Psychopathic Individuals Research Articles

Affinity between us: Examining how psychopathic traits influence the stigmatization of psychiatric disorders.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that is often stigmatized in both the general population and in legal settings. Although individuals with psychopathy face significant stigma, individuals with elevated psychopathic traits may hold fewer stigmatizing beliefs about this population. It is unclear, however, if this relationship stems from feelings of similarity or from traits of fearlessness that are commonly observed in some psychopathic individuals. In this study, 661 participants from the community were recruited online and completed the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure. They were then randomly assigned to read a description of either a nonviolent or violent psychopath, as well as either a nonviolent or violent person with schizophrenia. All participants also read a vignette of a nondangerous person with depression. For each description, participants completed the Attribution Questionnaire to measure stigmatizing attributes based on the vignette. Psychopathic traits were negatively associated with the stigmatization of individuals presented as either dangerous or nondangerous psychopaths, but were not associated with either forms of schizophrenia or with depression. Findings are explained in terms of identification with psychopaths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychopathy and the Induction of Desire: Formulating and Testing an Evolutionary Hypothesis

The problems psychopathic individuals impose on society and in their interpersonal relationships can be held in stark contrast to reports of their appeal and sexual success in some of those relationships. In the current paper, we seek to contextualize this enigma by focusing on the interpersonal dynamics of psychopathic individuals in romantic encounters. We first formulate a plausible evolutionary function, the sexual exploitation hypothesis, that proposes psychopathy exhibits “special design” features for subverting female mate choice, facilitating the induction of favorable impressions and desire in prospective intimate relationships. We then test the hypothesis in two studies with university samples. Study 1 had young men assessed on psychopathy, social intelligence, and sociosexuality engage in a filmed dating interaction. Study 2 had young women view a subsample of the videos, rate them on desirability, and leave voice messages. Results show psychopathy was related to sociosexuality, specific factors of social intelligence, and generating higher desirability ratings from women after controlling for men’s physical attractiveness. Analyses involving comparisons of two men showed women’s ratings increased in favor of the more psychopathic man. Women’s voice pitch also changed, but only in response to different facets of psychopathy. The results provide preliminary support for the sexual exploitation hypothesis and suggest that more dynamic assessment of putative desirability in psychopathy may be required to capture its plausible special design features in prospective dating encounters.

How group composition affects cooperation in fixed networks: can psychopathic traits influence group dynamics?

Static networks have been shown to foster cooperation for specific cost–benefit ratios and numbers of connections across a series of interactions. At the same time, psychopathic traits have been discovered to predict defective behaviours in game theory scenarios. This experiment combines these two aspects to investigate how group cooperation can emerge when changing group compositions based on psychopathic traits. We implemented a modified version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game which has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically to sustain a constant level of cooperation over rounds. A sample of 190 undergraduate students played in small groups where the percentage of psychopathic traits in each group was manipulated. Groups entirely composed of low psychopathic individuals were compared with communities with 50% high and 50% low psychopathic players, to observe the behavioural differences at the group level. Results showed a significant divergence of the mean cooperation of the two conditions, regardless of the small range of participants’ psychopathy scores. Groups with a large density of high psychopathic subjects cooperated significantly less than groups entirely composed of low psychopathic players, confirming our hypothesis that psychopathic traits affect not only individuals’ decisions but also the group behaviour. This experiment highlights how differences in group composition with respect to psychopathic traits can have a significant impact on group dynamics, and it emphasizes the importance of individual characteristics when investigating group behaviours.

Do I win, does the company win, or do we both win? Moderate traits of the Dark Triad and profit maximization

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the relationship between the maximization of personal and company gains and the moderate traits of the Dark Triad. The relevance of choosing this topic lies in investigating the attitude of executives who exhibit characteristics of a moderate intensity between the strong and weak traits. It is proven that the vision and charisma of narcissistic individuals, the strategy and tactics of Machiavellian individuals, and the creativity and good strategic thinking of psychopathic individuals are differentiating characteristics that enhance successful and integrative leadership and that are far from the more accentuated and opportunistic attitudes related to the strong traits, whose practices involve dishonest actions for personal gain. This evidence creates the possibility for strengthening the research in the accounting area, especially on the behavioral approach, in order to promote its interface with psychology and clarify how personality, values, and experiences influence managers’ choices when conducting business and how workers and companies are impacted by these decisions. The study is empirical-theoretical and involves 263 managers, adopting a survey as its data collection strategy and applying a self-reporting type questionnaire. The data analysis approaches included descriptive statistics, correlations, tests of means, and logistic regressions. In this study, managers with moderate psychopathic traits showed a lower tendency to maximize profit by manipulating results. An opposite tendency was revealed for those with moderate Machiavellian traits. The combined effect of the three Dark Triad traits was significant and positive, revealing opportunistic profit maximization. These findings contribute to future studies that aim to systematically analyze moderate levels of the triad and corroborate the findings that have revealed the common characteristics of manipulation, callousness, and dishonesty when investigating the interactive effect between the traits in question.

