Browsing by Subject "väkivaltafantasiat"

Aim of the study: Aim of the study was to examine whether there is a connection between psychopathy and the incidence of violent fantasies in normal population. A violent fantasy is defined as a thought that includes physical violence against another person. In previous research psychopathy has been associated with violent fantasies in criminal populations, and furthermore psychopathic traits are known to correlate with a greater risk of violent behaviour. However, little is known about associations between psychopathy and violent fantasies in normal population. In this study it was also examined whether psychopathic traits affect the emotional reactions that are generated by violent fantasies. Methods: The study was conducted by assessing four trait factors of psychopathy (erratic lifestyle, callous affect, interpersonal lifestyle, antisociality) as predictors of prevalence and incidence of psychopathy as well as magnitude of emotional reactions to violent fantasies. Analysing method was logistic regression. Effects of gender and age were controlled for in all analyses. Predictive power of the four traits was assessed simultaneously and separately while controlling for the other traits. Interactions between gender and the four traits were assessed. Results and conclusions: When all four psychopathy traits were examined simultaneously, all traits excluding erratic lifestyle predicted the prevalence of violent fantasies. Furthermore, all traits predicted the incidence of violent fantasies. However, these connections were small in magnitude and after controlling for all other traits only the connection between interpersonal lifestyle and incidence of violent fantasies remained statistically significant. Antisociality predicted higher levels of anger and anxiety as a reaction to violent fantasies. Callous affect predicted lower levels of anxiety. The results of this study suggest that there is a connection between psychopathy and violent fantasies also in normal population. However psychopathy is a weak predictor of violent fantasies. This weak predictive power can partly be explained by relative commonness of violent fantasies which is why other factors such as personal experiences of violence in life are stronger predictors of violent fantasies than personality.