Emotion expression abilities and psychopathy.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Forensic Psychology

Background:

• Facial emotion expression is a key socioemotional skill, yet research often overlooks productive abilities.
• Psychopathy is associated with deception, but the underlying emotion expression skills are under-researched.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate individual differences in the ability to pose nonfelt emotions facially.
• To examine the relationship between psychopathy, general mental ability, and interpersonal abilities in emotion expression.

Main Methods:

• Observational techniques were used to assess facial emotion expression in 316 adult men across a psychopathy spectrum.
• Participants posed six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) via written cues or imitation.
• Structural equation modeling analyzed the links between emotion expression, general mental ability, interpersonal skills, and psychopathy.

Main Results:

• Psychopathy showed a moderate association with poorer nonfelt emotion expression ability.
• Individuals with higher psychopathy exhibited deficits in imitating facial expressions and posing emotions.
• General mental ability deficits largely accounted for the observed emotion expression impairments in psychopathy.

Conclusions:

• The findings challenge the notion that high psychopathy confers superior cognitive skills for deception or manipulation.
• Poorer emotion expression ability in psychopathy appears linked to general cognitive deficits rather than specific social-cognitive impairments.