Lecture 13: Inside the Psychopathic Mind

psycopathy

a personality disorder

- characteristics seen early in childhood (callous, lack empathy, antisocial)

personality disorder

long-standing, see symptoms for at least two years

- different than depression, can last for shorter time

different trait types for psychopaths

- interpersonal

- affective

- impulsive

- antisocial

interpersonal traits of psychopaths

- difficulty establishing genuine relationships, manipulative

- glib (meet people at intellectual level, but with issues/fakeness), superficial charm (OJ effect)

affective traits of psycopaths

- minimal and superficial emotional experiences (don't experience same physiological expression of emotion)

- lack regret/remorse, callous, lack empathy

impulsive traits of psychopaths

- poor behavioral controls, live day to day

- irresponsible

antisocial traits

- criminal versatility (jack of all trades with crime)

- early behavior problems

psychopaths tend to be serial killers and murderers for hire

- not always true

- psychopaths commit multiple different crimes

psychopaths do things without ... (and example)

thinking or care for consequences

- stealing sandwich when have the money for it

psychopaths make up ...

1% of population, 25% of incarcerated, tend to commit more types of crimes (and at higher frequency) and repeat crimes after release from prison

- tend to use and try multiple substances

- disproportionately account for cost of crime

two things related to psychopathy

genetics and parenting

classic view is that psychopathic individuals are innately

fearless

- do not experience fear

- do not learn from punishment

based on brain scans, psychopathic individuals show ...

decreased volume, activity, and connectivity in and with the amygdala

methods for manipulating the fear response

- letter cues were either UPPER or lower case and colored red or green

- Electric shocks were administered on some trials following red letters (20%), but never to green letters (0%)

- threat focus (focus on color of letter) and alternative focus (emotional information contextual to primary goal, which is focusing on case or connection with other words)

methods for fear potentiated startle

- sudden loud noise elicits a startle response that can be measured using eye-blink magnitude

- a person's fear response may be measured using: fear potentiated startle = threat blink - non-threat blink

2 hypotheses for fearlessness in psychopaths

- always fearless

- good at focusing on goal

fear potentiated startle results

- threat focus: individuals showed comparable FPS across psychopathy scores

- alternative focus: increasing psychopathy scores showed a significant deficit in FPS

results showed that

psychopaths are not innately fearless, have ability to generate emotional response

- potential leverage point for intervention!

myth #2

psychopathic individuals cannot experience regret

methods for manipulating the regret response

1. retrospective regret: when you learn you could have done better/differently

2. prospective regret: use of regret signals to make different decisions in the future

retrospective vs. prospective mediated by ... (brain regions)

amygdala vs. frontal regions

methods: counterfactual decision-making

- can test how you feel after you learn how much you won or lost (retrospective regret)

- can also measure retrospective regret from how you feel after learning how much you could've won or lost

- can use this information to guess what you do next (prospective regret)

decision-making and regret results

during partial feedback, individuals higher on psychopathy reported appropriate affective responses to the value of what they won or lost --> show retrospective regret

- effect was similar during complete feedback

- choice behavior in individuals higher on psychopathy was less affected by prospective regret signals (flat line for high psychopathy)

it's scientifically inaccurate to say psychopaths cannot feel regret, you just have to ...

focus them on that information and they can

myth #3

psychopathic individual can take the perspective of others

methods: manipulating perspective taking

1. controlled: deliberately taking the perspective of others

2. automatic: effortlessly having the perspective of others affect your own

social psychology tells us that we're much better at taking in a perspective if we're in an ...

in group compared to an outgroup, so avatar looks like inmate

methods: perspective taking task

- controlled: does avatar see two dots

- automatic: do you see two dots --> conflict between what you and avatar sees

psychopathy and perspective taking results

- individuals with higher psychopathy demonstrated less interference when their own perspective differed from the perspective of the avatar (automatic cognitive empathy) --> screen out other perspectives

- similar across psychopathy levels for controlled

myth #4

individuals with psychopathy are unchangeable

research shows that individuals with psychopathy ...

- can experience emotion

- struggle to integrate context

sometimes the ways in which their minds are different than others ...

can lead to an advantage but sometimes it can lead to a disadvantage

cognitive remediation

use video games to train people on skills they are deficient in

training the minds of psychopaths: attend to context (ATC)

- reversal task: notice change in rules associated with earning and losing money (psychopaths do poorly)

- context discrimination task: learn to attend to peripheral information to respond to target (green = respond, yellow = don't respond, psychopaths do poorly)

- gaze task: learn to attend to both eye gaze and facial expression (press opposite direction when face is fearful, psychopaths don't integrate facial expression)

cognitive training in psychopathy results

- psychopaths improved over time

- could be explained by regression to the mean, that only way to go was up

- BUT, played totally different set of pre and post games at start and end and showed that psychopaths improved

- severity of conduct reports of individuals who played ATC got better

it's not that psychopaths cannot change, it's that ...

traditional therapy is not conducive to change

- individuals with psychopathy don't see or interact with the world ...

- they are capable of fundamental human experiences but lack ...

- they are ... fundamentally fearless, evil, without regret, calculating cons who just look for their next target

- the way others do

- natural propensity

- NOT