Investigating Emergent Models of Psychopathy

Abstract

The dominant conceptualization of psychopathic personality (psychopathy) in the field today, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) places significant weight on antisocial and criminal behaviors in conjunction with relatively less emphasis on constructs such as fearlessness and other personality characteristics (e.g., interpersonal dominance) that many theorists consider inherent to this disorder. The present study is one of the first to compare emergent models of psychopathy that differ from the PCL-R model in terms of their emphasis on core traits they postulate as essential to conceptualizing psychopathy. More specifically, this project is the first to concurrently investigate among a sample of male inmates (a) the Triarchic Model of psychopathy, which emphasizes traits indicative of “Boldness,” (b) the six dynamic domains of the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality Disorder (CAPP), which places greater weight on interpersonal characteristics (e.g., dominance) than behavioral components (e.g., aggression), as well as (c) the PCL-R model. Results from this study provide information regarding the extent to which emerging models of psychopathy converge (and diverge) with an established measure of psychopathy within an inmate sample.