Emotion processing of people with psychopathic tendency

This study examined the characteristics of emotion processing in people with psychopathic tendency using a web-based facial emotion decision task and a change-blindness facial emotion task. A psychopathic tendency and control group were selected out from university students using a Levenson's Self-Report Psychopathy and a Welsh Anxiety Scale. As a result of study 1 which employed a web-based facial emotion decision task, response accuracies of psychopathic tendencies to happiness and surprise was significantly lower than that of control group, suggesting that psychopathic tendency shows some emotion processing deficits. The results for emotions such as fear and sadness, however, were not statistically significant. The study 2, using a change-blindness facial emotion task, examined attention deficits of psychopathic tendencies in emotion processing. As a result, response times in psychopathic tendencies were significantly slower than those of control group in all six measures of emotion (happiness, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise). In summary, 1) the study 1 showed that people with psychopathic tendency have difficulty in processing emotions such as happiness and surprise. 2) the study 2 showed that they also has attention deficits in noticing changes in all six emotional faces. Finally, it was suggested that our results may shed lights on the development of evaluation tools for discriminating psychopaths from normal, and limitations of the current study were discussed.

keywords: 정신병질 성향군, 정서처리, 얼굴정서판단과제, 변화맹시과제, Psychopathy, emotion processing, facial emotion decision task, a Change Blindness-facial emotion task

Reference

공정식 (2005). 살인범들에 대한 심리학적 프로파일링; 살인범들의 정신병질과 기질불안에 따른 범행특성 분석. 경기대학교 대학원 박사학위논문.

이수정, 공정식 (2007). 정신병질에 따른 국내 살인범들의 살인행위 특성분석. 한국 경찰학회보, 13, 1-23.

홍현기 (2008). 일차 및 이차 정신병질 경향성자의 의사결정과 반응역전 수행 능력에 대한 연구. 중앙대학교 대학원 석사학위논문.

Addington, J., & Addington, D. (1998). Facial affect recognition and information processing in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia Research, 32, 171-181.

Ali, F., Amorim, I. S., Premuzic, T. C. (2009). Empathy deficits and trait emotional intelligence in psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Personality and Individual Differences 47, 758-762.

Barry T. Jones, Gillian Bruce, Steven Livingstone and Eunice Reed(2006). Alcohol-Related Attentional Bias in Problem Drinkers With the Flicker Change Blindness Paradigm. Psychology of addictive behaviors, Vol. 20, 171-177.

Blair, R. J. R. (2001). Neuro-cognitive models of aggression, the antisocial personality disorders and psychopathy. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 71(6), 727-731.

Blair, R. J. R., & Coles, M. (2000). Expression recognition and behavior problems in early adolescence. Cognitive Development, 15, 421-434.

Blair, R. J. R., Colledge, E., Murray, L., & Mitchell, D. G. (2001). A selective impairment in the processing of sad and fearful expressions in children with psychopathic tendencies. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 29(6), 491-498.

10.

Blair, R. J. R., Mitchell, D. G. V., Peschardt, K. S., Colledge, E., Leonard, R. A., Shine, J. H., Murray, L. K., & Perrett, D. I. (2004). Reduced sensitivity to others' fearful expressions in psychopathic individuals. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 1111-1122.

11.

Brinkley, C. A., Newman, J. P., Widiger, T. A., & Lynam, D. R. (2004). Two approaches to parsing the heterogeneity of psychopathy. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11, 69-94.

12.

Bruce, V., Young, A. (1986). Understanding face recognition, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 77, 305-327.

13.

Bryson, G., Bell, M., & Lysaker, P. (1997). Affect recognition in schizophrenia: a function of global impairment of a specific cognitive deficit. Schizophrenia Research, 24, 98-99.

14.

Devonshire, P. A., Howard, R. C., & Sellars, C. (1998). Frontal lobe dysfunction and mentally abnormal offenders. Personality and Individual Differences, 9, 339-344.

15.

Ekman, P., & O'Sullivan, M. (1987). The role of context in interpreting facial expression. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 117, 86-88.

16.

Elliott F. A. (1978). Neurological aspects of antisocial behavior. In: Reid J, editor. Unmasking the psychopath. New York: Brunner/Mazal. p 146-189.

17.

Fedora O., Fedora S. (1983). Some neuropsychological and psychophysiological aspects of psychopathic and nonpsychopathic criminals. In: Flor-Henry P, Gruzelier J, editors. Laterality and psychopathology. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers. p 41-58.

18.

Fullam, R, & Dolan, M. (2006). Emotional information processing in violent patients with schizophrenia: Association with psychopathy and symptomatology. Psychiatry Research, 141, 29-37.

19.

Gillstrom, B. J., & Hare, R. D. (1988). Language-related hand gestures in psychopaths. Journal of Personality Disorders, 2(1), 21-27.

20.

Gorenstein E. (1982). Frontal lobe functions in psychopaths. J Abnorm Psychology, 91, 368-379.

21.

Gray, J. A. (1985). The neuropsychology of anxiety: An inquiry into the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. New York: Oxford University Press.

22.

Hare, R. D. (1996). Psychopathy: A clinical construct whose thime has come. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 23, 25-54.

