Development of an Inconsistent Responding Scale for the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure.

Abstract

Inconsistent or careless responding to self-report measures is estimated to occur in approximately 10% of university research participants and may be even more common among offender populations. Inconsistent responding may be a result of a number of factors including inattentiveness, reading or comprehension difficulties, and cognitive impairment. Many stand-alone personality scales used in applied and research settings, however, do not include validity indicators to help identify inattentive response patterns. Using multiple archival samples, the current study describes the development of an inconsistent responding scale for the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM; Patrick, 2010), a widely used self-report measure of psychopathy. We first identified pairs of correlated TriPM items in a derivation sample (N = 2,138) and then created a total score based on the sum of the absolute value of the differences for each item pair. The resulting scale, the Triarchic Assessment Procedure for Inconsistent Responding (TAPIR), strongly differentiated between genuine TriPM protocols and randomly generated TriPM data (N = 1,000), as well as between genuine protocols and those in which 50% of the original data were replaced with random item responses. TAPIR scores demonstrated fairly consistent patterns of association with some theoretically relevant correlates (e.g., inconsistency scales embedded in other personality inventories), although not others (e.g., measures of conscientiousness) across our cross-validation samples. Tentative TAPIR cut scores that may discriminate between attentively and carelessly completed protocols are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record

Development and Initial Validation of an Inconsistent Responding Scale for the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory

“…Although mean scores were actually somewhat higher in our German sample, this is not entirely surprising given that those participants completed the YPI with the least amount of direct research assistant supervision. This is consistent with other recent research suggesting that the administration context to some extent impacts group mean scores on inconsistency scales (Mowle et al, 2016).…”

“…Overall, these findings provide promising evidence for the ability of the SPICIE to detect inconsistent responding across sample types (i.e., juvenile justice, middle school) and languages (at least for English and German). All told, these initial results are consistent with a growing body of literature (e.g., Kelley et al, 2016;Mowle et al, 2016) that has developed inconsistent responding scales for measures of psychopathic personality traits using a similar approach to item selection.…”

Self‐ and informant perceptions of psychopathic traits in relation to the triarchic model

“…Most participants had chosen their current roommate (63.2%), as opposed to being assigned a roommate. Twenty participants (11.5%) were removed from data analysis due to inattentive responding on the self‐ and/or informant report version of the TriPM (TAPIR ≥ 11; see Mowle et al, ) . One participant was excluded from further analysis due to being a parent of the undergraduate participant, resulting in a final sample of 153 participants and 67 complete dyads.…”

“…Nonetheless, the potential influence of psychopathic traits on valid reporting is troubling, especially in situations with heightened motivation for manipulating responses (e.g., forensic assessments or employment‐eligibility evaluations). Although validity scales designed to identify inconsistent responding are increasingly available for self‐report psychopathy measures (e.g., Kelley et al, ; Mowle et al, ; Penson et al, ), only the Psychopathic Personality Inventory‐Revised (PPI‐R; Lilienfeld & Widows, ) and Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (Lynam et al, ) originally contained indicators of positive impression management (e.g., consciously or unconsciously portraying oneself in an unrealistically favorable light; Paulhus, ). Moreover, few studies have examined the utility of these scales in detecting problematic response styles on self‐report psychopathy measures (Anderson, Sellbom, Wygant, & Edens, ; Kelley et al, ; Marcus, Church, O'Connell, & Lilienfeld, ; Nikolova, Hendry, Douglas, Edens, & Lilienfeld, ).…”

The incremental validity of the Triarchic model of psychopathy in replicating "The dark side of love and life satisfaction: Associations with intimate relationships, psychopathy and Machiavellianism"

“…Although generally stigmatized by many researchers, several studies support the efficiency and validity of recruiting participants via web-based forums such as reddit.com (Casler, Bickel, & Hackett, 2013;Jamnik & Lane, 2017;Shatz, 2017). Examination of potential outliers was performed with the Triarchic Assessment Procedure of Inconsistent Responding (TAPIR; Mowle et al, 2017). Participants' score ranged from 0 to 11, and therefore no protocol was removed.…”