Validating the B‐Scan Self: A self‐report measure of psychopathy in the workplace

Abstract

The surging interest in corporate psychopathy has underscored the need for a reliable and valid measure of psychopathic features that is suitable for research in organizational settings. The B‐Scan Self is a new self‐report measure of corporate psychopathy that was developed with Hare's Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised (PCL‐R) as a framework. Validity studies, using two independent Mechanical Turk samples, were designed to examine its factor structure and validity. Results indicated that B‐Scan Self facets were internally consistent and unidimentional and strongly related to another self‐report measure of psychopathy (SRP‐III). Confirmatory factor analyses supported a reliable fifteen facets and four‐factor model consistent with the PCL‐R four‐factor model of psychopathy. Furthermore, B‐Scan Self facets were positively correlated with the Dark Triad of personality traits and negatively correlated with FFM traits of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. More importantly, B‐Scan Self facets presented the same pattern of correlations with FFM traits as the SRP‐III and different patterns than the two other Dark Triad measures. Although this constitutes the first validation study of the B‐Scan Self and more research is needed, we believe that these results are encouraging and that the B‐Scan Self provides an opportunity to study psychopathic features through the measure of work‐related behavior.