Validation of the PPI in a Belgian community sample: Preliminary findings. Paper presented at the 3rd Summer Conference of Research in Forensic Psychology, Regensburg, Germany.

The Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) is a self-report measure for the assessment of dimensional psychopathic traits in non-criminal populations. A preliminary study was carried out within a community sample (N= 180) in Flanders, Belgium. All sub-scales demonstrated fairly satisfactory internal consistency, with Cronbach alpha coefficients ranging from .75 (machiavellian egocentricity) to .91 (blame externalization). A principal factor analysis with varimax rotation yielded a three factor structure. A comparison between students (n = 119) and business people (n = 61) showed significant differences with regard to the coldheartedness, blame externalization and stress immunity scales, (all p <.001; d = 1.21, d = 1.06, and d = 1.19, respectively). This Dutch translation of the PPI demonstrates good reliability but suggests a slightly different factor structure than the one that has been originally proposed by Benning et al. (2003). The results and their implications for further validation research are discussed.