title: Psychopaths lack the automatic avoidance of social threat: relation to instrumental aggression.
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.
authors: UMC Sint Radboud, Department of Psychiatry, Huispost 966, Postbus 9101 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands. k.v.borries@pompestichting.nl
authors: Anna Katinka
authors: AK
authors: Louise von Borries
authors: Inge
authors: I
authors: Volman
authors: Ellen Rosalia Aloïs
authors: ER
authors: de Bruijn
authors: Berend Hendrik
authors: BH
authors: Bulten
authors: Robbert Jan
authors: RJ
authors: Verkes
authors: Karin
authors: K
authors: Roelofs
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D057237:Criminals / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012938:Social Perception