23.

Hare, R. D. (1991). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-revised. Tronto: Multi-Health Systems.

24.

Hare, R. D., Forth, A. E., & Strachan, K. E. (1992). Psychopathy and crime across the life span. In R. D. peters, R. J. McMahon, & V. L. Quinsey (eds.), Aggression and Violence Throughout Life Span. Newburry Park, CA: Sage.

25.

Hare, R. D., & McPherson, L. M. (1984). Psychopathy and perceptual asymmetry during verbal dichotic listening. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 93(2), 141-149.

26.

Hastings, M. E., Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J. (2008). Psychopathy and identification of facial expressions of emotion. Personality and Individual Differences 44, 1474-1483.

27.

Herpertz, S., Werth, U., Lucas, G., Qunaibi, M., Scherkens, A., Kunert, H. J., Fresse, R., Flesh, M., Mueller-Isberner, R., Osterheider, M., & Sass, H. (2001). Emotion in criminal offenders with psychopathy and borderline personality disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(8), 737-745.

28.

Hicks, B. M., Markon, K. E., Patrick, C. J., Kruerger, R. F., & Newman, J. P. (2004). Identifying psychopathy subtypes based on personality structure. Psychological Assessment, 16, 276-288.

29.

Kohler, C. G., Bilker, W. B., Hargendoorn, M., Gur, G. E., & Gur, R. C. (2000). Emotion recognition deficit in schizophrenia; association with symptomology and cognition. Biological Psychiatry, 48(2), 127-136.

30.

Kosson, D. S., Suchy, Y., Mayer, A. R., & Libby, J. (2002). Facial affect recognition in criminal psychopaths. Emotion, 2(4), 398-411.

31.

Kreklewetz, K. (2005). Facial affect recognition in psychopathic offenders. Simon Fraser University.

32.

Lee, Miller & Moon. (2004). Exploring the forensic use of the emotional recognition test(ERT). International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 48(6), 664-682.

33.

Lee, T. H., Lee, K. Y., Lee, K., Choi, J. S., & Kim, H. T. (2006). The Korea University Facial Expression Collection: KUEFC. Lab. of Behavioral Neuroscience. Dept. of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea.

34.

Levenson, M. R., Kiehl, K. A., & Fitzpatrick, C. M. (1995). Assessing psychopathic attributes in a noninstitutionalized population. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 68, 151-158.

35.

Lykken, D. T. (1982). Fearlessness: Its carefree charm and deadly risks. Psychology Today, 16, 20-28.

36.

Morrison, R. L., Bellack, A. S., & Bashore, T. R. (1988). Deficits in facial-affect recognition and schizophrenia, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 14, 67-83.

37.

Newman, J. P., & Brinkley, C. A. (1997). Reconsidering the low-fear explanation for primary psychopathy. Psychological Inquiry, 8, 236-244.

38.

Newman, J. P., MacCoon, D. G., Vaughn, I. J., & Sadeh, N. (2005). Validating a distinction between primary and secondary psychopathy With measures of Gray's BIS and BAS constructs. journal of abnormal psychology 114, 319-323.

39.

Patrick, C. J. (1994). Emotion and psychopathy: startling new insights. Psychophysiology, 31, 319-330.

40.

Pham, T. H., Vanderstukken, O., Philippot, P., & Vanderlinden M. (2003). Selective attention and executive functions deficits among criminal psychopaths. Aggressive behavior, 29, 393-405.

41.

Pinkham, A. E., Penn, D. L., Perkins, D. O., & Lieberman, J. (2003). Implications for the neural basis of social cognition for the study of schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 815-824.

42.

Raine, A., & Yang, Y. (2006). The neuroanatomical bases of psychopathy: A review of brain imaging findings. In C. J. Patrick (Ed.), Handbook of Psychopathy. New York: Guilford.

43.

Reidy, D. E., Zeichner, A., & Hunnicutt-Ferguson, K. (2008). Psychopathy traits and the processing of emotion words: results of a lexical decision task. Cognition and Emotion, 22, 1174-1186.

44.

Ross, S. R., Moltó, J., Roy, R., Segarra, P., Pastor, M. C., & Montañés, S. (2007). Gray's model and psychopathy: BIS but not BAS differentiates primary from secondary psychopathy in non-institutionalized young adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1622-1655.

45.

Roussy S., & Toupin J. (2000). Behavioral inhibition deficits in juvenile psychopaths. Aggressive behavior, 26, 413-424.

46.

Schmitt, W. A., Brinkley, C. A., & Newman, J. P. (1999). Testing Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis with psychopathic individuals: risk takers or risk averse? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 538-543.

47.

Welsh, G. (1956). Factor dimensions A and R. In G. S. Welsh & W. G. Dahlstrom (Eds.), Basic readings on the MMPI in psychology and medicine (pp.264-281). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

48.

Williamson, S. E., Harpur, T. J., & Hare, R. D. (1991). Abnormal processing of affective words by psychopaths. Psychophysiology, 28(3), 260- 273.

바로가기메뉴

Article Contents

Vol.30 No.2

Emotion processing of people with psychopathic tendency

Abstract

Reference

Korean Journal of Psychology: General