Use of the personality assessment inventory to assess psychopathy in offender populations

The authors investigated the validity of the Antisocial Features (ANT) scal e of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; L.C. Morey, 1991) with resp ect to assessments of psychopathy in 2 offender samples. Study 1 included 4 6 forensic psychiatric inpatients who were administered the Screening Versi on of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL:SV; S.D. Hart, D.N. Cox, & R.D. H are, 1995). In Study 2, 55 sex offenders were administered the Hare Psychop athy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R.D. Hare, 1991). ANT scores correlated high ly with the PCL:SV total score (r = .54) and moderately with the PCL-R tota l score (r = .40). ANT tapped primarily behavioral symptoms of psychopathy rather than interpersonal and affective symptoms. Also, ANT had low to mode rate diagnostic efficiency regarding diagnoses of psychopathy, suggesting t hat it may be better used as a dimensional rather than categorical measure of this construct.