Most recently, Lynam and Widiger (2007) took advantage of the hierarchical disaggregation of personality to develop a comprehensive description of the psychopathy construct. For each of the 30 facets of the NEO PI-R, they identified whether (a) the trait related to psychopathy and (b) whether high or low trait scores reflected the psychopathy construct. The result is a placement of psychopathy along each of 30 homogeneous dimensions of personality; in this view, psychopathy is understood to represent a multidimensional combination of constructs, rather than a coherent theoretical entity in and of itself. Lynam and Widiger's findings revealed meaningful distinctions between personality facets on the same broad personality domain, such as we described with respect to neuroticism.
