Is PCL-R psychopathy associated with either type or severity of personality disorder?

Abstract

The extent to which assessment of personality disorders (PDs), and trans-diagnostic measures of PD severity, can capture the variance in psychopathy measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was examined in 100 forensic patients with a history of violent offending. Correlational and linear regression analyses were carried out to establish whether (i) combinations of PDs would predict PCL-R scores for each of its two factors, interpersonal–affective (F1) and antisocial deviance (F2); (ii) ‘acting out’, a putative measure of externalising maladjustment that transcends PD categories, would predict PCL-R scores. Results showed that narcissistic and avoidant PDs contributed significantly to the prediction of F1, but only antisocial PD contributed to the prediction of F2. ‘Acting out’ predicted both F1 and F2, suggesting that core features of PCL-R psychopathy are embedded within and across different PD diagnoses. Results are discussed in relation to different sub-types of psychopathy described in the literature.

Keywords:

• psychopathy
• severe personality disorder
• personality dimensions
• violence
• classification

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The UK 1983 Mental Health Act defined ‘psychopathic disorder’ as ‘a persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including significant impairment of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned’. This has been abolished in a subsequent revision of the Mental Health Act (2007) in favour of the generic term ‘mental disorder’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Nottingham under the New Researcher’s Fund.