Psychopathy dimensions, Big Five traits, and dispositional aggression in adolescence: Issues of gender consistency

• We evaluated psychopathy, Big Five traits and aggression in 1253 adolescent students.
• Significant gender differences in mean scores were observed.
• Raw correlations between psychopathy and criterion traits were stable across gender.
• Effect size estimates for regression models were large.
• Hierarchical regression models were replicated across gender-based groups.

In order to evaluate the nomological network of associations between psychopathy and its sub-dimensions, and Big Five domains and dispositional aggression in adolescence, and its consistency across gender-based sub-groups, 1253 Italian high school students (F = 429, M = 824) were administered the Italian translations of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI), Big Five Inventory (BFI) and the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire. Males scored on average significantly higher than females on all measures of psychopathy and aggression, whereas females scored significantly higher than males on the BFI O, C, A and N scales. Bivariate correlations between psychopathy scores, and aggression and BFI domains measures were highly similar in females and males. The majority of regression coefficients based on hierarchical regression models were consistently replicated across gender-based groups; effect size estimates for regression models were large, supporting the hypothesis that psychopathy can be described in terms of general personality traits in adolescence and that the relationships between psychopathy, its sub-dimensions and Big Five personality dimensions, and aggression generally are very similar across gender.