Evaluating the Construct Validity of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale in China

Abstract

The Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy (LSRP) scale is an efficient measure of psychopathy with promising psychometric properties. However, the cross-cultural utility of the LSRP has not been well documented, and no study has explored measurement invariance of the LSRP across East Asian and North American samples. We translated the LSRP into Chinese (Study 1) and investigated the validity and reliability of the Chinese LSRP using a sample of 226 university students in China (Study 2). Confirmatory factor analyses supported Brinkley, Diamond, Magaletta, and Heigel's (2008) three-factor model (Egocentricity, Callousness, and Antisocial). Evidence for configural and partial metric (but not scalar) invariance of the factor structure was observed when comparing Chinese and U.S. university samples. However, response thresholds were significantly different between the two samples. The Chinese LSRP scores also demonstrated encouraging convergent and discriminate validity in terms of their associations with external criteria. We discuss the implications for cross-cultural assessment of psychopathy.

<p>The Characteristics of Moral Judgment of Psychopaths: The Mediating Effect of the Deontological Tendency</p>

“…Due to its good cross-cultural characteristics, we adapt LSRP to investigate the subclinical population in the background of the Chinese culture. 14,15 Moral judgment relies on affection, cognition, and complex neural circuits related to behavioral processes. Thus, it is one of the most complex activities in the field of human cognition.…”

Factor Structure and Construct Validity of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP): A Replication and Extension in Dutch Nonclinical Participants

“…These three LSRP factors usually yield adequate estimates of internal consistency (at least using interitem correlation, whereas alpha coefficients for the Callousness and Antisocial factors often fall below .70; Sellbom, 2011). Besides providing evidence of better fit to the data in a variety of studies across various countries (Brinkley et al, 2008;Christian & Sellbom, 2016;Sellbom, 2011;Shou, Sellbom, & Han, 2017;Somma, Fossati, Patrick, Maffei, & Borroni, 2014;Wang et al, 2018), the three-factor structure of the LSRP provides the advantage of better aligning with contemporary conceptualizations of psychopathy, by partitioning the theoretically central features of psychopathy in two factors that distinguish interpersonal and affective traits, instead of conflating them in one factor (e.g., primary psychopathy, or the original PCL-R Factor 1). Indeed, the interpersonal and affective features of psychopathy are typically assessed separately in most psychopathy measures, and show conceptually meaningful distinctions in their nomological networks (Cooke & Michie, 2001;Hare & Neumann, 2008;Hoppenbrouwers, Neumann, Lewis, & Johansson, 2015;Neumann, Vitacco, & Mokros, 2016;Sellbom, 2011;Sellbom et al, 2018).…”

“…Other investigators have successfully proposed the addition of new items to improve the psychometric performance of the LSRP in general, and of the Callousness scale in particular (Christian & Sellbom, 2016). However, considering that the original LSRP is still vastly used worldwide, thanks to its availability in several languages (Chabrol, Labeyrie, Rodgers, & Levenson, 2010;Garofalo, Bogaerts, & Denissen, 2018;Shou et al, 2017;Somma et al, 2014;Uzieblo, Verschuere, & Crombez, 2006;Verschuere et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2018), further scrutiny of the model fit and construct validity of the three-factor structure of the LSRP seems warranted, before its use can be discouraged. For instance, in a recent study, the Chinese translation of the LSRP has yielded promising results in terms of measurement invariance and construct validity of its three-factor structure (Shou et al, 2017), hence renovating its status as an efficient self-report measure of psychopathic traits.…”

“…For instance, in a recent study, the Chinese translation of the LSRP has yielded promising results in terms of measurement invariance and construct validity of its three-factor structure (Shou et al, 2017), hence renovating its status as an efficient self-report measure of psychopathic traits. However, it should be noted that, although better than the two-factor structure, the model fit indexes reported by Shou et al (2017) were also suboptimal.…”

Development and Validation of the Chinese Modesty Scale (CMS)

“…Based on the results of previous studies demonstrating that personality traits and values continue to change throughout the life span (Leikas and Salmela-Aro, 2015; Shou et al, 2017), we hypothesized that there would be significant differences in both value modesty and instrumental modesty scores among the three groups.…”