The Durand Adaptive Psychopathic Traits Questionnaire: development and preliminary validation

In recent decades, psychopathic personality has become synonym to a pervasive personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy, callousness, impulsivity, social deviance and aggressive behavior. However, evidences point to the existence of another form of psychopathy, which involves adaptive traits such as stress and anxiety immunity, remarkable social skills, noteworthy leadership ability, and an absence of fear. The newly developed Durand Adaptive Psychopathic Traits Questionnaire (DAPTQ) aims to assess adaptive traits known to correlate with the psychopathic personality. Validation of the questionnaire among 765 individuals from the community gave support for a 4-factor solution within the DAPTQ: Extroverted Leading, Rational Thinking, Risk Taking, and Composure. The DAPTQ and its four subscales demonstrated high internal consistency in a community sample (0.78 - 0.88) and in a clinical sample (0.79 - 0.90). Good convergent and divergent validity was established by administering the DAPTQ alongside established measures of psychopathic personality. Subscales validation against well-established personality assessments further confirm the DAPTQ’s strength. These findings indicate that the DAPTQ is a reliable and valid tool for measuring psychopathy-associated adaptive traits. Limitations of the present study and potential directives for future research are also discussed. Further studies are needed to validate the DAPTQ and its subscales against a wider range of personality traits and behaviors.