Theory of Mind in the psychopath

Blair, James; Sellars, Carol; Strickland, Ian; Clark, Fiona; Williams, Akintude; Smith, Margaret; Jones, Lawrence

doi:10.1080/09585189608409914

Cited by 205 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

110

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…autistic spectrum disorders (Baron-Cohen et al 1997) and in some studies in psychopathic populations (Blair et al 1996). We selected a violent criminal population as we anticipated higher prevalence rates of ASPD and psychopathy than would be found in community studies (Hare, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Available studies examining ToM ability in antisocial subjects have produced inconsistent findings with some (Gough, 1948 ;Chandler, 1973 ;Widom, 1976;Lee & Prentice, 1988;Hughes et al 1998) but not all (Blair et al 1996;Richell et al 2003) reporting impairments. Early work by Blair et al (1995Blair et al ( , 1996 suggested subjects characterized as prototypical psychopaths using Hare's criteria have impairments in moral/conventional distinctions , but not on simple ToM stories compared with non-psychopathic criminals (Blair et al 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Early work by Blair et al (1995Blair et al ( , 1996 suggested subjects characterized as prototypical psychopaths using Hare's criteria have impairments in moral/conventional distinctions , but not on simple ToM stories compared with non-psychopathic criminals (Blair et al 1996). Recently, Richell et al (2003) have also failed to show a psychopathy-specific deficit on an advanced ToM task devised by Baron-Cohen et al (1997.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We hypothesized that ASPDs will not exhibit gross deficits in ToM tasks assessing basic mentalizing ability, but that subtle deficits would be apparent on more challenging ToM tasks tapping the emotions and feelings of others. We also hypothesized that 'psychopathic ' ASPDs would be less impaired on ToM tasks than non-psychopathic ASPDs in the light of Blair's (1996) report that psychopathy assessed using Hare's (1991) criteria was not associated with deficits in mentalizing ability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Theory of mind and mentalizing ability in antisocial personality disorders with and without psychopathy

2004

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background. The literature on Theory of Mind (ToM) in antisocial samples is limited despite evidence that the neural substrates of theory of mind task involve the same circuits implicated in the pathogenesis of antisocial behaviour.Method. Eighty-nine male DSM-IV Antisocial Personality Disordered subjects (ASPDs) and 20 controls (matched for age and IQ) completed a battery of ToM tasks. The ASPD group was categorized into psychopathic and non-psychopathic groups based on a cut-off score of 18 on the Psychopathy Checklist : Screening Version.Results. There were no significant group (control v. psychopath v. non-psychopathic ASPD) differences on basic tests of ToM but both psychopathic and non-psychopathic ASPDs performed worse on subtle tests of mentalizing ability (faux pas tasks). ASPDs can detect and understand faux pas, but show an indifference to the impact of faux pas. On the face/eye task non-psychopathic ASPDs showed impairments in the recognition of basic emotions compared with controls and psychopathic ASPDs. For complex emotions, no significant group differences were detected largely due to task difficulty.Conclusions. The deficits in mentalizing ability in ASPD are subtle. For the majority of criminals with ASPD and psychopathy ToM abilities are relatively intact and may have an adaptive function in maintaining a criminal lifestyle. Our findings suggest the key deficits appear to relate more to their lack of concern about the impact on potential victims than the inability to take a victim perspective. The findings tentatively also suggest that ASPDs with neurotic features may be more impaired in mentalizing ability than their low anxious psychopathic counterparts.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Theory of mind and mentalizing ability in antisocial personality disorders with and without psychopathy

2004

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Thus there may be little motivational obstacle to harming people . Blair et al (1996) compared the ability of APD patients with the ability of controls (people without APD matched for 10 and other variables) in an advanced test of CE o The APD patients provided correct judgments slightly more frequently than the controls and they used more mental state justifications than the controls. (The mean 10 of the control group was slightly higher than the mean 10 of the APD group.)…”

Section: Does Apd Involve Eedd?mentioning

confidence: 99%