Comparison of Personality Traits Between Psychopathic Prisoners, Non-Psychopathic Prisoners, and Non-Prisoner Patients

Research in the field of personality has tried to recognize the main traits that reflect the building blocks of personality. For instance, personality dimensions, especially the five-factor model, deals with the field of personality disorder, especially the psychopathic personality disorder. The purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the personality traits of psychopathic prisoners, non-psychopathic prisoners, and non-prisoner patients separated by gender in Tehran. This descriptive-comparative study was conducted on 355 participants including 202 male prisoners, 105 female prisoners, and 48 non-prisoner patients. All the participants filled out the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and the Revised Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Five-Factor Inventory. The data were analyzed by the Pearson correlation coefficient, regression analysis, one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA), and Scheffe’s post hoc test. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between psychopathy and extraversion and a significant negative relationship between psychopathy and openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness in male prisoners. The relationships were significant at the level of 0.1. By comparing male psychopathic and non-psychopathic prisoners, female psychopathic and non-psychopathic prisoners, and non-prisoner non-psychopathic patients, it was found that psychopathic prisoners had lower levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness than the other groups.