Operationalizing Psychopathy Through a Multi-Method Approach

We examined the operationalization of psychopathy through a multi-method framework in a community sample of 250 participants, who were oversampled for psychopathic traits. Psychopathy was operationalized through clinician-rated measures, including the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version and the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP): Symptom Rating Scale, as well as the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure and the CAPP-Self Report. Using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling and controlling for self-report and clinical rating method variances, a four-factor model of psychopathy emerged with factors representing Boldness, Disinhibition, Affective, and Interpersonal traits. We examined the validity of the four-factor model by investigating associations between each factor and conceptually relevant scales, and the results generally supported construct validity. The Interpersonal factor was considered to contribute to the model theoretically in the factor analysis, but the incremental validity of this factor above and beyond the Boldness and Affective factors was not supported by available criterion measures.