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Running head: Psychopathy and moral judgements

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Relationships between psychopathy and moral judgements may

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be due to a bloated specific factor of empathy

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Madeleine Esser

Jon May
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School of Psychology, Faculty of Health

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University of Plymouth
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Keywords: crime, non-offender, personality, confirmatory factor analysis, meanness, empathy

Word count (exc. Abstract, References, figures/tables): 2967

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*Corresponding author: Professor Jon May, School of Psychology, Plymouth University, Drake
Circus, Plymouth, UK PL4 8AA (e-mail: jon.may@plymouth.ac.uk).

ORCID ID : Jon May 0000-0001-7439-9200

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This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
 d
Running head: Psychopathy and moral judgements

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Relationships between psychopathy and moral judgements may

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be due to a bloated specific factor of empathy

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Keywords: crime, non-offender, personality, confirmatory factor analysis, meanness, empathy
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Word count (exc. Abstract, References, figures/tables): 2967
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This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
 Psychopathy and morality 2

Abstract

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High psychopathy and low morality have been identified as causes of anti-

social and criminal behaviour, with high levels of psychopathic traits reducing an

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individual’s ability to make rational moral judgements. Much of this research

focuses on offenders, so it is not clear if the same effect is observed in non-

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offending populations. We asked 158 students, ages ranging from 18.6 to 57.5
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(M= 21.6, SD=5.3, to complete The Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM)
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measuring psychopathy traits of meanness, disinhibition, and boldness, and The

Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) measuring the moral judgement

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dimensions harm, fairness, authority, ingroup, and purity. Confirmatory Factor

Analyses supported the four factor structure of the TriPM, but suggested a two
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factor solution for the MFQ combining harm and fairness into empathy and
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ingroup, authority and purity into rule-following. We found a strong association

r=-.57 between TriPM meanness and MFQ empathy but examination of item
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content revealed strong overlap between ten items within these two factors,
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 Psychopathy and morality 3

suggesting they may be a single bloated specific factor, and bringing the

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relationship between psychopathy and morality into question.

175 words

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This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
 Psychopathy and morality 4

Introduction

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The Office for National Statistics (2021) in the United Kingdom and Wales

reported over 12.7 million criminal offences, an increase of 12% since the

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previous report (2019). To tackle crime and anti-social conduct, it is vital to

understand what drives an individual to engage in that behaviour. One personality

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construct that has been linked to criminal activity is psychopathy (Heilbrun, 1979;
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DeLisi, 2009), which has been defined as a disorder, closely related to Anti-Social
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Personality Disorder (ASPD), affecting an individual’s interpersonal and

emotional capacity (Strickland, Drislane, Lucy, Krueger & Patrick, 2013). Those
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with high psychopathy are likely to exhibit behaviour described as impulsive, anti-

social, aggressive, and unrepentant (Venables, Hall & Patrick, 2013).

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Psychopathy is also linked closely with immoral behaviour, where morality

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has been defined as a concept concerning good or bad judgements regarding and

applying to other individuals’ wellbeing, rights, and fairness (Haidt & Kesebir,
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2010), with those higher in psychopathy being poor at moral reasoning (Turiel,
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1983) or moral intuition (Haidt, 2001). According to Situational Action Theory

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 Psychopathy and morality 5

(Barton-Crosby, 2020), criminal behaviour can occur when an individual’s sense

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of morality does not align with social rules, established as legal rules. When an

individual’s sense of what is morally right or wrong does not align with those

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established in the law, they may be likely to break those laws. We set out to

investigate the association between psychopathy and morality, through two

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widely used measures, within a non-criminal population to avoid the problems of

inference associated with sampling from a population likely to be at one extreme

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of the distribution of these constructs.
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The cause of psychopathy has been attributed to with developmental causes

such as childhood trauma (Craparo, Schimmenti & Caretti, 2013), and with
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biological vulnerabilities such as a genetic predisposition (Viding & McCrory,

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2012). The most influential model of psychopathy is represented within Hare &

Neumann’s (2008) four-factor Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), which

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includes Interpersonal, Affective, Lifestyle and Anti-Social traits. However, the

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checklist is intended to be administered by a professional in interview in forensic

or clinical settings, limiting its wider research use (Evans & Tully, 2016).
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 Psychopathy and morality 6

Patrick, Fowles & Krueger (2009) proposed an alternative model of

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psychopathy, the Triarchic Psychopathy Model. This model specifies three main

constructs which are implemented in psychopathy: disinhibition, meanness, and

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boldness. Individuals who score high in disinhibition are more likely to take part in

behaviour that is impulsive, without consequential regard, and that increases the