An investigation of the relationship between psychopathy and greater gray matter density in lateral prefrontal cortex.

Psychopathic traits predispose individuals toward antisocial behavior. Such antagonistic acts often result in "unsuccessful" outcomes such as incarceration. What mechanisms allow some people with relatively high levels of psychopathic traits to live "successful", unincarcerated lives, in spite of their antisocial tendencies? Using neuroimaging, we investigated the possibility that "successful" psychopathic individuals exhibited greater development of neural structures that promote "successful" self-regulation, focusing on the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). Across two structural magnetic resonance imaging studies of "successful" participants (Study 1: N = 80 individuals in long-term romantic relationships; Study 2: N = 64 undergraduates), we observed that gray matter density in the left and right VLPFC was positively associated with psychopathic traits. These preliminary results support a compensatory model of psychopathy, in which "successful" psychopathic individuals develop inhibitory mechanisms to compensate for their antisocial tendencies. Traditional models of psychopathy that emphasize deficits may be aided by such compensatory models that identify surfeits in neural and psychological processes.

Psychopathy is associated with shifts in the organization of neural networks in a large incarcerated male sample.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined by antisocial behavior paired with callousness, low empathy, and low interpersonal emotions. Psychopathic individuals reliably display complex atypicalities in emotion and attention processing that are evident when examining task performance, activation within specific neural regions, and connections between regions. Recent advances in neuroimaging methods, namely graph analysis, attempt to unpack this type of processing complexity by evaluating the overall organization of neural networks. Graph analysis has been used to better understand neural functioning in several clinical disorders but has not yet been used in the study of psychopathy. The present study applies a minimum spanning tree graph analysis to resting-state fMRI data collected from male inmates assessed for psychopathy with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (n = 847). Minimum spanning tree analysis provides several metrics of neural organization optimality (i.e., the effectiveness, efficiency, and robustness of neural network organization). Results show that inmates higher in psychopathy exhibit a more efficiently organized dorsal attention network (β==0.101, pcorrected==0.018). Additionally, subcortical structures (e.g., amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus) act as less of a central hub in the global flow of information in inmates higher in psychopathy (β==-0.104, pcorrected==0.048). There were no significant effects of psychopathy on neural network organization in the default or salience networks. Together, these shifts in neural organization suggest that the brains of inmates higher in psychopathy are organized in a fundamentally different way than other individuals.

Harsh environment facilitates psychopathy's involvement in mating-parenting trade-off

Previous research has suggested that psychopathy may be involved in mating-parenting trade-off; furthermore, a harsh environment could facilitate this trade-off in psychopathy. We integrated these two hypotheses into a single research design. We hypothesized that psychopathy elevated mating but decreased parenting effort; in addition, we predicted that these associations were more pronounced in a harsh environment. We tested these hypotheses in a community sample of individuals who have children (N = 320). We measured harsh environment in childhood, psychopathy traits (Meanness, Boldness and Disinhibition); mate seeking, the duration of longest partner relationship, the onset of sexual behavior (as indicators of mating effort) and care for children (as a measure of parenting effort). The results showed that psychopathic individuals had earlier onset of sexual behavior, shorter partner relationships, and invested more in seeking new partners but had lower parental effort. Furthermore, significant interactions between the Meanness trait and childhood environmental harshness were found in predicting these outcomes: individuals higher in Meanness who lived in a harsh environment had especially high mate seeking, shorter relationships and lower parental effort. Findings have high heuristic power because they reveal two evolutionary mechanisms which maintain inter-individual variation in psychopathy: adaptive trade-offs and harsh environment as an extrinsic state condition.

Capacity for upregulation of emotional processing in psychopathy: all you have to do is ask.

Historically, psychopathic individuals have been described as suffering a chronic hyporesponsivity to negatively valent stimuli. However, while a wide body of empirical work indicates that the psychopath does not manifest normal reactivity to emotional stimuli, it does not similarly indicate that they cannot do so. To attempt to differentiate these alternatives, the current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study evaluated the extent to which offenders with varying PCL-R scores could up- (or down-) regulate their neural response to negatively valent stimuli. Participants were asked to either watch negatively- and neutrally-valent images naturally (passive-processing), or to try to increase or decrease their emotional response to the images (instructed-processing). During passive processing, high-psychopathy offenders showed reduced activity compared to both low- and mid-psychopathic offenders through a majority of emotion-relevant regions. However, when participants were instructed to try to increase their emotional response all groups showing increased activity throughout relevant regions, including left insula, orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate/medial frontal cortex (ACC/mFC). Comparison of participants' subjective emotion ratings indicated that all groups showed symmetry between their neural/subjective emotion metrics, and the high-psychopathy group may have showed the greatest such symmetry. These findings suggest that psychopathic individuals may be capable of manifesting emotional reactivity to negatively valent stimuli, at least under certain conditions. Relevance for traditional and developing models of psychopathy is discussed in turn.

The contribution of brain imaging to the understanding of psychopathy.

Psychopathy is a personality type characterized by both callous emotional dysfunction and deviant behavior that affects society in the form of actions that harm others. Historically, researchers have been concerned with seeking data and arguments to support a neurobiological foundation of psychopathy. In the past few years, increasing research has begun to reveal brain alterations putatively underlying the enigmatic psychopathic personality. In this review, we describe the brain anatomical and functional features that characterize psychopathy from a synthesis of available neuroimaging research and discuss how such brain anomalies may account for psychopathic behavior. The results are consistent in showing anatomical alterations involving primarily a ventral system connecting the anterior temporal lobe to anterior and ventral frontal areas, and a dorsal system connecting the medial frontal lobe to the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus complex and, in turn, to medial structures of the temporal lobe. Functional imaging data indicate that relevant emotional flow breakdown may occur in both these brain systems and suggest specific mechanisms via which emotion is anomalously integrated into cognition in psychopathic individuals during moral challenge. Directions for future research are delineated emphasizing, for instance, the relevance of further establishing the contribution of early life stress to a learned blockage of emotional self-exposure, and the potential role of androgenic hormones in the development of cortical anomalies.

From theoretical to empirical: Considering reflections of psychopathy across the thin blue line.

The majority of psychopathy research has focused on negative outcomes in criminal populations. However, psychopathy encompasses a variety of traits, and recent research suggests that certain features of psychopathy, such as a fearless temperament, may be related to psychological resiliency, "successful" functioning, and even heroic behavior (Hall & Benning, 2006; Lykken, 1995). Despite anecdotal discussion, little is known about the possible "successful" or adaptive reflections of psychopathic personality traits in ostensible heroes. This study expands on the knowledge of "successful" psychopathy by considering police recruits; we examined the degree to which these aspiring first responders share traits with psychopathic individuals. When compared with a student sample and the community and offender samples in the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised manual (Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005), the police recruits reported higher Fearless Dominance and Coldheartedness scores and lower Self-Centered Impulsivity scores. Fearless dominance traits were positively correlated with narcissism, and self-centered impulsivity traits were positively associated with covert narcissism. These findings suggest that although our police recruit sample is not classically psychopathic, the dominance and coldheartedness associated with psychopathy may be common among those beginning a police career. Further, our results imply that certain features of psychopathy may be reflected across the thin blue line in those on the verge of entering their police careers. (PsycINFO Database Record

Psychopathy and Ratings of Persuasiveness: Examining Their Relations in Weaker and Stronger Contexts

Previous work has demonstrated mostly null to small associations between boldness and externalizing behaviors associated with psychopathy. The present study replicated this finding and examined an alternate manner in which boldness may be relevant to the construct of psychopathy, namely by enhancing psychopathic individuals’ capacity for interpersonal manipulation. Using data collected from a Mechanical Turk sample, we measured persuasiveness using ratings of video-recorded product pitches and examined the relations between psychopathic and general traits and persuasiveness across weaker (improvised) and stronger (scripted) conditions. Boldness exhibited a small, positive relation with perceived persuasiveness in the improvised condition only; conversely, psychopathic traits related to antagonism/meanness and disinhibition exhibited small negative associations with persuasiveness and trust in the scripted condition. The results suggest that boldness may help individuals persuade others so as to achieve desired outcomes, although the effect was quite small in nature, whereas psychopathic individuals who are not high on boldness may need to use other tactics (e.g., intimidation, coercion) to manipulate others.

Reduced engagement of the anterior cingulate cortex in the dishonest decision-making of incarcerated psychopaths.

