Construct Validity of the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP) Lexical Rating Scale

The current study investigated the internal structure and validity of a self-rating form for the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP) model in a large sample consisting of American (n = 463) and Australian (n = 94) undergraduates along with a U.S. community sample (n = 182). More specifically, we explored the factor structure of the CAPP Lexical Rating Scale and examined its associations with measures of psychopathy, antisocial behavior, and broad pathological personality traits. Neither exploratory factor analysis nor bass-ackward analyses supported the six proposed domains. Exploratory factor analysis supported a three-factor structure, generally representing the behavioral, interpersonal, and affective domains of psychopathy. Correlations with conceptually relevant external criteria demonstrated the identified three-factor structure was not superior to the six proposed rational domains with respect to construct validity. Symptom-level analyses supported the use of CAPP symptom as measures of individual symptoms with good convergent validity. Overall, the current study supports the construct validity of the CAPP model, and the Lexical Rating Scale in particular, but more research is needed to further explore the optimal structure of the model.