The Caring-Uncaring Emotional (CUE) Inventory: A Pilot Study of a New Measure of Affective Psychopathy Traits

Abstract

<p>An affective dimension of psychopathy, e.g., callousness, lack of empathy, unemotional responsiveness, is essential to the study and understanding of psychopathy. It may be advantageous to have available brief measures of the affective dimension that may be utilized with adults and/or youths. The current study aims to provide preliminary validation of a new, brief, self-report measure of the affective dimension of psychopathy that may be suitable in the study of both adults and adolescents. A pilot study of the Caring-Uncaring Emotional (CUE) Inventory was conducted with 155 men and women recruited from a community sample. The 23-item CUE Inventory was found to have high internal consistency reliability (α = .91) and was found to have high correlations with an expanded, 36-item version of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP; Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995), especially with the expanded LSRP Callous subscale (<em>r</em> = .85), thus supporting preliminary concurrent validity. The CUE was only modestly associated with the Antisocial subscale of the expanded LSRP, further supporting it as a measure of affective rather than behavioral traits. The CUE accounted for an additional 57% of the variance in LSRP total scores after controlling for demographic variables. An Exploratory Factor Analysis suggested a three-factor solution, with the first factor accounting for approximately 37% of the variance in scores and with high to very high loadings on this factor, which appears, tentatively, as a good measure of callousness. In conclusion, the CUE may function as an operational representative of callousness in adults in a community sample. Further study is needed to better clarify the latent structure of this scale and to determine its associations with other similar measures of the affective dimension of psychopathy and with other external correlates. The potential application of this measure in youths remains to be studied.</p>

Examining the Caring-Uncaring Emotional (CUE) Inventory as a Measure of Affective, Callous-Unemotional Psychopathy Traits in a Community Sample of Adults

“…Results of an exploratory factor analysis of the CUE were quite similar to the results of an EFA conducted in the initial pilot study (Semel, 2016), while several items were added to the CUE in the current study. As in the earlier study, results of the EFA supported a three-factor solution.…”

“…The CUE was previously found (Semel, 2016) to be highly correlated with an expanded version of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP; Levenson et al, 1995) that was developed by Christian and Sellbom (2016). The CUE was most highly correlated with the Callous subscale of the expanded LSRP, and was highly correlated with the Egocentric subscale and moderately correlated with the Antisocial subscale.…”

“…The CUE (Semel, 2016) is a 25-item self-report measure designed to assess the construct of callous and insensitive affective traits in adults and potentially in youths. The CUE incorporates some item content that might not suggest an undesirable mode of feeling or rationalizing about situations for some persons who are higher on the dimension of callousness.…”

The Abbreviated Psychopathy Measure (APM): Two Pilot Studies of a Brief Measure of Psychopathy Traits

“…The CUE Inventory was designed to measure affective traits of psychopathy. In two studies of community samples of adults (Semel, 2016(Semel, , 2017, the CUE was found to have high internal consistency reliability (α = .91 and .93, respectively). The CUE was found to have high correlations with an expanded, 36-item version of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP; Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995) that was developed by Christian and Sellbom (2016), and with multiple subscale measures of callous affect from several established adult and youth psychopathy measures.…”

“…Five of the 11 items included in the APM Meanness scale were selected from the Caring-Uncaring Emotional (CUE) Inventory (Semel, 2016(Semel, , 2017. The CUE Inventory was designed to measure affective traits of psychopathy.…”