Aggression and Psychopathy

Question 1

Why can aggression be seen as a social behavior?

Answer 1

• aggression always needs a ‘victim’
• it always depending on the context

Question 2

What is accepted violence?

Answer 2

aggression that occurs in the context of war or sports for example

Question 3

How is non-accepted violence defined?

Answer 3

Harms others (Physically or non-physically) or harms property (eg.: tennis player destroys racket on purpose out of frustration)

Question 4

How is proactive aggression defined?

Answer 4

• goal-directed
• self-initiated and planned (used as a tool to reach sth)
• “Cold” - without emotion
• often not physical
• Connected to Psychopathy check list Factor 1:
  -> selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others

Question 5

How is reactive aggression defined?

Answer 5

• defensive -> always in context of threat
• emotional, uninhibited, impulsive
• frustration
• often physical
• connected to Psychoathy check list Factor 2:
  -> chronically unstable, antisocial, socially deviant lifestyle

Question 6

How does the neural circuitry work in proactive aggression and which areas are involved?

Answer 6

Pre-frontal cortex areas, striatum, amygdala, AIC (anterior insula cortex)
-> this network is linked to (moral) decision making (combining emotional information with more rational info)
Differences in psychopathy:
- lack of bottom-up empathetic input -> helpful to be a goal-directed person
- amygdala is hypoactive -> Amygdala is known for feeding the cortisol system with bottom-up information

Question 7

Which areas are included in the neural circuitry of reactive aggression and how does it work?

Answer 7

Amygdala, Hypothalamus, PAG (switches fight or flight response), vmPFC, ACC, => reactive threat network
- this network is activated when there is direct threat (eg.: provocation)
In psychopaths:
- lack of top-down impulse control
- the vmPFC and the ACC have less control over threat network
- Amygdala is hyperactive

Question 8

Can only proactive or reactive aggression occur in psychopaths?

Answer 8

No, mostly both types of aggression occur in psychopaths. One doesn’t exclude the other.

Question 9

Why is psychopathy seen as a developmental disorder?

Answer 9

Often a severe history of abuse (or neglect) goes hand in hand with a lack of bonding leading to empathy and control issues.
-> if a child has no chance to experience bonding (eg.: with parents), they are not able to learn how to experience empathy
-> if a child was abused, the experience of constant lack of control leads to the desire/bias to regain control of their life (goal-directed control/power as one of the main motives in psychopathy)

Question 10

How is the “Pathology of Power” explainable in the prisoner context?

Answer 10

Prison is also a forced hierarchy.
○ Real prisoners soon learn the means to gain power whether through integration, informing, sexual control of other prisoners or development of powerful cliques
-> Aiming for a higher position in “this” hierarchy

Question 11

What are the pros of a social hierarchy from an evolutionary perspective?

Answer 11

• helps survival and reproduction of the individual -> Status provides access to better ressources
• hierarchy -> group: in a group ones is stronger
• helps survival and reproduction of the group
  -> probably one of the reasoning why we react so sensitive when we are forced in a hierarchy that we don’t want
  -

Question 12

How is testosterone build?

Answer 12

Testosterone is made in the HPG axis (Hypothalamus-Pituity gland-gonade/gonadal axis).
- Starts in the brain (hypothalamus) -> pituity gland produces precurses of testosterone -> gonade/gonadal the acutual testosterone is produced

Question 13

What does testosterone regarding the behavior in context of the challenge hypotheses of Wingfield et al. (1990)?

Answer 13

The idea is that hormones (eg.: testosterone) are really dynamic and fluctuate throughout the body. Every time you get into a competition (eg.: about a woman for example) testosterone increase. As soon as the bird (individual) finds a partner (monogam birds) the testosterone decreases.
=> high testosterone:
- leads to less caring behavior (eg.: for their children)
- high competitive behavior
=> Testosterone is a recursive hormone:
- that means: When you get into a competition your testosterone goes up that motivates you to get into another competition and testosterone increases even more

Question 14

Where is cortisol produced and how?

Answer 14

Cortisol is produced in the HPA axis (Hypothalamus-Pituity gland-adrenal glands- axis). It is known as the stress-hormone.
- produced after a stress reaction (after approx. 15 min after stimulus) -> firstly, fast adrenalin reaction (fight or flight)

Question 15

What are the effects of cortisol in the body?

Answer 15

Cortisol:
- brings you back to homeostasis -> reducing anxiety and fear
- prepares for the next threat (makes you vigilant for the next threat)
- if you are really anxious cortisol can increase more -> thus, cortisol is a marker in anxiety disorders

Question 16

What happens when cortisol and testosterone are interacting in the body?

