This study examined the impact of personality characteristics of individual raters on the scoring of the Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R) to determine if individuals who endorsed psychopathic personality characteristics would be more adept at detecting psychopathy in other individuals. It was hypothesized that individuals who scored higher on the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and displayed personality characteristics resembling psychopathy would be more accurate at detecting psychopathy in other individuals and thus would rate a sample case as higher in psychopathy. Although there were no significant correlations between PCL-R Factors and TriPM Dimensions, we found two negative correlations approaching significance: PCL-R Total Score and TriPM Meanness Score (p=0.085), and PCL-R Factor 2 Score and TriPM Meanness Score (p=0.064). This could indicate that individuals who endorse psychopathic personality characteristics, particularly Meanness, could interpret psychopathic behavior as normative and would not be able to detect psychopathy in a sample case file.
