Cross-Cultural Examination of Psychopathy Network in Chinese and U.S. Prisoners

Abstract

Although psychopathic personality has been described as a syndrome comprising three or four distinct personality domains, there is still no firm consensus regarding which traits constitute the core features of psychopathy. The present study conducted a network analysis to examine the network structure of psychopathy as operationalized by the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, and compared the similarities and differences between two samples from different cultural backgrounds. Two prison samples were employed, one from the United States (N = 564) and one from China (N = 3,475). Our findings revealed that items pertaining to the Egocentricity scale were placed centrally in the networks of both samples. Also, most items were clustered closely together in the U.S. network, while in the Chinese network the Callousness items were located further away from the Antisocial and Egocentricity items. Overall, our findings suggest that the conceptualization of psychopathy and sample characteristics do affect the network structure of psychopathy.