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likelihood of immediate gratification. Scoring high in boldness suggests

individuals are more likely to display risky and thrill-seeking behaviour with a high
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tolerance for stress and anxiety in provoking situations. Finally, individuals with a
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high score of meanness are likely to engage in cold-hearted, antagonistic

behaviour, displaying low interpersonal skills and a lack of empathy for others.
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This has since been translated into a self-report scale, the Triarchic Psychopathy
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Measure (TriPM; Evans & Tully, 2016). Many studies using samples from criminal

populations have made use of the TriPM in measuring psychopathic traits

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(Stanley, Wygant & Sellbom, 2013; Laurinavičius et al., 2020). However, the
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support for disinhibition and meanness in terms of validity is much greater than

that of boldness (Hannibal, Gatner, Douglas, Viljoen & Aknin, 2019).

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This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
 Psychopathy and morality 7

Morality has been positioned within a domain, the Moral Foundations (Haidt

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& Graham, 2007). The five dimensions of morality are described as: harm/care,

fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Harm

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refers to an individual’s compassionate response to seeing others suffer,

motivating them to resolve another’s distress. Fairness is the concept of having

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equality and inclusivity as a value, whether this is for an individual or on a

societal basis. Ingroup is practicing cooperation and trust within their group and
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shutting out individuals who threaten them, if they dissociate from their group
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this is seen as immoral. Authority is the concept of an individual obeying those in

an authoritative position in society as well as statutory law, and in cases where

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authority is undermined, is seen as deviant behaviour. Finally, purity refers to an

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individual showing behaviour of the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, gluttony, lust,

anger, greed & sloth)-as behaving immorally.

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The Moral Foundations domain and its dimensions have since been
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conveyed in a self-report scale, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ)

developed by Graham et al. (2011) which is a two-part questionnaire that

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measures an individual’s value of each dimension when making a judgement. The

This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
 Psychopathy and morality 8

overall validity of the MFQ has mixed reviews, the controversy being around

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cultural variation (Glover et al., 2014; Iurino & Saucier, 2020). However, where

morality is not a universal concept, it would be difficult to find a self-report scale

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that has high cultural validity. Moreover, as this scale does not require

participants to decide from a moral situation, the items are more relevant to

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judgements rather than decision-making. Therefore, the current study will use

this questionnaire to obtain measures of moral judgement.

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Using the MFQ, Irvin-Vitela et al., 2021 found female offenders displaying
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high psychopathy are less likely to value harm and fairness when making a

judgement, as well as displaying a negative relationship with authority.

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Furthermore, young offenders displaying high levels of psychopathic traits were

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associated with low scores of all five dimensions. They suggested that atypical

emotional characteristics found within psychopathy, such as limited experiences

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of guilt, could explain this (Fernandes, Aharoni, Harenski, Caldwell & Kiehl, 2020).
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Aharoni, Antonenko & Kiehl (2011) found abnormalities in judgements regarding

harm and fairness within male offenders. The shared findings that psychopathy
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negatively affects harm and fairness has been suggested to be due to low levels

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 Psychopathy and morality 9

of empathy, common in the classification of psychopathy. Further, a lack of

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empathy has been suggested to be due to adverse emotional processing (Blair,

1995) which inhibits individuals who possess high levels of psychopathy from

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making care-relative judgements.

Offenders are a useful sample to look at when measuring psychopathy and

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morality as they have already displayed violations of moral normalities which

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correlate positively with psychopathy (Aharoni, Antonenko & Kiehl, 2011), but

research using only offending populations obviously restricts the range of scores
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on each of the measures and so may limit inferences about their relationships.

One of the aims of this paper is therefore to investigate the measures within a
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non-criminal population. There is very limited evidence that moral judgement may
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be inhibited by an increase of trait psychopathy within the typical population. This

limits the generalisability of the findings and ignores the fact that psychopathy is
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a continuum, suggested from studies measuring psychopathy in non-offender

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samples (Levenson, Kiehl & Fitzpatrick, 1995; Lee & Salekin, 2010).

