Emotional psychopaths? Differentiation of various emotional states experienced by psychopathic individuals (original) (raw)
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Psychopathy and the Perception of Affect and Vulnerability
Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2007
The relationship between psychopathic traits and the perception of nonverbal communication, including facial expressions and body language, is investigated. Participants include 59 prison inmates and 60 community members. Psychopathic traits among inmates are measured using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and Levenson's Self Report Psychopathy Scale. Participants categorize the emotion of posed facial photographs and rate intensity of emotion. They view videotaped interactions of a confederate and a target individual and rate assertiveness using the Rathus Assertiveness Scale. There is a trend for the PCL-R to be positively correlated with the inmates' accuracy of emotional intensity ratings. Psychopathic traits are also positively associated with the accuracy of assertiveness ratings.
Emotion and aggression in the psychopathic personality
Aggression and Violent Behavior, 1998
This paper presents an integrative conceptual framework for understanding relationships between psychopathy and aggression, and reviews the extant relevant literature in relation to this framework. Issues pertaining to conceptualization and subtyping of aggression are reviewed with reference to contemporary emotion theory, and recent research on the emotional and temperamental underpinnings of criminal psychopathy is described. It is argued that different forms of aggression may be related to disparate facets of psychopathy, and that these relationships may be mediated by common dispositional factors. Methodological limitations of existing studies are identified, and suggestions for future research are offered.
What can we learn about emotion by studying psychopathy?
Psychopathy is a developmental disorder associated with core affective traits, such as low empathy, guilt, and remorse, and with antisocial and aggressive behaviors. Recent neurocognitive and neuroimaging studies of psychopathy in both institutionalized and community samples have begun to illuminate the basis of this condition, in particular the ways that psychopathy affects the experience and recognition of fear. In this review, I will consider how understanding emotional processes in psychopathy can shed light on the three questions central to the study of emotion: (1) Are emotions discrete, qualitatively distinct phenomena, or quantitatively varying phenomena best described in terms of dimensions like arousal and valence? (2) What are the brain structures involved in generating specific emotions like fear, if any? And (3) how do our own experiences of emotion pertain to our perceptions of and responses to others' emotion? I conclude that insights afforded by the study of psychopathy may provide better understanding of not only fundamental social phenomena like empathy and aggression, but of the basic emotional processes that motivate these behaviors.
Emotion processing in Psychopathy Checklist — assessed psychopathy: A review of the literature
Clinical Psychology Review, 2013
• Most studies associate psychopathy with abnormal responsiveness to emotion cues. • Verbal tasks produce deficits more consistently than nonverbal tasks. • Emotional stimulus complexity is associated with greater deficits. • Overall findings are not clearly consistent with any single theoretical perspective. • Future research should examine moderators of emotion processing in psychopathy.
Psychopathy traits and the processing of emotion words: Results of a lexical decision task
Cognition & Emotion, 2008
Research has indicated that individuals possessing psychopathic traits exhibit a deficit in the processing of emotional stimuli. Lexical decision task studies found that psychopathic individuals do not demonstrate affective facilitation in processing emotional words relative to nonpsychopathic individuals. However, these investigations have not examined processing of discrete affective categories and their relation to the callous/unemotional (F1) and impulse control/antisocial (F2) factors of psychopathy. Sixty undergraduate men completed a self-report measure of psychopathy traits and a lexical decision task assessing response latencies to anger, sadness, fear, and happiness words. Results reflected an association between F2 and a heightened experience of anger, whereas F1 was associated with a diminished experience of sadness. Findings are discussed in terms of the relation to existing research using alternative methods of processing affect. Cleckley identified lack of remorse and general poverty of affect as core features of the psychopathic personality. Although general correlates of antisocial and deviant behaviour typify common criminals, he included other members of society, such as doctors, lawyers, and businessmen unidentified by the legal system in the same rubric. Nevertheless, most studies in this area have focused on forensic populations while individuals in the general population possessing psychopathic traits have been studied to a lesser degree. Edens, Marcus, Lilienfeld, and Poythress (2006) demonstrated that psychopathic traits may be best conceptualised on a continuum and that the dimensional nature of psychopathy justifies research in non-forensic samples. Hare's conceptualisation of psychopathy identifies two factors, emotional detachment and antisocial behaviour (Hare, 2003
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2021
