Negative relating and psychopathy

Abstract

Although previous research has explored the relationship between psychopathy and interpersonal relating as measured by Leary’s (Interpersonal diagnosis of personality. New York, NJ: Ronald Press, 1957) interpersonal circle (Blackburn and Maybury, Personality and Individual Differences, 6, 375-386, 1985; Rauthmann and Kolar, Personality and Individual Differences, 54, 622-627, 2013; Salekin et al., Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 33, 445-460, 2005), no research to date has examined whether psychopathy is associated with negative relating as conceptualised by Relating Theory (Birtchnell, How humans relate: A new interpersonal theory, Westport, CT: Praeger; paperback, 1996, Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 1993/1996) and its associated theoretical structure, the Interpersonal Octagon (Birtchnell, Human Relations, 47, 511-529, 1994). This chapter reports research which investigated whether the scales of the Person’s Relating to Others Questionnaire Version 3 (PROQ3; Birtchnell et al., Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 20, 36-48, 2013) may correlate differently with psychopathy. Findings indicate that psychopathy is most strongly associated with upper distant relating, although some interesting differences were found with regard to primary and secondary psychopathy.