Are All Types of Morality Compromised in Psychopathy?

Abstract

A long-standing puzzle for moral philosophers and psychologists alike is the concept of psychopathy, a personality disorder marked by tendencies to defy moral norms despite cognitive knowledge about right and wrong. Previously, discussions of the moral deficits of psychopathy have focused on willingness to harm and cheat others as well as reasoning about rule-based transgressions. Yet recent research in moral psychology has begun to more clearly define the domains of morality, encompassing issues of harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, and spiritual purity. Clinical descriptions and theories of psychopathy suggest that deficits may exist primarily in the areas of harm and fairness, although quantitative evidence is scarce. Within a broad sample of participants, we found that scores on a measure of psychopathy predicted sharply lower scores on the harm and fairness subscales of a measure of moral concern, but showed no relationship with authority, and very small relationships with ingroup and purity. On a measure of willingness to violate moral standards for money, psychopathy scores predicted greater willingness to violate moral concerns of any type. Results are further explored via potential mediators and analyses of the two factors of psychopathy.

Initial development of an implicit and explicit approach to assess psychopathy

“…Regarding implicit cognition, poorer moral reasoning ability was equally associated with increased psychopathy scores on both the ACL and the PCL-SV, consistent with previous research noting difficulties in this area with psychopathy (Glenn et al, 2009;O'Kane, Fawcett & Blackburn, 1996;Young et al, 2012). However, in the current study this ability difficulty was focused on the Factor 2 (antisocial behaviour) component of the PCL-SV.…”

“…Moral reasoning was also associating across all measurements of psychopathy, with decreased reasoning ability associated with increased levels of total psychopathy (ACL and PCL-SV) and for both Factor 1 and Factor 2. This again supported evidence for moral reasoning as a core component of psychopathy (Glenn et al, 2009;O'Kane, Fawcett & Blackburn, 1996;Young et al, 2012) but not conventional moral reasoning (Stevens et al, 2012).…”

“…Moral abilities are thought associated with psychopathy (e.g. Blair, 1995;Blair et al, 1995;Glenn et al, 2009;O'Kane et al, 1996;Young et al, 2012) with the current study suggesting that it is not associated globally but specifically; it was not the more traditional element of moral judgement (i.e. conventional reasoning) that appeared to relate (e.g.…”

“…impulsive responding (Blair et al, 2005) and 4.) moral reasoning/moral cognition difficulties which include inferior moral reasoning (Glenn et al, 2009;O'Kane, Fawcett & Blackburn, 1996;Young et al, 2012), being unable to distinguish between moral and conventional reasoning, making less reference to the victim's welfare when judging moral situations (Blair, 1995;Blair et al, 1995), and a tendency to make unethical judgements (Stevens et al, 2012).…”

The inverse relation between psychopathy and faking good: not response bias, but true variance in psychopathic personality

“…Consider for instance the MarloweCrowne Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960) that consists of items such as ´No matter who I'm talking to, I'm always a good listener´. Psychopathic individuals are known to understand but violate social norms and conventions (Glenn et al, 2009), and may be less inclined to answer affirmatively on such items. The low score on faking good measures may thus tap into the psychopathic personality rather than reflect response bias.…”