Abstract
Purpose: Psychopathy and psychopathic personality traits (PPT) have been linked to a long list of negative life outcomes. To date, however, few studies have provided a systematic analysis of whether psychopathic personality traits contribute to increased health burden. The current study was designed to address this gap in the literature.
Method: This study analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and employed a measure of PPT derived from the five-factor model of personality. Analyses were conducted using OLS, logistic, and Poisson regression techniques.
Results: The results revealed that relatively higher scores on psychopathic personality traits were associated with a slight increase in a wide range of negative health outcomes. These significant associations were detected for both males and females.
Conclusions: We speak to the importance of these findings for the potential to reduce health burden among psychopaths and those who score relatively high on measures of psychopathic personality traits. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.