The use of self-report measures to assess psychopathic personality or psychopathy (i.e., a constellation of personality traits and behaviors encompassing guiltlessness, superficial charm, grandiosity, callousness, poor impulse control, and manipulativeness) has been fraught with controversy. Until approximately the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of psychopathy research was conducted in forensic and clinical settings. Since the 1990s, however, interest in studying psychopathic traits in nonclinical settings, such as college and community samples, has burgeoned. Moreover, accumulating research evidence suggests that psychopathy differs in degree rather than kind from normality and is probably underpinned by one or more subdimensions. Given these findings, some researchers have argued that psychopathy can be studied profitably among noncriminal populations by means of self-report measures. Self-report measures have become the predominant mode of psychopathy assessment among nonclinical participants, such as those in college and community samples. This article addresses the potential disadvantages and advantages of self-report psychopathy measures.
Criticisms and Potential Disadvantages
Self-report psychopathy measures have been met with some criticism. Critics of self-report psychopathy measures point to a variety of features associated with psychopathy, including dishonesty, manipulativeness, grandiose sense of self, and lack of insight, which preclude individuals’ ability to report accurately on their attributes. These criticisms typically reflect skepticism that individuals with extreme psychopathic features are either unwilling or unable to present themselves accurately. This notion is held widely in clinical psychology and psychiatry circles, even among psychopathy researchers.
Dishonesty
The most obvious characteristics of psychopathy believed to adversely affect the validity of self-reports are dishonesty and manipulativeness. Psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley, who introduced the psychopathy construct to the clinical community in 1941, noted astutely that “the psychopath shows a remarkable disregard for truth.” The lion’s share of research investigating this concern has focused on psychopathy’s relations with response bias, reflecting either a conscious or an unconscious motivation to present oneself inaccurately. Nevertheless, when examined meta-analytically, psychopathy does not relate markedly to various indices of response bias, such as social desirability. In fact, psychopathy is typically negatively associated with underreporting of negative features (i.e., faking good) and positively associated with overreporting of negative features (i.e., faking bad). Contrary to clinical lore, psychopathic individuals are willing to admit to many socially undesirable characteristics and are consistent with higher levels of negative emotionality found in those with chronic antisocial behaviors and impulsivity, which are commonly associated with psychopathy.
Lack of Insight
A second characteristic of psychopathic individuals thought to adversely affect their self-reports is lack of insight. Cleckley conjectured that psychopathic individuals lack the capacity to see themselves as others see them, calling into question their ability to introspect accurately. Nevertheless, scant research has examined blind spots in psychopathic individuals’ self-perception. It is well established that psychopathic individuals are higher in blame externalization, a trait that is assessed explicitly in certain self-report psychopathy measures. Although there are several potential explanations for this finding, the presence of elevated levels of this trait leaves open the possibility that psychopathic individuals possess little insight into their problematic behavior.
Self-Report Versus Informant Report
Another line of research has explored the convergence of self-reports and informant reports of psychopathic traits. The findings in this domain are somewhat mixed, but most studies demonstrate that self-reports and informant reports of psychopathy demonstrate modest to high overlap. These findings suggest that psychopathic individuals are not entirely devoid of the capacity to report accurately on their traits and behaviors. Moreover, there is only modest support for the notion that psychopathic individuals rate themselves as less psychopathic than their peers rate them. Nevertheless, the lack of complete overlap between the two types of reports leaves open the possibility that lack of insight attenuates the validity of self-reports among psychopathic individuals. It is also possible that self-reports are equally as valid as other forms of psychopathy measures. Along these lines, self-reports need not be factually accurate to yield diagnostically useful information. For example, a psychopathic participant may respond True to the item “I’ve never done anything I ought to feel guilty about” even though such a response is almost surely factually inaccurate. Indeed, the lack of overlap between reports may implicate a lack of insight and reflect a distorted, yet sincere self-perception.
Potential Advantages
Psychologist Gordon Allport argued that the self is in a privileged position and that if psychologists want to understand people’s personalities, they should just ask them. Consistent with this position, self-report psychopathy measures possess important potential advantages over other types of measures. First, self-reports are economical, and they are often more efficient in terms of cost and ease of administration compared with interview-based measures. Second, self-reports circumvent the problems posed by interrater reliability and subjective clinical inference. Third, an often-overlooked advantage of self-reports relative to interview-based measures is that they allow for the systematic assessment of response biases, which can be measured using built-in validity scales designed to detect lying, social desirability, and malingering, all of which may be more prevalent among psychopathic individuals than among non-psychopathic individuals.
Final Thoughts
The debate over the validity of self-report psychopathy measures remains contentious. On balance, despite skepticism and criticisms, self-reports have been shown to be reliable and reasonably valid indicators of psychopathic personality features. Perhaps for this reason, self-reports are becoming the most widely used instruments for assessing psychopathy in non-forensic, nonclinical populations. Nevertheless, future research is needed to explore the validity of self-reported personality measures and the extent to which these tools compare with, and perhaps add to, interview-based measures in the prediction of important life outcomes (e.g., criminal behavior and interpersonal deception).
References:
- Lilienfeld, S. O. (1994). Conceptual problems in the assessment of psychopathy. Clinical Psychology Review, 14, 17–38.
- Lilienfeld, S. O. (1998). Methodological advances and developments in the assessment of psychopathy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 99–125.
- Lilienfeld, S. O., & Fowler, K. A. (2006). The self-report assessment of psychopathy: Pitfalls, problems, and promises. In C. Patrick (Ed.), Handbook of psychopathy (pp. 107–132). New York, NY: Guilford Press.