Psychopathy & Facial Emotion Detection Timothy C. Bates

PCL: The “gold standard” Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) Hare, 1995 Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R) Hare, see Hare, 1991, 1996; Hart, Har,&Harpur, 1992). Uses clinical ratings based from a 2 hour semistructured interview combined with a review of file information.

PCL 2-factor structure Factor I Grandiosity Absence of guilt Callousness Cleckley (1941/1982) Factor II chronic antisocial and criminal lifestyle more akin to DSM ASPD

Self reports Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Psychopathic Deviate scale Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989), California Psychological Inventory Socialization scale (Gough, 1969) Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory–II Antisocial (Millon, 1987)

Problems with self report Moderate Factor II correlations (.3-.4) Close to zero with Factor I Harpur, Hare, & Hakstian, 1989; Hart, Forth, & Hare, 1991.

Other problems A core element of psychopathy is impression management Not apologizing, maximizing their own reputation, silencing dissent and dissimulating Hare et al., 1989 Why would they, then self-report psychopathic behavior?

PPI (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996)

Eight Subscales Machiavellian Egocentricity (30 items) Narcissistic and ruthless attitudes in interpersonal functioning. “I always look out for my own interests before worrying about those of the other guy” Social Potency(24 items) Perceived ability to influence and manipulate others. “Even when others are upset with me, I can usually win them over with my charm”

PPI Coldheartedness (21items) Callousness, guiltlessness, and an absence of sentimentality. “I have had ‘crushes’ on people that were so intense that they were painful” [false] Carefree Nonplanfulness (20 items) Indifference in planning one’s actions. “I often make the same errors in judgment over and over again”

PPI Fearlessness (19 items) Absence of anticipatory anxiety concerning harm and the willingness to participate in risky activities. “Making a parachute jump would really frighten me” [false]) Blame Externalization, (18 items) Blame others for one’s problems and to rationalize one’s own misbehavior. “I usually feel that people give me the credit I deserve” [false])

PPI Impulsive Nonconformity, (17 items) Reckless lack of concern regarding social mores. “I sometimes question authority figures ‘just for the hell of it’” [true]) Stress Immunity, (11 items): Absence of marked reactions to anxiety-provoking events. “I can remain calm in situations that would make many other people panic”

PPI Validity Scales Deviant Responding (10 items). Malingering, careless responding, comprehension “During the day, I generally see the world in color rather than in black-and-white” Unlikely Virtues (14 items). Socially desirable impression management. “I have always been completely fair to others” derived from Tellegen’s (1978) Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire and measure Variable Response Inconsistency Sum of the absolute differences between 40 item pairs with high intercorrelations.

Validity Most self-report indexes of psychopathy fail to correlate with PCL or other diagnostic ratings PPI correlates with questionnaire, interview, and rating measures of Primary Psychopathy (Lilienfeld, 1990; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). PPI & PCL-R factor 1 correlate >.45 (Poythress, Edens, & Lilienfeld, 1998; Lilienfeld et al., 1998)

Predicts Violence and recidivism Salekin, Rogers, & Sewell, 1996 Poor passive-avoidance learning withholding responses that lead to punishment Belmore & Quinsey, 1994; Newman & Kosson, 1986.

Lykken (1957) Suggested that Psychopaths are deficient in fear Everything else follows from that Predicts some unlikely things Heroic people are psychopaths Ignores some likely things You have not only to not fear punishment, but to desire the activity - are we all simply restrained from evil by fear? Reciprocity may exist I must not only not fear you, I must not empathize with your pain

Effortful Control Raine Reduced prefrontal cortex in murderers Damasio Infant Head injury can create sociopathy Jensen-Campbell (2002) A & C related to reduced Stroop and Wisconsin Bates (submitted) A & C related to frontal damage scales Attentional network performance Lynam: Delinquency & IQ/Executive fn

Social information Processing Raine: reduced PFC volume in murderers

Psychopathy & the Face We display emotions on our faces Psychopaths have severe emotional disturbances Perhaps face processing will reflect individual differences in psychopathic information processing?

While there appears to be a “face” area in the fusiform gyrus Haxby,2002

Faces evoke a diverse range of systems Haxby,2002

Morphs

Fear is the key? a) A great book by Alistair MacLean b) A good movie by Michael Tuchner c) A thing in which Psychopaths are deficient d) All of the above

Psychopathy & FFM

Is psychopathy a normal trait? NEO weightings

NEO-PI R Regression graph But no sig relationships to personality appear