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Manole S, Enea V. Psychopathy, criminogenic cognitions and emotional responses to affective stimuli among male adult offenders. CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR AND MENTAL HEALTH : CBMH 2024. [PMID: 39233382 DOI: 10.1002/cbm.2351] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2023] [Accepted: 08/25/2024] [Indexed: 09/06/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Previous research has consistently shown value in studying emotion processing with psychopathy, but the relative effect of aural and visual stimulation has hardly been considered. AIMS Our aims were to (1) compare reaction time and self-rated valence ((un)pleasantness), arousal and sense of being dominated by affective sounds or visual images among offenders with and without psychopathy (=/>26) on the psychopathy check-list revised; (2) investigate any associations, controlling for social desirability and depression; (3) explore the possible mediating effect of criminogenic cognitions on any relationships between psychopathy and emotional responses to affective stimuli. METHODS Professional educators invited all male offenders serving semi-open custody sentences in one prison to participate. After a semi structured interview to assess psychopathy, they self-reported on criminogenic cognition, depression and social desirability scales, before a computer task using standardised human and animal sounds and images. Using the self-assessment manikin, participants rated the emotional valence, arousal and dominance levels when pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sounds or images were presented. RESULTS About one in three prisoners completed all the ratings-120 men, of mean age 38.8 years (SD = 11.06). All had shorter reaction times to sounds than images. Offenders with high affective-interpersonal factor scores rated all types of sounds as less pleasant. Men with high psychopathy scores took longer to respond to unpleasant images than those with lower scores. There was a positive relationship between psychopathy factors and criminogenic cognitions and the external locus of criminogenic cognitions mediated the relationship between psychopathy facets and emotional responses of valence to pleasant sounds. CONCLUSION Our findings confirm the potential importance of emotional reactions to sounds as well as images among men with psychopathy. Given the shorter reaction times to sounds, in real life sounds could prove more provocative than images. While only small differences emerged between men above and below the PCL-R threshold, indications from facet analyses suggest that further study of sound stimuli could enhance the understanding of emotional response differences to inform interventions. Future research in this area should focus on human-related stimuli and add alexithymia measures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Steluța Manole
- Department of Psychology, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania
| | - Violeta Enea
- Department of Psychology, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania
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Snowden RJ, Mitchell E, Ojo SK, Preedy-Lunt R, Gray NS. Spatial Attention to Emotional Images and Psychopathic Personality Traits. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s10862-022-10012-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
AbstractPsychopathy has often been thought to be associated with a deficit in processing of the affective content of stimuli. This hypothesis was tested by examining if stimuli that depicted a threat to the viewer, or stimuli that depicted distressing scenes, would produce an automatic shift in spatial attention, and whether this effect would be modified by individual differences in trait psychopathy as conceptualised by the triarchic model of psychopathy. Using a large mixed gender community sample (N = 286) it was found that spatial attention was averted away from threat stimuli for both short (200 ms) and long (500 ms) periods from cue to target, while the distress cues did not produce any spatial attention shifts. The trait of Meanness was found to be associated with a reduction in the effect of threat stimuli, while the trait of Disinhibition was found to be associated with an increase in this threat effect. However, the dot-probe task showed poor reliability. We conclude that the callous unemotional aspects of psychopathy, as captured by the Meanness scale, are underpinned by a lack of response to affective information, whereas impulsive/irresponsible traits of psychopathy, as captured by the Disinhibition scale, are underpinned by an exaggerated response to such affective information.
