Emotionless in Edmonton

Psychopathic Traits and Emotion Detection

Abstract

Past research has found that psychopathic traits are negatively related to the perception and recognition of emotion in others; however, some studies have noted an enhanced ability to detect negative emotions. In line with this, scholars have argued that psychopaths may be able to experience emotion to some degree if they evidence traits associated with emotional intelligence (EI) or anxiety, thus allowing them to possibly identify emotions they are most familiar with. While general emotion recognition has been evaluated in relation to psychopathy, few studies have examined how these variables influence the detection of real or feigned negative emotion. The present research was designed to evaluate psychopathic traits, EI, and anxiety in relation to an emotion veracity task focused on negative emotions. Participants (N = 686) completed self-report assessments of personality variables, followed by exposure to facial emotion sets that varied according to veracity (genuine/feigned) and emotion type (fear/sadness/anger/disgust). Overall, participants were more accurate at detecting feigned emotions relative to genuine expressions. Accuracy was highest for feigned sadness (74.53%) and lowest for genuine anger (35.23%). Psychopathic traits interacted with both veracity and emotion type. Those high in psychopathic traits were more accurate at identifying fake faces and more impaired at identifying real faces relative to other trait levels. Psychopathic traits were negatively related to EI but unrelated to anxiety. Higher EI scores were associated with lower accuracy, especially for anger and fear. These results are discussed in relation to emotional intensity, familiarity, affective mimicry, and attentional narrowing.

Discipline: Psychology (Honours)

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kristine Peace