Impulsive Antisociality Research Articles

Self-regulation, ego depletion, and inhibition

Inhibition is a major form of self-regulation. As such, it depends on self-awareness and comparing oneself to standards and is also susceptible to fluctuations in willpower resources. Ego depletion is the state of reduced willpower caused by prior exertion of self-control. Ego depletion undermines inhibition both because restraints are weaker and because urges are felt more intensely than usual. Conscious inhibition of desires is a pervasive feature of everyday life and may be a requirement of life in civilized, cultural society, and in that sense it goes to the evolved core of human nature. Intentional inhibition not only restrains antisocial impulses but can also facilitate optimal performance, such as during test taking. Self-regulation and ego depletion— may also affect less intentional forms of inhibition, even chronic tendencies to inhibit. Broadly stated, inhibition is necessary for human social life and nearly all societies encourage and enforce it.

SSRIs as Moral Enhancement Interventions: A Practical Dead End

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have gained a degree of prominence across recent moral enhancement literature as a possible intervention for dealing with antisocial and aggressive impulses. This is due to serotonin's purported capacity to modulate persons’ averseness to harm. The aim of this article is to argue that the use of SSRIs is not something worth getting particularly excited about as a practicable intervention for moral enhancement purposes, and that the generally uncritical enthusiasm over serotonin's potential as a moral enhancer is a consequence of the paucity of viable options for envisaging practicable moral enhancement interventions. While there are many conceptual issues raised by the idea of moral enhancement generally, and by the idea of serotonin as a morally affective agent, the aim here is to look at practical concerns. It is argued that SSRIs do not, nor cannot in the reasonably foreseeable future, be made to work as a reliably safe or reliably effective means for moral enhancement, even within the very limited remit of treating “reactive” aggression. SSRIs might be effective as a limited and partial mental health intervention (even this is questionable), but not as a generally effective moral enhancement technology.

Concurrent and predictive validity of psychopathy in a batterers' intervention sample.

Domestic violence is a serious problem in the United States, with almost two million incidents occurring every year. Although several risk factors have been identified, psychopathy has been understudied in this area. The current study investigated the association between psychopathy and successful treatment completion and reoffending in 483 convicted male batterers undergoing treatment. Findings showed that both overall psychopathy and the specific facet of impulsive antisociality were positively associated with treatment failure and recidivism at 1-year follow-up. Furthermore, results also indicated that the psychopathy facet of fearless dominance positively moderated the association between impulsive antisociality and treatment failure. Thus, individuals high on fearless dominance are bold and narcissistic, and reject the notion that they need treatment, and when coupled with impulsive antisociality, this combination of traits increases the likelihood of treatment failure. In addition, relative risk-ratio analyses indicated that individuals with elevated scores on global psychopathy and impulsive antisociality were at a greater risk for treatment failure and recidivism.

Psychopathic predators? Getting specific about the relation between psychopathy and violence.

The psychopathy checklist-revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003) is often used to assess risk of violence, perhaps based on the assumption that it captures emotionally detached individuals who are driven to prey upon others. This study is designed to assess the relation between (a) core interpersonal and affective traits of psychopathy and impulsive antisociality on the one hand and (b) the risk of future violence and patterns of motivation for past violence on the other. A research team reliably assessed a sample of 158 male offenders for psychopathy, using both the interview-based PCL-R and the self-report psychopathic personality inventory (PPI: Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). Then, a second independent research team assessed offenders' lifetime patterns of violence and their motivation. After these baseline assessments, offenders were followed in prison or the community for up to 1 year to assess their involvement in 3 different forms of violence. Baseline and follow-up assessments included both interviews and reviews of official records. First, the PPI manifested incremental validity in predicting future violence over the PCL-R (but not vice versa)-and most of its predictive power derived solely from impulsive antisociality. Second, impulsive antisociality-not interpersonal and affective traits specific to psychopathy-were uniquely associated with instrumental lifetime patterns of past violence. The latter psychopathic traits are narrowly associated with deficits in motivation for violence (e.g., lack of fear or lack of provocation). These findings and their consistency with some past research led us to advise against making broad generalizations about the relation between psychopathy and violence.

