For the past while I have had the question “What is your favorite movie?” appended to the end of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale as an optional “Research item”. Two thousand takes later, lets see what can be learned from the data.

The LSRP measures psychopathy along two scales; primary psychopathy, a selfish, uncaring and manipulative attitude towards others, and secondary psychopathy, which reflects impulsiveness. Scores range from 1 to 5. This analysis will cover primary psychopathy scores.

The sample is 66% male. The average age was 33. The average score was 2.49.

The simplest analysis would be to aggregate scores by favorite movie, which can be seen below. Unfortunately, given the diversity of favorite movies, the sample sizes for each one are rather small and even given the modest threshold for inclusion of n=10, not many movies passed. The error bars are standard error.

So, no movies scored particularly high. If you have a friend who likes A Clockwork Orange, you don’t have to disown them, 3.3 is not concerning. However the movies with lower averages are more interesting. A person who scores 1.9 is, according to self-report, a very good person. If your favorite movie is 2001, pat yourself on the back.

Standard caveats apply.