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Psychopathic men have an extreme focus on mating at the expense of other domains and tend to be "parasitic" fathers
Why do psychopaths become parents? A study published in Evolutionary Psychological Science suggests that people high in psychopathy focus primarily on mating, but often avoid parental or somatic investment (meaning the growth and maintenance of oneself).
www.psypost.org
Psychopathy consists of traits such as selfishness, grandiosity, callousness, and impulsivity. People who are high on these antisocial traits can be very harmful to the people around them. This can oftentimes include short-term mating and less parental investment.
The researchers found that that psychopathic traits were associated with stronger mating attitudes and weaker parental and somatic investment attitudes. These effects also differed by relationship status, with men who were in relationships showing higher levels of somatic investment, with average mating and parental investment.
“Additionally, we found that men higher in psychopathic traits were more likely to be fathers, even despite their lower time and energy spent with their children. Thus, psychopathic men might be parasitic fathers who have lots of children but export the care of those children onto the mothers and/or others,” Brazil explained.
The findings are in line with another study, published in Evolutionary Psychological Science, which found that psychopathic traits were positively related to the number of children a person had. In other words, more psychopathic men tended to have more offspring than less psychopathic men.
“Men with psychopathic traits don’t seem to have an issue finding partners and having children. This is not just shown in our study, but many others as well, including studies examining offenders,” Brazil said.