Searching for successful psychopathy: A typological approach

Psychopathy (P) is considered to be an important clinical/forensic personality trait, which has recently received renewed attention due to research about the so-called dark triad (D3). Several authors assume P to be adaptive in certain “niches” of life, e.g. the workplace. P is generally thought to be a dimensional construct and not categorical. However in our exploratory study, we aimed to identify possible types on the trait psychopathy and examine if these types differed meaningfully in several domains of successful behavior. To identify possible P-types we measured psychopathy in a medium-sized sample from universities and the general population by using the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale – Forth Edition (SRP-4). We conducted cluster analyses on the basis of the SRP-4-facets (interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and anti-social) and identified five “psychopathy-types”. We compared the five P-types in regard to desirable psychological variables (e.g. cognitive ability, life satisfaction) and self-reported domains of success (social, leisure, academic, professional). Our analyses did not reveal any considerable differences between the types. The results do not support the notion that examining psychopathy by using a typological approach is a promising direction of research and also indicate that variants of psychopathy appear to be neither adaptive nor maladaptive in crucial aspects of everyday life.