Psychopathic Personality Traits and Iowa Gambling Task Performance in Incarcerated Offenders

There is a paucity of research on how psychopathy relates to decision-making. In this study, we assessed the relationship between affective decision-making and psychopathic personality. A sample of prisoners (n = 49) was characterized in terms of psychopathic traits using the Psychopathic Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV). Decision-making was assessed using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Higher levels of psychopathy related to more advantageous choices (p = .003). Also counter-intuitively, higher levels of antisocial traits (facet 4) predicted advantageous choices during the learning phase of the task (p = .004). Our findings suggest that some psychopathic facets may be more relevant to decision-making under risk, and highlight the importance of further investigations considering facet and trait-level relationships with decision-making.