Previous research has described diverse biological correlates of the psychopathic personality. Efforts to understand the underpinnings of low fear responses in psychopathic individuals have drawn attention to the possible role of abnormalities in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function, but studies to date have been largely limited to youth or to adult community samples. The current study therefore examined morning basal cortisol levels and responses to a psychosocial stress task in a forensic clinical sample of psychopathic offenders (n = 14), non-psychopathic offenders (n = 22), and non-offender controls (n = 14). Morning cortisol levels were similar in all three groups. Throughout the stress task, psychopathic offenders showed significantly lower cortisol than controls; non-psychopathic offenders showed a similar but non-significant trend towards lower cortisol. The three groups did not differ, however, in cortisol response slopes. Implications of these findings are discussed in the framework of current theories about biological mechanisms underlying psychopathic personality.

先前的研究描述了精神病态人格的多种生物学相关性。了解精神病患者低恐惧反应的基础的努力引起了人们对下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺 (HPA) 轴功能异常的可能作用的关注，但迄今为止的研究主要限于青年或成人社区样本。因此，目前的研究在精神病罪犯 ( n = 14)、非精神病罪犯 ( n  = 22) 和非罪犯对照 ( n = 14）。所有三组的早晨皮质醇水平相似。在整个压力任务中，精神病患者的皮质醇明显低于对照组；非精神病罪犯表现出类似但不显着的皮质醇降低趋势。然而，三组的皮质醇反应斜率没有差异。这些发现的含义在当前关于精神病人格潜在生物学机制的理论框架中进行了讨论。