Psychopathy

Above is the NEO PI-R profile of prototypic psychopathy based on expert ratings (from Miller et al., 2001). It is very similar to the profiles obtained through "translations" of psychopathy descriptions (e.g., Hare's Psychopathy Checklist, Lykken, Karpman), and meta-analyses of the correlations between FFM and psychopathy measures. Psychopathy consists of very low scores on all facets of Agreeableness, low scores on most facets of Conscientiousness, and a mixture of high and low scores on various facets of Neuroticism and Extraversion.

Although early work demonstrated that psychopathy could be reliably and validly assessed using the NEO PI-R, concerns were raised about the ability of an inventory designed to assess general personality to capture the extreme scores present in psychopathy. To address this issue, we developed the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (Lynam et al., 2011; Lynam et al., 2013) based on an FFM conceptualization. The EPA assesses 18 facets and includes 2 validity scales; these 18 facets are underlaid by four higher-order factors (Few et al., 2013). There is also a supershort form available that provides a total score and three factor scores (Collison et al., 2016).

Download the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (with validity scales)

Download the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (without validity scales)

Download the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment Super Short form