Revisiting the Relationships between Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) Facets and Sexual Recidivists versus Nonsexual Recidivists

The role of psychopathy in Asian samples has not been well reported. This study tests the ability of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) to predict sexual recidivists compared to nonsexual recidivists. A total of 451 Korean male high-risk offenders were assessed by the PCL-R in 2005, and 445 offenders recidivated by 2016. Factor 1 (interpersonal-affective) and facet 2 (affective) showed the highest effect size of 0.53 in a comparison between sexual recidivists (n = 201) and nonsexual recidivists (n = 244). We further tested four facets for different forms of recidivism using one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Sexual recidivists scored significantly higher in facet 2 than misdemeanors (n = 59, d = 0.79), robbers (n = 31, d = 0.58), burglars (n = 33, d = 0.57), and murderers (n = 65, d = 0.54). The highest effect sizes were found in facet 2 (d = 0.79) to separate sex offenders from misdemeanors, followed by Factor 1 (d = 0.75) and facet 1 (d = 0.73) to separate sex offenders from burglars. Finally, hierarchical binary logistic regression revealed that only facet 2 (27.3%) predicted sexual recidivism, indicating the importance of personality traits over behavioral traits in predicting sexual violence.