Lay Theories and Attitudes About Psychopathy

It is known that psychopaths receive harsher sentences than those who do not have the psychopathic label. And yet, jurors, or laypeople more broadly, do not have a thorough conception of psychopathy. Thus the goals of this research were to examine laypeople's understanding and attitudes about psychopathy, and to test if an educational experimental manipulation can improve laypeople's understanding of this disorder. Study 1 revealed that in a sample of 286, lay participants have misconceptions and a number of inaccurate attitudes about psychopathy. In Study 2, a sample of 259 lay participants was randomly assigned to watch a control video describing dog training myths or a video describing psychopathy myths. Compared to a control video, watching a short educational video about psychopathy helped improve lay participants' conception and misguided attitudes about psychopathy. This has promising implications for reducing mental health stigma and its associated negative consequences.