Are psychopaths and heroes twigs off the same branch? Evidence from college, community, and presidential samples

We examine the relation between psychopathy, especially its fearless dominance dimension, and heroism in two undergraduate samples (N=124 and 119), a community sample (N=457) and 42 U.S. presidents. The first undergraduate and community sample revealed significant positive correlations between fearless dominance and heroism and altruism toward strangers; the presidential sample provided some evidence for an association between fearless dominance and war heroism. In the second undergraduate sample, fearless dominance was related only to altruism toward strangers; heroism was instead significantly positively correlated with the impulsive antisociality component of psychopathy. These findings raise the possibility that some psychopathic personality traits are modestly associated with heightened levels of heroic altruism, and raise questions for future research on the personality correlates of heroism.

Cooperation and fairness depend on self-regulation

Any evolved disposition for fairness and cooperation would not replace but merely compete with selfish and other antisocial impulses. Therefore, we propose that human cooperation and fairness depend on self-regulation. Evidence shows reductions in fairness and other prosocial tendencies when self-regulation fails.

A Rasch model analysis of NEO PI-R fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality scales.

This study reports a Rasch model analysis of psychopathic trait measures of fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality (Witt et al., 2010). Through use of secondary data analysis (N = 200), these scales were evaluated to determine whether they provided effective dimensional measurement evidenced by a) one-dimensional structure, b) broad targeting of the latent dimensions, and c) invariance across men and women. Only fearless dominance achieved an invariant one-dimensional structure after slight modification. Both fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality had a restricted range in targeting of the latent trait dimensions. With one exception, scale items did not exhibit differential item functioning across men and women. Implications of the results are discussed within the context of Rasch analysis and the conceptualization of psychopathy.

Deficient fear conditioning and self‐reported psychopathy: The role of fearless dominance

The role of the two dimensions of psychopathy-dispositional fearlessness (theorized to reflect variations in reactivity of the brain's defensive system) and externalizing proneness (presumed to reflect variations in function of anterior regulatory systems)-in fear learning was examined in a sample of undergraduates assessed using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) who participated in a differential aversive conditioning task. Only scores on self-reported "fearless dominance," irrespective of scores on "impulsive antisociality," were related to diminished acquisition of physiological fear. Consistent with dual-process accounts of psychopathy proposing divergent etiological pathways for the interpersonal/affective and the social deviance features of the disorder, our results lend support to the existence of a deficit in reactivity of the brain's defensive system underlying the fearlessness dimension of psychopathy.

As Genetic Data Increase, How Will Courts Respond?

As Genetic Data Increase, How Will Courts Respond?

Psychopathy and the prediction of alcohol-related physical aggression: The roles of Impulsive Antisociality and Fearless Dominance

BackgroundIt is well established that individual difference factors modulate aggression under the acute effects of alcohol. In this investigation, we tested the hypothesis that one core dimension of psychopathy, Impulsive Antisociality, would modulate intoxicated aggression, whereas another dimension, Fearless Dominance, would not. MethodsParticipants were 516 young social drinkers (253 men and 263 women). Psychopathy was measured using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld and Andrews, 1996). Following the consumption of either an alcohol or a placebo beverage, aggression was measured with a task in which participants administered and received electric shocks to/from a fictitious opponent under the guise of a competitive reaction-time task. ResultsHierarchical regression analyses supported our hypothesis: Impulsive Antisociality predicted aggression under alcohol, whereas Fearless Dominance did not. ConclusionsPersons who tend to endorse antisocial and impulsive externalizing behaviors appear to be at greater risk for aggression under the acute influence of alcohol.

Exaggerated attention blink response in prisoners with externalizing

The diverse phenotypic expressions of disinhibitory psychopathology are believed to reflect a common latent predisposing variable: externalizing. While deficiencies in executive functioning (i.e., cognitive/inhibitory control, working memory) and affective hyper-reactivity are commonly associated with externalizing, there is also evidence that externalizing is related to anomalous allocation of attention. In this study, we administered an attention blink task to a sample of male prisoners and assessed externalizing using the Impulsive–Antisociality scale (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003). Individuals with high Impulsive–Antisociality displayed a significantly steeper attention blink (i.e., less accurate identification of a second target) than individuals with low Impulsive–Antisociality. Results provide new evidence that externalizers over-allocate attention to salient information and suggest a novel conceptualization of their disinhibitory psychopathology.

Psychopathic personality traits and environmental contexts: Differential correlates, gender differences, and genetic mediation.

