Source
Hare and Neumann (2008), “Psychopathy as a clinical and empirical construct”, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 4:217–246 (LIT-1428), read in full in NOTE-1094. Hare receives royalties from the PCL-R (p. 240).
What was actually shown
A review, not a study. It reports others’ analyses and the authors’ own.
- The instrument. The PCL-R is “a clinical construct rating scale that uses a semistructured interview, case history information, and specific scoring criteria” (p. 219): twenty items scored 0–2.
- Four factors. Interpersonal (glibness and superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological deception, conning and manipulation), affective (lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, callousness and lack of empathy, failure to accept responsibility for actions), lifestyle (need for stimulation, parasitic lifestyle, lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility) and antisocial (poor behavioural controls, early behaviour problems, juvenile delinquency, revocation of conditional release, criminal versatility) (pp. 219–220). The first two make Factor 1 and the last two Factor 2, and one superordinate factor explains all four (pp. 220, 233–234).
- No essential component. The review answers the view that the affective features are the disorder’s core: “a growing body of literature indicates that the affective features of psychopathy are intimately tied—i.e., psychometrically, genetically, and longitudinally—to the undercontrolled and fundamentally antisocial features of psychopathy. Thus, there appears to be no basis for holding one component of psychopathy as more essential than other components” (p. 231).
- A continuum. Psychopathic traits “are best viewed as existing on a continuum” (p. 234).
- Against antisocial personality disorder. The PCL-R combines personality traits with antisocial behaviour, where the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder emphasises the behaviour (p. 219).
What could have come out otherwise: a factor structure in which the affective items stood apart from the antisocial ones, or a taxon rather than a dimension.
What this does not say
- That the affective features are unimportant. The claim is that they are not more essential than the rest.
- That the structure holds outside the populations the PCL-R was built on. Much of the evidence is forensic, and several antisocial items read criminal history.
- Anything about corporations. Its bearing on the record’s question is the record’s inference, in CLAIM-432. If a corporation’s affect is read functionally (CLAIM-039), its affective items can be assigned from its record, as the PCL-R itself scores them from interview and case history; and since no component is the essence, a corporation matching across both factors falls under the construct to a degree. Several antisocial items are developmental (early behaviour problems, juvenile delinquency) and have no corporate counterpart. The instrument’s interview does not transfer, so a corporate “score” is an analogy, not an assessment.
Connections
The record’s question on corporate psychopathy (QUESTION-265), its reading (CLAIM-432) and the objection to it (CLAIM-431). Bakan’s The Corporation (LIT-1430) applies the checklist to the corporation; Boddy (LIT-1431) applies it to people in corporations.
Note of 2026-10-29: what holds it back
The structure is stated as fact on one review by the instrument’s author, whose evidence is largely forensic and several of whose antisocial items read criminal history. It waits on the four-factor, one-superordinate structure replicated by researchers independent of the instrument, and on the affective–antisocial ties shown in non-forensic samples measured without criminal history.