Psychopathic Checklist

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us - has devised a twenty-item checklist identifying the main characteristics of the psychopathic personality.

1. Glib and superficial charm - the tendency to be smooth, engaging, charming, slick, and verbally vacile. A psychopath never gets tongue-tied.
2. Grandoise self-worth - a grossly inglated view of one’s abilities and self-worth. Psychopaths are arrogant people who believe they are superior human beings.
3. Need for stimulation or proneness to boredeom - an excessive need for novel, thrilling, and exciting stimulations; taking chances and doing things that are risky.
4. Pathological lying - can be moderate or high.
5. Conning and manipulativeness - the use of deceit and deception to con, cheat, or defraud others for personal gain.
6. Lack of remorse or guilt - a lack of feelings or concern for the losses, pain, and suffering of victims.
7. Shallow effect - emotional poverty or a limited range or depth of feelings.
8. Callousness and lack of empathy - a lack of feeling toward people in general; cold, contemptuous, inconsiderate, and tactless.
9. Parasitic lifestyle - an intentional, manipulative, selfish, and exploitative financial dependance on others.
10. Poor behavioral controls - expressions of irritability, annoyance, impatience, threats, agression, and verbal abuse.
11. Promiscuous sexual behavior - a variety of brief, superficial relations, numerous affairs, and an indiscriminate selection of sexual partners.
12. Early behavioral problems - a variety of behaviors prior to age thirteen, including lying, theft, cheating, vandalism, bullying, sexual activity, fire-setting, glue-sniffing, alcohol use, and running away from home.
13. Lack of realistic long-term-goals - an inability or persistent failure to develop and execute long-term plans and goals.
14. Impulsivity - the occurrence of behaviors than are unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation.
15. Irresponsibility - repeated failure to fulfill or honor obligations and commitments.
16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions - as reflected in low conscientiouness, an absense of dutifulness, denial of responsibility, and an effort to manipulate others through this denial.
17. Many short-term marital relationships - a lack of commitment to a long-term relationship.
18. Juvenile relinquency - behavior problems between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.
19. Revocation of conditional release - a revocation of probation or other conditional releases due to technical violations.
20. Criminal versatility - a diversity of types of criminal offences; taking great pride in getting away with crimes.