Emotional reactivity and regulation in individuals with psychopathic traits: Evidence for a disconnect between neurophysiology and self‐report

Abstract

Individuals with psychopathic traits often demonstrate blunted reactivity to negative emotional stimuli. However, it is not yet clear whether these individuals also have difficulty regulating their emotional responses to negative stimuli. To address this question, participants with varying levels of psychopathic traits (indexed by the Triarchic Measure of Psychopathy; Patrick, 2010) completed a task in which they passively viewed, increased, or decreased their emotions to negative picture stimuli while electrocortical activity was recorded. During passive viewing of negative images, higher boldness, but not higher disinhibition or meanness, was associated with reduced amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP), an ERP that indexes reactivity to emotionally relevant stimuli. However, all participants demonstrated expected enhancement of the LPP when asked to increase their emotional response. Participants did not show expected suppression of the LPP when asked to decrease their emotional response. Contrary to the electrophysiological data, individuals with higher boldness did not self-report experiencing blunted emotional response during passive viewing trials, and they reported experiencing greater emotional reactivity relative to other participants when regulating (e.g., both increasing and decreasing) their emotions. Results suggest inconsistency between physiological and self-report indices of emotion among high-bold individuals during both affective processing and regulation.

What's in a blush? Physiological blushing reveals narcissistic children's social‐evaluative concerns

“…Our findings revealed a disconnect between physiology and self‐report in narcissistic children. A similar disconnect has been observed in other individuals with dark personality traits, such as psychopaths (Ellis, Schroder, Patrick, & Moser, ), and may reflect interoceptive blindness (such that individuals are unaware of their physiological responses) or denial (such that individuals deny their physiological responses, whether or not they are aware of them). The opposite pattern has been observed in socially anxious individuals.…”

As cold as a fish? Relationships between the Dark Triad personality traits and affective experience during the day: A day reconstruction study

“…This finding is consistent with earlier studies that demonstrated similar relationships between boldness and a trait positive/negative affect, resiliency [92,89], and well-being [90]. Although boldness is also considered to be connected with diminished physiological and emotional responsiveness [91], our study did not confirm this in relation to positive affective states.…”

“…However, we postulate that vulnerable narcissism will be positively related to momentary NA and negatively related to momentary PA (Hypothesis 3). Finally, taking into account the fact that meanness and disinhibition are related to primary and secondary psychopathy [75], and boldness is related to grandiose narcissism [73,89], and considering the results of recent research on triarchic psychopathy dimensions [90][91][92], we hypothesize that: boldness will be positively related to momentary PA and negatively related to momentary NA (Hypothesis 4); disinhibition will be negatively related to momentary PA and positively related to momentary NA (Hypothesis 5), and meanness will be negatively related to momentary NA (Hypothesis 6).…”

What Can Philosophers Learn from Psychopathy?

“…Psychopaths do evince a disconnect between their actions, their physiological and neurophysiological reactions, and their verbal reports (see, e.g. Ellis et al 2016). However, an alternative to their lying about being empathic is that they simply do not understand that they are unempathetic.…”