Investigating associations between empathy, morality and psychopathic personality traits in the general population

Abstract

Although atypical moral and empathy processing are considered core features of psychopathic personality, little is known about how these constructs are associated with psychopathic traits in the general population. One-hundred and twenty-four adult males from the community were administered the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale 4 Short Form, as well as a wide battery of affect, empathy and morality tasks and questionnaires. Our findings indicate that both core affective-interpersonal, as well as lifestyle-antisocial features of psychopathy are associated with weaker empathic responses to fearful faces. However, only the unique variance of the affective-interpersonal features is associated with weaker empathic response to happy stories, lower propensity to feel empathic concern and less difficulty in making decisions on moral dilemmas. In contrast, the unique variance of the lifestyle-antisocial features is associated with greater propensity to feel empathic concern. These preliminary findings extend previous research and suggest that, while the joint variance between affective-interpersonal and lifestyle-antisocial features might drive some ‘deficits’ associated with psychopathy, there also appears also to be unique ‘deficits’ associated with the core affective-interpersonal features, particularly in relation to affective aspects of moral processing.

Introduction

Lack of empathy and amoral behaviour are considered core features of the psychopathic personality (Blair, Mitchell, & Blair, 2005). However, little is known about how specific dimensions of empathy and morality are associated with psychopathic traits in the general population. In the current study we employed several paradigms concurrently to investigate these associations.

Based on formal assessment with the Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003), the syndrome of psychopathy can be diagnosed in forensic settings when an individual scores high on two dimensions. One, traditionally referred to as Factor 1, is characterized by affective and interpersonal features such as reduced guilt, empathy and attachment to significant others, along with deceptive, manipulative interactions. The other, Factor 2, relates to features involving impulsivity, poor behavioural control and antisocial behaviour (Hare, 2003, Hare and Neumann, 2008).

Recent taxometric studies suggest that psychopathy is a dimensional construct rather than a qualitatively distinct category of behaviour, and that psychopathic traits are best viewed as existing on a continuum, thus providing an empirical basis for studying individuals in terms of level of psychopathic traits rather than limiting studies to extreme groups (see Hare & Neumann, 2008 for a review). The strength of this dimensional perspective has led to a growing number of community studies on psychopathy (Lilienfeld & Fowler, 2006). Findings from these studies often mirror those observed in clinical/forensic samples (Benning et al., 2005, Hall and Benning, 2006), further strengthening the view that there are continuities between community and forensic populations in the mechanisms underlying psychopathy.

The presence of dysfunctional affective-interpersonal features is considered to be the core characteristic of psychopathy, distinguishing individuals who are psychopathic from those who are antisocial but not psychopathic (Blair et al., 2005). Evidence from forensic and community samples also suggest that the two dimensions of psychopathy present distinct associations with various criterion measures of personality, emotionality and behaviour, particularly when their shared variance is controlled (e.g. Hicks and Patrick, 2006, Patrick et al., 2007, Uzieblo et al., 2010), highlighting the distinct influence each dimension may have and the importance of inspecting the unique contribution of each dimension in order to provide a more comprehensive map of the psychopathy construct.

Although there is not complete agreement regarding the precise definition of empathy and its constitutive components (Batson, 2009) empathy is normally understood as an affective state caused by sharing the emotions of another person (Eisenberg, 2000, Hoffman, 2000, Singer, 2006). Emotional empathy, or simply empathy, can be defined by the subject’s emotional state resulting from the observation or imagination of another person’s state; the subject’s emotional state is isomorphic but the subject is aware that it is vicariously elicited by the emotional state of the other person (Singer, 2006).

Empathy and morality have long been conceptually linked (Eisenberg, 2000, Hoffman, 2000), and empathy is thought to play a crucial role in moral behaviour. Empathy is not considered to be pro-social per se. However, with further cognitive processing, empathic response may develop into empathic concern, guilt or a combination of the two. Such prototypical moral emotions are thought to provide the motivational force to ‘do good’ and avoid ‘doing bad’ (Moll & de Oliveira-Souza, 2007), and function as an emotional moral barometer, providing immediate and salient feedback on behaviour (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). Actual behaviour is not necessary for this barometer to function, as people can anticipate their likely emotional reactions when considering behavioural alternatives. Emotional empathy can thus be regarded as a necessary step in a chain that begins with affect recognition and emotional contagion, and is followed by understanding another person’s feelings; this understanding provides the basis for experiencing moral emotions, such as concern and guilt that in turn motivate moral behaviour.

Past research has found that adults and children with high levels of psychopathic traits have a selective impairment in the recognition of others’ distress, particularly fear and sadness (e.g. Blair et al., 2001, Blair et al., 2004, Blair et al., 2002; Montagne et al., 2005). However, this impairment does not appear as consistent in community samples (Del Gaizo & Falkenbach, 2008). Adults and children with psychopathic traits have also shown reduced autonomic response to stimuli associated with distress in others (Blair, 1999, Blair et al., 1997) and, in a community sample, adults with high traits of dysfunctional affective-interpersonal features have shown blunted affective empathic responses to the emotional displays of others (Ali, Amorim, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2009).

Adults with psychopathy do not seem to show different patterns of responses regarding the endorsement of actions in moral dilemmas compared to controls (Cima et al., 2010, Glenn et al., 2009). However, they do show reduced amygdala activity when responding to the same moral dilemmas, and those with particularly high scores of callousness show further reduced activity in several regions considered to be part of the moral circuitry (Glenn, Raine, & Schug, 2009). Some researchers have argued these individuals are able to distinguish between right and wrong but do not care (e.g. Cima et al., 2010) as their moral knowledge appears to be intact but their moral emotions appear deficient failing to motivate moral behaviour.

In the current study we employed several paradigms concurrently to investigate how different features of the psychopathic personality are associated with distinct components of affect, empathy and morality described above. Based on previous research, we predicted that affective-interpersonal features would be associated with lower scores on various measures of affect, empathy and morality. We also predict that impulsive-antisocial behaviour features would be associated with greater scores on those measures.