High and Low Anxiety Subgroups of Individuals with Psychopathic Personality in a Community Sample of Young Adults – Primary and Secondary Subtypes?

Abstract: Theory and research suggest that at least two subgroups of individuals with psychopathicpersonality that can be differentiated based on their levels of anxiety. What we know so far ofthe distinction between these subgroups is based predominantly on relatively small samples ofmales in institutionalized populations. The present study is the first to use a large andrandomly selected sample of the general population to try to identify subgroups of individualswith psychopathic personality separately for males and females (n=2500; 52.6% females;M=22.15; SD=1.38). Latent profile analysis suggested a two-group solution; where bothsubgroups were high on psychopathic traits, but low respectively high on a measure ofanxiety. The identified subgroups differed across theoretically and empirically relevantconstructs in that the high anxious group reported significantly more maltreatment history,aggression, symptoms of ADHD and post-traumatic stress, and treatment involvement.Generally, the differences between the high anxious and the low anxious subgroups were thesame for males and females, but an important difference was that the female high anxioussubgroup reported being significantly more involved in treatment. In conclusion, the gainedsubgroups are in several ways, but not in all, in line with theories of primary and secondary psychopathy.