Triarchic Model Personality Traits and Their Impact on Mock Juror Perceptions of a White-Collar Criminal Defendant

ABSTRACT

The triarchic model of psychopathy proposes that this personality disorder is composed of 3 relatively distinct constructs: meanness, disinhibition, and boldness. Although the first 2 components are widely accepted, boldness has generated considerable theoretical debate concerning its relevance—largely due to its association with various ostensibly adaptive characteristics and socially desirable behaviors (e.g., self-reported heroism). But is being bold actually perceived by others as an intrinsically adaptive, socially desirable personality trait? We investigated this question using a novel approach—a jury simulation study that manipulated the level of triarchic traits exhibited by a white-collar criminal. More specifically, 330 community members read a vignette in which the defendant's degree of boldness and disinhibition was manipulated and then provided sentence recommendations and other evaluative ratings. As hypothesized, manipulating boldness and disinhibition resulted in more negative views of the defendant, with the boldness manipulation more consistently predicting higher global psychopathy, “meanness,” and “evil” ratings. Surprisingly, neither manipulation predicted sentence recommendations, although higher global psychopathy ratings did correlate with more punitive sentence recommendations. The presence of personality traits construed in some contexts as advantageous or socially desirable can be perceived as more dysfunctional and undesirable in other contexts—particularly when they cooccur with criminal behavior.

Notes

¹ We did not manipulate meanness in this study because the extant research on the closely related concept of interpersonal and affective traits from the PCL–R already clearly indicates that such characteristics are highly stigmatizing (for a review, see Edens et al., in press).

² Although judges usually determine the sentence for convicted criminals, various U.S. states do allow for jurors to provide sentencing recommendations (Hoffman, 2003). Additionally, relatively recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions (e.g., Apprendi v. New Jersey, 2000) have served to further bolster the authority of juries in sentencing-related decisions (B. P. Smith, 2005).

³ It should be noted that participants in this study were not provided any PCL–R training, nor did they have access to most of the types of information mental health professionals use to score the PCL–R. Therefore, these ratings are not meant to be isomorphic with PCL–R ratings or a valid assessment of psychopathy. Rather, they simply represent ratings of the extent to which these laypersons attribute psychopathic trait labels (e.g., “lack of remorse”) to the defendant in this case.

⁴ Meanness ratings correlated highly with affective or interpersonal deficits (r = .51) and disinhibition ratings correlated highly with social deviance (r = .54). So, not surprisingly, meanness ratings correlated with sentence (r = .30, p < .001) and a weaker, albeit significant correlation emerged between disinhibition and sentence (r = .14, p = .01).

⁵ Results from these analyses separated out by the experimental conditions are available from the first author.

⁶ Given the degree to which affective or interpersonal and meanness ratings were correlated, unsurprisingly, the relationship between the manipulations and meanness ratings was similar to those found for affective or interpersonal ratings. Higher boldness predicted endorsement of the defendant being more “mean,” t(298) = 4.08, p < .001, d = .47. Disinhibition did not affect endorsement of the defendant as mean, t(298) = 1.64, p = .10, d = .19.