Psychopaty and personality traits of heroin addicts in treatment and general population

Abstract

The main objectives of this study were to determine: a) whether scores on the dimensions of psychopathy may serve as valid criteria for typology of both heroin addicts in treatment and general population; b) distribution of heroin addicts according to the clusters formed based on the psychopathy scores; and c) personality trait differences between obtained clusters. A sample of 180 respondents (90 heroin addicts in treatment and 90 nonaddicts, age 21-43 years) completed the Psychopathy Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ) and the Big Five Plus Two (BF+2). To estimate the number of clusters in the area measuring psychopathy, we used Ward’s hierarchical cluster analysis and non-hierarchical k-means analysis. Four cluster solution proved to be optimal. Clusters are interpreted using multivariate analysis of variance. Results show that there are statistically significant differences between the clusters in terms of the factor scores on all dimensions of the PAQ questionnaire. The four clusters were designated as 'psychopaths', 'sensation seekers', 'hyperadapted', and 'adapted insensitive'. The largest number of heroin addicts was found in the 'psychopaths' and 'sensation seekers' clusters, while most of the nonaddicts fell into the 'hyperadapted' and 'adapted insensitive' clusters. Regarding personality traits, multivariate analysis of variance results show that there are statistically significant differences between the clusters in terms of the factor scores on the dimensions of the questionnaire BF+2, except for Openness to experience and Positive valence.