A large body of research indicates that psychopathic individuals lie chronically and show little remorse or anxiety. Yet, little is known about the neurobiological substrates of dishonesty in psychopathy. In a sample of incarcerated individuals (n = 67), we tested the hypothesis that psychopathic individuals show reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) when confronted with an opportunity for dishonest gain, reflecting dishonest behavior that is relatively unhindered by response conflict. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, incarcerated offenders with different levels of psychopathy performed an incentivized prediction task wherein they were given real and repeated opportunities for dishonest gain. We found that while incarcerated offenders showed a high rate of cheating, levels of psychopathic traits did not influence the frequency of dishonesty. Higher psychopathy scores predicted decreased activity in the ACC during dishonest decision-making. Further analysis revealed that the ACC was functionally connected to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and that ACC activity mediated the relationship between psychopathic traits and reduced reaction times for dishonest behavior. These findings suggest that psychopathic individuals behave dishonestly with relatively low levels of response conflict and that the ACC may play a critical role in this pattern of behavior.

Triarchic psychopathy and deficits in facial affect recognition

Impaired socialization due to amygdala dysfunction has been proposed as a factor underlying psychopathy. Supporting this hypothesis, some research indicates that psychopathy is associated with deficits in facial affect recognition, but other studies have failed to find such a relationship. This study investigated whether healthy young adults elevated in psychopathic traits displayed deficits in identifying facial affective displays overall as well as deficits specific to fear recognition. Facial affect recognition was measured in a sample of 110 undergraduate men (n = 36) and women (n = 74). Participants completed the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure, and participants' eye gaze was measured using ASL Eye Trac 6. The facial affect recognition task was created using the NimStim facial expression stimuli. Individuals elevated in psychopathic traits did not display deficits in recognition of emotional faces overall or for fearful faces compared to individuals lower in psychopathic traits. However, meanness was negatively correlated with fear identification. We conclude that deficient emotion processing in psychopathic individuals may be specific to ambiguous affective expressions. We discuss implications for the study of psychopathy and emotion processing.

Psychopaths fail to automatically take the perspective of others

Psychopathic individuals display a chronic and flagrant disregard for the welfare of others through their callous and manipulative behavior. Historically, this behavior is thought to result from deficits in social-affective processing. However, we show that at least some psychopathic behaviors may be rooted in a cognitive deficit, specifically an inability to automatically take another person's perspective. Unlike prior studies that rely solely on controlled theory of mind (ToM) tasks, we employ a task that taps into automatic ToM processing. Controlled ToM processes are engaged when an individual intentionally considers the perspective of another person, whereas automatic ToM processes are engaged when an individual unintentionally represents the perspective of another person. In a sample of incarcerated offenders, we find that psychopathic individuals are equally likely to show response interference under conditions of controlled ToM, but lack a common signature of automatic ToM known as altercentric interference. We also demonstrate that the magnitude of this dysfunction in altercentric interference is correlated with real-world callous behaviors (i.e., number of assault charges). These findings suggest that psychopathic individuals have a diminished propensity to automatically think from another's perspective, which may be the cognitive root of their deficits in social functioning and moral behavior.

Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs on an Affective Lexical Decision Task: Implications for the Affect Regulation Theory of Psychopathy

Evidence for performance deficits in psychopathic offenders on emotional processing tasks have been documented. However, studies that show performance improvements or elimination of anomalies under certain conditions are not consistent with a general insensitivity to emotion stimuli. The current study tests the hypothesis set forth by the Affect Regulation Theory (Penney and Kosson, manuscript submitted to Clinical Psychological Science) that psychopathic participants’ performance on an affective lexical decision task will reflect a speed-accuracy trade-off wherein accuracy on emotion-word trials correlates with response latency among psychopathic participants but not controls. Participants were 86 incarcerated male offenders divided into three groups using scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and DSM-IV criteria for ASPD (non-ASPD/non-psychopathic, ASPD/non-psychopathic; and ASPD + psychopathic). There was a significant Group x Response latency interaction for negative word trials, with greater accuracy associated with slower response times on negative word trials for ASPD + psychopathic individuals but not for the other groups. The implications of these results for hypotheses about emotional functioning in psychopathic offenders and for the recently proposed ART are discussed.

The ends justify the meanness: An investigation of psychopathic traits and utilitarian moral endorsement

Although psychopathy has traditionally been synonymous with immorality, little research exists on the ethical reasoning of psychopathic individuals. Recent examination of psychopathy and utilitarianism suggests that psychopaths' moral decision-making differs from nonpsychopaths (Koenigs et al., 2012). The current study examined the relationship between psychopathic traits (PPI-R, Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005; TriPM, Patrick, 2010) and utilitarian endorsement (moral dilemmas, Greene et al., 2001) in a college sample (n = 316). The relationships between utilitarian decisions and triarchic dimensions were explored and empathy and aggression were examined as mediating factors. Hypotheses were partially supported, with Disinhibition and Meanness traits relating to personal utilitarian decisions; aggression partially mediated the relationship between psychopathic traits and utilitarian endorsements. Implications and future directions are further discussed.

