Psychopathic personality disorder and cybercriminality: an outline of the issue

Abstract

The rapid development of information and communication technologies has created a new dimension in interpersonal rela-tionships, which is commonly called cyberspace. Structural features of cyberspace such as anonymity, the lack of non-verbal indicators of interaction, their asynchrony, a sense of impunity and the lack of specific norms of conduct cause that the behavior of some people online may differ significantly from their behavior in real life. Individuals with psychopathic personality disorder can use cyberspace for criminal activities such as cyberbullying, trolling, digital piracy, cybervandalism or data theft. This is a very significant problem, as some researchers predict that as digital communication develops, ‘cy-berpsychopaths’ will become the dominant form of criminals. Currently, there is a lack of research on the relationship be-tween the structural features of cyberspace and the expression of psychopathic personality traits and their role in commit-ting cybercrimes.

Keywords

• cyberspace
• psychopathic personality disorder
• criminal offences