Assessing Genuine and Posed Facial Expressions and Response Inhibition in Psychopathy

Abstract

Trait psychopathy can be characterized by several features, including manipulativeness, low empathy, and impulsivity. Traditionally, psychopathy has been assessed on two dimensions, clustered around callous/unemotional (Factor 1) and emotionally reactive (Factor 2) traits. There is a dearth of research concerning psychopathy traits in community populations in relation to face processing, including the ability to distinguish genuine emotional faces, and attention to emotional faces. The present study measured psychopathy traits in a sample of undergraduate students at Cape Breton University between the ages of 18-25 years. The first aim was to evaluate the influence of psychopathy traits on the ability to identify genuine/posed facial expressions. Preliminary results indicate that anger authenticity is more challenging to classify than fear (t(13) = 3.21, p < .006), though the genuineness accuracy of these emotions did not yield significant results. The second aim was to evaluate the influence of these traits on response inhibition both at the behavioural and neural levels using emotional Go/No-Go face tasks. Factor 1 was related to reaction times in angry (r = -.688, p = .007) and fearful (r = -.598, p = .024) conditions, but not in the non-emotional condition. A psychopathy subscale, cognitive responsiveness, was also correlated with commission errors to angry No-Go faces (r = -.603, p = .022). The current behavioural findings, paired with the pending neural results, have implications for understanding psychopathic traits and social cognition, as well as the potential mechanisms involved in the development and maintenance of psychopathy traits.