title: Diminished cooperativeness of psychopaths in a prisoner's dilemma game yields higher rewards.
abstract: Maladaptive social behavior is one of the defining characteristics of psychopathic personality disorder. Nevertheless, maladaptive social behavior has only rarely been observed among psychopaths in experimentally controlled situations. The authors assessed the behavior of criminal psychopaths from high-security psychiatric hospitals in a computer simulation of a social dilemma situation. The psychopaths showed a markedly higher proneness to competitive (i.e., noncooperative) behavior than did healthy adults from the general population. The odds ratio between defection and being a psychopath was estimated at 7.86 in the sample. The probability to choose selfish instead of cooperative behavior was significantly linked to the following subscales of the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised (S. O. Lilienfeld & M. R. Widows, 2005): rebellious nonconformity, Machiavellian egocentricity, and the total score. On average, the psychopathic participants accumulated higher gain and more strongly exploited their counterpart than did the healthy participants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany. andreas.mokros@medbo.de
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mokros
authors.forename: Birgit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Menner
authors.forename: Hedwig
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Eisenbarth
authors.forename: Georg W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Alpers
authors.forename: Klaus W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Lange
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Osterheider
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D003134:Commitment of Persons with Psychiatric Disorders; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003617:Dangerous Behavior; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005716:Game Theory; D006801:Humans; D007298:Insanity Defense; D008257:Machiavellianism; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010552:Personality Assessment; D012201:Reward; D012637:Security Measures; D012925:Social Conformity