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LIT-1428: Psychopathy as a Clinical and Empirical Construct

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StatusActive — read 2026-10-23 (NOTE-1094): in full, from the copy Hare posts on his own site. Worth reading as the authors' own statement of what the construct is, made while defending it against the charge that the PCL-R has "drifted" from Cleckley. The PCL-R's 20 items fall, 18 of them, into four correlated factors: Interpersonal and Affective (together Factor 1) and Lifestyle and Antisocial (together Factor 2). A single superordinate factor explains them, and the authors hold that no component, the affective one included, is more essential than the others. That is the sharpest constraint the record has on borrowing only the affective features of psychopathy for a corporation. Hare receives royalties from the PCL-R.
Tagspsychopathology-and-treatment, moral-psychology
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1094 — Psychopathy as a Clinical and Empirical Construct
Cited as “source” byTHEORY-892 — Psychopathy as the PCL-R measures it is one dimensional construct rather than a type: its items form four correlated factors, interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and antisocial, explained by one superordinate factor, and its affective features are tied psychometrically, genetically and longitudinally to its antisocial ones, so that no one component is its essence

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Robert D. Hare & Craig S. Neumann (2008), Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 4:217–246 — DOI-10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.3.022806.091452

Key takeaways

  • The item set. The PCL-R is a rating scale scored from “a semistructured interview, case history information, and specific scoring criteria” on 20 items, each 0–2, for a total of 0–40, with 30 the usual research cut (pp. 219–220).
  • Four factors, two higher. Interpersonal (glibness/superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological deception, conning/manipulative) and Affective (lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, callous/lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility) make Factor 1. Lifestyle (stimulation seeking, parasitic lifestyle, no realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility) and Antisocial (poor behavioral controls, early behavior problems, juvenile delinquency, revocation of conditional release, criminal versatility) make Factor 2. Promiscuous sexual behavior and many short-term relationships load on no factor (pp. 219–220).
  • No essential core. The affective features are tied “psychometrically, genetically, and longitudinally” to the antisocial ones, so the authors see “no basis for holding one component of psychopathy as more essential than other components” (p. 231). One superordinate factor explains all four (pp. 233–234).
  • Dimensional, not taxonic. Psychopathic traits are “best viewed as existing on a continuum” (p. 234).
  • Antisociality belongs to the construct. Against the view that the PCL-R strayed from Cleckley by including antisocial behavior, they show Cleckley’s own profile and cases were antisocial throughout (pp. 229–230).
  • Cleckley is not the test. His Clinical Profile came from an unrepresentative, overinclusive patient sample, and its “positive adjustment” items are rightly absent from the PCL-R (pp. 225–228).

Standing in the record

Filed and read on 2026-10-23 at the owner’s request, as the construct Bakan’s The Corporation (2004) borrows when it applies Hare’s checklist to the corporation. The record will ask which features could transfer to a corporation. This paper sorts them into interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and antisocial, but also argues that the construct is their covariation, not any one of them. The record’s accounts of corporate agency and responsibility are THEORY-131 (French) and THEORY-139 (Pettit).

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