Answer 16

• HPA and HPG axis inhibit each other. -> eg.: if testosterone goes up, syntheses of cortisol will be reduced (and the other way round)
• BUT: it can still happen that both hormone concentrations are high
  -> Testosterone is a recursive hormone, thus, it can build up more and more
  => the Testosterone-Cortisol ratio (T/C ratio) can be seen as hormonal marker for aggression
  In context of psychopathy:
• testosterone prepares to perform dominance behavior (-> aggression)
• low levels of cortisol show less fear/anxiety -> easier to aggress against others

Question 17

What happens when an individual has a high T/C ratio?

Answer 17

It decouples the PFC from the amygdala and the sub cortex
=> reduced bottom-up distress signals (=> proactive aggression)
- less input from the emotional areas
- less empathy
- less effect of your own fear on rational thinking
- lower responsively to the fear of someone else
=> reduced impulse-control (=> reactive aggression)
- loose of control of reactive threat-network

Question 18

What happens when testosterone stimulates vasopressin gene expression in the amygdala?

Answer 18

It biases the amygdala output for fight instead of flight.

Question 19

What did the study of the “Macaque brain” show?

Answer 19

○ Social status network seems to be a combination of:
-Threat network:
□ Reactive -> Brainstem, Hypothalamus, Amygdala
=> threat system -> fight or flight response
□ Proactive -> Amygdala, Striatum (Posterior putamen, Caudate)
=> Reward-system (especially Striatum) -> mainly involved in goal -directed behavior
=> this combination of reactive aggression and goal-directed behavior helps to promote the status within a group

Question 20

How does the stability of a hierarchy influence the testosterone and cortisol level?

Answer 20

Gorillas (stable hierarchy):
- alpha male has high testosterone and low cortisol levels
- often just use of intimidation (instead of fights)
Baboons (unstable hierarchy):
- Alpha male has also high testosterone, BUT also high cortisol levels
- repeatedly change of hierarchy using physical aggression
=> normally: the higher the status, the higher the testosterone level and the lower the cortisol level

Question 21

What showed Rijnders et al. (2022) in psychopaths with a high score on facet 4 of the PCL-R?

Answer 21

It was found that psychopaths with a high score in facet 4 (antisocial behavior/criminal behavior) have a high level of testosterone.

Question 22

How does somebody become a psychopath?

Answer 22

Psychopathy is often mainly caused by experiences of childhood abuse, as this is leading to lack of control, lack of bonding, and severe stress, and thus, in total to no experience of empathy.
Consequences:
- depleted and inflexible stress system:
-> severe stress in childhood leads to elevated levels of cortisol (also related to reduced volumes of amygdala and hippocampus later in life)
-> stress system can’t go back to homeostasis
Pathology of power:
-> associated with loss of control in childhood (due to abuse)
-> constant aim is to regain power
- reduced development of empathy
+
goal-directed mindset (without fear, empathy, morals)
=> all linked to reduced amygdala reactivity (No adjustment of goal-directed behavior by (own) fear and distress of others)

Question 23

What are the 3 most dominant aspects in a psychopath ?

Answer 23

Goal-directed (he wants to experience a specific feeling), ‘non’-moral (everybody does it), lack of empathy

Question 24

Why is it not possible to just look on an fMRI image to say that “their morals are wrong” do diagnose psychopaths?

Answer 24

Morals are completely context-specific. Thus, it is more about the underlying mechanisms why a psychopath is not able to adjust to “our” norms

Question 25

What is the trolley dilemma?

Answer 25

○ an Impersonal dilemma (Not directly involved with the person you sacrifice)
○ Train/trolley on rails
○ If it drives further a group of people will die who are on the rails
○ The railway of the train can be changed to a rail where only one person will die
○ You have the power to decide whether the group or the one person is killed
○ Average Results:
- 70% decide utilitarian -> yes, i will flip the switch and save the group to the expense of one person
- 30% decide deontological -> no, i dont want the responsibility to kill this one person on purpose

Question 26

What is the footbridge dilemma?

Question 27

What are the consequences of damage of the basolateral amygdala (BLA)?

Answer 27

• more deontological (action-based) decisions
• especially on the more emotional ones (with sacrifice)
  => Centro-medio amygdala can freely influence the decision-making system according to the action-based path
  => BLA serves outcome-based utilitarian decisions
  => CMA serves action-based deontological decisions

Question 28

Is the outcome-based or action-based motivation reduced in psychopaths?

Answer 28

the action-based motivation (deontological decision) is reduced (CMA)

Question 29

What issues with fear does a psychopath has?