Marcus David K, John Siji L, Edens John F
Department of Psychology, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 77341-2447, USA.
J Abnorm Psychol. 2004 Nov;113(4):626-35. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.113.4.626.
Although a common assumption throughout much of the professional and popular literature is that psychopaths are qualitatively different from others, very few studies have examined the latent structure of psychopathy. Whether psychopathy is a discrete category or a continuous dimension may have implications for research on the assessment, etiology, and treatment of this disorder. This study examined the latent structure of psychopathy in a sample of 309 jail and prison inmates. Three taxometric procedures were used to analyze indicators drawn from the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (S. O. Lilienfeld & B. P. Andrews, 1996), a self-report instrument. Consistent with prior studies that used other measures of psychopathy, none of the analyses was consistent with a taxonic solution, suggesting that psychopathic personality may be best understood as existing on a continuum.
尽管在许多专业和通俗文献中一个常见的假设是，精神变态者在本质上与其他人不同，但很少有研究考察精神变态的潜在结构。精神变态是一个离散类别还是一个连续维度，可能会对该障碍的评估、病因和治疗研究产生影响。本研究在309名监狱和看守所囚犯样本中考察了精神变态的潜在结构。使用了三种分类分析程序来分析从《精神变态人格问卷》（S.O.利林费尔德和B.P.安德鲁斯，1996年）中提取的指标，这是一种自我报告工具。与之前使用其他精神变态测量方法的研究一致，没有一项分析与分类解决方案一致，这表明精神变态人格最好被理解为存在于一个连续体上。
