Understanding psychopathy through an evaluation of interpersonal behavior: testing the factor structure of the interpersonal measure of psychopathy in a large sample of jail detainees.

Interpersonal characteristics are core features of the psychopathy construct which have a unique pattern of correlations with a variety of external correlates. To improve the assessment of interpersonal traits, the current study evaluated the internal structure of the Interpersonal Measure of Psychopathy (IM-P) through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) in a large sample of jail inmates. A 17-item, 3-factor (Dominance, Grandiosity, and Boundary Violations) structure evidenced good fit in European American inmates.

Psychopathic personality traits in middle-aged male twins: a behavior genetic investigation.

Psychopathic personality is characterized by interpersonal dominance, impulsivity, sensation seeking, poor planning, and aggressiveness. Studies have shown that the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) can be used to estimate scores on the fearless-dominant (FD) and the impulsive-antisocial (IA) dimensions of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI), the best validated self-report measure of psychopathic personality traits. Prior behavior genetic studies reported roughly equal genetic and nonshared environmental influences for both FD and IA, which remained stable from adolescence to young adulthood.