Lishner David A, Vitacco Michael J, Hong Phan Y, Mosley Jennifer, Miska Kathryn, Stocks Eric L
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI 54901, USA.
Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol. 2012 Dec;56(8):1161-81. doi: 10.1177/0306624X11421891. Epub 2011 Nov 17.
It is widely believed that impairment in an ability to experience affective empathy for others is a central feature of psychopathy. The authors tested this assumption by covertly manipulating and measuring state experiences of emotional contagion and empathic concern in college undergraduates and male forensic inpatients. Surprisingly, they found little evidence of a negative association between psychopathy and affective empathy in either sample. In those instances in which associations were found, they tended to indicate that higher psychopathy was associated with increased affective empathy. Follow-up analyses also revealed that psychopathy was positively associated with pervasive experiences of sadness, anger, and fear, and negatively associated with pervasive experiences of happiness among nonforensic individuals. This research raises questions about existing conceptualizations of interpersonal affect in psychopathy and offers suggestions for advancing future understanding of the role-played by emotional processes in psychopathy.
人们普遍认为，缺乏对他人产生情感共鸣的能力是精神病态的一个核心特征。作者通过暗中操纵并测量大学生和男性法医住院患者的情绪感染和共情关注的状态体验，对这一假设进行了测试。令人惊讶的是，他们在两个样本中均未发现精神病态与情感共鸣之间存在负相关的证据。在发现存在关联的情况下，这些关联往往表明，较高的精神病态与增强的情感共鸣有关。后续分析还显示，在非法医个体中，精神病态与普遍的悲伤、愤怒和恐惧体验呈正相关，与普遍的幸福体验呈负相关。这项研究对精神病态中人际情感的现有概念化提出了质疑，并为推进未来对情感过程在精神病态中所起作用的理解提供了建议。
