The network of psychopathic personality traits: A network analysis of four self-report measures of psychopathy.

Psychopathy is often perceived as a constellation of personality traits, yet there is little consensus as to what constitutes the core features of psychopathy. We applied a network approach to investigate the psychopathy network, as operationalized by four self-report measures of psychopathy among a large sample of undergraduate students. Items assessing manipulativeness and irresponsibility/impulsivity had the strongest centrality indices in the item-level psychopathy network models. Stimulus seeking, social deviance, and interpersonal/affective traits were the most central domains in the psychopathy network derived from all factors in the four psychopathy measures. Network analysis may offer an alternative approach to help researchers identify characteristics that are important in the psychopathy network. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).