Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much: Psychopathic Traits, Externalizing Dimensions, and Interpersonal Proximity

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Forensic Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Psychopathy is characterized by altered affiliation and threat sensitivity, which are difficult to differentiate behaviorally.
• Understanding these socioemotional processing differences is crucial for psychopathy research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the behavioral manifestations of affiliation and threat sensitivity in psychopathy using an interpersonal distance task.
• To examine the relationship between psychopathic traits and interpersonal proximity preferences.

Main Methods:

• A preregistered study with two independent samples (N=175, N=173) utilized clinical-forensic and transdiagnostic measures of psychopathy.
• An adapted interpersonal distance task required participants to indicate preferred proximity to targets varying in affiliation and threat.
• Participants also described targets in their own words.

Main Results:

• Participants generally preferred closer proximity to affiliative targets compared to threatening targets.
• Psychopathic traits did not significantly predict interpersonal proximity preferences.
• Higher levels of psychopathic traits (Factor 2; antagonism) correlated with response inconsistency, indicating potential task disengagement.
• Exploratory analysis suggested a hostile attribution bias in individuals high in antagonism, but this did not correlate with task behavior.

Conclusions:

• The interpersonal distance task, as adapted, did not effectively differentiate socioemotional processing in psychopathy.
• Current findings suggest a need for more engaging and ecologically valid methods to assess affiliation and threat processing in psychopathy.