A Preliminary Investigation of the Construct of Psychopathic Personality (Psychopathy) in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes )

Although the construct of psychopathy has received considerable attention in humans, its relevance to other animals is largely unknown. We developed a measure of psychopathy for use in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ), the Chimpanzee Psychopathy Measure (CPM), and asked 6 raters to complete this index on 34 chimpanzees. The CPM (a) demonstrated satisfactory interrater reliability and internal consistency; (b) exhibited marginally significant sex differences (males > females); (c) correlated positively with measures of extraversion, agreeableness, and observational ratings of agonism, sexual activity, daring behaviors, teasing, silent bluff displays, and temper tantrums, and negatively with observational ratings of generosity; and (d) demonstrated incremental validity above and beyond a measure of dominance. Although further validation of the CPM is needed, these findings suggest that the psychopathy construct may be relevant to chimpanzees.