title: Empathic competencies in violent offenders.
abstract: Violent offending has often been associated with a lack of empathy, but experimental investigations are rare. The present study aimed at clarifying whether violent offenders show a general empathy deficit or specific deficits regarding the separate subcomponents. To this end, we assessed three core components of empathy (emotion recognition, perspective taking, affective responsiveness) as well as skin conductance response (SCR) in a sample of 30 male violent offenders and 30 healthy male controls. Data analysis revealed reduced accuracy in violent offenders compared to healthy controls only in emotion recognition, and that a high number of violent assaults was associated with decreased accuracy in perspective taking for angry scenes. SCR data showed reduced physiological responses in the offender group specifically for fear and disgust stimuli during emotion recognition and perspective taking. In addition, higher psychopathy scores in the violent offender group were associated with reduced accuracy in affective responsiveness. This is the first study to show that mainly emotion recognition is deficient in violent offenders whereas the other components of empathy are rather unaffected. This divergent impact of violent offending on the subcomponents of empathy suggests that all three empathy components can be targeted by therapeutic interventions separately.
authors.affiliation: Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit, Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Electronic address: eva-maria.seidel@univie.ac.at.
authors.forename: Eva-Maria
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Seidel
authors.forename: Daniela Melitta
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Pfabigan
authors.forename: Katinka
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Keckeis
authors.forename: Anna Maria
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Wucherer
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jahn
authors.forename: Claus
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lamm
authors.forename: Birgit
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Derntl
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression; D000786:Anger; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D057237:Criminals / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D005239:Fear; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Affect; Criminals; Skin conductance; Social; Violence
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