Psychopathy and subjective well-being

• Psychopathy was associated with high levels of depression and negative affect.
• Psychopathy was associated with low levels of positive subjective well being.
• Psychopathy can be conceptualized using normal personality traits.

Psychopathy is a personality construct characterized by shallow affect, lack of empathy, and impulsiveness. We investigated the relations between psychopathy, subjective well-being and personality in 427 undergraduates. Prevalence rates for psychopathy, based on participants who endorsed eight or more primary psychopathy items, were 22.6% of males and 7.5% of females. Psychopathy was associated with high levels of depression and negative affect, and low levels of life satisfaction, happiness and positive affect. Psychopathy accounted for significant portions of the variance in depression (16.6%), negative affect (16.9%), life satisfaction (13.7%), happiness (14.4–18.3%) and positive affect (9.8%). However, psychopathy failed to account for variance in either ill-being or well-being above and beyond the variance accounted for by personality. These results support the position that psychopathy can be thought of as a constellation of extreme levels of normative personality traits.