Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre, ASST "Grande Ospedale Metropolitano" Niguarda, Milano, Italy.
Cogn Emot. 2023 May-Jun;37(3):430-438. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2023.2170333. Epub 2023 Feb 1.
Individuals who deviate from social norms by committing crimes may have reduced facial emotion recognition abilities. Nevertheless, a specific category of offenders - i.e. organised crime (OC) members - is characterised by hierarchically organised social networks and a tendency to manipulate others to reach their illicit goals. Since recognising emotions is crucial to building social networks, OC members may be more skilled in recognising the facial emotion expressions of others to use this information for their criminal purposes. Evidence of a difference between OC and non-organised crime (NOC) offenders in terms of facial emotion recognition is still lacking. To fill this gap in the literature, we tested 50 OC, 50 NOC offenders, and 50 non-offender controls for their ability to identify six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise). All participants underwent a cognitive and psychological evaluation to avoid alternative explanations. Results show that OC members were more able to detect the expression of fear in others as compared to NOC. We interpreted this finding in light of the social context and the behavioural criminal attitude of OC members.
个体通过犯罪行为偏离社会规范可能会导致其面部情绪识别能力下降。然而，有一类特定的罪犯——即有组织犯罪（OC）成员——其特点是具有等级组织的社交网络和操纵他人以达到非法目的的倾向。由于识别情绪对于建立社交网络至关重要，OC 成员可能更擅长识别他人的面部情绪表情，以便将这些信息用于犯罪目的。目前，关于 OC 和非有组织犯罪（NOC）罪犯在面部情绪识别方面的差异证据仍然缺乏。为了填补这一文献空白，我们测试了 50 名 OC 罪犯、50 名 NOC 罪犯和 50 名非罪犯对照组识别六种基本情绪（快乐、悲伤、恐惧、愤怒、厌恶和惊讶）的能力。所有参与者都接受了认知和心理评估，以避免其他解释。结果表明，OC 成员比 NOC 更能察觉到他人表达的恐惧。我们根据社会背景和 OC 成员的犯罪行为态度来解释这一发现。
