Furthering the case for the MPQ-based measures of psychopathy

Abstract

This paper provides further information about measures of the psychopathic personality traits of fearless dominance (FD) and impulsive antisociality (IA) created from the multidimensional personality questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen, 1982) item pool. Study 1 evaluated the criterion-related validity of these measures for predicting variables related to antisocial behavior and for predicting variables that included affective elements. Results indicate that IA was positively associated with measures of antisocial behavior whereas FD was associated with measures that included affective content. Study 2 evaluated how FD and IA were related to facets of narcissism and relationship variables. Results indicated complicated links between psychopathic traits and narcissism and that IA was a correlate of intentions of infidelity. Taken together, these studies suggest that the MPQ-based measures are useful tools for studying psychopathy and provide further construct validity data for a two-factor model of psychopathic personality traits.