Relations of Distinct Psychopathic Personality Traits with Anxiety and Fear: Findings from Offenders and Non-Offenders.

Fred J Helmstetter,Steven M Gillespie,Pia Rotshtein,Ian J Mitchell,Rose-Marie Satherley,Anthony R Beech

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143120

Fred J Helmstetter, Steven M Gillespie + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143120

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Nov 16, 2015
Citations: 88	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Birmingham

Abstract

Early descriptions of psychopathy emphasise fearlessness and a lack of nervousness or anxiety as key characteristics of the disorder. However, conflicting evidence suggests that anxiety may be positively correlated with some aspects of the psychopathy construct. This position may seem somewhat paradoxical when considered alongside impaired processing of fear related stimuli in psychopathic personality. The aim of the current paper was to examine the distinct relations of callous, egocentric, and antisocial psychopathic traits with measures of anxiety and social anxiety in samples of non-offenders (Study 1) and violent offenders (Study 2). In Study 2 we also used an emotion recognition task to examine fearful face recognition. In Studies 1 and 2 we showed distinct and opposite significant relationships of egocentric and antisocial psychopathic traits with trait anxiety. Thus, while trait anxiety was negatively predicted by egocentric traits, it was predicted in a positive direction by antisocial traits in both samples. In Study 2 we found that callous traits were predictive of greater impairments in fearful face recognition. These findings suggest that anxiety and fear are distinguishable constructs in relation to psychopathic personality traits, and are discussed in terms of potentially separable mechanisms for these two constructs.

Highlights

Cleckley [1], in his seminal description of psychopathy, describes a distinct subgroup of psychiatric patients who beneath a façade of normalness, presented as severely callous, devoid of human emotion, and lacking in nervousness or anxiety
The finding that higher egocentric traits were associated with lower levels of state and trait anxiety is consistent with descriptions of prototypical psychopaths as lacking in nervousness or anxiety [1]
The findings that we report here suggest that while anxiety is negatively related to the egocentric features of psychopathy in a non-offending sample, there is no relationship of trait anxiety with the callous and affective features of the disorder

Summary

Introduction

Cleckley [1], in his seminal description of psychopathy, describes a distinct subgroup of psychiatric patients who beneath a façade of normalness, presented as severely callous, devoid of human emotion, and lacking in nervousness or anxiety. These criteria are largely relevant to modern day conceptualizations of psychopathy and have been adapted for use in the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised [PCL-R] [2, 3] for the measurement of psychopathic personality. While Factor 1 measures the interpersonal/affective features of psychopathy, including a callous lack of empathy and a deceitful and manipulative interpersonal style, Factor 2 taps lifestyle/antisocial features, including need for stimulation/proneness to boredom, and poor behavioural controls [3].

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