Comparison of Personality Traits Between Psychopathic Prisoners, Non-Psychopathic Prisoners, and Non-Prisoner Patients

Abstract

Background: Research in the field of personality has tried to recognize the main traits that reflect the building blocks of personality. For instance, personality dimensions, especially the five-factor model, deals with the field of personality disorder, especially the psychopathic personality disorder. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the personality traits of psychopathic prisoners, non-psychopathic prisoners, and non-prisoner patients separated by gender in Tehran. Methods: This descriptive-comparative study was conducted on 355 participants including 202 male prisoners, 105 female prisoners, and 48 non-prisoner patients. All the participants filled out the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and the Revised Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Five-Factor Inventory. The data were analyzed by the Pearson correlation coefficient, regression analysis, one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA), and Scheffe’s post hoc test. Results: The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between psychopathy and extraversion and a significant negative relationship between psychopathy and openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness in male prisoners. The relationships were significant at the level of 0.1. Conclusions: By comparing male psychopathic and non-psychopathic prisoners, female psychopathic and non-psychopathic prisoners, and non-prisoner non-psychopathic patients, it was found that psychopathic prisoners had lower levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness than the other groups.