Social, Sexual, and Violent Predation: Are Psychopathic Traits Evolutionarily Adaptive?

Abstract

The construct of psychopathy is typically viewed as a psychopathology, and more specifically, a severe personality disorder with manifest psychobiological deficiencies. There is an alternative perspective that certain aspects of psychopathy are evolutionarily adaptive, and confer an advantage at both the individual and group level. In this article, we explore the research on psychopathy as it relates to social, sexual, and violent predation to demonstrate that psychopathy provides an adaptive psychobiological template for success. Utilizing Meloy's (1988, 2006) ten normative criteria for predatory violence, it appears psychopathy research findings over the past 30 years facilitate four domains of predatory behavior in humans: calmness, rationality, attention, and fantasy.