The Factor Test

Every result, explained

The Factor Test scores Hare's two psychopathy factors separately, Factor 1 (the cold interpersonal-affective core) and Factor 2 (the hot lifestyle-antisocial shell), and the pair lands in one of four verdicts.

• The Cold Factor

  Factor 1 leads. The interior is quiet and the exterior is doing all the work.

  Your Factor 1 score is high and your Factor 2 score is not. This is the configuration Hare's research calls the interpersonal-affective core: charm that switches on for a purpose, a self-estimate that does not need anyone's agreement, lying that costs nothing, and an interior where guilt and grief are things you observe in other people. What you do not have is the shell that gets most psychopaths caught. You plan. You keep the lease. You do not shout. It is the configuration I was assessed as, and it is the one the literature finds in boardrooms rather than cells.

• The Hot Factor

  Factor 2 leads. The shell is loud and the cold core is not there.

  Your Factor 2 score is high and your Factor 1 score is not. This is the lifestyle and antisocial shell without the interpersonal-affective core: boredom that turns into decisions, a life financed by other people more than once, no honest answer about five years from now, a temper with a body count of jobs and friendships, and a history of trouble that started early. It is the more common of the two, and it is the one that produces most of what the public calls a psychopath, because it is the part that ends up in the report. The interior, though, still feels things. That is the line between you and the cold profile.

• The Full Profile

  Both factors high. The core and the shell, together.

  Both factors score high. This is the configuration Hare's checklist was built to find: the cold interpersonal-affective core and the impulsive antisocial shell in the same person. The charm and the temper. The lie that costs nothing and the plan that never existed. In the research this is the profile with the worst outcomes, not because the interior is darker than the cold profile's, but because the shell keeps handing the interior consequences it would otherwise have avoided. A self-report cannot tell you whether you meet criteria for anything; it can tell you the pattern is not subtle.

• Below the Line

  Neither factor scores high.

  Neither factor reached the top third of the scale. Whatever you came here to find, the items did not find it in the amounts that define the pattern. You still have a lean, and it is named on this page, because everyone has one: a slightly colder interior or a slightly hotter shell. A lean is a description of a person, not a profile. If you arrived because someone called you cold, or because a relationship ended and you wanted to know whose diagnosis it was, the answer this instrument gives is that it was probably not yours.

Nothing on these pages is a diagnosis. A result describes a pattern of answers on a self-report instrument; only a clinician can diagnose, and only with a proper assessment.