Psychopathy traits and the processing of emotion words: Results of a lexical decision task

Abstract

Research has indicated that individuals possessing psychopathic traits exhibit a deficit in the processing of emotional stimuli. Lexical decision task studies found that psychopathic individuals do not demonstrate affective facilitation in processing emotional words relative to nonpsychopathic individuals. However, these investigations have not examined processing of discrete affective categories and their relation to the callous/unemotional (F1) and impulse control/antisocial (F2) factors of psychopathy. Sixty undergraduate men completed a self-report measure of psychopathy traits and a lexical decision task assessing response latencies to anger, sadness, fear, and happiness words. Results reflected an association between F2 and a heightened experience of anger, whereas F1 was associated with a diminished experience of sadness. Findings are discussed in terms of the relation to existing research using alternative methods of processing affect.

Notes

¹Notably, slower responses to threat words have been attributed to an “activity-disrupting” defence mechanism purported to indicate greater attention allocation to threat (Algom, Lev, & Chajut, 2004). These seemingly discrepant findings require further examination of attention allocation to affect words and attendant response latencies.

²Dependent t-test indicated that each discrete affect significantly differed from neutral words, and from other words of affects.

³For all regression equations containing F1 and F2 as the predictors, Hotelling's t-tests were performed to determine whether βs differed significantly. No ts were significant.