The prevalence, manifestation and assessment of psychopathy might be influenced by culture. However, the vast majority of research on psychopathy has been carried out in a few Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) countries. In contrast, there is limited knowledge in the Middle Eastern Arabic speaking countries for psychopathy. A recent issue of the journal Mental Health, Religion & Culture showed a study using a large sample of under-graduate university students (N = 850) from two Arab countries (Egypt and Kuwait) administered the original version of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP) along with the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). The LSRP is better organized using a three-factor structure (Egocentrism, Callousness, and Antisocial) rather than its original two-factor model (primary and secondary psychopathy) and the reliabilities of all factors were found to be acceptable to high. In addition, all factors correlated negatively with agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion but positively with neuroticism. These results provide initial evidence for cross-cultural similarity of psychopathy construct. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
For the abstract (Open source)
Arab countries are way too similar to WEIRD countries to make for a useful comparison. The Middle East and the West have been in contact for millennia and both are influenced by the same monotheistic tradition.
To answer this question, one would have to look at isolated tribes that have had almost no contact with or other influence from Westerners. It might also require the researchers to be non-Western so as to not unconsciously bring WEIRD biases into the very structure of the study.
Posted by: Benjamin David Steele | February 04, 2022 at 06:47 PM