Moral Judgment and Moral Conduct in the Psychopath

Abstract

The relationship between moral conduct and moral judgment was investigated by comparing moral reasoning of a psychopathic sample from a maximum security hospital for the criminal offender with a similar inmate, nonpsychopathic sample, and a group of “normals”. Psychopaths obtained significantly higher scores on the Kohlberg scale of moral judgment than either of the other groups, for whom no differences were found. Results suggest the hypothesis that lack of guilt feelings in psychopaths facilitate the achievement of higher levels of moral judgment.

What’s wrong? Moral understanding in psychopathic offenders

“…It is also consistent with early work showing that females high in psychopathy provided deviant responses to a moral dilemma questionnaire under free response conditions, but not when the questionnaire obeyed a multiple choice format (Simon et al, 1951). Indeed, at least one study utilizing a free response format found that psychopathic participants achieved higher scores than controls on Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment scale, somewhat reminiscent of Blair’s finding that they rated both moral and conventional acts as wrong (Link et al, 1977). Taken together, we suggest that the current evidence for moral reasoning deficits among psychopathic individuals is not sufficient to justify arguments for reduced responsibility in psychopathic offenders on the basis of not ‘knowing’ right from wrong.…”

“…The notion that psychopathic moral reasoning abilities may be effectively normal has some empirical footing (Aharoni et al, 2012; Cima, Tonnaer, & Hauser, 2010; Link, Sherer, & Byrne, 1977; Simon, Holzenberg, & Unger, 1951; for a review, see Borg & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2013). Therefore, deeper scrutiny into the MCT methods is warranted.…”

Deontological and altruistic guilt: Evidence for distinct neurobiological substrates

“…Kédia et al, 2008;Moll et al, 2007;Shin et al, 2000], here we show that our brain is differentially specialised in terms of neural substrates for situations implicating suffering in others (altruistic guilt), and those violating inner moral rules (deontological guilt). This formulation has clinical implications for abnormal experiences of guilt in relation to certain neurological disorders [Mendez, 2006], antisocial behavior [Link et al, 1977;Pardini et al, 2003], and obsessive (Rachman, 1993;Salkovskis, 1989;Shafran et al, 1996] or depressive symptoms [Gilbert, 1992;O'Connor et al, 1999O'Connor et al, , 2002.…”

Clarifying the heterogeneity in psychopathic samples: Towards a new continuum of primary and secondary psychopathy

“…Core characteristics that are common to all primary psychopaths can be summarized as; (1) Link, Sherer, & Byrne, 1977;Tassy et al, 2013). As the title of one of these studies aptly states, -psychopaths know right from wrong but do not care‖ (Cima et al, 2010).…”