The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), low anxiety, and fearlessness: a structural equation modeling analysis

The current study employed a large representative sample of violent male offenders within the Swedish prison system to examine the factor structure of the PCL-R and the latent variable relations between the PCL-R items and clinical ratings of low trait anxiety and trait fearlessness (LAF). Consistent with previous research, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed strong support for the four-factor model of psychopathy (Interpersonal, Affective, Lifestyle, and Antisocial). Also, a series of CFAs revealed that the LAF items could be placed on any of the PCL-R factors without any changes in model fit. Finally, structural equation modeling results indicated that a PCL-R superordinate factor was able to account for most of the variance of a separate LAF factor. Taken together, the results indicate that if low anxiety and fearlessness, as measured via clinical ratings, are part of the psychopathy construct they are comprehensively accounted for by extant PCL-R items.