“Assessing psychopathic attributes in a noninstitutionalized population”

“Assessing psychopathic attributes in a noninstitutionalized population” is a research article by Michael R. Levenson, Karen A. Kiehl, and Robert D. Fitzpatrick, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1995. The article describes the development and validation of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP), a self-report measure of psychopathic traits that is designed for use in noninstitutionalized populations.

The article begins by discussing the limitations of existing measures of psychopathy, which were primarily developed for use with incarcerated populations and may not be well-suited for use in community settings. The authors argue that there is a need for a self-report measure of psychopathic traits that can be used with noninstitutionalized populations in order to better understand the prevalence and correlates of psychopathy in the general population.

The authors then describe the development of the LSRP, which is based on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) but is designed for self-report by noninstitutionalized individuals. The LSRP consists of 26 items that assess both primary and secondary psychopathy, and participants rate themselves on a 4-point Likert scale, from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

The authors report that the LSRP has good internal consistency and test-retest reliability, and that it is positively correlated with other measures of psychopathy, antisocial behavior, and aggression. The authors also report that the LSRP is able to discriminate between individuals with and without a history of criminal behavior, and that it is not significantly influenced by factors such as age, sex, or level of education.

Overall, the article suggests that the LSRP is a reliable and valid measure of psychopathic traits that can be used with noninstitutionalized populations. The authors argue that the LSRP has important implications for the study of psychopathy in the general population, and that it may be useful for identifying individuals who are at risk for engaging in criminal behavior or other forms of antisocial behavior.