Emotion deficits and experience Flashcards
Kirsch and Becker (2007) emotional deficits in psychopathy and sexual sadism: implications for violent behaviour
Affective deficits might mediate instrumental violence via a lack of victim empathy
Factor 1 was associated with greater deficits in processing emotional words and vocal affect, decreased physiological response to aversive stimuli (pictures of crime scenes, ), deficits in recognising sad and fearful expressions, and reduced fear reactivity to emotional cues (startle reflex, post-auricular reflex - less subject to controlled attentional processes)
Use to describe ‘core’ feature - lack of emotions
Response of a psychopath when asked to identify the emotion on a fearful face… (Ronson 11)
“he didn’t know what the emotion was, but it was the face people pulled just before he killed them”
Willemsen (2012) PTS symptoms and psychopathy
The affective features of psychopathy are negatively associated with PTS because they protect from the impact of traumatic exposure. Supports Lykkens low fear hypothesis… trauma that would cause a disorder in a normal person would have little effect on an emotionally deficient psychopath. Hare, in an interview with Ronson expressed that a psychopath would cry if his dog died, or if someone scratched his expensive car, but would show little reaction to the death of a sibling or parent
De Belliss (2003)
Traumatic events during critical development, intense anxiety and chronic stress directly effect the maturation of cerebral structures (amygdala, hippocampus, PFC) which are associated with emotional processing
