Psychopathy is no longer a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as of the third edition. Rather the diagnosis would be antisocial personality disorder with psychopathic traits. These psychopathic traits are characterised by “a lack of anxiety or fear and by a bold interpersonal style that may mask maladaptive behaviours”, e.g. not adjusting adequately or appropriately to certain environments or situations.

Psychopathic traits are assessed using a variety of measurement tools, most famously Robert D. Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R), brought to the mainstream by author Jon Ronson in his book The Psychopath Test. Dr Hare’s checklist is a list of 20 traits which the assessed is scored on a three-point scale, for example, item 6 is lack of remorse or guilt and the recipient is assessed, giving a grade of 0 for no match, 1 for a partial match or 2 for a good match. If someone scores above 30 on the checklist, they are considered to have psychopathic traits, for instance, serial killer/serial rapist Ted Bundy was evaluated at 39/40.

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