Title: Psychopaths: Emotional
1Psychopaths Emotional Behavior Responses
- Profiling Psychopathology
- Dr. Kline
- FSU-PC
-
2I. What is psychopathy? (review)
- Core features-
- Psychopaths lack remorse
- Poverty of emotions (positive negative)
- Psychopaths are
- Superficially charming
- Pathological liars cheaters
- Impulsive sensations seekers
- Manipulative, will change story to fit facts
- Less responsive to fear/anxiety
- Immoral
- Usually diagnosed in men
3II. What is the fundamental distinction between
APD psychopathy???
- Lack of remorse, is needed for a diagnosis of
psychopathy, but not for Antisocial Personality
disorder.
4Prevalence of psychopathy
- Affects approximately 1 of the general
population (Hare, 1991). - Approximately 15-25 of incarcerated offenders
meet criteria for psychopathy.
5III. Historical Perspective of Clinical
description of Psychopathy
- Pinel, a physician in the 1700s, noticed that
some of his patients were impulsive
self-destructive. These patients were aware of
the irrationality of their acts their reasoning
abilities were intact. - He called this illness, manie sans delire
(insanity without delirium) - Benjamin Rush also reported cases of individuals
who were clear in their thought processes, yet
engaged in morally-deficient behavior. He coined
the term psychopathic to describe these folks. - In his book, The Mast of Sanity, Cleckley
developed a description of psychopathy based on
observations of caucasian, middle-class male
patients who were inpatients of a psychiatric
facility.
6Historical perspectives contd.
- In 1941 Cleckley wrote, The Mask of Sanity, in
which he provided not only a comprehensive
description of psychopathy, but a method for
assessing it. - His description of psychopathy was made on the
basis of observations of caucasian, middle-class
male inpatients in a psychiatric institution.
This concept is still stable today. - Note Cleckley focused on the psychopaths
personality traits (poor judgment, impulsivity,
lack of guilt or remorse, inability to learn from
punishment, blaming others, etc.) and not on the
patients criminal history.
7Hart Hare (1998)s summary of Cleckleys
psychopath
- Interpersonally, psychopaths are grandiose,
arrogant, callous, superficial, and manipulative
affectively, they are short-tempered, unable to
form strong emotional bonds with others, and
lacking in empathy, guilt or remorse and
behaviorally, they are irresponsible, impulsive,
and prone to violate social and legal norms and
expectations. (p.25)
8Hares contribution
- Hare developed the Psychopathy Checklist in 1980
then revised it in 1991. This checklist is the
goal standard that is used today to assess
psychopathy in both criminal non-criminal
populations. - Hare based his checklist largely on Cleckleys
original criteria for psychopathy.
9IV. Items on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised
(PCL-R)
- Factor 1- Factor 2-
- Interpersonal//Affective Social Deviance
- Superficial charm Need for stimulation
- Grandiosity easily bored
- Pathological lying parasitic lifestyle
- Lack or remorse/guilt poor behavioral controls
- Manipulative early behavioral problems
- Shallow affect lack of realistic long-term
goals - Callousness/lacks- Impulsivity
- Empathy Irresponsibility
- Failure to accept ones Juvenile delinquency
- Responsibilities
10Rating system of Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R)
- The PCL-R (Hare, 1991) consists of 20 items.
- A 3-point scale is used to score items
- 0item does not apply
- 1item applies somewhat
- 2item definitely applies
- Scores range from 0 to 40. A score of 30 or
greater indicates psychopathy.
11V. Do psychopaths experience emotions like
non-psychopathic individuals??
- No!!! According to several studies (Hare, 1978
Siddle Trasler, 1981 Kiehl, Hare, McDonald,
Brink, 1999 Patrick, 1994). - Psychopaths produce overt facial verbal
responses that are consistent with socially
appropriate emotions, but produce autonomic
activity that is incongruent with their overt
behavioral responses!!!
12The Mirror Has Two Faces
- In other words, psychopaths can produce normal
facial expressions reactions to emotional
events, but their bodily sensations dont match
their facial expressions. - (E.g., When psychopaths anticipate receiving
electric shocks, they produce an anxious facial
expression consistent with fear or anxiety, but
show reduced galvanic skin responses (sweating)
in response to receiving shocks. Normal
individuals sweat more, not less when
anticipating being shocked.)
13VI. Studying emotion in psychopaths
- A. Startle Blink studies
- The startle blink (eye blink) response is a good
non-verbal indicator of emotional state. - Magnitude (strength) of the startle blink changes
with emotional state. - Startle increases for a negative emotional state
decreases for a positive emotional state (e.g.,
you may be more likely to be startled after
watching a horror movie, than when watching a
comedy).
14Patrick (1994) Startle blink study on psychopaths
- Subjects 4 groups of prisoners selected with
Hare checklist participated. - Group 1 nonpsychopaths (low on antisocial
behavior emotional detachment) - Group 2 Detached white collar offenders (high
only on emotional detachment) - Group 3 Antisocial offenders (high only on
antisocial behavior) - Group 4 Psychopaths (high on both factors).
15Experimental Paradigm-Patricks study
- Baseline condition- prisoners were presented with
a visual cue, and sometimes a blast of loud
noise. - Experimental condition - Ss experienced the
visual cue were told that when it disappeared
the loud noise would occur. - Results Both psychopaths detached offenders
showed much smaller increases in their startle
responses, indicating that less fear had been
aroused.
16B. Facial Affect Recognition studies in
psychopaths
- Kosson, Suchy, Mayer, Libby (2002) examined the
accuracy with which psychopaths non-psychopaths
classify facial expressions based on six specific
emotions fear, anger, disgust, happiness,
sadness, and surprise. - Psychopaths (n34) non-psychopaths (N33) were
presented with 30 adult male female caucasian
faces each representing a specific emotion (5
slides for each of the 6 emotions) required to
press a button on a key pad signaling which
emotion the face depicted.
17Results of study
- 1. Psychopaths accuracy in classifying the
disgust faces was significantly impaired
compared to the non-psychopaths. This effect was
not found for the other emotions in this study. - 2. These results indicate the psychopaths
exhibit deficits in non-verbal emotional
processing, specifically in recognizing a
particular emotion from faces. -
18C. Skin conductance Studies
- Do psychopaths show less empathy for distress of
others? - Yes!!! Blair coworkers (1997), examined skin
conductance of psychopaths controls (men) to
slides of varying images. - Ss were shown threatening (guns, knives), neutral
(lamp, chair), distress-provoking (crying
person) slides.
19Results of Blairs study
- 1. Both psychopaths and non-psychopaths showed
same skin conductance responses to the
threatening neutral slides. - 2. Interestingly, psychopaths were less
responsive to the distress slides. - This suggests psychopaths are impaired in or lack
the ability to empathize with others.
20VII. Do psychopaths show neurological
differences in processing of emotional
information compared to normal people?
- Yes!!! Kiehl, Smith, Hare, Mendrek, Forster,
Brink, Liddle (2001) measured functional MRI in
psychopaths and normals while they read
emotionally-ladden words. - Overall, psychopaths showed less affect-related
brain activity compared to baseline conditions
than did non-psychopaths.
21Kiehl et al., (2001) results contd.
- Criminal psychopaths showed less activation in
the anterior cingulate cortex, posterior
cingulate, left inferior frontal gyrus, amygdala,
hippocampus, and frontal cortex. - Neural processing of non-affect related
information, was not different for the
psychopaths and non-psychopaths.