Psychopathy and Alcohol Misuse in the Spit For Science Sample
Creators: name: Chester, David
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Medical Sciences
subject: Substance Abuse and Addiction
subject: Personality and Social Contexts
subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Social Psychology
subject: Mental and Social Health
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Genetic Processes
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: This project represents a secondary data analysis of an existing dataset collected via the Virginia Commonwealth University's Spit For Science Project. Our analyses will be performed on the most recently released dataset of N = 12,358 undergraduate participants. Psychopathic individuals inflict substantial public health costs. For instance, despite comprising only 1-2% of the U.S. population, psychopathic individuals perpetrate 30-40% of the violent acts in the U.S. (Kiehl &amp; Hoffman, 2011; Reidy et al., 2015). A key reason behind the increased violence among psychopathic individuals may be alcohol misuse. Alcohol misuses is a well-known cause of aggressive behavior (Bushman, &amp; Cooper, 1990) and psychopathy is associated with greater alcohol misuse (Smith, &amp; Newman, 1990). However, the ways in which psychopathy and alcohol misuse interact are incompletely understood. To fill this gap in our understanding, we propose a series of data analysis that test three hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Alcohol misuse over time will be positively associated with the growth trajectory of psychopathic traits. Hypothesis 2: Polygenic risk scores for alcohol misuse will be positively associated with psychopathic traits. Hypothesis 3: Psychopathy will be positively associated with anxiety over ‘unmasking ones-self’ (i.e., becoming disinhibited and acting aggressively) during alcohol misuse. Psychopathy will be measured by reverse-scoring items from the Agreeableness subscale of the Big Five Inventory from all available timepoints (as suggested by Miller, &amp; Lynam, 2015). Alcohol misuse will be measured via the DSM-V Alcohol Use Disorder criterion items from all available timepoints. Polygenic risk scores for alcohol misuse will be created from each participant’s genomic data based on the most up-to-date GWAS of alcohol misuse. Unmasking anxiety will be measured via the following items from the “Alcohol” section of Spit4Science measures from (all available timepoints): -alc_12f: I would feel guilty. -alc_12m: I would act aggressively. -alc_12m: I would take risks. -alc_13d: I worry that I might not be able to control myself -alc_13m: I'm scared I'll get into trouble. -alc_13t: I'm concerned about what people might think. -alc_13w: I was embarrassed by something I said or did when I drank before. We also request all participant demographic information in order to accurately characterize the sample. We will test Hypothesis 1 using latent growth curve modeling that examines the associations between the latent intercepts and slopes of alcohol misuse and psychopathy over time. We will test Hypothesis 2 by first calculating polygenic risk scores based on polymorphism-weights from the most well-powered and up-to-date GWAS on alcohol misuse. We will then conduct a bivariate correlation between this polygenic risk score and psychopathy traits. We will test Hypothesis 3 using a simple bivariate correlation between psychopathy and the composite unmasking anxiety variable. References Bushman, B. J., &amp; Cooper, H. M. (1990). Effects of alcohol on human aggression: An intergrative research review. Psychological bulletin, 107(3), 341. Kiehl, K. A., &amp; Hoffman, M. B. The criminal psychopath: History, neuroscience, treatment, and economics. Jurimetrics 51 (2011): 355. Miller, J. D., &amp; Lynam, D. R. (2015). Understanding psychopathy using the basic elements of personality. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 9(5), 223-237. Reidy, D. E., Kearns, M. C., DeGue, S., Lilienfeld, S. O., Massetti, G., &amp; Kiehl, K. A. (2015). Why psychopathy matters: Implications for public health and violence prevention. Aggression and violent behavior, 24, 214-225. Smith, S. S., &amp; Newman, J. P. (1990). Alcohol and drug abuse-dependence disorders in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic criminal offenders. Journal of abnormal psychology, 99(4), 430.