Mirror Protocol
The small print

Fifteen questions, three dials, one shareable result

Read this first.

This is not a diagnostic tool. Psychopathy is not even a diagnosis in the DSM-5 (antisocial personality disorder is; a “psychopathic features” specifier lives in the manual's alternative-model section).

The clinical standard, Hare's PCL-R, requires a trained rater, a long interview and your actual records. Self-report quizzes correlate only moderately with clinician ratings, and short ones correlate less.

Treat the result as a position on three dials, not a verdict. If you are concerned about yourself or someone else, talk to a qualified professional, not a results screen.

The model

Three dials

The dimensions come from the Triarchic model (Patrick, Fowles & Krueger, 2009), built to reconcile Cleckley's clinical picture, the PCL-R and the self-report literature.

Boldness
Social dominance, fearlessness, calm under pressure. The contested one.
Meanness
Callousness, low remorse, exploitation, a taste for the upper hand. The one that is specifically psychopathic.
Disinhibition
Impulsivity, boredom, weak brakes. The one everyone has a little of.

Answering

As you actually are

Rate each item as you actually are, not as you'd like to appear online. For what it's worth, the research suggests people high in these traits answer fairly candidly. It's the rest of us who flatter ourselves.

Each item is answered Rarely, Sometimes or Usually. It takes about four minutes.

Scoring

How the dials add up

Most items score 0, 1 or 2 for Rarely, Sometimes or Usually. Items 5, 7 and 12 are reverse-keyed and score the other way round. Reverse items exist so that people who answer “Usually” to everything don't come out as supervillains. It is the cheapest trick in psychometrics and it mostly works.

BoldnessItems 1, 4, 7R, 10, 13 · max 10
MeannessItems 2, 5R, 8, 11, 14 · max 10
DisinhibitionItems 3, 6, 9, 12R, 15 · max 10

A dial is high at 7 or more, low at 3 or less. Your total is all three dials, 0 to 30.

Low

0–7

Moderate

8–15

Elevated

16–22

High

23–30

These cut points are quarters of the possible range, not population norms. Norms require a sample. You are the sample.

Archetypes

Applied in order

  1. Total 7 or below: Empathic Anchor.
  2. Two or more dials at 7 or more: Full Spectrum, read by blend.
  3. Otherwise, your highest dial. Ties get both readings.
Charismatic Operator
You lead with presence. Fear, social or physical, is a rumor you've heard about.
Cold Calculator
You read people accurately and feel very little while doing it.
Reckless Spark
Impulse outruns plan. You generate novelty, energy and the occasional crater.
Full Spectrum
Two or more dials high. Which blend you are matters more than the total.
Empathic Anchor
You feel other people's weather, keep your commitments and get nervous before presentations.

Boldness + Meanness. The boardroom profile. The “successful psychopath” has a better publicist than evidence base, but this is what the hypothesis looks like.

Meanness + Disinhibition. The classic forensic profile, the one the PCL-R was built around.

Boldness + Disinhibition. The charming daredevil. No malice, poor insurance history.

All three. The Cleckley original. The Mask of Sanity, 1941 edition.

The small print

Which is the interesting part

References

Sources

  1. Babiak, P., Neumann, C. S., & Hare, R. D. (2010). Corporate psychopathy: Talking the walk. Behavioral Sciences & the Law.
  2. Cleckley, H. (1941). The Mask of Sanity. Mosby.
  3. Edens, J. F., Marcus, D. K., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Poythress, N. G. (2006). Psychopathic, not psychopath: Taxometric evidence for the dimensional structure of psychopathy. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
  4. Hare, R. D. (2003). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (2nd ed.). Multi-Health Systems.
  5. Lilienfeld, S. O., Waldman, I. D., Landfield, K., Watts, A. L., Rubenzer, S., & Faschingbauer, T. R. (2012). Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
  6. Meffert, H., Gazzola, V., den Boer, J. A., Bartels, A. A. J., & Keysers, C. (2013). Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy. Brain.
  7. Miller, J. D., & Lynam, D. R. (2012). An examination of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory's nomological network: A meta-analytic review. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment.
  8. Patrick, C. J., Fowles, D. C., & Krueger, R. F. (2009). Triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy. Development and Psychopathology.
  9. Ray, J. V., Hall, J., Rivera-Hudson, N., Poythress, N. G., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Morano, M. (2013). The relation between self-reported psychopathic traits and distorted response styles: A meta-analytic review. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment.
  10. Sanz-García, A., Gesteira, C., Sanz, J., & García-Vera, M. P. (2021). Prevalence of psychopathy in the general adult population: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology.
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