Which specific dimensions of these constructs are associated with

In chapters 2 and 3 of this thesis, we described two behavioural studies where we employed several paradigms concurrently to investigate how variability in distinct components of empathy and morality are associated with variability in levels of psychopathic traits in the general population. Overall, our findings indicate that in the general population, individual differences in psychopathic traits are associated with variability in empathic responses to emotional facial expressions and emotional-eliciting stories; propensity to feel moral emotions such as empathic concern and guilt; and difficulty to make decisions in moral dilemmas.

155 Surprisingly, and contrary to previous studies reporting that psychopathic traits are associated with difficulties in recognising sad and fearful facial affect (Blair et al., 2004; Montagne et al., 2005), we found no significant associations between these traits and sensitivity to recognise emotional facial expressions. Previous research with a community sample has reported similar negative results (Del Gaizo & Falkenbach, 2008). It is possible that the measures used in ours and in previous studies to measure emotional recognition ability are not sensitive enough to capture what is possibly subtle variation in emotional recognition abilities in the general population. However, it is also possible that impairments in emotional recognition are present only in extreme cohorts of psychopathy, which would explain the lack of consistent findings in studies using community samples. Our results also indicate that variation in emotion recognition sensitivity is not consistently associated with other measures of affective empathy. This could again be due to lack of sensitivity of the measure used, but could also indicate that emotional recognition is a distinct process from affective empathy and, therefore, that caution should be used when using affect recognition as a proxy of affective empathy.

Our findings did however indicate a clear negative association between levels of psychopathic traits and variability in affective empathy, i.e. in experiencing an affective or sensory state that is similar to that of another person, but where one is aware that the source of the state is the other person. This association was patent in the results from the Affective Empathy scale of the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE; Reniers et al., 2011), and was further corroborated and specified by the results from the affective empathy tasks where participants indicated their feelings using the Self-Assessment

156 were associated with less negative empathic responses to both observed and imagined displays of fear, sadness and happiness. These results are in line with and extend previous results from Ali et al (2009) where they found that psychopathic traits were associated with empathic response to fearful faces using the same methodology.

Appropriate affective empathic response to others’ emotions is considered to be necessary for the normal development of moral emotions (i.e. emotions that are linked to the interests or welfare of the society or of persons other than the judge or agent) such as guilt and empathic concern (i.e. compassion). In fact, our results show that high levels of psychopathic traits were not only associated with diminished affective response to others’ emotions, but also with diminished propensity to feel moral emotions. Higher levels of psychopathic traits were characterized by reduced ability to feel other-oriented moral emotions, as demonstrated by its negative associations with the Empathic Concern scale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980), and with compassion and guilt ratings on the Moral Emotions task. These moral emotions are thought to function as ‘moral barometers’, motivating prosocial and inhibiting antisocial behaviours. Impairments in processing such emotions might thus underlie a possible emotional disengagement in moral judgement and decision-making in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits which is translated into their (immoral) behaviour.

Finally, our studies did not indicate a clear association between levels of

psychopathic traits and response to moral dilemmas. In the study described in chapter 2 we found no such association, whilst in the study described in chapter 3 we found that

psychopathic traits were indeed negatively associated with higher endorsement of direct harm to a single victim in order to save the lives of many. The nature of this difference in

157 results could lie in the characteristics of the samples (which will be discussed further in a following section), but could also be a reflection of other studies in the field which indicate that it is yet unclear whether psychopathic traits are associated with a different pattern of responses to these dilemmas or not. While two other studies using these dilemmas so far have reported negative findings (Cima et al., 2010; Glenn, Raine, Schug, et al., 2009), one study has reported higher utilitarian responses in personal dilemmas in a group of low- anxious psychopaths in comparison to controls (Koenigs et al., 2011). In spite of this inconsistent finding, our results show a clear link between higher levels of psychopathic traits and less difficulty in making decisions on these moral dilemmas. Taken together with the findings described in the previous paragraph, these results suggest that psychopathic traits might indeed be associated with some level of emotional disengagement when making moral decisions.

6.2.2. Are behavioural correlates of empathy and morality in psychopathic traits