The effect of fear-inducing stimuli on risk taking in people with psychopathic traits

ABSTRACT

Research suggests that people with psychopathic traits experience fear-inducing stimuli differently from others, seeming to interpret fear as more positive and less negative. We expected that this reaction, termed fear enjoyment, would impact the effect of fear-inducing stimuli on self-report risk-taking behaviour. Risk-taking was measured before and after viewing excitement- and fear-inducing videos (N = 825). As expected from research showing that fear induction tends to reduce risk-taking tendencies, participants showed reduced risk-taking scores following a fear-inducing stimulus. Importantly, this relationship was moderated by psychopathic traits. Participants who did not decrease their risk-taking tendencies following the video scored significantly higher on psychopathic traits. Also, some of the variance in the relationship between psychopathic traits and change in risk-taking was partly accounted for by fear enjoyment, suggesting that future research should examine whether fear enjoyment may play a role in the relationship between psychopathy and risk-taking.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychopathy
• fear enjoyment
• risk-taking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: [Grant Number 435-2017-0426].