Citation

Louise von Borries AK, Volman I, de Bruijn ER, Bulten BH, Verkes RJ, Roelofs K. Psychiatry Res. 2012; 200(2-3): 761-766.

Affiliation

UMC Sint Radboud, Department of Psychiatry, Huispost 966, Postbus 9101 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Pompestichting, Postbus 31435, 6503 CK Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Radboud University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Kapittelweg 29, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.psychres.2012.06.026

PMID

22819277

Abstract

Psychopathy (PP) is associated with marked abnormalities in social emotional behaviour, such as high instrumental aggression (IA). A crucial but largely ignored question is whether automatic social approach-avoidance tendencies may underlie this condition. We tested whether offenders with PP show lack of automatic avoidance tendencies, usually activated when (healthy) individuals are confronted with social threat stimuli (angry faces). We applied a computerized approach-avoidance task (AAT), where participants pushed or pulled pictures of emotional faces using a joystick, upon which the faces decreased or increased in size, respectively. Furthermore, participants completed an emotion recognition task which was used to control for differences in recognition of facial emotions. In contrast to healthy controls (HC), PP patients showed total absence of avoidance tendencies towards angry faces. Interestingly, those responses were related to levels of instrumental aggression and the (in)ability to experience personal distress (PD). These findings suggest that social performance in psychopaths is disturbed on a basic level of automatic action tendencies. The lack of implicit threat avoidance tendencies may underlie their aggressive behaviour.

Language: en