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Category: Communication

Description: Psychopathy is a distinctive personality style that is associated with a tendency to act recklessly, impulsively, and engage in sensation seeking behaviors. These associations suggest that psychopathy may be related to risk taking; however, the relationship between these variables has yet to be fully explored. To investigate this relationship, we utilized the dual-process model of psychopathy’s fearless dominance (FD) and impulsive antisociality (IA) factors and the Triarchic model’s boldness, meanness, and disinhibition domains. A sample of 508 undergraduate students completed a series of self-report questionnaires and underwent the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Analyses revealed that individuals high on all psychopathy factors displayed a tendency to view risky situations as less risky and self-reported engaging in a number of risky behaviors. The tendency of individuals high in psychopathic traits to view situations as less risky indirectly affected their likelihood to self-report engaging in risky behaviors. Notably, only FD was significantly associated with behavioral risk taking on the BART. Further correlational analyses revealed that IA, meanness, and disinhibition were all associated with greater self-reported externalizing behaviors, sensation seeking, and impulsivity. On the other hand, FD and boldness were only associated with self-reported adult antisocial behavior, alcohol use, sensation seeking, and low levels of impulsivity. Our pattern of results showed nearly identical relationships for FD and boldness, suggesting that these two factors may be capturing the same aspects of psychopathy.