One usually presents a lack of empathy towards others, lack of remorse, lack of guilt or failure to take responsibility for their actions, inclination towards violence, as well as a manifest contempt for laws and social conventions. They are also usually people skilled at deceiving and manipulating. As a personality disorder, psychopathy is defined by persistent antisocial behavior that is often hostile, deviant, and apathetic. According to research, these individuals present a reduced response, of lower intensity, in situations that provoke fear, being able to remain calm when they occur (Benning et al., 2005). There is ample evidence to suggest that . Now, new research found a relationship between psychopathic traits and poor emotional regulation in both a community sample and a sample of violent criminals (Garofalo et al., 2020).
Garófalo and his colleagues hypothesized that difficulties in emotional regulation (ability to monitor and control emotions) could be involved in the expression of psychopathy. They explain that if psychopathy does not fundamentally imply an absence of emotions, it is possible that alterations in emotional regulation are linked to the expression of psychopathic traits.
Methodology
To investigate the issue, they recruited two non-clinical North American samples, with a total of 1,217 respondents. A third non-clinical sample of 559 people living in Italy was also recruited from the general public. Finally, they recruited a sample of 164 male violent crime offenders from seven Italian prisons.
All participants completed a measure of emotion regulation and psychopathic traits. The two Italian samples were also assessed for Machiavellianism (characterized by cold, manipulative behavior) and narcissism (characterized by an inflated sense of self and an excessive need for attention).
Results
Structural equation modeling revealed a significant correlation between psychopathy and emotion regulation. Specifically, subjects high in psychopathy traits were more likely to show emotional dysregulation. This was true in all samples and was stronger in male offenders.
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Furthermore, for the two samples from Italy, the researchers found that psychopathy continued to predict emotion regulation (as measured by the Difficulties in Regulating Emotions Scale (EDRE)) even after taking into account the other two traits of the triad. dark
In both samples examined, narcissism was significantly and positively related to higher EDRE scores, while the relationships between Machiavellianism and EDRE latent variables were not significant in both samples.
The researchers note that such a finding is compelling evidence (and supportive of previous findings (Harenski & Kiehl, 2010)) that psychopathy is uniquely related to greater emotional dysregulation, beyond any shared variance among the other poor traits. adaptation.
Limitations
This was a cross-sectional study and as such does not allow us to infer the direction of the relationship between psychopathy and emotional dysregulation. Still, the findings suggest interesting directions for future research, including exploring the possibility that emotion regulation may mediate the link between psychopathy and violent behavior.
Bibliographic reference:
- Benning, S.D., Patrick, C.J., & Iacono, W.G. (2005). Psychopathy, startle blink modulation, and electrodermal reactivity in twin men. Psychophysiology, 42(6), 753-762. https://doi.org/
- Garofalo, C., Neumann, C.S., Kosson, D.S., & Velotti, P. (2020). Psychopathy and emotion dysregulation: More than meets the eye. Psychiatry Research, 290, 113160. https://doi.org/
- Harenski, C.L., & Kiehl, K.A. (2010). Reactive aggression in psychopathy and the role of frustration: Susceptibility, experience, and control. In British Journal of Psychology (Vol. 101, Issue 3, pp. 401-406). https://doi.org/
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