Collateral report of psychopathy: convergent and divergent validity of the psychopathic personality inventory-short form

Abstract

Psychopathy is a personality syndrome comprised of interpersonal, affective, and behavioral features that has emerged as a correlate of intimate partner violence perpetration. One commonly used self-report measure of psychopathy is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Short Form (PPI-SF). The current study employed a multi-trait, multi-method approach to test convergent and discriminant validity of the measure in partner-violent couples by comparing males’ self-report of psychopathy to the informant report of their female partner (N = 114). It was hypothesized that the female partner report of the male’s psychopathy would be highly correlated with the male report of his own psychopathy, thus providing evidence for the construct validity and interrater reliability of the PPI-SF. Analyses found that male and female reports were correlated significantly on the two major factors of the PPI-SF. Furthermore, the female report explained a significant amount of variance over and above men’s self-report on PAI scales designed to indicate antisocial personality traits.

Keywords:

• psychopathy
• intimate partner violence
• collateral reports
• antisocial personality

Notes

1. The eighth scale, Coldheartedness, does not load on either PPI-I or PPI-II factor.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health [R03 MH066943-01A1] and University of Houston [Small Grant].