Cima, Tonnaer & Hauser (2010) found there was little difference in making
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moral judgements between low and high displays of psychopathy, suggesting that

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 Psychopathy and morality 10

emotional processing may not be necessary when making judgements. Glenn,

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Koleva, Iyer, Graham & Ditto (2010) argued that the adverse behaviour displayed

in those possessing high psychopathy is not produced from limited familiarity

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with moral judgements. The evidence from these studies implies that

psychopaths are more than capable of making moral judgements but choose to

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ignore them and behave adversely. Almeida et al., (2015) used portuguese

translations of the TriPM to measure psychopathy and the MFQ to measure

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moral judgement within a general population. They found trait meanness was
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negatively associated with harm and fairness, suggesting those who are

perceived as callous and without concern for others, are less likely to value the
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welfare and justice of others in a situation. Furthermore, they found boldness and
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disinhibition were negatively correlated with purity, which they explained through

the insensitivity to disgust, an important consideration within purity. Finally,

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disinhibition and authority were negatively correlated which may be due to a

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limited anxiety experienced when in the presence of authoritarian figures and the

perception of the law, atypical of someone with lower levels of disinhibition.

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Overall, these findings show that even within the non-offending population

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 Psychopathy and morality 11

characteristics within each TriPM sub-scale may alter an individual’s reaction, if

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exhibiting abnormal levels of the traits, to certain moral values, thus impeding on

their ability to make a rational moral judgement.

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The aim of this paper is to replicate the work of Almeida et al., (2015) within

an English-speaking non-offending population, and to examine relationships

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between the subscales of the TriPM and MFQ.

Method
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Participants
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The study was advertised to undergraduate psychology students in return

for course credit. Overall, 164 participants volunteered, of whom 158 completed
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the study (31 males, 124 females, and 3 other). Ages ranged from 18.6 to 57.5
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(M= 21.6, SD=5.3). All individuals gave informed consent before proceeding, and

the study received ethical approval from the Faculty Ethical Committee.
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 Psychopathy and morality 12

Materials and Procedure

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Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM): Psychopathic traits were measured

through a modified version of the TriPM developed by Evans & Tully (2016). The

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TriPM aims to produce an overall score of psychopathy based on the scores of

three sub-scales: Disinhibition (20 items): e.g., ‘My impulsive decisions have

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caused problems with loved ones’ (⍺= .84,) Meanness (19 items): e.g., ‘It doesn’t
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bother me see someone else in pain’ (⍺= .88), and Boldness (19 items): e.g., ‘I’m
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afraid of far fewer things than most people’ (⍺= .77). Items were answered using

a four-point scale ‘3=True’, ‘2=Somewhat True’, ‘1=Somewhat False’ and

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‘0=False’ (17 items were reverse coded).

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As the original TriPM questionnaire was used to test within the criminal

population, we removed two disinhibition items which asked about criminal

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activities and were not appropriate for testing within a student population: ‘I have

robbed someone’ and ‘I have stolen something out of a vehicle’. Additionally, the
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item ‘I don’t stack up well against most others’ was replaced by ‘I don’t compare
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well to most people’ for clarity.

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 Psychopathy and morality 13

Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) : Moral judgements were tested

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through the MFQ developed by Graham et al. (2011) which consists of five sub-

scales each with six items: harm (e.g., ‘Whether or not someone suffered

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emotionally’, ⍺= .69), fairness (e.g., ‘Whether or not someone was denied his or

her rights’, ⍺= .65), ingroup (‘Whether or not someone did something to betray his

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or her group’, ⍺= .71), authority (‘Whether or not someone conformed to the

traditions of society’, ⍺= .74) and purity (‘Whether or not someone acted in a way
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that God would approve of’, ⍺= .84). Two catch items are included (‘Whether or
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not someone was good at math’ and ‘It is better to do good than to do bad.’).

The thirty-two item questionnaire is split into two equal parts (16 items in
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each part). The original instruction for the first part was ‘When you decide
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whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following

considerations relevant to your thinking?’, which we changed to the more

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directional, ‘When you decide whether something is morally wrong, to what extent
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are the following considerations relevant to your thinking?’. This section is rated

on a six point Likert scale running from Not at all relevant (0) to Extremely
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relevant (5). The second section asks participants to indicate agreement or

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 Psychopathy and morality 14

disagreement with statements on a six point Likert scale running from Strongly

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Disagree (0) to Strongly Agree (5). There are no reverse scored items.

The surveys were delivered via an online survey platform through which

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participants gave consent, provided demographic details, and then completed the

TriPM and MFQ.

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Results
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The descriptive statistics of each scale and correlations between them are
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shown in Table 1.
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Table 1 about here

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We conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses using the lavaan

package (Rosseel, 2012) within R version 4.1.3 (R Core Team, 2022) to verify the
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factor structure of the two questionnaires. The original three factor structure of
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the TriPM produced a reasonable fit for a replication, after addition of eight

correlated error variances between items within factors, with a robust RMSEA=
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.072, but the fit indices were weak (CFI = .65, TLI = .64, although this is to be

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 Psychopathy and morality 15

expected in an analysis such as this with a large number or items and a moderate

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sample size; Shi, Lee & Maydeau-Olivares, 2019). Table 1 shows that there is a

strong correlation between meanness and disinhibition, a moderate correlation

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between meanness and boldness, and no correlation between boldness and

disinhibition, confirming the findings of Almeida et al., (2015). Neither a

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unifactorial solution nor a two-factor solution combining the meanness and

disinhibition scales improved fit, so we decided to retain the three subscales.

