Relationships between psychopathy and impulsivity in the domain of self-reported personality features

Impulsivity is widely accepted as a characteristic of psychopathy. However, both psychopathy and impulsivity are multi-faceted constructs, and theory suggests that primary and secondary variants of psychopathy may differ in their manifestations of impulsivity-related features. Using a sample of 92 offenders, this study used the fearless dominance (FD) and self-centered impulsivity (SCI) factors of the psychopathic personality inventory - revised (PPI-R; Lilienfeld, S.O., & Widows, M.R. (2005). Psychological assessment inventory - revised (PPI-R). Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.), respectively, as proxy indicators of primary and secondary psychopathy, and examined their relations to multiple impulsivity-related constructs. Bivariate and hierarchical regression analyses revealed that FD and SCI have different patterns of association with impulsivity-related constructs and that these patterns are generally consistent with theoretical expectations. The results suggest that measures of impulsivity may be useful in identifying psychopathy subtypes.