title: Deficient fear conditioning and self-reported psychopathy: the role of fearless dominance.
abstract: The role of the two dimensions of psychopathy-dispositional fearlessness (theorized to reflect variations in reactivity of the brain's defensive system) and externalizing proneness (presumed to reflect variations in function of anterior regulatory systems)-in fear learning was examined in a sample of undergraduates assessed using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) who participated in a differential aversive conditioning task. Only scores on self-reported "fearless dominance," irrespective of scores on "impulsive antisociality," were related to diminished acquisition of physiological fear. Consistent with dual-process accounts of psychopathy proposing divergent etiological pathways for the interpersonal/affective and the social deviance features of the disorder, our results lend support to the existence of a deficit in reactivity of the brain's defensive system underlying the fearlessness dimension of psychopathy.
authors.affiliation: Affective Neuroscience Lab, Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology, Psychobiology, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain.
authors.forename: Raúl
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: López
authors.forename: Rosario
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Poy
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Patrick
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Moltó
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D001143:Arousal; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007175:Impulsive Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012930:Social Dominance