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Deming P, Eisenbarth H, Rodrik O, Weaver SS, Kiehl KA, Koenigs M. An examination of autonomic and facial responses to prototypical facial emotion expressions in psychopathy. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0270713. [PMID: 35776725 PMCID: PMC9249219 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270713] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/01/2021] [Accepted: 06/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Meta-analyses have found that people high in psychopathy categorize (or “recognize”) others’ prototypical facial emotion expressions with reduced accuracy. However, these have been contested with remaining questions regarding the strength, specificity, and mechanisms of this ability in psychopathy. In addition, few studies have tested holistically whether psychopathy is related to reduced facial mimicry or autonomic arousal in response to others’ dynamic facial expressions. Therefore, the current study presented 6 s videos of a target person making prototypical emotion expressions (anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy, and neutral) to N = 88 incarcerated adult males while recording facial electromyography, skin conductance response (SCR), and heart rate. Participants identified the emotion category and rated the valence and intensity of the target person’s emotion. Psychopathy was assessed via the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). We predicted that overall PCL-R scores and scores for the interpersonal/affective traits, in particular, would be related to reduced emotion categorization accuracy, valence ratings, intensity ratings, facial mimicry, SCR amplitude, and cardiac deceleration in response to the prototypical facial emotion expressions. In contrast to our hypotheses, PCL-R scores were unrelated to emotion categorization accuracy, valence ratings, and intensity ratings. Stimuli failed to elicit facial mimicry from the full sample, which does not allow drawing conclusions about the relationship between psychopathy and facial mimicry. However, participants displayed general autonomic arousal responses, but not to prototypical emotion expressions per se. PCL-R scores were also unrelated to SCR and cardiac deceleration. These findings failed to identify aberrant behavioral and physiological responses to prototypical facial emotion expressions in relation to psychopathy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philip Deming
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
- * E-mail:
| | - Hedwig Eisenbarth
- School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
| | - Odile Rodrik
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
| | - Shelby S. Weaver
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
| | - Kent A. Kiehl
- The Mind Research Network and Lovelace Biomedical, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America
- Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America
| | - Michael Koenigs
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
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Snowden RJ, Frongillo Juric A, Leach R, McKinnon A, Gray NS. Automatic processing of emotional images and psychopathic personality traits. Cogn Emot 2022; 36:821-835. [PMID: 35319353 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2022.2054780] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
Psychopathy is associated with a deficit in affective processes and might be reflected in the inability to extract the emotional content of a stimulus. Across two experiments, we measured the interference effect from emotional images that were irrelevant to the processing of simultaneous target stimuli and examined if this interference was moderated by psychometrically defined traits of psychopathy. In Experiment 1, we showed this emotional distraction effect was reduced as a function of psychopathic traits related to cold-heartedness and occurred for both positively- and negatively-valenced images. Experiment 2 attempted to test the automaticity of the effects by presenting the emotional stimuli briefly so that the emotion was difficult to report. Again, high visibility images produced strong effects that were moderated by the cold-heatedness/meanness traits of psychopathy, but the low-visibility images did not evoke the emotional distractor effect. Our results strongly support the notion that psychopathic traits related to cold-heartedness/meanness are associated with an inability to automatically process the emotional content of images.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Robyn Leach
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
| | | | - Nicola S Gray
- Department of Psychology, Swansea University and Swansea Bay University Health Board, Swansea, UK
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Gray NS, McKinnon A, Snowden RJ. A reduction in the pupil's response to affective sounds in psychopathy and related personality traits. Physiol Rep 2022; 10:e15235. [PMID: 35312180 PMCID: PMC8935637 DOI: 10.14814/phy2.15235] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2022] [Accepted: 03/01/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023] Open
Abstract
The pupil of the eye dilates in response to affective information, even if that information is not visual. We used this affective modulation of the pupil to examine the hypothesis that individuals with high traits of psychopathy have an insensitivity to emotional stimuli. We also examined general personality traits related to psychopathy. A sample of 120 healthy young men had their pupils monitored while they listened to sound clips that conveyed either neutral emotion (e.g., rain), negative emotion (e.g., a person screaming) or positive emotion (e.g., people laughing). Psychopathy and general personality traits were measured via self-report questionnaire. As expected, both the positive and negative emotional sounds produced greater dilation in the pupil size than neutral sounds. This affective modulation of the pupil was found to be reduced for the negative sounds for people high on the "callous/affective" components of psychopathy (the Affective facet of the SRP-4 and the Meanness scale of the TriPM) and the general personality traits of Reward Dependence and Cooperativeness. The results indicate that these callous traits of psychopathy and general personality may be underpinned by a reduction in the ability to effectively process or monitor emotional stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicola S. Gray
- Swansea University & Swansea Bay University Health BoardSwanseaUK
