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Clinical instrument

International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) Psychopathy

Psychopathy uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Psychopathy.

A public-domain measure of subclinical psychopathy—impulsivity, thrill-seeking, and low empathy/anxiety.

You learn how much boldness, coolness under pressure and low empathy mark your style.

For anyone curious about how bold, cool-headed or callous they can be.

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Report and PDF $6, paid after you finish.

Your answers stay private.

It comes from personality research on low empathy and fearless dominance in everyday adults.

Example score on the scale rangeChart drawn with invented example scores; not a real result.Example dataLower rangeMiddle rangeHigher rangePsychopathy
Sample result, example data. Illustrative chart with invented scores; it does not describe any real respondent.

What this test is

Welcome. Psychopathy uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Psychopathy.

A public-domain measure of subclinical psychopathy—impulsivity, thrill-seeking, and low empathy/anxiety.

The measure

It has 10 items, each answered on a 5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate) scale.

International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org). Source scale: Hare, R. D. (1985). Comparison of procedures for the assessment of psychopathy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53(1), 7–16.

At a glance

Items
10
Response scale
5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate)
Est. time
~1 min
Access
Free to take · Full report and PDF for $6, or $3 to repeat

What it measures

Ten statements describe a callous and impulsive style: enjoying getting back at people, acting on impulse without thinking of consequences, not feeling bad about hurting others, seeking thrills and danger, and finding rules easy to ignore. The scale concerns these tendencies as a normal-range trait.

Psychopathy was described clinically by Cleckley (1941) and compared across assessment procedures by Hare (1985). Research since has studied self-reported psychopathic traits in the general population, and Paulhus and Williams (2002) grouped them with Machiavellianism and narcissism as the dark triad. The statements here come from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP).

The ratings are combined into a single score. Higher scores describe stronger callousness, impulsivity and disregard for others; lower scores describe more concern for others and greater restraint. The scale measures a trait in the normal range and is not a clinical assessment of psychopathy.

The scale is used in research on antisocial behavior, risk-taking and relationships. On this site, the IPIP Dark Triad measures all three dark triad traits, the Impulsive-Nonconformity Scale describes impulsive rule-breaking, and the Dangerous Thrill-Seeking scale describes risk-taking.

Nomological network

Convergently, psychopathy overlapped the other Dark Triad measures (rs = .25–.50; highest disattenuated link with narcissism ≈ .61) and related to Extraversion (r = .34), Openness (r = .24), low Agreeableness (r = −.25), and low Conscientiousness (r = −.24). Discriminantly, it alone among the triad related negatively to Neuroticism (r = −.34), and males showed the largest sex difference of the triad (biserial r = .40). Predictively, Paulhus and Williams reported that antisocial behavior in follow-up work was more specifically tied to psychopathy than to Machiavellianism or narcissism; a modest IQ overestimation residual (r = .14) also appeared.

This site’s International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) form

This version uses public-domain items from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 2006) keyed to the same dimensions.

Example item

“Don't think that laws apply to me.”

Very InaccurateModerately InaccurateNeither Accurate nor InaccurateModerately AccurateVery Accurate

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Your report explains each of your scale scores in plain language.

Related measures

Common questions

Is this the PCL-R?

No. It is a public-domain IPIP scale keyed to the self-report psychopathy construct associated with Hare (1985), not a PCL interview.

What uniquely marks psychopathy in the Dark Triad data?

Lower Neuroticism and the strongest male elevation; antisocial outcomes tracked psychopathy more than Machiavellianism or narcissism in the work Paulhus and Williams (2002) cite.

References

  1. Hare, R. D. (1985). Comparison of procedures for the assessment of psychopathy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53(1), 7–16.
  2. Lilienfeld, S. O., & Andrews, B. P. (1996). Development and preliminary validation of a self-report measure of psychopathic personality traits in noncriminal populations. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66(3), 488–524.
  3. Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(6), 556–563.
  4. Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(1), 84–96.

Sample report preview

The report shows your total score and where it falls across the range of possible scores, followed by a plain-language explanation of what scores in that region describe. Where the instrument has published interpretive bands, the report names the band and what it means. It closes with notes on how to read the result and on when a conversation with a qualified professional may be useful.

Report contents
SectionWhat it shows
ScoreYour scale score, computed with the published scoring key.
ComparisonsHow your scores compare with a published comparison group.

It is free to take, and the full report with a downloadable copy is $6.

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