Citation

Waller R, McCabe HK, Dotterer HL, Neumann CS, Hyde LW. J. Personal. Disord. 2018; 32(4): 543-561.

Affiliation

Institute for Social Research, and the Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Guilford Publications)

DOI

10.1521/pedi_2017_31_314

PMID

28902572

Abstract

Psychopathy is defined by affective and interpersonal deficits, deviant lifestyle, and antisocial behaviors. Poor recognition of emotions and childhood maltreatment are two risk factors implicated in psychopathy. The current study examined whether childhood maltreatment and complex emotion recognition deficits showed unique and interactive associations with psychopathic traits among 261 undergraduate students.

RESULTS indicate that maltreatment was related to higher general psychopathy scores within a bifactor model comprising a general psychopathy factor and four specific factors tapping underlying dimensions of psychopathy (i.e., affective, interpersonal, lifestyle, and antisocial). A significant interaction emerged whereby maltreatment was related to higher antisocial factor scores among individuals showing poor recognition of positive emotions. In an intriguing interaction, more maltreatment was related to lower interpersonal factor scores among individuals with low/mean levels of neutral emotion recognition. The interaction of positive emotion recognition deficits and maltreatment highlights a potential intervention target among antisocial individuals who have experienced maltreatment.

Language: en