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Liao HI, Kashino M, Shimojo S. Attractiveness in the Eyes: A Possibility of Positive Loop between Transient Pupil Constriction and Facial Attraction. J Cogn Neurosci 2020; 33:315-340. [PMID: 33166194 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01649] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Contrary to the long-held belief of a close linkage between pupil dilation and attractiveness, we found an early and transient pupil constriction response when participants viewed an attractive face (and the effect of luminance/contrast was controlled). While human participants were making an attractiveness judgment on faces, their pupil constricted more for the more attractive (as-to-be-rated) faces. Further experiments showed that the effect of pupil constriction to attractiveness judgment extended to intrinsically esthetic visual objects such as natural scene images (as well as faces) but not to line-drawing geometric figures. When participants were asked to judge the roundness of faces, pupil constriction still correlated with their attractiveness but not the roundness rating score, indicating the automaticity of the pupil constriction to attractiveness. When pupillary responses were manipulated implicitly by relative background luminance changes (from the prestimulus screen), the facial attractiveness ratings were in accordance with the amount of pupil constriction, which could not be explained solely by simultaneous or sequential luminance contrast. The overall results suggest that pupil constriction not only reflects but, as a part of self-monitoring and attribution mechanisms, also possibly contributes to facial attractiveness implicitly.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Makio Kashino
- NTT Corporation, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan.,Tokyo Institute of Technology
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Mckinnon AI, Gray NS, Snowden RJ. Enhanced emotional response to both negative and positive images in post-traumatic stress disorder: Evidence from pupillometry. Biol Psychol 2020; 154:107922. [DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2020.107922] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/10/2019] [Revised: 06/12/2020] [Accepted: 06/16/2020] [Indexed: 01/24/2023]
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Burley DT, Deriu V, Masin R, Gray NS, Snowden RJ. Emotional modulation of the pupil in psychopathy: A test of the Response Modulation Hypothesis. Int J Psychophysiol 2020; 155:168-174. [PMID: 32592734 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2020.06.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/09/2019] [Revised: 06/15/2020] [Accepted: 06/18/2020] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
Some aspects of psychopathy may be underpinned by a deficit in processing emotional information, although there is evidence that this impairment only emerges when the affective cues are not central to ongoing goal-directed behaviour. However, this hypothesis has not been explored previously in relation to autonomic reactivity to emotional stimuli. The current study investigated this in a large (N = 174) community sample by examining changes in pupil diameter, a measure of autonomic nervous system activity, while participants viewed images that were either neutral in content or contained highly arousing/emotional content. Participants' attentional focus was manipulated across two tasks, such that participants either focused on whether the image contained emotional content (emotion-focus) or whether there were people present in the image (alternate-focus). Psychopathy was conceptualised via the Triarchic model of boldness, meanness and disinhibition. As expected, the arousing images caused greater pupil dilation compared to neutral images. However, the magnitude of this dilation was not moderated by any aspect of psychopathy regardless of the participant's attentional focus. It may be that reduced pupil reactivity to emotional stimuli is only expressed at high levels of psychopathy not normally found in community samples, or that participants with high traits of psychopathy in the community were still able to sufficiently attend to the emotional components of the images to overcome any autonomic deficits regardless of their attentional focus. Further research is needed to explore these possibilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel T Burley
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, 70 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK
| | - Valerio Deriu
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, 70 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK
| | - Rhys Masin
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, 70 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK
| | - Nicola S Gray
- Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK; Abertawe Bro-Morgannwg University Health Board, Caswell Clinic, Glanrhyd Hospital, Tondu Road, Bridgend CF31 4LN, UK
| | - Robert J Snowden
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, 70 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK.
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Burley DT, van Goozen SHM. Pupil Response to Affective Stimuli: a Biomarker of Early Conduct Problems in Young Children. JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 2020; 48:693-701. [PMID: 31982978 PMCID: PMC7188718 DOI: 10.1007/s10802-020-00620-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/19/2022]
Abstract
Childhood conduct problems have been associated with reduced autonomic arousal to negative cues indicative of an insensitivity to aversive stimuli, with mixed evidence in response to positive cues. Autonomic arousal to affective stimuli has traditionally been measured through galvanic skin responses and heart-rate, despite evidence that pupillometry is more reliable and practically beneficial (i.e., no wires are attached to the participant). The current study is the first to examine abnormal pupillary responsivity to affective stimuli as a biomarker for childhood conduct problems. We measured pupil reactivity to negative, positive and neutral images in 131 children aged 4-7 years, who were referred by their teachers for being at risk of future psychopathology. We assessed relationships between pupil response to the images and teacher-rated scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), which indexed child conduct problems and their overlapping emotional, behavioural and social difficulties. Reduced pupil dilation to negative images was associated with significantly increased conduct, hyperactivity, emotional and peer problems, as well as reduced prosocial behaviour. Composite scores for disruptive behaviour and emotional difficulties both uniquely predicted blunted pupil response to negative threat stimuli; there were no relations with pupil responses to positive images. These findings highlight that blunted pupil responsivity to negative stimuli serves as a biomarker for early disruptive behavioural problems and affective difficulties. Pupillometry offers an inexpensive, fast and non-intrusive measure to help identify children who are showing early disruptive behaviour or experiencing affective difficulties, which can provide opportunities for preventative intervention to avoid further psychopathology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel T Burley
- School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3AT, UK.
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