A taxometric analysis of the latent structure of psychopathy: Evidence for dimensionality.

Abstract

The taxonomic status of psychopathy is controversial. Whereas some studies have found evidence that psychopathy, at least its antisocial component, is distributed as a taxon, others have found that both major components of psychopathy-callousness/unemotionality and impulsivity/antisocial behavior-appear to distribute as dimensions and show little evidence of taxonicity. In the present study, recent advances in taxometric analysis were added to P. Meehl's (1995) multiple consistency tests strategy for assessing taxonicity, and they were applied to Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003) ratings of 4,865 offenders sampled from multiple forensic settings. The results indicated that both the individual components of psychopathy and their interface are distributed dimensionally. Both the implications of these results for research in psychopathy and the integration of these findings with previous taxometric studies of psychopathy are discussed.

DSM-IV Antisocial Personality Disorder and Conduct Disorder: Evidence for Taxonic Structures Among Individuals With and Without Substance Use Disorders in the General Population

“…These results contrast sharply with studies that found dimensionality underlying psychopathy, ASPD, and CD (Edens et al, , 2011Guay et al, 2007;Murrie et al, 2007;Walters, 2009;Walters et al, 2007aWalters et al, , 2007bWalters et al, , 2007cWalters et al, , 2008. This discrepancy may refl ect reliance on adult inmate or juvenile detention center samples in prior studies that overrepresented individuals with severe antisocial syndromes.…”

“…Several clinical rating scales designed to assess psychopathy have been used in taxometric research, including various versions of the Psychopathology Checklist (PCL) and its revisions, the PCL-Revised and the PCL-Antisocial Process Screening Device (Frick and Hare, 2001;Hare 1993), antisocial subscales of the Personality Assessment Interview (Morey, 2007), and the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathology Scale (Levenson et al, 1995). Within this tradition, eight studies conducted among adult jail and/or prison inmates (Dana, 1990;Edens et al, 2006;Guay et al, 2007;Marcus et al, 2004;Walters, 2009;Walters et al, 2007aWalters et al, , 2007bWalters et al, , 2007cWalters et al, , 2008 and two studies (Edens et al, 2011;Murrie et al, 2007) conducted among adolescents in juvenile correctional facilities consistently yielded evidence of dimensionality of psychopathy.…”

Prevalence and correlates of psychopathic traits in the household population of Great Britain

“…Both the PCL-R (Guay, Ruscio, Knight, & Hare, 2007) and the PCL: SV (Walters, Gray, Jackson, Sewell, Rogers, Taylor, et al, 2007) measure a dimensional construct, and our primary analyses therefore involved correlations between the PCL: SV (and its factors) and its correlates, including demographic characteristics, verbal intelligence, DSM-IV Axis-II personality disorder traits, ICD-10 clinical syndromes, and social and behavioral problems. In addition, however, the PCL-R and PCL: SV scores can be used to provide convenient threshold or cut-scores for psychopathy, thereby allowing estimates to be made of the prevalence of the disorder in our sample.…”

Factor structure of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI): Findings from a large incarcerated sample.

“…However, given that psychopathy appears to be a construct that is continuously distributed (e.g., Guay, Ruscio, Knight, & Hare, 2007;Marcus, John, & Edens, 2004), one may reasonably expect some uniformity of PPI factor solutions across nonincarcerated and incarcerated populations. Moreover, other psychopathy research has found similar factor structures across very diverse samples (Hare & Neumann, in press).…”