American Journal of Psychological Research

Three studies (Ns = 183, 75, 123) examined the utility of the M5 Questionnaire (McCord, 2002), based on the five-factor model of personality (FFM), in assessing psychopathic personality traits in three separate undergraduate college student samples from the same public university in the Southeastern United States. Participants completed the M5 Questionnaire, a 336-item FFM instrument derived from the IPIP item set (Goldberg, 1999), in addition to measures of psychopathy. At the domain level, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness correlated negatively with the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) and the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP; Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995), and a positive correlation was evidenced between Neuroticism and both the LSRP and performance on a prisoner’s dilemma task. Furthermore, Extraversion correlated negatively with the LSRP and positively with the PPI. Together, these findings support the validity of the M5 Questionnaire as a valid measure of the FFM and provide additional understanding of the nature and personality framework of the psychopathic profile.