Attention moderates the fearlessness of psychopathic offenders.
BACKGROUND
Psychopathic behavior is generally attributed to a fundamental, amygdala-mediated deficit in fearlessness that undermines social conformity. An alternative view is that psychopathy involves an attention-related deficit that undermines the processing of peripheral information, including fear stimuli.


METHODS
We evaluated these alternative hypotheses by measuring fear-potentiated startle (FPS) in a group of 125 prisoners under experimental conditions that 1) focused attention directly on fear-relevant information or 2) established an alternative attentional focus. Psychopathy was assessed using Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R).


RESULTS
Psychopathic individuals displayed normal FPS under threat-focused conditions but manifested a significant deficit in FPS under alternative-focus conditions. Moreover, these findings were essentially unchanged when analyses employed the interpersonal/affective factor of the PCL-R instead of PCL-R total scores.


CONCLUSIONS
The results provide unprecedented evidence that higher-order cognitive processes moderate the fear deficits of psychopathic individuals. These findings suggest that psychopaths' diminished reactivity to fear stimuli, and emotion-related cues more generally, reflect idiosyncrasies in attention that limit their processing of peripheral information. Although psychopathic individuals are commonly described as cold-blooded predators who are unmotivated to change, the attentional dysfunction identified in this study supports an alternative interpretation of their chronic disinhibition and insensitive interpersonal style.
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
Joseph P
JP
Newman
John J
JJ
Curtin
Jeremy D
JD
Bertsch
Arielle R
AR
Baskin-Sommers
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D057237:Criminals / Q000523:psychology*; D004597:Electroshock / Q000009:adverse effects; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013216:Reflex, Startle / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult