Moral strategies and psychopathic traits

The computational psychiatry of antisocial behaviour and psychopathy

Antisocial behaviours such as disobedience, lying, stealing, destruction of property, and aggression towards others are common to multiple disorders of childhood and adulthood, including conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, psychopathy, and antisocial personality disorder. These disorders have a significant negative impact for individuals and for society, but whether they represent clinically different phenomena, or simply different approaches to diagnosing the same underlying psychopathology is highly debated. Computational psychiatry, with its dual focus on identifying different classes of disorder and health (data-driven) and latent cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms (theory-driven), is well placed to address these questions. The elucidation of mechanisms that might characterise latent processes across different disorders of antisocial behaviour can also provide important advances. In this review, we critically discuss the contribution of computational research to our understanding of various antisocial behaviour disorders, and highlight suggestions for how computational psychiatry can address important clinical and scientific questions about these disorders in the future.

Added value of neurotechnology for forensic psychiatric and psychological assessment

The attention for neuroscience in relation to criminal behavior is growing rapidly, and research shows that neurobiological factors have added value to the understanding of psychological and social factors in explaining delinquency. There is evidence that neurotechnology can be used in criminal justice and may be of relevance for forensic psychiatric and psychological assessment. However, the question is whether scientific knowledge of neurobiological factors is applicable in daily practice of forensic assessment. Incorporation of basic technologies, e.g., psychophysiology (heart rate, skin conductance, wearables), hormonal measures (cortisol, testosterone), and neuropsychological testing might be evident, since they can be applied relatively easy. Moreover, a body of research shows the additive value of these technologies in this field. In addition, first steps are taken to apply these technologies in individual diagnostics, treatment, and risk assessment. Complex neurotechnologies like functional MRI (e.g., brain reading) and EEG show potential to be applicable in criminal justice, once it is known what additional information these indices offer for individual cases.

Social-affective functioning and learning in psychopathy

Psychopathy is a personality construct for which impairments in multiple aspects of social and affective functioning are considered to be central. Individuals with elevated levels of psychopathic traits tend to exhibit maladaptive behaviors that are harmful to themselves and others, and seem to be limited in how they perceive and experience affective states. This chapter provides a brief overview of biopsychological theories and studies of psychopathy targeting impairments in affective processing and behavioral adaptation through learning. Also, current gaps in the literature will be discussed in addition to findings highlighting the need to routinely reexamine the validity and robustness of decades-old views on psychopathy in the light of recent multidisciplinary empirical research. The chapter ends with a short reflection on how alternative views may offer novel insights that may bring significant advances in the study of the biopsychological factors underlying psychopathy.

The Relationship of Shopping-Related Decisions with Materialistic Values Endorsement, Compulsive Buying-Shopping Disorder Symptoms and Everyday Moral Decision Making

BACKGROUND

Compulsive buying-shopping disorder (CBSD) is associated with high materialistic values endorsement and excessive purchasing of consumer goods. A subgroup of individuals with CBSD engage in socially unacceptable behaviors to continue shopping despite negative consequences. This investigation aimed at exploring possible links between ego-oriented shopping-related decisions, materialism, symptoms of CBSD and close-to-everyday moral decision making.

METHODS

In study 1, patients with CBSD were interviewed to develop a list of conflict situations, capturing typical shopping-related dilemmas. In study 2, the shopping-related dilemmas from study 1, standardized close-to-everyday moral dilemmas, the Material Values Scale and Pathological Buying Screener were administered to a web-based convenience sample (n = 274).

RESULTS

The main effects of a moderated hierarchical regression analysis revealed an association of more ego-oriented shopping-related decisions with both higher materialistic values endorsement and more CBSD symptoms, but not with everyday moral decision-making. However, a more egoistic everyday moral decision making style moderated the effect of CBSD symptoms on ego-oriented shopping related decisions.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings indicate that a more egoistic everyday moral decision making style is not directly linked to domain-specific shopping-related decision making but strengthens the link between symptoms of CBSD and ego-oriented shopping-related decisions.

Own Pain Distress Mediates the Link Between the Lifestyle Facet of Psychopathy and Estimates of Pain Distress in Others

Psychopathy is a multifaceted personality construct entailing interpersonal-affective disturbances, antisocial traits, and a tendency to lead an erratic lifestyle. Elevated levels of psychopathic traits have been linked to having an altered experience of pain, reduced responsivity to distress in others, and making poor moral choices that bring harm to others. In the context of moral decision-making, it is possible that the capacity to estimate the distress felt by others is linked to a limitation in the first-hand experience of distress, as the presence of psychopathic traits increases. We employed a model-based approach in a non-offender sample (n = 174) to investigate whether pain-related distress mediated the links between facets of psychopathy and estimates of the pain distress potentially experienced by others. Participants judged the permissibility of moral dilemmas and rated how much pain distress they would experience while making such judgements, as well as how much pain distress they believed the “victims” would feel as a result of the moral choice made by the participant. We found that ratings of own pain distress predicted beliefs about the distress others may experience, and elevated scores on the lifestyle facet of psychopathy uniquely predicted lower estimates of own pain distress. Furthermore, own pain distress mediated the relationship between the lifestyle facet and beliefs about others’ distress. Finally, exploratory zero-order correlation analyses revealed that ratings of own pain distress decreased as the scores on multiple psychopathic traits increased. Only the lifestyle facet correlated in the negative direction with beliefs about others’ distress. Taken together, our findings suggest that beliefs about how much pain distress others may experience is indeed mediated by own pain distress, and that the tendency to lead an erratic lifestyle is linked to alterations in this mechanism.