Assessing psychopathic personality traits with the MMPI-2

Abstract

In this study, we examined the utility of the MMPI-2 (Butcher et al., 2001) in assessing psychopathic personality traits. We explored whether MMPI-2 scales that measure affective and interpersonal traits add to the instrument's social deviance measures in assessing global psychopathy and its two facets. Our study of 281 male and female college students indicates that the MMPI-2 Social Deviance scales (e.g., Clinical Scales 4 and 9, ASP) predict substantial variance in the social deviance factor and affiliated subscales of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996), whereas MMPI-2 measures of affective and interpersonal functioning predict substantial variance in the affective-interpersonal PPI factor. In addition, the results of two regression models indicate that the Restructured Clinical scales provide the most parsimonious assessment of psychopathic personality traits. Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.