Personality disorders and the risk of violating legal norms – what we know about the complex nature of humans

The article explores the relationship between theoretical knowledge of the psychology of personality disorders and its practical application in the area of justice. There is agreement in the literature on the relationship between a diagnosis of personality disorder and the increased risk of aggressive or violent behaviour, as pointed out by both the research of clinicians and judiciary workers. Nevertheless, the issue of explaining and understanding the relationship between personality disorders and violence has not yet been resolved, due to conceptualisation, diagnostic, methodological, psychotherapeutic and resocialisation difficulties. These controversies stimulate reflection and an attempt to determine whether the relationship between personality disorders and aggression is the same in all types of personality disorders.

Corruption as a Propensity: Personality and Motivational Determinants Among Nigerians

Psychologically oriented studies on corruption are lacking despite the fact that psychology has contributed enormously to the understanding of criminal behaviors over the past decades. Part of this problem relates to the lack of psychological tone in the definition and measurement of corruption. Taking a clue from the extensive psychological discourse on crime, which provides strong evidence for the existence of criminal tendencies, we conceptualized corruption here in terms of propensity. Possible personality and motivation determinants of this propensity were then explored. Results revealed that extraversion and conscientiousness positively and inversely predicted corruption tendencies, respectively. Results further showed that extrinsic motivation positively potentiates corruption tendencies, whereas intrinsic motivation was inversely related to corruption tendencies. Analysis of demographic variables revealed that males were more likely to be corrupt than their female counterparts. In general, findings here are consistent with the criminal behavior literature, which strongly suggests that the study of corruption is indeed amenable to psychological theories and methods and that individual differences variables constitute important explanatory variables in this regard.