Form DPT-45Scale: Callousness7 items
Callousness
Not much concern for how other people feel or how your actions land on them.
What does callousness look like?
These are typical examples, written by us to illustrate the statements below — not a checklist for diagnosing anyone.
- Shrugging off other people's distress as their problem
- Making decisions without thinking about who pays the cost
- Being told you come across as cold, even when you don't feel hostile
Where does this trait come from in the research?
Callousness is one of seven factors that emerged when researchers analyzed 234 antagonism items from seven questionnaires (Sleep et al., 2021). The statements used here come from the “Callousness” scale of the CAT-PD static form, a personality-disorder trait measure built in a project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (Simms et al., 2011), published in the public-domain International Personality Item Pool.
The item pool reports internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) for this scale of 0.85 in a community sample and 0.83 in a patient sample. Values above about .80 mean the statements hang together well; it does not by itself show the scale measures what it claims. Validation studies found the static-form scales relate to other trait measures as expected (Long et al., 2021).
Which statements measure callousness?
| Item | Self-report wording | Scored |
|---|---|---|
| 744 | Care about others. | Reversed (6 − answer) |
| 274 | Am not a caring person. | As answered |
| 63 | Am a cold-hearted person. | As answered |
| 864 | Do not care how my actions affect others. | As answered |
| 701 | Can't be bothered with others' needs. | As answered |
| 280 | Am not a sympathetic person. | As answered |
| 243 | Am indifferent to the feelings of others. | As answered |
Your callousness score is the average of these 7 answers, after reversing the one item worded in the opposite direction. Item numbers are the item pool's own identifiers.
If you scored high
- Before a decision that affects someone, name one way it could land badly for them and say it out loud.
- Ask one person close to you: "When have I seemed not to care?" Listen without correcting.
- Practice one concrete act of care per week that costs you something small (time, attention).
If it's someone you deal with
- State the impact plainly and specifically ("When you X, I had to Y"); appeals to feelings may not land.
- Frame requests around shared outcomes rather than guilt.
- Don't rely on them to notice when you need support; ask directly, or get it elsewhere.
These suggestions are our editorial judgment, not tested interventions. For the research on whether people can change these traits, read how to be less difficult; for others, dealing with a difficult person.
Take the full testRate someone
The other six traits
- 01
- 02
- 03
- 04
- 05
- 06
Sources
- Sleep CE, Crowe ML, Carter NT, Lynam DR, Miller JD (2021). Uncovering the structure of antagonism. Personal Disord 12(4), 300-311. PubMed 34323587 · doiCross-sectional factor analysis. 532 university students answered 234 antagonism items from seven trait measures; a seven-factor solution emerged: callousness, grandiosity, domineering, manipulation, suspiciousness, aggression and risk taking. Limits: One student sample, self-report only. Checked against the abstract only, October 26, 2026.
- Simms LJ, Goldberg LR, Roberts JE, Watson D, Welte J, Rotterman JH (2011). Computerized adaptive assessment of personality disorder: introducing the CAT-PD project. J Pers Assess 93(4), 380-9. PubMed 22804677 · doiMeasure development. Describes the NIMH-funded project that built the CAT-PD trait model and item pool (59 candidate traits, 2,589 initial items). Limits: Early-phase report. Checked against the abstract only, October 26, 2026.
- Long TA, Reinhard E, Sellbom M, Anderson JL (2021). An Examination of the Reliability and Validity of the Comprehensive Assessment of Traits Relevant to Personality Disorder-Static Form (CAT-PD-SF). Assessment 28(5), 1345-1357. PubMed 32125172 · doiValidation study. CAT-PD static-form scores related to other personality measures in expected ways and moderately to functional impairment. Limits: The five-factor structure fit only marginally. Checked against the abstract only, October 26, 2026.
Item text and reliability values: International Personality Item Pool (IPIP): CAT-PD-SF v1.1 scale keys, retrieved 2026-10-26. Public domain (IPIP): use for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, is pre-granted.