Are you a psychopath? - Statwing Blog

Complete the scientifically validated test below to see how psychopathic you are relative to others who have taken the test.[1] It will take two minutes, and you’ll be contributing to some fun data that we’ll share back to the community.

Psychopathy is on a spectrum: some people are less empathetic and prosocial than others, regardless of whether they’re diagnosably psychopaths.[2] So the question isn’t actually Are you a psychopath?, it’s Just how psychopathic are you?

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Discussion on Hacker News

Or, take a look at the results from our initial sample, like the below finding that men tended to score higher than women on the psychopathy scale.

As is typical for psychopathy tests, men tended to have higher psychopathy scores than women in our initial survey sample.

Soon we'll have the full, final results from this survey (including: who's more psychopathic, iPhone owners or Android owners?). Watch for a post on Hacker News next week—and write down your score above to compare yourself to people demographically similar to you.

Caveats, Warnings, Disclaimers

Results from the above test should not be viewed as a serious diagnostic. But hopefully it gives you a sense of the kinds of questions explored in the Psychopathy Checklist, which is controversially used for parole hearings in some prison systems.

The Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale and the Psychopathy Checklist typically look for two relatively independent concepts. "Primary" pyschopathy concerns manipulativeness and a lack of empathy, while "Secondary" psychopathy concerns impulsiveness and and lack of behavioral control. In the interest of time, we only tested for the former. A fuller test is available here.

If you're curious about society's treatment of psychopathy, check out Jon Ronson's exploration of psychopathy. You may also want to read a criticism of Ronson's work written by the creator of the Psychopathy Checklist, Robert Hare.