Affiliation:
1. The National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders & Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing Anding Hospital Capital Medical University Beijing China
2. Department of Psychology Shanghai Normal University Shanghai China
3. School of Sociology China University of Political Science and Law Beijing China
4. Institute of Psychology Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing China
Abstract
AbstractBackgroundPsychopathy is closely related to many negative interpersonal outcomes in daily life, including violence. Therefore, psychopathy intervention in subclinical individuals has significant application value.ObjectiveGuided by the personality–relationship transaction model and social investment theory, this study examined how marital quality affects self‐ and partner‐rated psychopathy. We also used the actor–partner interdependence mediation model to explore the mediating effect of communication.MethodsWe examined self‐reports and partner reports of psychopathy, marital quality, and communication among 260 married Chinese couples.ResultsThe results indicated that marital quality directly influenced couples' self‐rated psychopathy, with both actor and partner effects on husbands' psychopathy and actor effects on wives' psychopathy. Moreover, verbal communication had mediating effects at time 2 between marital quality at time 1 and partner‐reported psychopathy at time 3. Meanwhile, the mediating effect of nonverbal communication was not significant.ConclusionOur investigation of relationship effects on psychopathy revealed that the underlying mechanisms differed between self‐ and partner‐rated psychopathy. The findings can highlight directions for exploring potential intervention strategies for subclinical psychopathy.