The Psychopathic Personality in a Social Situation

INTRODUCTION

The “psychopathic personality” is the subject of much research, debate, and even concern, for it is neither any symptom of psychosis nor any obvious sign of mental retardation which characterizes this disorder, but rather, a striking incapacitation of emotional responsiveness. The problem, then, stems from an obvious lack of all that which we as human beings consider to be imperative to proper social functioning; for the psychopath, there is a clear inhibition of emotional development which impairs the individual’s instinctual drive to adjust to the moral demands of society. Hence, the term “antisocial” is born. Due to this lag in emotional development possibly brought about by problems in the early life of the individual, pro-social tendencies are compromised and in their stead arise deviations and perverse personality traits deemed destructive and highly inappropriate, leading to behavior that many people who observe the transgressions of those psychopathic individuals as “shameless” and even “remorseless” in nature. Paradoxically, certain indicators of a psychopathic personality may cause one to wonder how someone so charming, poised, seemingly confident and intelligent could also be described as being so severely socially impaired. To clarify, the impairment lies in the psychopath’s ability to form long-lasting, healthy relationships but not entirely within the individual’s level of sociability in an interpersonal situation. Regardless of this emotional impairment, the distinction that I aim to make is thus: though the moniker of “antisocial” may carry with it the assumption that the psychopath is socially incompetent due to certain impairments within the individual, this is quite contrary to the truth. The question, then, is this: just how well does the psychopath fare in social situations, and to what extent does said individual rely on social cues to do so? The aim of this discussion is to analyze the emotional responsiveness in relation to the contributing physiological factors of the psychopath in a social situation, as well as the verbal and nonverbal cues given off by a psychopath in a social context wherein he is dominant or left to his own devices. Let us then divide this discussion into two narrowly defined sections: 1) the analysis of the psychopath’s emotional responsiveness in a social context in which he is receiving -- but not necessarily processing -- distress cues from others, and 2) the emphasized verbal and nonverbal techniques which may be essential elements supporting the notion that psychopaths are skillful manipulators who use their “charm” to their advantage.

EMOTIONAL RESPONSIVENESS OF PSYCHOPATHS IN SITUATIONS INVOLVING DISTRESS CUES

Imperative to social cognition, facial expressions act as non-verbal communicative displays which allow rapid transmission of valence information to different members of a single species concerning unfamiliar objects or environments. Fearful and sad expressions have long been known to regulate social interactions. These displays of distress serve an important social function regarding the inhibition of aggression and the elicitation of pro-social tendencies. Lack of empathy is one of the most defining characteristics of psychopathy, thus leading one to suspect that psychopathic people would pay little or no attention to the emotional state of others, especially states which are prone to elicit pro-social action tendencies from the observer (such as fear, distress, or sadness). Conversely, psychopaths are portrayed as “master manipulators” who skillfully employ superficial charm as a means of inappropriately gaining or benefitting from the people around them. It stands to reason that in order to manipulate others on such a successful level, one would expect better performance in the decoding of facial expressions in psychopaths than in non-psychopathic individuals. Interestingly, studies by Blair and colleagues show that, when it comes to expressions of distress, psychopaths -- primarily adults and children with callous-unemotional traits, as psychopathic adolescents’ responsiveness to selected expressions were not thoroughly studied -- were less accurate at recognizing fearful and sad expressions than were controls, possibly due to “early amygdala dysfunction and consequent impairment in processing fearful and sad expressions” and overall “reduced amygdaloid volume relative to comparison individuals” (Blair, 2001, 2003). Children with psychopathic tendencies “were more likely to misclassify fear as one of the other five basic emotions” (Blair, Colledge, Murray & Mitchell, 2001). An increased response stage to the expression of sadness indicated that these children were more insensitive to sad expressions than the comparison group. In line with these findings, one can speculate that, due to this selective impairment in the processing of sad and fearful expressions, the psychopathic individual would not view social distress cues in the given social context as aversive unconditioned stimuli. They would continue to behave in ways which may cause harm to others; no avoidance measures to these aversive unconditioned stimuli are learned by the psychopath and, as a result, he will continue to engage in behavior that may cause distress in others and this will lead to what Blair called a “failure in socialization” for the psychopath. To put it plainly, how does one react to what one cannot recognize?

Blair also makes an important distinction between the impairment of the developmental psychopath and that of the individual with “acquired sociopathy” in social situations. “Acquired sociopathy” was a term coined by Antonio Damasio to characterize individuals who had previously acquired lesions to particular regions of the frontal lobes of the brain, primarily the orbitofrontal cortex, and as a consequence developed traits and patterns of behavior extremely similar to those of diagnosed psychopaths. Whereas developmental psychopaths find difficulty in processing expressions related to distress and do not learn to avoid behaviors that can cause harm to others, in acquired sociopathy, individuals do not have pronounced levels of goal-directed antisocial behavior. Instead, due to the damage in the orbitofrontal cortex of these individuals, behavior modulation in response to angry and/or embarrassed expressions was affected. The impairment is particularly marked for expressions of anger since it is the orbitofrontal cortex which is involved in response to angry expressions (Blair, 2003). Just as distress expressions serve a particular social function, anger and embarrassment are also considered to be pivotal in regulating social hierarchical interactions between conspecifics. The role of anger is to explicitly put a stop to an inappropriate