Reduced electrodermal response to conflict, failure to inhibit dominant behaviors, and delinquency proneness.

Abstract

Antisocial behavior patterns have been hypothesized to result in part from a reduced physiological component of fear, anxiety, and avoidance responses. Electrodermal correlates of antisocial personality have been consistent with such a model, but evidence that the reduced electrodermal response (EDR) of sociopathic and delinquency-prone individuals actually plays a role in their behavior is sparse. This article examines whether the reduced EDR of undersocialized individuals should be conceptualized in terms of reduced inhibitory control rather than in terms of reduced aversive processes and whether the reduced EDR actually relates to relevant behavior of undersocialized young adults. Subjects high and low on a socialization scale (California Psychological Inventory) performed a nonstressful response-conflict (or interference) task while the EDR was recorded. As predicted by the weak inhibitory conflict than on control trials less frequently than did high-socialization subjects and, correspondingly, committed more errors by failing to inhibit a dominant behavioral response.

Psychophysiology in Attachment Interviews: Converging Evidence for Deactivating Strategies

“…For example, Pennebaker and Chew (1985) found that deception was associated with increases in skin conductance activity, but was not related to other autonomic nervous system activity. Both as induced in the laboratory (Pennebaker & Chew, 1985;Wegner, Shortt, Blake, & Page, 1990) and as observed naturalistically (Waid & Orne, 1982;Weinberger, Scbwartz, & Davidson, 1979), inhibition has been associated witb heightened skin conductance activity. In the laboratory, subjects asked to inhibit emotionally charged thoughts, for example, thoughts of sex (Wegner et al, 1990), or to react with detachment to disturbing movie clips that depicted amputations (Koriat, Melkman, Averill, & Lazarus, 1972), showed elevated levels of skin conductance activity.…”

Reflectivity and learning from aversive events: Toward a psychological mechanism for the syndromes of disinhibition.

“…Newman and Wallace (1993) have offered an alternative to the standard "insensitivity to punishment" explanation: Psychopaths' lower anticipatory EDA represents less response uncertainty (see Schalling, 1978). That is, they engage in less prospective information processing to cope with the response conflict inherent in a mixed-incentive context (see Waid & Orne, 1982). However, their HR acceleration represents motor readiness for active coping.…”

Error monitoring during reward and avoidance learning in high‐ and low‐socialized individuals

“…found attentional deficits in a divided attention task. Several reports~Raine & Venables, 1984;Waid, 1976;Waid & Orne, 1982! have demonstrated that low socialized participants were electrodermally hyporesponsive to a variety of stimuli.…”