ABSTRACT
This chapter provides evidence for the neurobiological underpinnings of psychopathy, and shows the emerging consensus that psychopathy, sociopathy, and antisocial personality disorder (APD) are three different but overlapping constructs. There also appears to be an emerging consensus that psychopathy is a stable phenotype that evidences a fairly constant prevalence across time, culture, and socioeconomic status. The gold standard for accomplishing it for the psychopathy concept is the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) developed by Robert Hare, a pioneer in scientific psychopathy research. If psychopathy is an alternate reproductive strategy forged by natural selection, or even if psychopaths are individuals with extreme genetic and neurobiological signatures for antisocial behavior, there must be a number of identifiable biological markers that distinguish them from non-psychopaths. It is fertile ground because the human brain captures all the toxicity of such circumstances, and will inevitably spew it back on society at some time in the future.
