Psychopathy and low communion: An overlooked and underappreciated core feature.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that is robustly linked to interpersonal difficulties, delinquency, aggression, and general antisocial conduct. Previous research has explored a number of potential deficits underlying these behaviors including reduced fear, impaired emotional responding, and poor response modulation. Drawing from extant personality work that has demonstrated the importance of interpersonal antagonism as a core feature of psychopathy, the present project examines low communion as a potential core feature of the disorder in a novel manner-using a social discounting lab task. This possibility was examined in 195 undergraduate students (49% male) via a multimethod approach. In addition to a measure of psychopathy, participants completed a novel social discounting laboratory task designed to measure communion. Participants also completed self-report measures of communion and related constructs including the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised, Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire, and Interpersonal Adjective Scales. Results indicate that psychopathic individuals are lower in their level of communion and value social relationships less. Dysfunctions in communion should be studied more specifically in psychopathy as it may be a core feature of the disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record

Development of a Short Form of the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory: the FFNI-SF.

The Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI; Glover, Miller, Lynam, Crego, & Widiger, 2012) is a 148-item self-report inventory of 15 traits designed to assess the basic elements of narcissism from the perspective of a 5-factor model. The FFNI assesses both vulnerable (i.e., cynicism/distrust, need for admiration, reactive anger, and shame) and grandiose (i.e., acclaim seeking, arrogance, authoritativeness, entitlement, exhibitionism, exploitativeness, grandiose fantasies, indifference, lack of empathy, manipulativeness, and thrill seeking) variants of narcissism. The present study reports the development of a short-form version of the FFNI in 4 diverse samples (i.e., 2 undergraduate samples, a sample recruited from MTurk, and a clinical community sample) using item response theory. The validity of the resultant 60-item short form was compared against the validity of the full scale in the 4 samples at both the subscale level and the level of the grandiose and vulnerable composites. Results indicated that the 15 subscales remain relatively reliable, possess a factor structure identical to the structure of the long-form scales, and manifest correlational profiles highly similar to those of the long-form scales in relation to a variety of criterion measures, including basic personality dimensions, other measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, and indicators of externalizing and internalizing psychopathology. Grandiose and vulnerable composites also behave almost identically across the short- and long-form versions. It is concluded that the FFNI-Short Form (FFNI-SF) offers a well-articulated assessment of the basic traits comprising grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, particularly when assessment time is limited.

Agreeableness accounts for the factor structure of the youth psychopathic traits inventory.

The present study investigated the relationship between the Five-Factor Model (FFM) and the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI; Andershed, Ker, Stattin, & Levander, 2002) in an undergraduate sample. It was hypothesized that Agreeableness would saturate the lower- and higher-order scales of the YPI, and that taking Agreeableness into account would reduce the intercorrelations among the three factors of the YPI. These hypotheses were explored in a sample of 466 undergraduates who completed the YPI and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992). Results demonstrated that Agreeableness was the strongest, most consistent correlate of the lower-order scales and three higher-order factors of the YPI. Additionally, analyses showed that Agreeableness accounted for large portions of the three YPI factors, as well as the overlap among factors, helping explain their intercorrelations. Current results underscore the centrality of Agreeableness to the assessment and understanding of psychopathy, particularly as measured by the YPI.

Development of a short form of the elemental psychopathy assessment.

The Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (EPA) is a 178-item self-report measure designed to assess the basic elements of psychopathy from a Five-Factor Model perspective: Anger, Arrogance, Callousness, Coldness, Disobliged, Distrust, Dominance, Impersistence, Invulnerable, Manipulation, Opposition, Rashness, Self-Assurance, Self-Centered, Self-Contentment, Thrill-Seeking, Unconcern, and Urgency. The present article reports on the development of a short-form version of the EPA in two large undergraduate samples using item response theory. The validity of the resultant, 72-item, item response theory-derived short form is compared against the validity for the full scale in the undergraduate samples and smaller forensic sample. Results indicate that the 18 subscales of the EPA short form remain relatively reliable, possess an internal structure virtually identical to the full version, and manifest highly similar correlational profiles to a variety of criterion measures. The EPA short form is offered as a viable assessment of psychopathy when assessment time is limited. Implications of these findings are discussed.