Psychopathy is a personality syndrome comprised of interpersonal, affective, and behavioral features that has emerged as a correlate of intimate partner violence perpetration. One commonly used self-report measure of psychopathy is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Short Form. The current study employed a multi-trait, multi-method approach to test convergent and discriminant validity of the measure in partner-violent couples by comparing males’ self-report of psychopathy to the informant report of their female partner (N = 114). It was hypothesized that the female partner-report of the male’s psychopathy would be highly correlated with the male report of his own psychopathy, thus providing evidence for the construct validity and interrater reliability of the PPI-SF. Analyses found that male and female reports were correlated significantly on the two major factors of the PPI-SF. Furthermore, the female-report explained a significant amount of variance over and above men’s self-report on PAI scales designed to indicate antisocial personality traits.

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Background Men who commit violence against an intimate partner differ in their motives. Classifying the proactivity of men's partner violence may reveal important differences that could be treatment targets. Aims To examine the differences between proactive and reactive partner violence based on coded descriptions of past violent events. Method Community cohabiting couples reporting intimate partner violence were recruited via advertisements. Men and women were independently interviewed about past male‐to‐female violent events. The narratives of a male perpetrator and a female victim were coded using a Proactive–Reactive coding system, yielding three categories of violence: reactive, mixed proactive/reactive and proactive. The three categories were compared for differences in personality disorder features, attachment, psychophysiological reactivity during a conflict discussion task, and a self‐ and partner report of men's proactive and reactive aggressive tendencies. Results The results revealed a 54% classification agreement between perpetrator and victim reports. No differences were found on personality or attachment measures between the groups regardless of gender of the reporter. Reactive violence was related to a tendency to self‐report more reactive aggression and higher heart rate reactivity during a laboratory conflict discussion compared to the group reporting both proactive and reactive violent incidents. Conclusion This study suggests that a coding system for intimate partner violence can be applied to community volunteers, and it is a reliable report and valid. However, there are discrepancies when the coding is based on the perpetrator or victim reports.