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Table 1 also shows the expected negative correlation between the overall
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measures of psychopathy and morality, driven by the negative correlations of the

psychopathy subscales meanness and (to a lesser extent) disinhibition. Using

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CFA to fit the five-factor structure of the MFQ showed high multicollinearity, with
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the harm and fairness scales correlating, and the ingroup, authority and purity

scales correlating, but only one of the six bivariate correlations between the two
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sets being significant. A two-factor model combining harm and fairness into
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empathy and ingroup, authority and purity into rule-following, with six correlated

error variances between items within factors, also gave a reasonable fit with a
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 Psychopathy and morality 16

robust RMSEA=.073, although the fit indices were again weak (CFI = .72, TLI =

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.69).

Figure 1 shows the relationships between these two subscales and the

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meanness and disinhibition TriPM subscales in more detail. While the two

morality factors correlate, the strongest association is the negative correlation of

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meanness with empathy, with a weaker negative relationship between meanness

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and rule-following, and disinhibition and empathy, and no relationship between

disinhibition and rule-following.

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Figure 1 about here

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Discussion
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Overall, our results confirm a negative relationship between the MFQ and
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TriPM, indicating that participant’s moral judgement were generally negatively

related to high levels of psychopathy, and support the three factor structure of
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the TriPM, but indicate that within a non-offending population the MFQ only
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contains two dimensions, which we have labelled empathy and rule-following.

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 Psychopathy and morality 17

With these two subscales, most of the association between psychopathy and

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morality is driven by the relationship of meanness and empathy. These findings

are consistent with those of Almeida et al., (2015).

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Having found a strong relationship between meanness and empathy, it

would be tempting to argue that we have confirmed the finding that psychopaths

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are poor at making moral judgements, and that this lack of empathy could be a

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reason for their propensity to break laws and commit crimes. However, it is worth

looking at the items that make up these subscales. The seven items ‘How other
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people feel is important to me’, ‘I don’t have much sympathy for people’, ‘I don’t

care much if what I do hurts others’, ‘It doesn’t bother me when people around
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me are hurting’ , ‘I don’t see any point in worrying if what I do hurts someone
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else’, ‘It doesn’t bother me to see someone else in pain’, and the reverse-scored ‘I

sympathise with other’s problems’ might all be understood as being measures of

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lack of empathy, underpinning a weakness in moral decision making, but are

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actually taken from the TriPM meanness subscale. Similarly, the three items

‘Whether or not someone suffered emotionally’, ‘Whether or not someone was

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cruel’, and ‘Compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue’,

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 Psychopathy and morality 18

might be understood as reflecting meanness, but are taken from the MFQ

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harm/care subscale.

It seems that ten items in these two subscales, which underly the negative

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correlation between the TriPM and MFQ, actually consist of related (if opposite)

content, and all twenty-one cross scale pairs correlate -.31 < r < -.37. Among the

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other twelve TriPM meanness items and the other nine MFQ items from our

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empathy factor, only four pairs have correlations in this range, the largest being

r=-.37 for ‘I don’t mind if someone I dislike gets hurt’ with ‘It can never be right to
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kill a human being’. Indeed, if all ten of these highly correlating items are

combined into a single scale it has a high reliability with Cronbach’s alpha = .89,
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Guttman’s omega =.90.

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The similarity in content of these ten items raises the possibility that they
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are a ‘bloated specific factor’, in the words of Cattell and Tsujioka (1964), formed

from several items that are so closely related semantically that they are in effect
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asking the same question several times, and over-representing a single aspect of

the underlying construct of lack of empathy. The problem here is compounded by

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the fact that they are taken from two different constructs, meanness and

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 Psychopathy and morality 19

harm/care, in different measures. Oltmanns and Widiger (2016, 2018) have

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shown how easy it can be to create bloated specific factors in the context of the

five-factor model of personality, and how misleading they can be once generated.

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It may be that the research on psychopathy and morality is being similarly

hampered by poor attention to item selection.

