The Role Played by Theory of Mind and Empathy in the Feigning of Psychopathology

Abstract

In this article, we hypothesized that in order to feign mental illness, one would need to have empathy and be able to understand other’s mental states. To test this hypothesis, we asked 432 healthy volunteers to feign depression, PTSD or schizophrenia while completing a self-report test that measures the severity of the feigned condition’s symptoms and the Inventory of Problems − 29 (IOP-29). Additionally, all participants were administered a theory of mind (ToM) task and an empathy measure with the request to respond truthfully. Results from a series of linear regression models revealed that higher cognitive empathy is associated with increased symptom endorsement on self-report symptom questionnaires and higher ToM abilities are associated with less credible feigned profiles, especially in the case of feigned depression.

Keywords:

• Theory of mind
• empathy
• malingering
• assessment
• IOP-29

Conflict of interest

The second author (Luciano Giromini) declares that he owns a share in the corporate (LLC) that possesses the rights to Inventory of Problems. The other seven authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Data availability statement

Authors are willing to share their data set upon reasonable request. To obtain the data set associated with this article, please contact the corresponding author at [email protected]

Notes

1 In this paper, we refer to “malingering” to indicate the deliberate fabrication or gross exaggeration of symptoms motivated by external incentives, and to “feigning” to indicate fabrication or gross exaggeration of symptoms without any assumptions about its goals.