Structural Equation Modeling of Personality Traits in the Primary and Secondary Vulnerability Patterns of Antisocial Personality Disorder Based on Eysenck's Model

 Psychopath evaluation and conceptualization in non–clinical individuals has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Psychopathy is a set of emotional, interpersonal, and behavioral traits that represent cruelty, recklessness, deception, bigotry, excitement, and aggression. Underlying individual differences in Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) are biological issues. One of the personality theories that addressed individual differences, especially biological differences, is Eysenck's theory of personality. Eysenck's personality traits model describes APD based on the following traits: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between personality traits of primary and secondary psychopathy based on Eysenck’s model.

 The present correlational research applied structural equation modeling. The statistical population of this study included all medical students in Tabriz City, Iran, in the academic year of 2019–2020. In total, 284 subjects were selected using the convenience sampling method. The inclusion criterion of the study included medical students. Besides, the exclusion criteria of the study were the presence of active mental health disorders and absence from >2 sessions. The required data was gathered by the Levenson Self–Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP) (Levenson et al., 1995) and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire–Revised Short (EPQ–RS) (Eysenck et al., 1985). The obtained data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling in SPSS and LISREL. The significance level of all tests was 0.01.

 The collected results indicated that neuroticism had a direct and significant relationship with primary APD (Beta=0.301, p<0.001) as well as secondary APD (Beta=0.823, p<0.001). Psychosis had a direct and significant relationship with primary APD (Beta=0.502, p<0.001) as well as secondary APD (Beta=0.310, p<0.001); however, extraversion had no significant relationship with primary APD (Beta=–0.123, p=0.061) as well as secondary APD (Beta=0.122, p=0.080). Furthermore, the collected data fitted with the proposed research model (x2/df=2.46, CFI=0.96, GFI=0.91, NFI=0.94, RMSEA=0.072).

 According to the current research results, Eysenck's theory has a tremendous influence on the development of theoretical and research etiology of psychopathy and supports the major role of Eysenck's theory in APD.