Psychopathy, Gender, and Gender Roles: Implications for Antisocial and Histrionic Personality Disorders

Several authors have proposed that antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and histrionic personality disorder (HPD) are sex-typed manifestations of the same underlying predisposition, namely psychopathy. In a sample of 180 undergraduates (90 males, 90 females), we tested three hypotheses: (1) psychopathy underlies both ASPD and HPD traits; (2) the relation between psychopathy and both ASPD and HPD traits is moderated by biological gender, with psychopathic males tending to exhibit an antisocial pattern and psychopathic females a histrionic pattern; and (3) the relation between psychopathy and both ASPD and HPD traits is moderated by gender roles, with psychopathic individuals possessing stereotypically “masculine” features tending to exhibit an antisocial pattern and psychopathic individuals possessing stereotypically “feminine” features tending to exhibit a histrionic pattern. The latter hypothesis was tested both across and within gender. Structural equation modeling applied to self-report measures of psychopathy, gender roles, and ASPD and HPD traits provided support for the first two hypotheses but not the third. Implications of these findings for the differential expression of psychopathy in males and females, as well as future directions for research, are discussed.