Marital quality improves self- and partner-reported psychopathy among Chinese couples: A longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Psychopathy is closely related to many negative interpersonal outcomes in daily life, including violence. Therefore, psychopathy intervention in subclinical individuals has significant application value. OBJECTIVE: Guided by the personality-relationship transaction model and social investment theory, this study examined how marital quality affects self- and partner-rated psychopathy. We also used the actor-partner interdependence mediation model to explore the mediating effect of communication. METHODS: We examined self-reports and partner reports of psychopathy, marital quality, and communication among 260 married Chinese couples. RESULTS: The results indicated that marital quality directly influenced couples' self-rated psychopathy, with both actor and partner effects on husbands' psychopathy and actor effects on wives' psychopathy. Moreover, verbal communication had mediating effects at time 2 between marital quality at time 1 and partner-reported psychopathy at time 3. Meanwhile, the mediating effect of nonverbal communication was not significant. CONCLUSION: Our investigation of relationship effects on psychopathy revealed that the underlying mechanisms differed between self- and partner-rated psychopathy. The findings can highlight directions for exploring potential intervention strategies for subclinical psychopathy.