Personality Disorder Features and Paraphilic Interests Among Undergraduates: Differential Relations and Potential...

We examined the relations between: (1) narcissism, psychopathy, DSM-5 personality disorder symptom counts; and (2) paraphilic interests among undergraduates (N = 608). Base rates of paraphilic interests were appreciable. The disinhibition and meanness features of psychopathy and the entitlement and exploitativeness features of narcissism were robustly associated with paraphilic interests, particularly sexual sadism, whereas the boldness features of narcissism and psychopathy were essentially unrelated to these interests. Narcissism and psychopathy features typically manifested the most pronounced relations with paraphilic interests, although antisocial personality disorder features were also strong predictors. By and large, these relations were comparable across gender. Lastly, there was no evidence that erotophilia mediated the relations between the narcissism and psychopathy features and paraphilic interests, most likely because erotophilia was generally unrelated to paraphilic interests. Relative to other dimensions of personality disorders, facets of meanness and disinhibition from psychopathy and entitlement/exploitativeness facets from narcissism were most associated with paraphilic interests.