Parental Alienation Triarchic Psychopathy Measure: Validity in Relation to Normal-Range Traits, Personality Pathology, and Psychological Adjustment
Based on the triarchic model of psychopathy (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009),
the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM; Patrick, 2010) was developed to
capture three distinct phenotypic dimensions: disinhibition, meanness, and bold–
ness. We review research on its validity, drawing attention to the less consistent
ndings, and present tests of its internal and test-retest reliability and convergent
and discriminant validity vis-à-vis an original set of validation measures.
Boldness reects tendencies toward fearlessness, adventure seeking, social
dominance, and low stress reactivity (Patrick et al., 2009), and it relates closely
to fearless-dominance (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003).
By facilitating glibness, it may enable highly psychopathic individuals to appear
well adjusted (as described by Cleckley, 1982). Disinhibition, as the tendency
not to constrain behavior in the context of activation by appetitive pursuit
or anger, may facilitate irresponsibility, poor planning, impulsivity, and angry
outbursts.
Finally, meanness corresponds to an emotionally callous and instru–
mental way of relating to others that enables unempathic exploitativeness
and cruelty. In its behavioral expression, meanness may overlap with bold–
ness in the excitement-seeking domain (Sellbom & Phillips, 2013) and with
disinhibition in antisociality and aggression. However, meanness-related cal-
lousness promotes instrumental aggression (Kahn et al., 2013) linked to low
empathy (Stanley, Wygant, & Sellbom, 2013), whereas disinhibition appears
to underlie reactive aggression (Patrick et al., 2009) and recklessness (Venables
& Patrick, 2012
