The Revised Animal Preference Test: An Implicit Probe of Tendencies Toward Psychopathy

Abstract

At least some forms of interpersonal violence could follow from a vision of the self as a fierce, dominant creature. This should be particularly true when psychopathic (more proactive, less reactive) tendencies are involved. Possible relations of this type were examined in two studies (total N = 278) in which college student samples were presented with a new, structured version of an old projective test typically used in psychotherapy contexts. Participants were presented with predator-prey animal pairs (e.g., lion-zebra) that were not explicitly labeled as such. For each pair, the person was asked to choose the animal that they would more prefer to be. Participants who desired to be predator animals more often, on this Revised Animal Preference Test (RAPT), tended toward psychopathy to a greater extent. In Study 1, such relations were manifest in terms of correlations with psychopathic traits and with an interpersonal style marked by hostile dominance. Further analyses, though, revealed that predator self-identifications were more strongly related to primary psychopathy than secondary psychopathy. Study 2 replicated the interpersonal style correlates of the RAPT. In addition, photographs were taken of the participants in the second study and these photographs were rated for apparent hostility and dominance. As hypothesized, participants who wanted to be predator animals to a greater extent also appeared more hostile and dominant in their nonverbal behaviors. These studies suggest that projective preferences can be assessed in a reliable manner through the use of standardizing procedures. Furthermore, the studies point to some of the motivational factors that may contribute to psychopathy and interpersonal violence.

Blunted startle reactivity in everyday sadism and psychopathy

“…Past research has often shown that implicit measures correlate better with other implicit measures, while self-report measures correlate better with other self-report measures 105 . Thus, future research could test startle associations with more observational or implicit measures of antisocial traits, such as the Interpersonal Measure of Psychopathy 106 , the Psychopathy Q-Set 107 , the Revised Animal Preference Test 108 , the voodoo doll aggression task 109 , or tasks to assess implicit associations with violence 110 , 111 . Informant reports of sadistic tendencies may also help corroborate the self-reports and provide additional information from an observer’s perspective.…”

Open‐hearted: Preferences for openness in the agreeableness domain

“…For example, rather than asking clients, in an open‐ended way, “what animal would you like to be?” (Tuber, 2012), the researcher could develop a test that presents a series of particular animal pairs. Penzel and colleagues (2021) created a “Revised Animal Preference Test” of this type by presenting 12 animal pairs (e.g., lion‐zebra) and asking participants to choose which animal of each pair they preferred to be. Although not stated, all animal pairs consisted of one animal (e.g., lion) that kills and eats the other (e.g., zebra) and participants who wanted to be predator animals more often were prone to hostile dominance in their social interactions with others.…”