Psychopathy and Self-Construal: Trait-Specific Associations With Independent and Interdependent Self-Construal

Three direct replication studies were conducted to investigate the association between psychopathy and self-construal. Participants were undergraduate college students who completed two comprehensive measures of psychopathic traits used to represent the four-factor conceptualization of psychopathy and the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy. Participants also completed self-report measures and a task-based measure of independent, interdependent, relational, and collective self-construal. Analyses based on data aggregation across all three studies (N = 446) and simultaneous prediction of self-construal were consistent with previous research suggesting a negative association between psychopathy and self-reported interdependent self-construal. However, the present results revealed this association was primarily specific to four-factor and triarchic traits reflecting emotional callousness (assessed as Callous Affect and Coldheartedness) and may be specific to relational self-construal, and not collective self-construal. A robust positive association between boldness (assessed as Fearless Dominance) and self-reported independent self-construal also emerged. The results clarify previous findings on the relation between psychopathy and self-construal using two major conceptualizations of psychopathy. The results also suggest models of psychopathy should consider the direction and nature of causal relations between specific psychopathic traits and types of self-construal and work toward understanding how these relations manifest when relying on trait-like (self-report) assessments of self-construal versus state-like (task-based) assessments of self-construal.