Theorists have speculated that primary psychopathy (or Factor 1 affective-interpersonal features) is prominently heritable whereas secondary psychopathy (or Factor 2 social deviance) is more environmentally determined. We tested this differential heritability hypothesis using a large adolescent twin sample. Trait-based proxies of primary and secondary psychopathic tendencies were assessed using Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) estimates of Fearless Dominance and Impulsive Antisociality, respectively. The environmental contexts of family, school, peers, and stressful life events were assessed using multiple raters and methods. Consistent with prior research, MPQ Impulsive Antisociality was robustly associated with each environmental risk factor, and these associations were significantly greater than those for MPQ Fearless Dominance. However, MPQ Fearless Dominance and Impulsive Antisociality exhibited similar heritability, and genetic effects mediated the associations between MPQ Impulsive Antisociality and the environmental measures. Results were largely consistent across male and female twins. We conclude that gene-environment correlations rather than main effects of genes and environments account for the differential environmental correlates of primary and secondary psychopathy.

Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency: Implications of psychopathic personality traits for successful and unsuccessful political leadership.

Although psychopathic personality (psychopathy) is marked largely by maladaptive traits (e.g., poor impulse control, lack of guilt), some authors have conjectured that some features of this condition (e.g., fearlessness, interpersonal dominance) are adaptive in certain occupations, including leadership positions. We tested this hypothesis in the 42 U.S. presidents up to and including George W. Bush using (a) psychopathy trait estimates derived from personality data completed by historical experts on each president, (b) independent historical surveys of presidential leadership, and (c) largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance. Fearless Dominance, which reflects the boldness associated with psychopathy, was associated with better rated presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations, and allied variables; it was also associated with several largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance, such as initiating new projects and being viewed as a world figure. Most of these associations survived statistical control for covariates, including intellectual brilliance, five factor model personality traits, and need for power. In contrast, Impulsive Antisociality and related traits of psychopathy were generally unassociated with rated presidential performance, although they were linked to some largely or entirely objective indicators of negative job performance, including Congressional impeachment resolutions, tolerating unethical behavior in subordinates, and negative character. These findings indicate that the boldness associated with psychopathy is an important but heretofore neglected predictor of presidential performance, and suggest that certain features of psychopathy are tied to successful interpersonal behavior.

The Age of Auden (review)

Reviewed by: The Age of Auden Michael Clune The Age of Auden. Aidan Wasley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Pp. xix + 258. $35.00 (cloth). In his new book, Aidan Wasley attempts to tell the story of postwar American poetry through the optic of W. H. Auden's ubiquitous presence as example, friend, judge, and teacher. Wasley develops this aim through two related theses. The first is that Auden's impact consists in large measure of the dissemination of a happy model of poetic influence that is free of anxiety. The second is that understanding the ways such major poets as John Ashbery and Adrianne Rich respond to Auden will illuminate their poetry in startling new ways. [End Page 205] Wasley argues that Auden, in his poetry, criticism, lectures, and conversation, shows American poets how to achieve an "unanxious assimilation of influences" (74). "It is an idea of influence based on acknowledgement, emulation, and creative utility" (55). Here he contrasts Auden's with two competing models. The first is Harold Bloom's vision of poetic affiliation in terms of the Freudian family romance, with son struggling to subdue the father and claim his own voice. The second is T. S. Eliot's vision of poetic impersonality as submission to the tradition. In contrast to both, Auden teaches young poets to see the tradition as a menu of options for constructing and enhancing the poetic voice. In part, this model of self-fashioning is a function of the poet's homosexuality. Auden's queerness, for Wasley, is utterly free of the violence and anti-social impulses that animate homosexual relations for a critic like Leo Bersani. Rather, the family romance is replaced by a benign erotics that promiscuously pursues unshadowed connections. These connections are unburdened by any sense of responsibility to the integrity of the whole that the poet's borrowings and graftings might add up to. The young poet under Auden's tutelage follows what he or she likes without worrying too much about what this says about his or her identity. Above all, this means that poets under Auden's influence don't need to worry about whether Rimbaud and Pound and Auden are appropriate materials for an American poetry. "To be an 'American' poet after Auden was to be . . . unfettered (or unassisted) by notions of native authenticity" (74). Auden offers America the "paradigm of the modern professional poet" (94). A polite, deracinated professionalism replaces anxious supplication and aggression. Auden's way of enacting and theorizing the poet's relation to the poetic tradition is itself an artifact of a thoroughly commercial concept of public and private life, and Wasley brings this out in contrasting Auden with Eliot. Both agree in attacking the straw man of a supposed romantic commitment to the self-authorizing creative self and in seeing the poet as composed of borrowed materials. What Auden adds to Eliot is that preeminent postwar civic and commercial value: choice (96). Eliot imagines that the tradition is singular and monolithic. Auden thinks that it is constituted by the free choice of the poet, browsing the bookstores of the world. Wasley develops the commercial dimension of Auden's influence in the book's most successful chapter, which describes James Merrill's absorption of that influence in his composition of The Changing Light at Sandhover. "The mystery of selfhood's debt to inheritance is perhaps the central theme of Merrill's life and his work," Wasley suggests (81). He cites the following, extraordinary lines of Merrill's to illustrate the extent to which the poet's career consists of a search to make others feel at home in his voice: "Young chameleon, I used to / Ask how on earth one got sufficiently / Imbued with otherness. And now I see" (90). But what, one might wonder, does Auden add to Merrill's séance-assisted quest for inspiration that Yeats couldn't have taught him? Wasley examines the terms by which Merrill solicits his ghosts, the curious bureaucratic structure of the afterlife that Ephraim and the others reveal, and the many-voiced entity that the poet "imbued with otherness" finally becomes. The mature Merrill, Walsey concludes, "is the poetic tradition incorporated" (92...

