Mental Capacities of Psychopaths: Lack in Global Intellect, Not Emotional Perception Skills
A recent neuroscience study has shed new light on the relationship between psychopathy and emotion perception, challenging the assumption that deficits in emotion perception associated with psychopathy are unique and specific to the disorder.
The study, which used a sample of 339 men across the psychopathy continuum, both in and out of the German prison system, addressed limitations of previous study methodology, such as the use of tasks with unknown or poor psychometric properties, underpowered samples, and a lack of control for third variables.
The study's findings question the assumption that deficits in emotion perception associated with psychopathy are unique and specific to psychopathy. Instead, the study's modeling revealed that the relationship between psychopathy and emotion perception is not independent of other cognitive factors.
The study's results support the idea that deficits in emotion perception associated with psychopathy are not unique to psychopathy and can be explained by more general cognitive factors. In fact, the study's results suggest that previous studies may have overestimated the specificity of deficits in emotion perception associated with psychopathy.
The study used three psychometrically validated tasks to assess the ability to perceive facially expressed emotions. The study's conclusions imply that the general mental ability deficits, rather than specific deficits in emotion perception, are the primary drivers of the association between psychopathy and deficits in emotion perception.
Interestingly, the study's findings provide evidence that the overestimation of deficits in emotion perception associated with psychopathy may be due to a failure to control for general mental ability deficits. The study's results support the conclusion that deficits in emotion perception associated with psychopathy are fully attributable to deficits in general mental ability for both inmates and non-inmates.
The study's modeling relations were analyzed separately for inmates and non-inmates. The study found that the association between psychopathy and deficits in emotion perception remains consistent across different subgroups, including inmates and non-inmates.
In summary, while psychopathic traits are associated with altered emotion perception and processing, recent work highlights that deficits may be confounded by impairments in general cognitive ability, indicating emotion perception deficits are not exclusive to psychopathy but may overlap with other cognitive factors. The emotional shallowness of psychopathy further complicates this relationship by diminishing felt emotion even when perceptual recognition is intact. As such, it is important for future research to continue to explore the complex interplay between psychopathy, cognitive abilities, and emotion perception.
References
[1] Kiehl, K. A., & Buckholtz, J. W. (2010). The neural basis of psychopathy: A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychology, Biobehavioral, and Neuroscientific Reviews, 1-35.
[2] Lynam, D. R., & Cale, E. C. (2015). Psychopathy and affect: A review and synthesis. The Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 11, 311-332.
The neuroscience study's findings suggest that deficits in emotion perception associated with psychopathy may not be exclusive to psychopathy, but could be attributed to more general cognitive factors related to health-and-wellness and mental-health. This research challenges the belief that these deficits are unique and specific to the disorder, and instead, implies a complex interplay between psychopathy, cognitive abilities, and emotion perception.
