Abstract

The aims of this research were to: (1) develop a short and internally consistent and valid measure of psychopathic personality traits – the PPT-1 - that could be a useful and efficient tool for assessing psychopathic tendencies in various sociological and political-psychological research; (2) find out whether and what dimensions of Psychopathic personality traits are significant predictors of National closeness and prejudice, and Ethnic minority threat perception. A questionnaire was administered to randomly selected undergraduate students (N=368) at the University of Zagreb. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to explore factorial and construct validity of the PPT-1 and yielded three factors labeled Hostility and hatred, Disinhibition, and Lack of empathy (callous-unemotionanlity traits). The first-order factor model did not have a satisfactory fit based on goodness of fit indices, but the model on the level of second-order factor was acceptable (SRMR= .05; RMSEA= .07; CFI= .97; NNFI= .97). CFA of ten items suggested that the PPT-1 measures a super ordinate construct underpinned by three correlated clusters of items that reflect the interpersonal, behavioural, and affective features of psychopathic personality traits. Subsequent multiple regression analysis showed that the Hostility and hatred and Lack of empathy subdimensions were significant predictors of both National exclusiveness and prejudice and Ethnic minority threat perception, indicating the existence of a kind of psychopathic ethnic exclusionism