Robert Hare

Introduction

        Robert Hare has been a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia where he has been both a teacher and researcher for over forty years.  Hare’s life began in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1934 where his father was a roofing contractor and his mother was French Canadian.  Without a lot of effort he completed high school with average grades, and enrolled at the University of Alberta to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree which ended up being mostly centered in psychology.  He received his Master of Arts in psychology in 1960 from the same university and happened to land a job in the prison system in British Columbia where he stayed eight months.  After his job in the prison system he moved to Ontario where he received his PHD and researched and completed a paper on the effects of punishment on behavior.  It was his research on this paper that played a major role in the application and development of his work in psychopathy.

        It was after Hare returned to British Columbia that he would begin working at the same university he would retire from thirty years later.  His eight months working in the prison system in British Columbia inspired him to return and conduct research on the effects of punishment on behavior.  His research led him to the conclusion that the prisoners who did not change their behavior as a result of punishment were psychopaths.  His research in the field of criminal psychology led him to develop the Hare Psychopathy Checklist which has proven to be both valid and reliable as a diagnostic tool used in determining a person’s psychopathic tendencies.  Hare’s checklist is quickly becoming the standard diagnostic tool for researchers and clinicians in the field of psychopathy.  

        The Hare checklist was developed in the early 1990’s, and was used to diagnose adult males in prisons, criminal psychiatric hospitals, and those up for psychiatric evaluation on trial in other correction or detention centers.  It was created mostly for the assessment of those people accused or already convicted of a crime.  This checklist is made up of a 20 symptom rating scale that compares that person’s degree of psychopathy to a prototypical psychopath.  The main symptoms of a person diagnosed with psychopathy are a lack of conscience or any feelings of guilt, lack of empathy, egocentricity, pathological lying, repeated violations of social norms, disregard for the law, shallow emotions, and a history of victimizing others.  These are all characteristics that would be used to determine the extent of psychopathy in a person on the Hare Checklist.  These people who are diagnosed as a psychopathic, prey ruthlessly on unsuspecting people.  They use charm, deceit, violence, or any other means they feel necessary to get what they want.

        The Hare checklist has most recently been found useful in the courtroom and in other institutions to identify the potential risk of prisoners or other subjects.  It has proven useful because paychopaths, having a lack of social emotion or moral reasoning, often prove to be repeat offenders who commit sexual assault or other violent crimes over and over.  The results of the psychopathy checklist are used to determine the length and type of prison time the offender needs.  It also helps decide the necessary treatment for the offender, if rehabilitation is even a possibility.