Psychopathy: Brief Overview of Its Behavioral, Experimental, and

Neural Aspects

By Oleg Nekrassovski

Introduction

Psychopathy is characterized by a pervasive pattern of behavioral (e.g.,

impulsivity), affective (e.g., lack of empathy), and interpersonal (e.g., manipulation)

features. It is considered to be one of the most destructive personalities, showing robust

correlations with aggression, criminality, and recidivism (Gordts, Uzieblo, Neumann,

Van den Bussche, & Rossi, 2015). But, despite their criminal and violent reputation,

many psychopaths avoid violent and criminal behavior and instead favor working in

leadership positions in legal organizations. These corporate psychopaths are often

viewed as sinister masterminds dangerous to organizations (Babiak & Hare, 2006).

However, some authors argue that corporate psychopaths have many positive

leadership qualities (Lilienfeld et al., 2012). Hence, the present paper will first seek to

provide an overview of the experimental and the hypothesized neural bases of

psychopathy that seek to explain its harmful manifestations. Next, the paper will attempt

to provide an overview of the hypothesized differences between criminal and non-

criminal psychopaths.

Experimental and Neural Bases of Psychopathy

The field of psychopathy is dominated by two theoretical camps. One of these

camps consists of emotion-focused models (Hamilton, Hiatt Racer, & Newman, 2015),

which propose that the behavior of psychopathic individuals is a product of a core fear

deficit which prevents psychopaths from appreciating the consequences of their actions

and choices (Baskin-Sommers, Curtin, & Newman, 2013). Arguably the strongest and

the most frequently cited evidence for this comes from studies that use the picture-

viewing paradigm to assess emotion-modulated startle (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2013).

These studies show that while non-psychopathic individuals display enhanced eye blink

startle response to sudden noise from concurrent viewing of unpleasant pictures;

psychopathic individuals show a lack of such eye blink startle response enhancement

from the viewing of unpleasant pictures (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2013). This is usually

interpreted as evidence of psychopaths having a fundamental deficit in the reactivity of

their defense system (i.e., a fear deficit). As a result, in the experimental context,

psychopaths do not react to threatening/unpleasant images and, by extension, are

insensitive to the emotions of others, creating a callous and aggressive interpersonal

style (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2013).

One specific emotion-focused model of psychopathy sees a dysfunction in the

amygdala (a sub-section of the ‘primitive’ part of the human brain) being responsible for

the development of psychopathy. This is because amygdala is essential for the

development of associations between environmental cues and emotional states, and

the activation of basic threat circuits (Anderson & Kiehl, 2012). More recently this model

has been expanded to include the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (an ‘advanced’ brain

structure found only in mammalian brains). In this new formulation, amygdala enables

the development of empathy, and, together with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex,

enables empathy to inform moral decision making (Anderson & Kiehl, 2012).

The second theoretical camp, regarding the nature of psychopathy, consists of

attention-focused models of psychopathy, which, in many ways, contradict the emotion-

focused models of the first camp, described above (Hamilton et al., 2015). In particular,

this group of models views psychopathy as stemming from information processing

deficits (Hamilton et al., 2015), and points to the fact that psychopaths are impaired in

their ability to reallocate attention away from the goal-relevant task toward important

stimuli (e.g., threat cues) which are irrelevant to their current task (Larson et al., 2013).

This attentional deficit is believed to undermine psychopaths’ ability to effectively

regulate their behavior by considering alternative, adaptive responses to situations

(Hamilton et al., 2015).

At the same time, the attention-focused models, undermine their emotion-

focused counterparts, described earlier, by pointing to the fact that even though

psychopaths show poor passive avoidance and weak electrodermal responses to

punishment cues when focused on a specific goal; this difference from non-

psychopathic individuals disappears whenever threat avoidance becomes the primary

focus of their attention (Larson et al., 2013). Similarly, psychopaths show normal fear-

enhanced startle response whenever they are specifically focused on the threat cues;

but the same threat cues produce much smaller startle responses in psychopaths than

non-psychopaths whenever psychopaths’ attention is already focused on another

stimulus or task (Larson et al., 2013).

Hamilton et al. (2015) point out that both emotion- and attention-focused models

of psychopathy have their strengths. Hence, it is not surprising that Hamilton et al.

(2015) were not the first ones to attempt uniting these two groups of models. In fact, the

first model, to unite the emotion- and attention-focused models of psychopathy, into a

single framework, was the differential amygdala activation model (DAAM) (Hamilton et

al., 2015). The DAAM proposes that in psychopathy the central amygdala is at normal,

or above-normal, levels of activation, while the basolateral amygdala is underactive.

This hypothesized imbalance of the two amygdala regions leads, according to the

DAAM, to the deficits in the conditioned fear response, fear recognition, and stimulus-

reinforcement tasks, by altering the normal function of associative learning processes

and attentional processes (Moul, Killcross, & Dadds, 2012).

Differences between Criminal and Non-Criminal Psychopaths

Psychopathic individuals don’t necessarily become criminals. However, they are

thought to be at a greater risk for various behavioral deviancies (Heinzen et al., 2011).

The forms these deviancies take on seem to depend on how the psychopathic traits are

expressed in the individual. For example, interpersonal and affective features of

psychopathy— lack of empathy, callousness, manipulation, and superficial charm —

have often been found, in earlier studies, to be associated with instrumental and

planned violence (Heinzen et al., 2011). Similarly, Mahmut, Homewood, and Stevenson

(2007) believe that criminal and non-criminal psychopaths share similar

neuropsychological and psychophysiological characteristics and hence are not

qualitatively distinct populations. In fact, the two groups most likely differ in terms of

degree: specifically, in the manifestation of the interpersonal-affective features of

psychopathy and the extent to which they engage in antisocial behaviors (Mahmut et

al., 2007).

In addition, the dual-process model of psychopathy suggests that the antisocial

and personality features of psychopathy have separate causes and are independent;

such that non-criminal psychopaths have highly developed personality features of

psychopathy and relatively reduced antisocial features, while criminal psychopaths have

both of these features developed to a high degree (Mahmut et al., 2007). This is

supported by data which suggests that in comparison to criminal psychopaths, non-

criminal psychopaths possess lower levels of certain psychopathic traits, but the same

or higher levels of others psychopathic traits (Lilienfeld, Watts, and Smith, 2015).

Wall, Sellbom, and Goodwin, (2013) note that a number of previous studies of

psychopathy suggest the possibility of intelligence being at least partly responsible for

different manifestations of criminal and non-criminal psychopaths. For example, an early

(1977) study, noted by them, found that a sample of non-incarcerated psychopaths was

of higher intelligence than their incarcerated counterparts, but ultimately differed from

the psychopathic inmates not in the number of arrests but in the number of convictions;

suggesting merely a better ability to avoid convictions rather than antisocial behavior

per se (Wall et al., 2013). While a more recent study (2001), noted by them, found that

non-criminal psychopaths displayed better executive function, which allows better

problem solving and organization, than either criminal psychopaths or non-psychopaths

(Wall et al., 2013). However, the main findings of Wall et al.’s (2013) study were that

people with highly developed psychopathic traits (especially the Fearless Dominance

feature of psychopathy) and higher intelligence (especially verbal intelligence) are less

likely to engage in criminal activities, compared to psychopaths with low intelligence.

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