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On the positive side, removing these ten items from the two measures and

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recomputing the overall means of psychopathy and morality still gives a

correlation r=-.25, not too much smaller than the original, and the meanness and
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empathy correlation is still sizeable at r=-.43; although the remaining items are

also highly related in terms of content and so could include further bloated
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specific aspects. Further inspection of the item-level relationships between the

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TriPM and MFQ is warranted, with larger samples drawn from a more diverse

population than ours, to test whether our concerns are warranted.

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Conclusions
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Psychopathic traits can have a detrimental effect when making rational

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moral judgements, and our findings confirm previous findings that this is the case

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 Psychopathy and morality 20

within the typical population as well as within offender populations. Meanness

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specifically has a role in making empathic moral judgements, demotivating

individuals to consider another’s welfare, although using the current measures

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this may be due to semantic overlap between several items on the individual

measures. Understanding the negative interaction between psychopathy and

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moral judgement could help us to better know why individuals in society engage

in criminal and anti-social behaviour, so it is essential that better measures of the

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two constructs are developed.
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 Psychopathy and morality 21

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References

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Aharoni, E., Antonenko, O., & Kiehl, K. A. (2011). Disparities in the moral intuitions of criminal

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Fernandes, S., Aharoni, E., Harenski, C. L., Caldwell, M., & Kiehl, K. A. (2020). Anomalous moral

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Lee, Z., & Salekin, R. T. (2010). Psychopathy in a noninstitutional sample: differences in primary and

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 Psychopathy and morality 24

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 Psychopathy and morality 25

Data availability

d
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The raw data and analysis script is available online at doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/WE9YS

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This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
Table 1
Means, standard deviations, and correlations with confidence intervals

e d
w
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

1. psychopathy

2. boldness
3.19

1.41
1.05

0.49 .61**
[.51, .70]

vi e
3. meanness 0.71 0.48 .83**
[.77, .87]
.27**
[.12, .41]

r e
4. disinhibition 1.07 0.48 .73**
[.64, .79]
.05
[-.11, .21]
.53**
[.41, .63]

e r
5. morality 14.50 2.54 -.33** -.00
[-.46, -.19] [-.16, .15]
-.47**

p e
-.25**
[-.58, -.34] [-.39, -.10]

t
6. harm 3.82 0.74 -.43** -.10 -.63** -.21** .59**
[-.55, -.30] [-.25, .06] [-.72, -.53] [-.35, -.05] [.48, .69]

7. fairness 3.90 0.61 -.22** .01

n o
[-.37, -.07] [-.15, .17]
-.36** -.14
[-.49, -.22] [-.29, .02]
.44**
[.30, .55]
.58**
[.47, .68]

8. ingroup 2.26 0.77

in t
-.11
[-.26, .05]
.04
[-.12, .19]
-.21** -.06
[-.36, -.06] [-.22, .10]
.78**
[.71, .83]
.30**
[.15, .44]
.05
[-.10, .21]

9. authority

10. purity
2.38

2.15
p r 0.80

0.84
-.17*

-.20*
.09
[-.32, -.01] [-.07, .24]

-.04
-.21**

-.21**
-.25**

-.18*
.76**
[-.36, -.06] [-.39, -.10] [.69, .82]

.75**
.14
[-.02, .29]

.09
.03
[-.12, .19]

-.00
.59**
[.47, .68]

.58** .68**

r e [-.34, -.04] [-.20, .11] [-.35, -.06] [-.33, -.02] [.67, .81] [-.07, .24] [-.16, .15] [.47, .68] [.59, .76]

PNote. M and SD represent mean and standard deviation. Values in square brackets indicate the 95% confidence interval for each correlation. The
confidence interval is a plausible range of population correlations that could have caused the sample correlation (Cumming, 2014). * indicates p < .05.
** indicates p < .01. All N=158. This table was produced using the R package apaTables.

This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
Psychopathy and morality 27

e d
w
0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 0 1 2 3 4

e
meanness

2.0
i

1.5
0.53*** −0.57*** −0.21**
v

1.0
0.5
e

0.0
r
2.5

disinhibition
2.0

−0.20* −0.06
r
1.5

e
1.0
0.5

p
empathy

4.5
0.21**

3.5
t

2.5
o

1.5
n rulefollowing
4

t
3
2

in
1

r
0

0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0

e p
Figure 1. Distributions, scatterplots and intercorrelations of the TriPM psychopathy subscales meanness and disinhibition with the combined subscale
scores from the two factor model of the MFQ. * indicates p<.05, ** indicates p<01, *** indicates p<.001. All N=158. This figure was produced using

r
the R package psych.

P
This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528
Psychopathy and morality 28

e d
i e w
e v
r r
e e
t p
n o
in t
p r
r e
P
This preprint research paper has not been peer reviewed. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4325528