Preliminary Data on the Role of Emotional Intelligence in Moderating the Link between Psychopathy and Aggression in a Nonforensic Sample

Psychopathic personality traits are linked to reduced false memories for negative events

Individuals scoring high on psychopathic personality traits process emotional material to a different extent than individuals with few psychopathic traits. Evidence exists that these individuals have impaired emotional memory. The question arises whether this emotional memory impairment has ramifications for the production of emotional false memories. In the present study, we investigated the production of false and true memories for emotional events in a community sample (N = 120) of individuals varying in psychopathic traits (evaluated with the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised [PPI-R] questionnaire). The fearless dominance (FD) component of psychopathy interacted with the emotional impact of to-be-remembered events in the production of false memories, showing fewer negative false memories with increasing levels of FD. At the subjective level, negative false memories were not perceived as vivid memory experiences in high FD individuals. Concerning true memories, higher scores in cold-heartedness were related to fewer true memories for neutral and negative (but not positive) events. These results show that individuals with high psychopathy traits - in particular, FD - do not have a general emotional memory impairment but they process negative material in a different way than individuals with low psychopathic traits and thus are less susceptible to producing false memories for negative events.

Emotional Intelligence and Aggressive Behaviors in Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Adolescent aggression is a global public health with long-lasting and costly emotional, social, and economic consequences, and it is of vital importance to identify those variables that can reduce these behaviors in this population. Therefore, there is a need to establish the protective factors of aggressive behavior in adolescence. While some research has demonstrated the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and various aggressive responses in adolescence, indicating that EI-or the ability to perceive, use, understand, and regulate emotions-could be considered a protective factor for the development of aggressive behavior in adolescence, the strength of this effect is not clear. The aim of the present study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature concerning the relationship between aggressive behavior and EI in adolescents and provide a reliable estimate of the relationship between both constructs through a meta-analysis. For this purpose, we searched for relevant articles in English and Spanish in Medline, PsycINFO, and Scopus, obtaining 17 selectable articles based on the search terms used in research in the adolescent population. These studies provide scientific evidence of the relationship between the level of EI assessed from the three theoretical models of EI (performance-based ability model, self-report ability model, and self-report mixed model) and various aggressive responses, showing that adolescents with higher levels of EI show less aggressive behavior. Implications for interventions and guidelines for future research are discussed.

The psychological effects of imprisonment: The role of cognitive, psychopathic and affective traits

The present cross-sectional correlational study aimed to investigate a set of cognitive, affective, and personality traits impacting the psychological effects of imprisonment. Ninety-three male inmates filled out a battery including measures of intelligence, working memory, psychopathy, aggressiveness, anxious trait, emotionality, rumination styles, and empathy proneness. Inmates' psychological outcomes were conceptualized in terms of mood, anxiety, depression, and general health. Results showed that inmates with high cognitive abilities, psychopathic impulsivity, proactive aggression, personal distress and fantasy, anxious and negative emotionality are mainly prone to ill-being psychological outcomes. Contrariwise, the fearless dominance trait, positive emotionality and empathic concern ability seem to expose inmates to positive psychological outcomes. Reactive aggression and perspective taking seem to impact both positive and negative moods. Ruminative style was unrelated to psychological outcomes. These preliminary results provide an insight into which factors intervention programs should be based upon in order to enhance well-being and reduce distress among inmates.

The Characteristics and Benefits of Disclosing Personal Experiences in Prison: A Study of the Writing Paradigm

The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristics and benefits of writing about personal experiences in prison. A variation of the classic writing paradigm was proposed to a sample of 93 male inmates in southern Italian prisons. Participants were left to write on any personal experience related to their condition and time in prison in 4 daily sessions. Measures of subjective well-being were collected across the sessions. Transcripts were analyzed through sentiment analysis. Cognitive and executive functioning indices (i.e., general cognitive abilities, working memory capacity, inhibition, and shifting) are included as covariates in our analyses on the evolution of well-being measures. Results showed that participants’ well-being improved across the sessions, independent of the emotional valence of the disclosed experience. This effect was partly modulated by the participant’s measure of working memory capacity. After an initial simplification, narrative productions appeared to increase their length and complexity. Our results support the idea that emotional disclosure in our sample of inmates contributes to social integration. Results encourage the adoption of writing procedures, as they are inexpensive and effective in supporting prisoners’ adjustment to prison life. Supplemental materials are available at https://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/ajp/media/a_study_on_the_writing_paradigm/index.htm

Do psychopathic traits impair autobiographical memory for emotional life experiences?

We examined the relationship between psychopathic traits and autobiographical memory (AM) for emotional life experiences in both a community (Study 1) and forensic sample (Study 2). Considering that psychopathy is traditionally linked to an impairment in the processing of emotion, we hypothesised an emotional deficit of AM in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits. Participants in both samples were asked to recall an emotionally charged event, and were then administered the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised, the Flashbulb Memory Checklist, and the Autobiographical Memory Characteristics Questionnaire. A linguistic content analysis was applied to inmates' memory transcriptions (Study 2). Only in the forensic sample, was self-centered impulsivity found to be positively related to the linguistic use of mood terms, and negatively related to the linguistic use of cognitive labels. Furthermore, high levels of fearless dominance were associated to a low emotional attribution to the event and its implications, and highly confident and coherent memory. Lastly, coldheartedness was the psychopathic trait most associated to a deficit in emotional AM, in terms of a lack of hedonic labels and contextual details, a poor emotional evaluation of the event and its implications. The current results encourage further investigation concerning AM in psychopathic traits.