A life history approach to understanding the Dark Triad

Researchers adopting an evolutionary perspective have conceptualized the Dark Triad as an exploitative interpersonal style reflective of a fast life history strategy. However, not all research has supported this claim. We posit that different elements of the constructs associated with the Dark Triad may reflect different life history strategies. Our results indicate that the measures of the Dark Triad and other indicators of life history strategies form two distinct factors: (1) a fast life strategy factor that includes the impulsive antisociality facet of psychopathy, the entitlement/exploitativeness facet of narcissism, Machiavellianism, unrestricted sociosexuality, and aggression, and (2) a slow life strategy factor that includes the fearless dominance facet of psychopathy and both the leadership/authority and grandiose exhibitionism facets of narcissism. These factors differentially correlate with established measures of life history strategy. These findings add to the literature by clarifying how the Dark Triad fits into a life history framework.

"Psychometric characteristics and clinical correlates of NEO-PI-R fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality in the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study": Correction to Witt et al. (2010).

"Psychometric characteristics and clinical correlates of NEO-PI-R fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality in the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study": Correction to Witt et al. (2010).

Psychometric characteristics and clinical correlates of NEO-PI-R fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality in the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study.

This study evaluates the validity of derived measures of the psychopathic personality traits of Fearless Dominance and Impulsive Antisociality from the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) using data from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (baseline N = 733). These 3 issues were examined: (a) the stability of the measures over a 10-year interval, (b) their criterion-related validity, and (c) their incremental validity relative to an alternative NEO-PI-R profile-rating approach for assessing psychopathy. NEO-PI-R Fearless Dominance and Impulsive Antisociality scales were relatively stable across 10 years and demonstrated differential associations with measures of personality pathology and psychopathology generally consistent with past research and theoretical considerations. Moreover, these measures demonstrated an appreciable degree of incremental validity over the NEO-PI-R profile-rating approach.

Self-control predicts later symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Self-control, the ability to control one’s thoughts and actions, is perhaps one of the most important constructs in human psychology. Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, (2004) found that greater levels of self-control were related to higher grade point averages, better relationships and interpersonal skills, secure attachment styles, greater optimal emotional responses to stressful situations, fewer reports of psychopathology, less binge eating and alcohol abuse, and greater self-esteem among college students. These findings highlight the many aspects of an individual’s environment that can be affected by self-control. Although self-control has been shown to be related to important outcomes, it has been rarely examined in clinical disorders, particularly with regards to PTSD. Self-control is arguably an essential skill for successful functioning in one’s environment. Freud (1930) contended that the ability to inhibit antisocial impulses and conform to social standards of society is the fundamental nature of civilized life. Freud

