Callous‐unemotional, impulsive‐irresponsible, and grandiose‐manipulative traits: Distinct associations with heart rate, skin conductance, and startle responses to violent and erotic scenes

Abstract

The present study aimed to examine whether callous-unemotional, grandiose-manipulative, and impulsive-irresponsible dimensions of psychopathy are differentially related to various affective and physiological measures, assessed at baseline and in response to violent and erotic movie scenes. Data were collected from young adults (N = 101) at differential risk for psychopathic traits. Findings from regression analyses revealed a unique predictive contribution of grandiose-manipulative traits in particular to higher ratings of positive valence for violent scenes. Callous-unemotional traits were uniquely associated with lower levels of sympathy toward victims and lower ratings of fear and sadness during violent scenes. All three psychopathy dimensions and the total psychopathy scale showed negative zero-order correlations with heart rate at baseline, but regression analyses revealed that only grandiose manipulation was uniquely predictive of lower baseline heart rate. Grandiose manipulation was also significantly associated with lower baseline skin conductance. Regarding autonomic activity, findings resulted in a unique negative association between grandiose manipulation and heart rate activity in response to violent scenes. In contrast, the impulsive-irresponsible dimension was positively related with heart rate activity to violent scenes. Finally, findings revealed that only callous-unemotional traits were negatively associated with startle potentiation in response to violent scenes. No associations during erotic scenes were identified. These findings point to unique associations between the three assessed dimensions of psychopathy with physiological measures, indicating that grandiose manipulation is associated with hypoarousal, impulsive irresponsibility with hyperarousal, and callous-unemotional traits with low emotional and fear responses to violent scenes.

Adolescent psychopathy, heart rate, and skin conductance

“…It should be noted that our results diverge from Fanti et al () in some ways. First, although our findings were similar at the total score level for the relation between HR and SC, there were differences with respect to the grandiose‐manipulative findings, where Fanti et al () found a negative association between grandiose‐manipulative traits and baseline HR and SC and lower HR in response to stimuli.…”

“…It should be noted that our results diverge from Fanti et al () in some ways. First, although our findings were similar at the total score level for the relation between HR and SC, there were differences with respect to the grandiose‐manipulative findings, where Fanti et al () found a negative association between grandiose‐manipulative traits and baseline HR and SC and lower HR in response to stimuli. However, there were some key differences between the studies, including that Fanti et al () used a self‐report measure of psychopathy (YPI‐S) instead of an interview‐based measure of psychopathy (i.e., PCL:YV).…”

“…First, consistent with our predictions, no significant associations were found between total psychopathy scores and HR or SC. These findings are partially in line with Fanti and colleagues () who found that total psychopathy was not associated with SC and only associated with resting HR. Second, the results did show differences at the dimensional level indicating that the factors may in fact have distinct processes.…”

Neurophysiological markers associated with heterogeneity in conduct problems, callous unemotional traits, and anxiety: Comparing children to young adults.

“…These results are consistent with theory and studies proposing that CU traits are associated with fearlessness (e.g., Fanti, Panayiotou, Lazarou, Michael, & Georgiou, 2016b;Lykken, 1995). However, not all studies find significant or expected associations between anxiety and CU traits with SC and HR measures (e.g., Fanti et al, 2017a;Hoehn-Saric,McLeod, Funderburk, & Kowalski, 2004;Lorber, 2004;Rosebrock, Hoxha, Norris, Cacioppo, & Gollan, 2016), indicating that it is important to account for heterogeneity between these measures. When taking heterogeneity into account during childhood, Fanti and Kimonis (2017) indicated that the primary group scored lower than the anxious and secondary groups on resting heart rate.…”

“…In addition to creating emotional categories, to follow a similar procedure as in study 1 the negative affective scenes were computed together (fear, sad, anger) and compared to neutral scenes. Similar to the selected cartoon scenes, prior work also suggested that violent scenes used among adults induce emotions of fear, sadness, and anger (Fanti et al, 2016c;Fanti et al, 2017a). All scenes were duration across categories.…”