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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Psychopathy Checklist and non-violent offender groups

subject

description

Cleckley’s concept of psychopathy includes characteristics such as superficial charm, unreliability, and affective poverty. In this study, the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and personality questionnaires (MMPI, CPI, EPQ, and SSS) were used to assess 92 non-violent male offenders. The variable-based approach was applied in order to study the structure of the PCL and the relationships between the PCL, the PCL factors and the personality questionnaire scores. The results indicated that the personality scale scores failed to correlate positively with the PCL score, with the exception of the MMPI hypomania score. Two PCL factors emerged: factor 1 related to the core personality characteristics of the Cleckley psychopath, and factor 2 referred to a chronically unstable and antisocial lifestyle. In the person-oriented approach, three offender groups were distinguished based on the cluster analysis of the PCL items; cluster 1 subjects scored high on factor 1 items describing the personality characteristics of Cleckley’s psychopathy. They were psychopaths with a high level of fraud-like offences. Severely antisocial offenders, starting their criminal behaviour early and having an active criminal lifestyle, comprised cluster 2. Cluster 3 was a group of non-psychopathic but antisocial and experience-seeking offenders. The overall results advocated the importance of the PCL as a method of assessing the Cleckley psychopaths and the usefulness of personoriented analysis in differentiating them from others.