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Despite decades of research into the core traits of psychopathy, substantial disagreement about the structure of the psychopathic personality remains.
Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) stands out as one of the most prominent.6,7 But PCL-R has received its fair share of criticism, for instance, for not giving proper weight to the lack of fear of consequences, a trait many psychopaths embody.1, 12
To further complicate matters, the psychopathy literature distinguishes between pathological, clinical psychopathy, and successful or socialized subclinical psychopathy, a distinction originally due to Cleckley (1941).2, 3, 16, 17
This distinction has been employed to classify a long list of real and fictional characters as either pathological or successful psychopaths.8, 9, 10, 11
In a new study, Crego and Widiger set out to identify the core psychopathic traits of six of these alleged (real or fictional) psychopaths to shed light on the personality of psychopaths in their pathological and successful embodiments. The six alleged psychopaths at the center of the study include:
Ted Bundy: A cold-blooded serial killer with superficial charm who abducted, raped, and murdered between 30 to 100 young women and girls in the 1970s. Bundy also engaged in necrophilia with the bodies and decapitated heads of some of his victims.
Clyde Barrow: Described as a schoolboy who changed to a rattlesnake, Barrow went on a…
