Psychopathy Variants: Empirical Evidence Supporting a Subtyping Model in a Community Sample

Psychopathy is a personality construct typically related to deficits in interpersonal and affective functioning and antisocial behavior. Currently, the majority of research focuses on the omnibus construct of psychopathy as it applies to criminal populations. However, theories of psychopathy and empirical evidence suggest that there may be different variants of psychopathy and diverse expressions of psychopathic traits across individuals. Thus, there is a need to consider psychopathy in terms of subtypes and across more broadly defined populations. The present study used model-based cluster analysis and garnered support for the differentiation of primary and secondary subtypes in a college sample. Analysis yielded 6 clusters, 2 of which demonstrated the expected patterns of traits indexed by theories of primary and secondary psychopathy; the factors of psychopathy, anxiety, borderline personality traits, aggression, and affect, all differentiated the subtypes. Overall, the results provide continued support for the existence of psychopathy variants in college samples, initial empirical support for model of psychopathy, and aid in the understanding of psychopathy subtypes.