Predicting self-reported total, aggressive, and income offending with the Youth Version of the Psychopathy Checklist: Gender- and factor-level interactions.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether gender moderates the interaction between Factor 1 (F1: core interpersonal-affective traits of psychopathy) and Factor 2 (F2: social deviance and disinhibition) of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003) in predicting future offending. A group of 806 (679 boys, 127 girls) adjudicated delinquents from the Pathways to Desistance study (Mulvey, 2013) completed the PCL:YV and were followed for 7 years. When gender and the PCL:YV factor scores were entered into the 1st step of a hierarchical regression analysis, only gender and Factor 2 successfully predicted total, aggressive, and income offending. The 2-way (F1 × F2, F1 × Gender, F2 × Gender) and 3-way (F1 × F2 × Gender) interactions entered at Steps 2 and 3, respectively, failed to achieve significance. Because several of the interactions involving gender approached statistical significance, male and female data were analyzed separately. A significant interaction between Factors 1 and 2 for income offending in the female subsample surfaced, but contrary to previous research, Factor 2 predicted income offending in youth scoring low, rather than high, on Factor 1. Overall, these results indicate that Factor 2 is the component responsible for the bulk of predictive efficacy observed with the PCL:YV in males as well as in females and that if Factor 1 moderates Factor 2 in females it does so in a manner opposite to what has been proposed by advocates of the PCL F1 × F2 interaction hypothesis.