Examining the Construct Validity of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised: Preferential Correlates of Fearless Dominance and Self-Centered Impulsivity

Although the construct of psychopathy is frequently construed as a unitary syndrome, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) and its revision, the PPI-R (Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005), are composed of 2 scales, termed Fearless Dominance (FD) and Self-Centered Impulsivity (SCI), which appear to reflect orthogonal dimensions. In this study, we examined the construct validity of the FD and SCI scales of the PPI-R as markers of these constructs with a range of theoretically relevant correlates assessed across multiple domains in a sample of 200 forensic psychiatric inpatients. Results were generally, though not uniformly, consistent with hypothesized relationships: The SCI scale positively and selectively predicted anger and hostility, impulsivity, total psychiatric symptoms, drug abuse or dependence, antisocial behavior, and violence risk, whereas FD predicted anger, depression, anxiety symptoms (negatively), and alcohol abuse or dependence (positively).