The inverse relation between psychopathy and faking good: not response bias,but true variance in psychopathic personality |
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| Authors: | Bruno Verschuere Katarzyna Uzieblo Maarten De Schryver Hester Douma Thomas Onraedt Geert Crombez |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands;2. Department of Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium;3. Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, The Netherlands;4. Department of Applied Psychology, Thomas More, Antwerp, Belgium;5. Department of Clinical Psychology, Leuven University, Antwerp, Belgium;6. Department of Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium |
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| Abstract: | The possibility to assess psychopathy through self-report is debated, amongst others, because psychopathic individuals may deliberately underreport psychopathic features (fake good). Meta-analytic research has shown an inverse relation between faking good and self-reported psychopathy, possibly indicating that faking good lowered psychopathy scores (response bias). Low faking good scores, could, however, also reflect true variance in psychopathic personality to the extent that it reflects a disregard of social conventions. Through a secondary analysis (n = 675), we show that controlling for faking good significantly weakens, rather than strengthens, the associations between psychopathy scores and antisocial behavior (alcohol and drug abuse, indirect aggression, and delinquency). These findings indicate that the inverse relation between faking good and self-reported psychopathy reflects true variance in psychopathy personality (i.e. low social desirability), not a response bias. |
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| Keywords: | psychopathy antisocial behavior social desirability self-report faking impression management |
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