Are Specific Traits of Psychopathy More Predictive of Intimate Partner Homicide?

The study uses 143 intimate partner homicide (IPH) offenders (male = 120 and female = 23) who were assessed by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). IPH men are more affectively impaired (facet 2: Cohen’s d = 0.58) and have more behavioral antisocial problems (facet 4: Cohen’s d = 0.75) than IPH women. The riskiest traits of IPH men are criminal versatility (item 20: Cohen’s d = 0.72) and callousness (item 8: Cohen’s d = 0.71). In addition, IPH women tended be abused by their (male) victims, whereas IPH men tended to be abusers and violence escalated into killing their (female) victims.