Overview
Psychopathy isn’t an official medical or clinical diagnosis, but it carries weight as a personality construct explored by researchers of various fields. In general, psychopathy refers to a lack of empathy, a lack of inhibition, and a charming external appearance that compensates for lacking genuine emotional reactions. Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is often used instead, since many of the conventional traits of psychopathy are difficult to measure.
Researchers out of the field of criminology and criminal justice have often relied on the label in constructing the idea of a criminal personality or assessing the likelihood of someone with a conviction to reoffend. While certain assessments for psychopathy have predictive power in that regard, there are also controversies about the label and the automatic associations that go with it. Someone can score highly on an assessment as the result of other personality disorders or manic episodes, while some infamous serial killers don’t trigger the thresholds on assessments that we set for psychopathy. And of course, there’s always controversy around how objective any evaluator can be when they have their own biases going into an interview.
History and Context
Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
One of the tools considered a gold standard for psychopathy screenings is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) which measures two factors: emotional detachment (measured by interpersonal traits and affective traits) and antisocial behavior (measured by lifestyle traits and antisocial traits). There are 20 items rated on a three-point scale:
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Glibness/superficial charm
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Grandiose sense of self worth
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Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
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Pathological lying
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Cunning/manipulative
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Lack of remose or guilt
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Shallow affect
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Callous/lack of empathy
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Parasitic lifestyle
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Poor behavioral controls
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Promiscuous sexual behavior
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Early behavior problems
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Lack of realistic, long-term goals
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Impulsivity
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Irresponsibility
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Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
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Many short-term marital relationships
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Juvenile delinquency
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Revocation of conditional release
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Criminal versatility
Ted Bundy was evaluated to have a 39/40, Jeffrey Dahmer a 23/40, and John Wayne Gacy a 27/40. A 30 is considered the threshold for psychopathy in most North American settings.