Examining the relationships between sub-clinical psychopathic traits with shame, guilt and externalisation response tendencies to everyday transgressions

Abstract

Although many theories of psychopathy include reference to some form of emotional deficit, surprisingly little research has examined the relationships between psychopathic traits and important self-conscious moral emotions such as shame and guilt. The present study sought to examine these relationships in a sub-clinical sample, taking into account the important theoretical differences between the two emotions. Participants (N = 739) completed a measure of psychopathic traits and a measure of self-conscious affect style. Both primary and secondary psychopathic traits were found to be inversely related to guilt-proneness; however, the effect size was greater for primary psychopathic traits. Primary psychopathic traits were unrelated to shame-proneness, while secondary psychopathic traits were positively related to shame-proneness. Both primary and secondary traits were positively related to externalisation; however the effect size was greater for primary over secondary traits. The findings provide support for affective differences between psychopathy variants.

Keywords:

• Psychopathic traits
• guilt
• shame
• self-conscious emotions
• primary psychopathy
• secondary psychopathy