The effect of fear-inducing stimuli on risk taking in people with psychopathic traits.

Research suggests that people with psychopathic traits experience fear-inducing stimuli differently from others, seeming to interpret fear as more positive and less negative. We expected that this reaction, termed , would impact the effect of fear-inducing stimuli on self-report risk-taking behaviour. Risk-taking was measured before and after viewing excitement- and fear-inducing videos (= 825).

In the eye of the beholder: Psychopathy and fear enjoyment.

Objective: We investigated the relations between psychopathic traits and fear enjoyment.

Method: In Study 1, 140 undergraduate participants (62 men, 78 women) watched the footage of video game play meant to induce either excitement or fear, rating each on positive/negative adjectives. In Study 2, 150 undergraduate participants (94 women, 56 men) rated valence (positive/negative) of 20 sets of morphed surprise/fear photos.

Psychopathic Traits and the Cheater-Hawk Hypothesis.

The present study was a direct test of the cheater-hawk hypothesis which argues that psychopathy is related to two potentially adaptive interpersonal strategies: cheating and aggression. As expected, the measures of cheater and hawk behaviors comprised a single factor, according to a maximum-likelihood factor analysis. As hypothesized, psychopathic traits exhibited large positive correlations with measures of both cheater (entitlement, exploitiveness, and short-term mating orientation) and hawk (vengeance and aggression) behaviors.

Psychopathic Sexuality: The Thin Line Between Fantasy and Reality.

In two studies, we explored the relations between psychopathic traits and sexual fantasy content. In Study 1, we rated content themes in the fantasy narratives of 195 men and women recruited at a Canadian university. In Study 2, we administered a sexual fantasy questionnaire to a sample of 355 Canadian undergraduate students.

Is low anxiety part of the psychopathy construct?

Low anxiety has traditionally been considered a feature of psychopathy, but there has been mixed research support for this conceptualization. We investigated the PPI-R-SF Stress Immunity subscale (a measure of low anxiety) in relation to 2 widely used self-report psychopathy scales in a sample of 346 undergraduate students. Results indicated that PPI-R-SF Stress Immunity was nearly unrelated to other indicators of psychopathy, showing a near-zero loading on the common psychopathy factor defined jointly by the scales of the PPI-R-SF and SRP-III.

Psychometric characteristics of a public-domain self-report measure of vocational interests: the Oregon Vocational Interest Scales.

We investigated the psychometric properties of the Oregon Vocational Interest Scales (ORVIS), a brief public-domain alternative to commercial inventories, in a large community sample and in a college sample. In both samples, we examined the factor structure, scale intercorrelations, and personality correlates of the ORVIS, and in the community sample, we also examined the correlations of the ORVIS scales with cognitive abilities and with the scales of a longer, proprietary interest survey. In both samples, all 8 scales-Leadership, Organization, Altruism, Creativity, Analysis, Producing, Adventuring, and Erudition-showed wide variation in scores, high internal-consistency reliabilities, and a pattern of high convergent and low discriminant correlations with the scales of the proprietary interest survey.

Similarity and assumed similarity in personality reports of well-acquainted persons.

The authors obtained self- and observer reports of personality from pairs of well-acquainted college students. Consistent with previous findings, results of Study 1 showed strong cross-source agreement for all 6 HEXACO personality factors (rs approximately .55).