Structural differences in psychopathy between women and men: a latent modeling perspective

Abstract

Research on sex differences in psychopathy indicates that men generally exhibit higher psychopathy scores than women. Measurement equivalence is an important prerequisite for the investigation of mean differences, but is often neglected for psychopathy instruments. The current research provides a systematic qualitative review of the pertinent literature on measurement invariance between men and women for several rater-based and self-report-based psychopathy assessments. Based on 28 studies, we found that the factor structure and factor loadings are most likely comparable between sexes for four out of nine instruments. Results on item thresholds, however, are inconsistent, which questions the comparability of mean scores between men and women for these instruments. The majority of studies that reported acceptable measurement equivalence indicated higher psychopathy scores among men compared to women. As the current literature is neither consistent nor exhaustive, further research needs to address structural differences in psychopathy between biological sexes more systematically.