Myth 7: Pedophiles and ephebophiles are psychopathic or neurotic.

Facts:

• The few studies that have actually addressed personality pathology among pedophiles and ephebophiles have suffered from numerous methodological problems, including the use of prison or clinical samples, basing conclusions on scales that have not been validated, or including incorrectly reported data.²¹
• One well-conducted study was unable to find any particular personality profile for pedophiles.²²
• Two British researchers found pedophiles and ephebophiles to be on average slightly higher in their levels of psychoticism and neuroticism, but no more so than members of several occupational groups including actors, architects, doctors, and students. They concluded that pedophiles and ephebophiles show no sign of clinically significant psychopathy or thought disorder. Based on an extensive review of the literature, two UCLA researchers came to the same conclusion.²³

Researchers write:

Paul Okami and Amy Goldberg, Department of Psychology, University of California Los Angeles:

Surprisingly little clinically significant pathology of any sort has been found among these groups...Our findings are consistent with those of Langevin...that "None of the commonly held hypotheses were supported."²⁴

• For more information, see the section on this site about characteristics of minor-attracted men.