Tamura Ayame, Sugiura Yoshinori, Sugiura Tomoko, Moriya Jun
Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan
Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan.
Psychol Rep. 2016 Dec;119(3):608-629. doi: 10.1177/0033294116667699. Epub 2016 Sep 16.
Psychopathy is personality traits, which is consisted of primary psychopathy characterized by affective and interpersonal problems and secondary psychopathy characterized by behavioral problems. Prior researchers have suggested that people with psychopathy have peculiar attention, which prevents them from detecting information peripheral to their concern, and we hypothesized that this explains their low empathy. Based on these reasoning, the present study assessed whether attention moderates the relationship between psychopathy and affective empathy. Eighty-five undergraduates (40 men and 45 women; mean age = 19.8 years; SD = 1.6) completed the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and a perceptual load task. Hierarchical regression showed that a significant moderation effect was found: primary psychopathy was negatively associated with affective empathy, among those with reduced interference from task-irrelevant stimuli under a medium level of perceptual load. Future study should need to replicate this finding with clinical population.
精神病态是一种人格特质，它由以情感和人际问题为特征的原发性精神病态以及以行为问题为特征的继发性精神病态组成。先前的研究人员表明，患有精神病态的人具有特殊的注意力，这使他们无法察觉与其关注内容无关的信息，并且我们假设这可以解释他们较低的同理心。基于这些推理，本研究评估了注意力是否调节了精神病态与情感同理心之间的关系。八十五名本科生（40名男性和45名女性；平均年龄 = 19.8岁；标准差 = 1.6）完成了莱文森自我报告精神病态量表、人际反应指数和一项知觉负载任务。分层回归表明发现了显著的调节效应：在中等水平的知觉负载下，对于那些来自与任务无关刺激的干扰减少的人，原发性精神病态与情感同理心呈负相关。未来的研究需要在临床人群中重复这一发现。
