1. Psychopathy: Brief Overview of Its Behavioral, Experimental, and
Neural Aspects
By Oleg Nekrassovski
Introduction
Psychopathy is characterized by a pervasive pattern of behavioral (e.g.,
impulsivity), affective (e.g., lack of empathy), and interpersonal (e.g., manipulation)
features. It is considered to be one of the most destructive personalities, showing robust
correlations with aggression, criminality, and recidivism (Gordts, Uzieblo, Neumann,
Van den Bussche, & Rossi, 2015). But, despite their criminal and violent reputation,
many psychopaths avoid violent and criminal behavior and instead favor working in
leadership positions in legal organizations. These corporate psychopaths are often
viewed as sinister masterminds dangerous to organizations (Babiak & Hare, 2006).
However, some authors argue that corporate psychopaths have many positive
leadership qualities (Lilienfeld et al., 2012). Hence, the present paper will first seek to
provide an overview of the experimental and the hypothesized neural bases of
psychopathy that seek to explain its harmful manifestations. Next, the paper will attempt
to provide an overview of the hypothesized differences between criminal and non-
criminal psychopaths.
Experimental and Neural Bases of Psychopathy
The field of psychopathy is dominated by two theoretical camps. One of these
camps consists of emotion-focused models (Hamilton, Hiatt Racer, & Newman, 2015),
which propose that the behavior of psychopathic individuals is a product of a core fear
deficit which prevents psychopaths from appreciating the consequences of their actions
and choices (Baskin-Sommers, Curtin, & Newman, 2013). Arguably the strongest and
the most frequently cited evidence for this comes from studies that use the picture-
viewing paradigm to assess emotion-modulated startle (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2013).
These studies show that while non-psychopathic individuals display enhanced eye blink
startle response to sudden noise from concurrent viewing of unpleasant pictures;
psychopathic individuals show a lack of such eye blink startle response enhancement
from the viewing of unpleasant pictures (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2013). This is usually
interpreted as evidence of psychopaths having a fundamental deficit in the reactivity of
their defense system (i.e., a fear deficit). As a result, in the experimental context,
psychopaths do not react to threatening/unpleasant images and, by extension, are
insensitive to the emotions of others, creating a callous and aggressive interpersonal
style (Baskin-Sommers et al., 2013).

2. One specific emotion-focused model of psychopathy sees a dysfunction in the
amygdala (a sub-section of the ‘primitive’ part of the human brain) being responsible for
the development of psychopathy. This is because amygdala is essential for the
development of associations between environmental cues and emotional states, and
the activation of basic threat circuits (Anderson & Kiehl, 2012). More recently this model
has been expanded to include the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (an ‘advanced’ brain
structure found only in mammalian brains). In this new formulation, amygdala enables
the development of empathy, and, together with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex,
enables empathy to inform moral decision making (Anderson & Kiehl, 2012).
The second theoretical camp, regarding the nature of psychopathy, consists of
attention-focused models of psychopathy, which, in many ways, contradict the emotion-
focused models of the first camp, described above (Hamilton et al., 2015). In particular,
this group of models views psychopathy as stemming from information processing
deficits (Hamilton et al., 2015), and points to the fact that psychopaths are impaired in
their ability to reallocate attention away from the goal-relevant task toward important
stimuli (e.g., threat cues) which are irrelevant to their current task (Larson et al., 2013).
This attentional deficit is believed to undermine psychopaths’ ability to effectively
regulate their behavior by considering alternative, adaptive responses to situations
(Hamilton et al., 2015).
At the same time, the attention-focused models, undermine their emotion-
focused counterparts, described earlier, by pointing to the fact that even though
psychopaths show poor passive avoidance and weak electrodermal responses to
punishment cues when focused on a specific goal; this difference from non-
psychopathic individuals disappears whenever threat avoidance becomes the primary
focus of their attention (Larson et al., 2013). Similarly, psychopaths show normal fear-
enhanced startle response whenever they are specifically focused on the threat cues;
but the same threat cues produce much smaller startle responses in psychopaths than
non-psychopaths whenever psychopaths’ attention is already focused on another
stimulus or task (Larson et al., 2013).
Hamilton et al. (2015) point out that both emotion- and attention-focused models
of psychopathy have their strengths. Hence, it is not surprising that Hamilton et al.
(2015) were not the first ones to attempt uniting these two groups of models. In fact, the
first model, to unite the emotion- and attention-focused models of psychopathy, into a
single framework, was the differential amygdala activation model (DAAM) (Hamilton et
al., 2015). The DAAM proposes that in psychopathy the central amygdala is at normal,
or above-normal, levels of activation, while the basolateral amygdala is underactive.
This hypothesized imbalance of the two amygdala regions leads, according to the
DAAM, to the deficits in the conditioned fear response, fear recognition, and stimulus-

3. reinforcement tasks, by altering the normal function of associative learning processes
and attentional processes (Moul, Killcross, & Dadds, 2012).
Differences between Criminal and Non-Criminal Psychopaths
Psychopathic individuals don’t necessarily become criminals. However, they are
thought to be at a greater risk for various behavioral deviancies (Heinzen et al., 2011).
The forms these deviancies take on seem to depend on how the psychopathic traits are
expressed in the individual. For example, interpersonal and affective features of
psychopathy— lack of empathy, callousness, manipulation, and superficial charm —
have often been found, in earlier studies, to be associated with instrumental and
planned violence (Heinzen et al., 2011). Similarly, Mahmut, Homewood, and Stevenson
(2007) believe that criminal and non-criminal psychopaths share similar
neuropsychological and psychophysiological characteristics and hence are not
qualitatively distinct populations. In fact, the two groups most likely differ in terms of
degree: specifically, in the manifestation of the interpersonal-affective features of
psychopathy and the extent to which they engage in antisocial behaviors (Mahmut et
al., 2007).
In addition, the dual-process model of psychopathy suggests that the antisocial
and personality features of psychopathy have separate causes and are independent;
such that non-criminal psychopaths have highly developed personality features of
psychopathy and relatively reduced antisocial features, while criminal psychopaths have
both of these features developed to a high degree (Mahmut et al., 2007). This is
supported by data which suggests that in comparison to criminal psychopaths, non-
criminal psychopaths possess lower levels of certain psychopathic traits, but the same
or higher levels of others psychopathic traits (Lilienfeld, Watts, and Smith, 2015).
Wall, Sellbom, and Goodwin, (2013) note that a number of previous studies of
psychopathy suggest the possibility of intelligence being at least partly responsible for
different manifestations of criminal and non-criminal psychopaths. For example, an early
(1977) study, noted by them, found that a sample of non-incarcerated psychopaths was
of higher intelligence than their incarcerated counterparts, but ultimately differed from
the psychopathic inmates not in the number of arrests but in the number of convictions;
suggesting merely a better ability to avoid convictions rather than antisocial behavior
per se (Wall et al., 2013). While a more recent study (2001), noted by them, found that
non-criminal psychopaths displayed better executive function, which allows better
problem solving and organization, than either criminal psychopaths or non-psychopaths
(Wall et al., 2013). However, the main findings of Wall et al.’s (2013) study were that
people with highly developed psychopathic traits (especially the Fearless Dominance
feature of psychopathy) and higher intelligence (especially verbal intelligence) are less
likely to engage in criminal activities, compared to psychopaths with low intelligence.

4. References
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