This study examined associations of performance‐monitoring event‐related potentials (ERPs) from go/no‐go and flanker tasks with one another, and with psychopathy‐related traits of disinhibition, meanness, and boldness. A task‐dependent relationship was evident between the error‐related negativity (ERN) and trait disinhibition, with high‐disinhibited participants showing reduced no‐go ERN but not flanker ERN. Disinhibition was also inversely related to variants of the P3 and the error positivity (Pe) from these two tasks. A factor analysis of the ERPs revealed two distinct factors, one reflecting shared variance among the P3 and Pe measures from the two tasks, and the other covariance among the N2 and ERN measures. Scores on the P3/Pe factor, but not the N2/ERN factor, were inversely related to disinhibition, and accounted for associations of this trait with variants of the P3 and Pe across tasks. The implication is that high trait disinhibition relates mainly to reductions in brain responses associated with later elaborative stages in the processing of motivationally significant events across different tasks. Importantly, no‐go ERN predicted disinhibition scores beyond N2/ERN factor scores, indicating that high disinhibition is not generally related to diminished early preresponse conflict and error processing, but rather to processing impairments in conditions calling for inhibition of prepotent response tendencies.

Antisocial behavior has been linked to an increased tolerance of painful stimuli; however, there is evidence that pain behavior is multi-determined. The current study used pain measures from three different modalities (pain tolerance, pain ratings, electrocortical reactivity) and assessed triarchic traits of boldness and meanness to clarify the dispositional basis of associations between pain processing and antisocial behavior. High boldness was significantly associated with blunted early neural response to painful and nonpainful stimuli as well as increased pain tolerance. High meanness was associated with blunted elaborative processing of painful images, lower ratings of perceived pain for self and others, and increased pain tolerance. Meanness also accounted for variance shared between pain processing and antisocial behavior. Findings demonstrate that boldness and meanness contribute to pain processing in different ways and suggest that meanness may uniquely account for the association between blunted pain processing and antisocial behavior.

This study aimed to extend previously reported links between distinctive configurations of traits in the psychopathic personality and maladaptive response perseveration, by examining performance in the Card Perseveration Task (CPT) within the framework of the triarchic model of psychopathy in a mixed-gender undergraduate sample. A computerized version of the CPT was administered to 222 undergraduates (142 women) assessed for triarchic psychopathy dimensions using the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM). Maladaptive response perseveration (more cards played and less money earned) was uniquely associated with trait boldness scores for both women and men. Moreover, analyses of response times following feedback indicated that poor performance on the CPT was related to lack of overall reflection. Further mediation analyses did not reveal significant effects of trait boldness on the response perseveration deficit through reflection times. Our results provide new evidence for the role of trait boldness in the failure to suspend reward-approach behavior in the face of increasing punishment contingencies, probably due to an absence of fear or insensitivity to punishment cues rather than to an unreflective response style.

The boldness disposition of the triarchic model of psychopathy is theorized to entail, aside from maladaptive proclivities (narcissism, fearless risk-taking), some adaptive features (e.g., immunity to stressful events, high self-esteem, and emotional resilience) that seem to predispose high boldness individuals to an effective emotional regulation in response to environmental demands. The high frequency band of heart rate variability -an index of parasympathetic cardiac vagal activity-is a well-validated physiological index of emotional self-regulation and mental health resilience. The aim of this study was to examine the unique predictive contributions of triarchic dispositions of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition on resting vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) in a sample of 241 undergraduates (60 men) assessed via the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM; Patrick, 2010). A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted on vmHRV in which TriPM Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition scores were entered as predictors, along with gender, age, body mass index, mean resting heart rate, and respiratory activity. Results showed that only TriPM Boldness -but not Meanness or Disinhibition-scores significantly predicted vmHRV (positively), thus evidencing that adequate emotional self-regulation is one of the adaptive features encompassed by the boldness disposition. These findings encourage further use of vmHRV as a physiological marker of boldness and contribute to shedding light on the nomological network surrounding the construct of boldness in psychopathy.

The organization of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) model provides unique opportunities to evaluate whether neural risk measures operate as indicators of broader latent liabilities (e.g., externalizing proneness) or narrower expressions (e.g., antisociality and alcohol abuse). Following this approach, the current study recruited a sample of 182 participants (54% female) who completed measures of externalizing psychopathology (also internalizing) and associated traits. Participants also completed three tasks (Flanker-No Threat, Flanker-Threat, and Go/No-Go tasks) with event-related potential (ERP) measurement. Three variants of two research domain criteria (RDoC)-based neurophysiological indicators—P3 and error-related negativity (ERN)—were extracted from these tasks and used to model two latent ERP factors. Scores on these two ERP factors independently predicted externalizing factor scores when accounting for their covariance with sex—suggesting distinct neural processes contributing to the broad externalizing factor. No predictive relation with the broad internalizing factor was found for either ERP factor. Analyses at the finer-grained level revealed no unique predictive relations of either ERP factor with any specific externalizing symptom variable when accounting for the broad externalizing factor, indicating that ERN and P3 index general liability for problems in this spectrum. Overall, this study provides new insights about neural processes in externalizing psychopathology at broader and narrower levels of the HiTOP hierarchy.