A network analysis on psychopathy and theoretically relevant personality traits

Abstract

Psychopathy can be divided into primary and secondary psychopathy. However, these variants of psychopathy can be found in other forms of personality and disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Regardless of the substantial overlap, studies have typically investigated bivariate relationships between psychopathy and other personality traits, leaving it an open question how these traits are uniquely associated with each other. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between psychopathy and other theoretically relevant personality and disorders which cover autism, ADHD, alexithymia, Machiavellianism, and trait anxiety. A Japanese-speaking community sample (N = 1000, M = 41.3 ± 11.5 years, and 500 women) completed an online survey. A partial correlation network with regularization was estimated. Results showed that secondary psychopathy (measured by the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy scale) has unique positive associations with autism, ADHD symptoms, alexithymia, and trait anxiety. On the other hand, primary psychopathy has positive associations with Machiavellianism and alexithymia but negative associations with autism and trait anxiety. These findings suggest that secondary psychopathy is a common feature (or can be seen as a general behavioral problem) shared by other personality traits and symptoms, whereas primary psychopathy may be a more unique variant of psychopathy, albeit significantly overlapping with Machiavellianism and alexithymia.