Publications by authors named "Nicholas D Thomson"

Objective: This study examined the relationship between psychopathy and subtypes of aggression and firearm violence among a high-risk, community-based sample of adults. Specifically, it assessed whether the four-facet model of psychopathy (interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial) was differentially associated with reactive and proactive aggression and reactive and proactive gun violence. Additionally, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to evaluate the factor structure of the Self-Report Psychopathy Short Form (SRP-SF) in this population.

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Violent injuries tend to cluster together geospatially. The discriminatory housing practice of redlining undertaken by the United States federal government in the 1930s has been repeatedly linked with various contemporary community-level disparities. However, no known work has explored the association between historical redlining and the risk of violent injuries among adolescents.

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Firearm violence is a pervasive public health concern in the United States. However, the study of firearm violence is a relatively new area of research that is limited by a dearth of validated measures that assess firearm violence and behavior. Moreover, prior studies have assessed firearm behavior as a unidimensional construct, which is inconsistent with theories of aggression.

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Conduct Disorder (CD) involves persistent behavior violating societal norms and others' rights. A subgroup of adolescents with CD exhibits callous-unemotional (CU) traits, which are linked to severe antisocial behavior and poorer long-term outcomes. Research suggests parenting plays an important role in the development of CU traits.

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Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects upwards of 12 million people annually and is associated with psychological consequences for survivors (Black et al., 2011). Childhood trauma exposure (CTE) and separation insecurity are established correlates of IPV victimization; however, possible interactive effects remain unclear.

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Introduction: Conduct disorder (CD) is highly prevalent among youth, yet existing and conventional treatment approaches are limited and costly. Further, most interventions for CD focus on behavior management rather than targeting the underlying mechanisms of CD. To meet the needs of youth with CD (ages 10-17), we developed Impact VR, a virtual reality intervention that promotes competency in emotion recognition and regulation, as well as modeling prosocial behaviors.

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Introduction: Psychopathy reliably predicts aggression, making it valuable for violence prevention. However, research on sex differences within the 4-facet model, which includes affective, interpersonal, lifestyle, and antisocial facets of psychopathy, is limited, especially among high-risk community samples.

Methods: This study examined sex differences in the psychopathy facets associated with anger, hostility, and aggression among 419 ( = 32.

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Intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization is a risk factor for drug use, which has the potential to negatively impact survivor health and well-being. However, few studies have explored the role of emotion regulation in the association between IPV exposure and drug use. Understanding whether difficulties with emotion regulation mediate the association between IPV victimization and drug use may be important to better understand the mechanisms driving drug use and identify potential intervention targets.

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Background: Research on childhood maltreatment indicates that it is positively linked with exposure to violence during childhood and later in life. Various forms of maltreatment during childhood (e.g.

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While the impact of violent media on aggression is well established, less is known about how individual differences influence this relationship over time. This longitudinal study addresses that gap by examining whether narcissism and sex moderated the effect of violent media consumption and reactive and proactive aggression one year later. A sample of 2,284 adolescents from Cyprus (M = 16, SD = 0.

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The escalating global concerns surrounding radicalization and violent extremism necessitate a comprehensive understanding and explanation. Identifying the risk factors associated with radicalism and violent extremism is critical to the development of risk assessment, prevention, and intervention strategies. It is imperative to distinguish these risks from civic responsibilities (i.

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Objective: Myriad psychological research evinces a negative association between self-control and aggression with some arguing for self-control failure as a cause of aggression. Recent literature suggests that the relationship between aggression and self-control is likely more complex and even positive in some cases. One source of such conflict in the literature could be the presence of unaccounted for random item slopes in commonly used measures of self-control which may inflate the likelihood of Type I errors.

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Research has indicated that youths with CU traits are fearless, and this fearlessness plays a bidirectional role in both the development of CU traits and engagement in aggressive behavior. However, research specifically testing the role of fear in the association between CU traits and aggression is scarce. The goal of the current study was to test if fear reactivity, both conscious (self-report) and automatic (skin conductance reactivity; SCR), moderated the association between CU traits and aggression subtypes (reactive and proactive aggression).

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The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic carried with it an increase in violence in the United States and abroad. The proportion of violence cases involving firearms also increased during this time, yet little research has examined these effects using data from the second wave of COVID infections. Explanations for these documented increases in gun violence put forward by scholars include increased firearm purchases, alcohol consumption, unemployment, and organized crime activity.

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Psychopathy comprises antagonistic personality traits and antisocial behaviors that are associated with critical outcomes for the individual and society (e.g., violent behavior).

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Recidivism places a significant burden on society and efforts aimed at reducing cyclical criminal justice involvement are needed. This prospective study tested the utility of psychopathic traits in predicting general, felony, and substance-related rearrest in women following release from a correctional facility. The extent to which psychopathic traits offered incremental utility in predicting outcomes, above and beyond other established risk factors, including substance use disorder, was examined.

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Violence events tend to cluster together geospatially. Various features of communities and their residents have been highlighted as explanations for such clustering in the literature. One reliable correlate of violence is neighborhood instability.

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Research exploring risk factors of gun violence is limited, especially research involving women as perpetrators of violence. Yet, women account for 18-21% of convicted violent crime. The present study aimed to test if psychopathy, a notable risk factor for violence, was related to past convictions of gun violence, general forms of violence, and non-violent crime.

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Psychopathy is a collection of personality traits and behaviors that are associated with costly personal, interpersonal, and societal outcomes. The nature of this construct has been widely debated across decades of literature, and such debates have produced a multitude of instruments for the measurement of psychopathy. These measures include self-reports and clinical interviews, yet little work has examined the degree to which measurements of psychopathy may differ across these modalities and whether such potential differences may impact the associations commonly found with psychopathy (e.

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People with high levels of psychopathic traits are often described as fearless and lacking in emotional depth, particularly when evaluating threats in their environments. Skin conductance responsivity (SCR) to negative emotional stimuli represents a robust autonomic correlate of conduct problem behavior in children (Fanti et al., in , 100, 98-107, 2019).

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Article Synopsis
  • * A study showed that over a third of OUD participants reported experiencing recent IPT, with women more frequently affected by sexual violence than men.
  • * The findings suggest that public health strategies addressing the opioid crisis should specifically consider the impacts of IPT, focusing on tailored approaches for different genders.
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The ability to efficiently recognize the emotions on others' faces is something that most of us take for granted. Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits and impulsivity/conduct problems (ICP), such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, have been previously described as being "fear blind". This is also associated with looking less at the eye regions of fearful faces, which are highly diagnostic.

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Reactive aggression is posited to occur as a result of hypersensitivity to threat, whereas fearlessness may drive proactive aggression. This study aimed to test if physiological fear reactivity differentially relates to self-report reactive and proactive aggression using immersive virtual reality fear (VR) induction. We collected subjective fear ratings and sympathetic (SNS; skin conductance) and parasympathetic (PNS; respiratory sinus arrhythmia) nervous system reactivity during an interactive VR horror video.

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Psychopathy and substance use disorders (SUDs) are both characterized by neurocognitive impairments reflecting higher levels of impulsivity such as reward-driven decision-making and deficient inhibitory control. Previous studies suggest that psychopathy may exacerbate decision-making deficits, but it may be unrelated to other neurocognitive impairments among substance dependent individuals (SDIs). The aim of the present study was to examine the role of psychopathy and its interpersonal-affective and impulsive-antisocial dimensions in moderating the relationships between dependence on different classes of drugs and neurocognitive domains of impulsivity.

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