Brain Region's Dopamine Levels Linked to Psychopathy Trait

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessBrain Region's Dopamine Levels Linked to Psychopathy TraitJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:7 May 2010https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.45.9.psychnews_45_9_022AbstractAh, the “bad guy” is thinking, “I'm going to take that sucker for all he's worth.”An overly responsive nucleus accumbens—illustrated in this brain image—may prompt antisocial individuals to be aggressive.Credit: Gregory Samanez-Larkin and Joshua Buckholtz, Vanderbilt UniversityWhat's going on in his brain? His brain's reward center—the nucleus accumbens—may be goading him into action, a new study suggests.The study found a link between the personality trait of psychopathy and an overly responsive nucleus accumbens.Joshua Buckholtz, a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University, headed the study. Results were reported online March 14 in Nature Neuroscience.The personality trait of psychopathy is characterized by charm, egocentricity, manipulation of others, sensation-seeking, poor reflection, and blunted empathy. Psychopathy in turn is a robust predictor of antisocial behavior.Moreover, alcohol, nicotine, and many other drugs of abuse are known to stimulate the nucleus accumbens, and psychopathic individuals are known to be at heightened risk for developing substance abuse problems. So Buckholtz and his colleagues suspected that there might be a link between the personality trait of psychopathy and the nucleus accumbens. They conducted a study to find out.They recruited 24 community volunteers and used the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, a validated measurement of psychopathy, to determine how each subject scored on a subdomain of the trait called “impulsive antisociality.” This subdomain in turn has been linked with antisocial behavior, aggression, impulsivity, and substance abuse both in prison and community samples.In a first experiment, the subjects were given an amphetamine, which is known to increase levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. After that, PET scans were used to measure the amount of dopamine released in the nucleus accumbens of each subject. The researchers looked to see whether there was any correlation between how high subjects had scored on impulsive antisociality and the amount of dopamine released in their nucleus accumbens.The higher subjects had scored on impulsive antisociality, the more dopamine they released. In fact, when the highest-scoring subjects were compared with the lowest-scoring ones, the former released four times more dopamine in the nucleus accumbens than the latter did.In a second experiment, the subjects played a game in which they could win a cash reward. While they were playing the game, fMRI scans were used to see how much dopamine was released in their nucleus accumbens. The higher subjects had scored on impulsive antisociality, the more dopamine they released.So the combined results from both experiments appear to indicate that people who score high on impulsive antisociality possess an especially responsive nucleus accumbens, or reward system.But what do these findings mean in practical terms? One possibility is that people with an especially responsive reward system might be aggressive about obtaining whatever they consider rewarding, whether it is drugs, sex, money, or something else. Indeed, rodent studies have shown that dopamine is released from the nucleus accumbens during aggressive behavior, and aggressive behavior is common among antisocial or psychopathic individuals.Although Buckholtz and his group believe that they've taken an important first step in linking impulsive antisociality to an exaggerated dopamine response in the nucleus accumbens, they now hope to confirm their results in subjects who have been diagnosed as having antisocial personality disorder.And if they manage to do so, then an especially responsive reward system might be considered one of the biological hallmarks of antisocial individuals, just as deficits in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala already are (Psychiatric News, April 5, 2002; October 16, 2009).The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.An abstract of “Mesolimbic Dopamine Reward System Hypersensitivity in Individuals With Psychopathic Traits” is posted at <www.nature.com/neurojournal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nn.2510.pdf>. ISSUES NewArchived

Psychopathic personality traits and risky sexual behavior in college students

Risky sexual behavior (RSB) is associated with a variety of negative health and social consequences including STDs and unplanned pregnancies. The present study focused on the association between psychopathic personality traits and RSB. College students ( N = 511) completed self-report measures of RSB, psychopathic personality traits, and sensation seeking. When sensation seeking, Fearless Dominance psychopathic traits, and Impulsive Antisociality psychopathic traits were entered as predictors of RSB, only Impulsive Antisociality significantly contributed to the regression. These main effects were qualified by a gender by psychopathic traits interaction: (a) Impulsive Antisociality predicted RSB in both men and women, with a stronger association between Impulsive Antisociality and RSB in men, and (b) Fearless Dominance only predicted RSB in men. Thus, RSB may require both opportunity (associated with Fearless Dominance in men) and a combination of poor judgment and impulsive behavior (associated with Impulsive Antisociality in both men and women).