Passive avoidance learning in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders.

Abstract

Research on passive avoidance learning has demonstrated reliabledifferences between psychopaths and controls when avoidance errors result in electric shock but not in loss of money (Schmauk, 1970). Using monetary punishments, Newman, Widom, and Nathan (1985) found that psychopathic delinquents performed more poorly than controls in an experimental paradigm employing monetary reward as well as the avoidance contingency. The present study was conducted to replicate and extend these findings using adult psychopaths and a computer controlled task. Sixty white male prisoners were assigned to groups using Hare's (1980) Psychopathy Checklist and administered a go/no-go discrimination task involving monetary incentives. One condition entailed competing reward and punishment contingencies; the other, two punishment contingencies. As predicted, psychopaths made significantly more passive avoidance errors than nonpsychopaths when the task conmined competing goals (/9 < .05) but performed as well as controls when the subjects' only goal was avoiding punishment. Results corroborate earlier findings that psychopaths are relatively poor at learning to inhibit reward-seeking behavior that results in monetary punishment.