Unfair offers, unfair offenders? Fairness considerations in incarcerated individuals with and without psychopathy

Contains fulltext : 116754.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Offenders with psychopathy have often committed crimes violating social norms, which may suggest a biased moral reasoning in psychopathy. Yet, as findings on utilitarian decisions remain conflicting, the current study investigated different aspects of fairness considerations in offenders with psychopathy, offenders without psychopathy and healthy individuals (N = 18/14/18, respectively). Unfair offers in a modified Ultimatum Game (UG) were paired with different unselected alternatives, thereby establishing the context of a proposal, and made under opposing intentionality constraints (intentional vs. unintentional). As in previous studies, unfair offers were most often rejected when the alternative was fair and when the offer was made intentionally. Importantly, however, offenders with psychopathy demonstrated a similar rejection pattern to that of healthy individuals, i.e., taking the unselected alternative into account. In contrast, delinquents without psychopathy did not adjust their decision behavior to the alternatives to an offer, suggesting stronger impairments in social decision-making. Crucially, the mechanisms and processes underlying rejection decisions might differ, particularly with regard to cognitive vs. emotional competencies. While preserved cognitive perspective-taking could drive seemingly intact decision patterns in psychopathy, emotional empathy is likely to be compromised.7 p

Psychopathy-related traits and the use of reward and social information: A computational approach

Contains fulltext : 121151.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Psychopathy is often linked to disturbed reinforcement-guided adaptation of behavior in both clinical and non-clinical populations. Recent work suggests that these disturbances might be due to a deficit in actively using information to guide changes in behavior. However, how much information is actually used to guide behavior is difficult to observe directly. Therefore, we used a computational model to estimate the use of information during learning. Thirty-six female subjects were recruited based on their total scores on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI), a self-report psychopathy list, and performed a task involving simultaneous learning of reward-based and social information. A Bayesian reinforcement-learning model was used to parameterize the use of each source of information during learning. Subsequently, we used the subscales of the PPI to assess psychopathy-related traits, and the traits that were strongly related to the model's parameters were isolated through a formal variable selection procedure. Finally, we assessed how these covaried with model parameters. We succeeded in isolating key personality traits believed to be relevant for psychopathy that can be related to model-based descriptions of subject behavior. Use of reward-history information was negatively related to levels of trait anxiety and fearlessness, whereas use of social advice decreased as the perceived ability to manipulate others and lack of anxiety increased. These results corroborate previous findings suggesting that sub-optimal use of different types of information might be implicated in psychopathy. They also further highlight the importance of considering the potential of computational modeling to understand the role of latent variables, such as the weight people give to various sources of information during goal-directed behavior, when conducting research on psychopathy-related traits and in the field of forensic psychiatry.11 p

Group characteristics for the psychopathic, non-psychopathic and the control group.

<p>Group means are reported with their standard deviation between brackets. Significant Group differences are flagged.</p

Behavioural results for the psychopathic, non-psychopathic and the control group.

<p>Group means are reported with their standard deviation between brackets. Reaction times are reported in msec and accuracy measures in counts. Significant group differences are flagged.</p

Average peak amplitudes for novels and targets at FCz and Pz for the psychopathic, non-psychopathic and control group, respectively.

<p>Average peak amplitudes for novels and targets at FCz and Pz for the psychopathic, non-psychopathic and control group, respectively.</p

Grand average stimulus-locked waveforms for the P3a at FCz and the P3b at Pz for each group separately.

<p>Grand average stimulus-locked waveforms for the P3a at FCz and the P3b at Pz for each group separately.</p