Browsing by Author "Saarinen, Aino"

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between personality traits and psychoticism in a criminal population. In earlier studies, this theme has been investigated in the general population and among psychiatric patients, and the results have indicated that especially emotional stability, agreeableness and extraversion are associated with psychotic symptoms. However, these results cannot be generalized to criminal populations because there are some special features related to the personality traits and psychotic symptoms of criminals. Personality traits have been shown to be highly stable despite psychotic symptoms and, therefore, this study focused on examining how personality traits possibly predispose to psychotic symptoms. The data consisted of 1188 American juvenile delinquents. The level of psychoticism was assessed through the Threat/Control Override Psychotic Symptoms Scale (TCO) questionnaire, which measures persecutory delusions and delusional beliefs that one's own thoughts or mental functions are produced or directed by some outside factor. Personality traits were assessed through the NEO-Five Factor Personality Inventory, Short Form (NEO-PI-SF), which measures the level of extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. In the statistical analyses, age, gender, possible major depressive disorder, and parental socioeconomic status of the participants were controlled. According to the results, low emotional stability, low agreeableness and low openness were associated with higher current psychotic symptoms. When considering only those participants who had never had psychotic symptoms before, low emotional stability predisposed to psychotic symptoms after six months. None of the traits predisposed to the relapse of psychotic symptoms. The results indicated that, except for openness, personality traits are generally weaker associated with psychoticism among criminals than in the general population. Personality traits seem to be associated to psychoticism in a very indirect and sophisticated way, and it is possible that facility conditions protect against some of the vulnerability factors that mediate or moderate the relationship between personality traits and psychoticism. It is not recommendable to utilize personality traits in screening individuals with high risk for psychosis in criminal populations.