title: The Mask of Sanity: Facial Expressive, Self-Reported, and Physiological Consequences of Emotion Regulation in Psychopathic Offenders.
abstract: This study investigated the physiological, self-reported, and facial correlates of emotion regulation in psychopathy. Specifically, we compared psychopathic offenders (n = 42), nonpsychopathic offenders (n = 42), and nonoffender controls (n = 26) in their ability to inhibit and express emotion while watching affective films (fear, happy, and sad). Results showed that all participants were capable of drastically diminishing facial emotions under inhibition instructions. Contrary to expectation, psychopaths were not superior in adopting such a "poker face." Further, the inhibition of emotion was associated with cardiovascular changes, an effect that was also not dependent on psychopathy (or its factors), suggesting emotion inhibition to be an effortful process in psychopaths as well. Interestingly, psychopathic offenders did not differ from nonpsychopaths in the capacity to show content-appropriate facial emotions during the expression condition. Taken together, these data challenge the view that psychopathy is associated with either superior emotional inhibitory capacities or a generalized impairment in showing facial affect.
authors: Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, the Netherlands.|Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors: Lieke
authors: L
authors: Nentjes
authors: Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, the Netherlands.|Forensic Psychiatric Center "de Rooyse Wissel," the Netherlands.
authors: David P
authors: DP
authors: Bernstein
authors: Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, the Netherlands.
authors: Ewout
authors: E
authors: Meijer
authors: Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam. the Netherlands.
authors: Arnoud
authors: A
authors: Arntz
authors: Addiction, Development and Psychopathology (ADAPT)-Lab, Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
authors: Reinout W
authors: RW
authors: Wiers
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D000368:Aged; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D057237:Criminals / Q000523:psychology*; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008397:Masks; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D057566:Self Report; D055815:Young Adult