Relationships Between Psychopathy and DSM Personality Disorders in Men and Women

Abstract

The current investigation asseses the relationship between DSM personality disorders (PDs) and PCL psychopathy in a community study: the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD). The children (Generation 3) of the original CSDD males (Generation 2) were assessed for PDs and psychopathy in early adulthood. Generation 3 consisted of both males ( n = 291) and females ( n = 260) and allowed for analyses separately for each gender. Cluster B PDs showed the strongest relationships with psychopathy, especially Borderline and Antisocial PD. Histrionic PD did not appear to have strong relationships with psychopathy, and there were no indications that histrionic PD overlaps with psychopathy in females as past research has hypothesized. There were however some other gender-specific relationships in the analyses, most notably between psychopathy and schizoid and schizotypal PDs for females, and between psychopathy and paranoid PD in males. Implications for the understanding of psychopathy in males and females are discussed.