Psychopathic personality is measured with a 1970s checklist. A Berkeley psychologist says it’s time to upgrade.

If someone asked you to imagine a psychopath, who would you picture? Many of us might conjure an image of a violent criminal who will do anything without remorse to get what they want. After all, we’ve seen such a character in countless movies and other depictions over the decades.

But this isn’t the profile for everyone with psychopathic personality disorder, says Keanan Joyner, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology. Rather, it describes the most extreme cases of psychopathy.

Joyner runs the Clinical Research on Externalizing and Addiction Mechanisms Laboratory, where he and his team study risk for addiction and why problematic drug use co-occurs with mental disorders. One of the disorders they study is psychopathy.