Psychopaths impose large costs on society, as they are frequently habitual, violent criminals. The pervasive nature of emotional and behavioral symptoms in psychopathy suggests that several associated brain regions may contribute to the disorder. Studies employing a variety of methods have converged on a set of brain regions in paralimbic cortex and limbic areas that appear to be dysfunctional in psychopathy. The present study further tests this hypothesis by investigating structural abnormalities using voxel-based morphometry in a sample of incarcerated men (N [H11005] 296). Psychopathy was associated with decreased regional gray matter in several paralimbic and limbic areas, including bilateral parahippocampal, amygdala, and hippocampal regions, bilateral temporal pole, posterior cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex. The consistent identification of paralimbic cortex and limbic structures in psychopathy across diverse methodologies strengthens the interpretation that these regions are crucial for understanding neural dysfunction in psychopathy.

Objective To investigate the relationship between brain structure and psychopathic traits in maximum-security incarcerated male adolescents: Do the associations between brain volumes in paralimbic and limbic regions and psychopathic traits observed in incarcerated adult men extend to an independent sample of incarcerated male adolescents? Method A structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of regional gray matter volumes (GMV) by using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in maximum-security incarcerated male adolescents (N=218) assessed for psychopathic traits using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Youth Version (PCL-YV). All analyses controlled for effects of age, substance use, and brain size. Results Consistent with hypotheses and the adult literature, psychopathic traits were associated with decreased regional GMV in diffuse paralimbic regions, including orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral temporal poles, and posterior cingulate cortex. Conclusions These results strengthen the interpretation that paralimbic regions are central for understanding neural dysfunction associated with psychopathic traits and that psychopathy is best conceptualized as a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Baron-Cohen (1995) proposed that the theory of mind (TOM) inference system evolved to promote strategic social interaction. Social exchange-a form of cooperation for mutual benefit-involves strategic social interaction and requires TOM inferences about the contents of other individual's mental states, especially their desires, goals, and intentions. There are behavioral and neuropsychological dissociations between reasoning about social exchange and reasoning about equivalent problems tapping other, more general, content domains. It has therefore been proposed that social exchange behavior is regulated by social contract algorithms: a domain-specific inference system that is functionally specialized for reasoning about social exchange. We report an fMRI study using the Wason selection task that provides further support for this hypothesis. Precautionary rules share so many properties with social exchange rulesthey are conditional, deontic, and involve subjective utilities-that most reasoning theories claim they are processed by the same neurocomputational machinery. Nevertheless, neuroimagingshows that reasoning about social exchange activates brain areas not activated by reasoning about precautionary rules, and vice versa. As predicted, neural correlates of theory of mind (anterior and posterior temporal cortex) were activated when subjects interpreted social exchange rules, but not precautionary rules (where TOM inferences are unnecessary). We argue that the interaction between TOM and social contract algorithms can be reciprocal: social contract algorithms requires TOM inferences, but their functional logic also allows TOM inferences to be made. By considering interactions between TOM in the narrower sense (belief-desire reasoning) and all the social inference systems that create the logic of human social interaction-ones that enable as well as use inferences about the content of mental states-a broader conception of theory of mind may emerge: a computational model embodying a Theory of Human Nature (TOHN). Social exchange reasoning engages TOM 3A fierce debate over the nature of the human mind has raged over the last two decades, and the study of reasoning has been a principal battleground. Broadly construed, reasoning is the ability to generate new representations of the world-new knowledge-from given or observed information. It is often considered constitutive of human intelligence: the most distinctly human cognitive ability, often thought to exist in opposition to, and as a replacement for, instinct.Discovering the nature of the inferential procedures whereby new knowledge is generated is, therefore, a foundational task of the cognitive sciences, with implications for every branch of the social sciences (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992).One side of the reasoning debate has defended a long-standing and traditional view of the evolved architecture of the human mind: that it is a blank slate, a neurocomputational system equipped with content-free inferential procedures that operate uniformly on information ...

Relative social status strongly regulates human behavior, yet this factor has been largely ignored in research on risky decision-making. Humans, like other animals, incur risks as they compete to defend or improve their standing in a social group. Among men, access to culturally important resources is a locus of intrasexual competition and a determinant of status. Thus, relative status should affect men's motivations for risk in relevant domains. Contrasting predictions about such effects were derived from dominance theory and risk-sensitive foraging theory. Experiments varied whether subjects thought they were being observed and evaluated by others of lower, equal, or higher status, and whether decisions involved resources (status relevant) or medical treatments (status irrelevant). Across two experiments, men who thought others of equal status were viewing and evaluating their decisions were more likely to favor a high risk/high gain means of recouping a monetary loss over a no risk/low gain means with equal expected value. Supporting predictions from dominance theory, this motivation for risk-taking appeared only in the equal status condition, only for men, and only for resource loss problems. Taken together, the results support the idea that motivational systems designed to negotiate a status-saturated social world regulate the cognitive processes that generate risky decision-making in men.

Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development, is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluate the theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the costeffective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others' valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose recognition by others would lead them to enhance their evaluations of the individual, and (iii) mobilizing the individual to take advantage of the resulting enhanced social landscape. To modulate how much to invest in actions that might lead to enhanced evaluations by others, the pride system must forecast the magnitude of the evaluations the action would evoke in the audience and calibrate its activation proportionally. We tested this prediction in 16 countries across 4 continents (n = 2,085), for 25 acts and traits. As predicted, the pride intensity for a given act or trait closely tracks the valuations of audiences, local (mean r = +0.82) and foreign (mean r = +0.75). This relationship is specific to pride and does not generalize to other positive emotions that coactivate with pride but lack its audience-recalibrating function.pride | valuation | decision-making | emotion | culture