Background: The emotional processes within people with psychopathy have been thoroughly investigated. Although content analysis is an interesting area for evaluating emotional characteristics, few data exist concerning the speech content of people with psychopathy in response to affective and neutral images. Method: Our study population included male forensic inpatients (n = 47) from Centre Régional de soins Psychiatrique, Les Marronniers, Tournai, Belgium. According to their total score, as measured by the Pscyhopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), the inpatients were divided into three groups: Psychopath (n = 24, PCL-R score of ≥25), Intermediate (n = 12, PCL-R score from 15.0 to 24.9), and Nonpsychopath (n = 11, score of ≤14.9). Using Tropes analyses and EMOTAIX scenario tools, we examined each narrative's emotional characteristics. We tested the hypothesis that people with psychopathy report fewer emotional words on all International Affective Picture System images, particularly on negative-valence images. Results: Generally, our results do not support this hypothesis, that people with psychopathy report fewer emotional words on all images, but rather suggested a specific discordance in the verbal emotional treatment (exclusively PCL-R Interpersonal factor) but not in terms of the subjective evaluation. Moreover, this interpersonal factor was positively correlated with the self-referring pronouns (i.e., I and me) setting, whereas the PCL-R Social Deviance factor was positively correlated with action verbs. Conclusion: Speech outputs of people with psychopathy present specificities in terms of emotional content and verbal setting. The results are congruent with the notion that psychopathy combines both functionality and subtle impairment.
International Journal of Risk and Recovery, 2021
Background Emotional processes among psychopathic individuals have been consistently investigated. Although content analysis is interesting for evaluating emotional characteristics, few data exist concerning Psychopath’s speech content following affective and neutral images. Method Population included male forensic inpatients (n=47) from Security Hospital. The inpatients were divided into: “Psychopaths” (n=24, PCL-R total score >25), “Intermediates” (n=12, score from 15 to 24.9) and “Non-psychopaths” (n=11, score <14.9). TROPES analyses and EMOTAIX scenario tools examined the narrative’s emotional characteristics. We tested the hypothesis that psychopaths report fewer emotional words on all images, particularly on negative-valence images. Results Our results on the whole do not support this hypothesis but suggested rather a specific discordance in the verbal emotional treatment (exclusively PCL-R interpersonal factor) but not in terms of the subjective evaluation. Moreover, th...
Evaluating emotion processing and trait anxiety as predictors of non-criminal psychopathy
Personality and Individual Differences, 2014
This study's primary aim was to investigate if trait anxiety and other emotion processing variables would be additive predictors that will differentially predict primary and secondary psychopathy, as previous research has yet to examine the relative contributions of these constructs in a non-criminal population. A convenience community sample (N = 470) was obtained using an online survey. Structural equation modelling analyses demonstrated that trait anxiety, reappraisal and emotional manipulation are significant predictors of primary psychopathy. Trait anxiety, emotion manipulation, poor emotional skills and general emotion dys-regulation were found to be significant predictors of secondary psychopathy. From these findings, particularly noteworthy relationships are those between trait anxiety and secondary psychopathy (16% of the variance), and emotion manipulation and primary psychopathy (17.64% of the variance). In addition, there was preliminary evidence that emotion processing variables may partially mediate the relationship between trait anxiety and psychopathy subtypes. These findings have important implications, including the relevance of the findings to psychopathy conceptualised as a personality trait and the applicability of the findings in different non-forensic settings.
Pham, H.T. & Philippot, P. (2003). Psychopathy and emotion: Facial decoding expressions of emotions
To examine whether psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 20 criminal psychopaths, 23 criminal nonpsychopaths, both groups identified with Hare's (2003) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, and 25 noncriminals completed the facial affect recognition test developed by Philippot et al. (1999). All participants were males. The criminal psychopaths and nonpsychopaths were confined in a high-security prison. Forty slides were presented on a computer screen, each representing a male or a female actor portraying facial expressions of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, or disgust. Facial stimuli varied in emotional intensity (0%, 30%, 70%, and 100%). Overall, both criminal groups were less accurate than controls in decoding facial expression of emotion. Analysis of covariance showed that this effect is accounted for by differences in level of education of the participants. While criminal nonpsychopaths did not differ from criminal psychopaths in term of overall accuracy, they were less accurate for amygdalian emotion than for nonamygdalian ones. Criminal psychopaths' performance, however, was not affected by the amygdalian nature of the facial display. This pattern of results is opposed to the Blair's amygdalian hypothesis.