Comparison between the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality in a representative sample of Spanish prison inmates

Abstract

In the field of psychopathy, there is an ongoing debate about the core traits that define the disorder, and that therefore must be present to some extent in all psychopaths. The main controversy of this debate concerns criminal behaviour, as some researchers consider it a defining trait, while others disagree. Using a representative sample of 204 Spanish convicted inmates incarcerated at the Pereiro de Aguiar Penitentiary in Ourense, Spain, we tested two competing models, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), which includes criminal behaviour items, versus the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP), which does not. We used two different PCL-R models, one that includes criminal items and another that does not. PCL-R factors, facets, and testlets from both models and CAPP dimensions were correlated and compared. Two different PCL-R cutoff scores, 25 or more and 30 or more, were used for the analysis. Overall, a strong correlation was found between PCL-R and CAPP scores in the whole sample, but as scores increased and inmates became more psychopathic, the correlations weakened. All these data indicate that psychopathy, understood to mean having high scores on the PCL-R and CAPP, is a multidimensional entity, and inmates can develop the disorder and then receive the diagnosis through different dimensions. The CAPP domains showed better correlations when compared with the PCL-R factors from both models, showing that an instrument for the assessment of psychopathy without a criminal dimension is valuable for clinical assessment and research purposes.

Content Validation of the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality—Basic Version (CAPP-Basic) Using Prototypical Analysis

“…Most of the various instruments associated with the CAPP have been researched extensively, providing support for the theoretical strength of the model. In particular, investigations utilizing the CAPP-IRS have suggested that the instrument exhibits moderate to high levels of internal consistency across multiple populations (Dawson et al, 2012;De Page et al, 2018;Flórez et al, 2018;Pedersen et al, 2010), strong convergent validity with other established measures of psychopathic personality (Flórez et al, 2018(Flórez et al, , 2020Sandvik et al, 2012), and predictive validity for violent and nonviolent institutional outcomes at a level on par with Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R; Hare, 1991) based measures (Pedersen et al, 2010).…”

The Influence of Psychopathy on Incarcerated Inmates’ Cognitive Empathy

“…Once again, these findings are difficult to explain. Since CAPP Cognitive and Behavioral are domains closely related to one another, as previous CAPP research has shown [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 34 ], they should associate with RMET scores in the same way. For the CAPP Behavioral association with RMET performance, we found that, as with the PCL-R Facet 3, which measures a similar construct, it turned in the opposite direction when compared with previous research [ 11 ].…”

“…The protocol followed in the current study has been described in detail elsewhere [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]. Participants in the current study are the same as those in our previously published PCL-R and CAPP work [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ].…”

“…The protocol followed in the current study has been described in detail elsewhere [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]. Participants in the current study are the same as those in our previously published PCL-R and CAPP work [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]. The study was conducted at the Pereiro the Aguiar Prison, a low-medium security institution where all offenders from the Ourense region who receive aggregate sentences of 2 years or longer are incarcerated.…”

Prevalence of psychopathy in a community sample of Spanish adults: Definitions and measurements matter

“…Moreover, it could be questioned whether it is possible to evaluate and identify psychopathy simply from the evaluation and presence of extreme personality traits, without taking into account the evaluation and presence of criminal behaviors or the deterioration caused by such traits in social, work, or other important areas of functioning. However, even in samples of the delinquent or prison population, including Spanish samples, several studies have shown that the instruments that evaluate personality traits related to psychopathy but do not include items that evaluate criminal behavior seem to evaluate the same construct of psychopathy ( Pedersen et al, 2010 ; Flórez et al, 2020 ). In addition, in a recent study, Clark et al (2019) have demonstrated the strong correlation between measures of personality disorders based on the presence of extreme personality traits and measures based on the presence of problems in the functioning of the personality, such that, although personality traits and personality dysfunction are theoretically distinct constructs, empirically, they are indistinguishable.…”