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Abnormal processing of affective words by psychopaths.

S Williamson1, T J Harpur, R D Hare

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Psychophysiology
|May 1, 1991
PubMed
Summary

Psychopaths show abnormal processing of emotional words, unlike nonpsychopaths. This suggests individuals with psychopathy extract less information from affective language, impacting their behavior.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Psychology
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by antisocial behavior and emotional deficits.
  • Previous research suggests impaired processing of emotional stimuli in psychopathy.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the hypothesis that psychopathy is linked to abnormal processing of affective verbal material.
  • To examine behavioral and neural responses to emotional words in criminal psychopaths versus nonpsychopaths.

Main Methods:

  • Participants: Criminal psychopaths and nonpsychopaths, assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist.
  • Task: Lexical decision task (word recognition) measuring reaction time and event-related potentials (ERPs).
  • Stimuli: Affective words, neutral words, and nonwords.

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Main Results:

  • Nonpsychopaths exhibited faster reaction times and larger ERP amplitudes for affective words compared to neutral words.
  • Psychopaths did not show significant differences in reaction time or ERPs between affective and neutral words.
  • This indicates reduced behavioral and neural differentiation to emotional language in psychopaths.

Conclusions:

  • Psychopaths appear to extract less information from affective words than nonpsychopaths.
  • These findings may offer insights into the behavioral characteristics associated with psychopathy.
  • Abnormal processing of emotional language could contribute to deficits in social cognition and empathy in psychopathy.