Facial responsiveness of psychopaths to the emotional expressions of others.

Psychopathic individuals show selfish, manipulative, and antisocial behavior in addition to emotional detachment and reduced empathy. Their empathic deficits are thought to be associated with a reduced responsiveness to emotional stimuli. Immediate facial muscle responses to the emotional expressions of others reflect the expressive part of emotional responsiveness and are positively related to trait empathy. Empirical evidence for reduced facial muscle responses in adult psychopathic individuals to the emotional expressions of others is rare. In the present study, 261 male criminal offenders and non-offenders categorized dynamically presented facial emotion expressions (angry, happy, sad, and neutral) during facial electromyography recording of their corrugator muscle activity. We replicated a measurement model of facial muscle activity, which controls for general facial responsiveness to face stimuli, and modeled three correlated emotion-specific factors (i.e., anger, happiness, and sadness) representing emotion specific activity. In a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we compared the means of the anger, happiness, and sadness latent factors between three groups: 1) non-offenders, 2) low, and 3) high psychopathic offenders. There were no significant mean differences between groups. Our results challenge current theories that focus on deficits in emotional responsiveness as leading to the development of psychopathy and encourage further theoretical development on deviant emotional processes in psychopathic individuals.

House of Cards: Psychopathy in Politics

Psychopathy is a severe personality disorder that can be defined by a lack of conscience, an egocentric and manipulative character, and charming social skills. Among the general community, images of serial killer Ted Bundy or movie character Hannibal Lector immediately come to mind. Interestingly, however, the recent TV show House of Cards appears to introduce a different kind of psychopathic personality to the general public through the character of Frank Underwood. This “successful” psychopathic leadership type has also been an important focus of attention among scholars of psychopathy in the last few years. This article uses an analysis of the psychopathic traits of Frank Underwood to present a new model of this psychopathic leader. Through this illustration, it is postulated that the psychopathic leader has a specific profile with a combination of psychopathic and nonpsychopathic features. Because this profile is different from the “traditional” conceptualization of psychopathy, it is more difficult to recognize such a politician as a psychopathic individual. The question of whether a leader with such a profile is successful or a risk will also be addressed.

Do psychopathic individuals possess a misaligned moral compass? A meta-analytic examination of psychopathy's relations with moral judgment.

Psychopathic individuals are often characterized as lacking a moral sense. Although this hypothesis has received ample experimental attention over the past decade, findings have been inconsistent. To elucidate the relationship between psychopathy and abnormal moral judgment, we conducted a meta-analysis of the research on psychopathy and morality-related variables (k = 23, N = 4376). A random effects model indicated a small but statistically significant relation between psychopathy and moral decision-making (rw = .16) and moral reasoning (rw = .10) tasks. These results reveal at best modest support for the common perception that psychopathic individuals fail to understand moral principles. A secondary meta-analysis (k = 9, N = 4294) of the growing body of literature on the relationship between psychopathy and moral reasoning on moral foundations measures provides preliminary evidence that psychopathic individuals may possess a differential set of "moral taste buds" than less psychopathic individuals. We discuss the implications of the results from both meta-analyses for models of the etiology of psychopathy and the criminal responsibility of psychopathic individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record

Psychopathic traits are associated with reduced fixations to the eye region of fearful faces.

Impairments in processing fearful faces have been documented in both children and adults with psychopathic traits, suggesting a potential mechanism by which psychopathic individuals develop callous and manipulative interpersonal and affective traits. Recently, research has demonstrated that psychopathic traits are associated with reduced fixations to the eye regions of faces in samples of children and community-dwelling adults, however this relationship has not yet been established in an offender sample with high levels of psychopathy. In the current study, we employed eye-tracking with paradigms involving the identification and passive viewing of facial expressions of emotion, respectively, in a sample of adult male criminal offenders (n = 108) to elucidate the relationship between visual processing of fearful facial expressions and interpersonal and affective psychopathic traits. We found that the interpersonal-affective traits of psychopathy were significantly related to fewer fixations to the eyes of fear faces during the emotion recognition task. This association was driven particularly by the interpersonal psychopathic traits (e.g., egocentricity, deceitfulness), whereas fear recognition accuracy was inversely related to the affective psychopathic traits (e.g., callousness, lack of empathy). These findings highlight potential mechanisms for the subset of the interpersonal-affective traits exhibited by psychopathic individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record