When made to feel sad, men with psychopathic traits shift their visual focus to anger
A study involving incarcerated men found that those with pronounced psychopathic traits tend to subconsciously divert their attention away from sad faces when they are experimentally induced to feel sad. In the same situation, their attention toward angry faces increased. The paper was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology. Psychopathy is a stable pattern of personality characteristics involving low empathy, shallow emotions, and a tendency toward manipulative or antisocial behavior. Core features of psychopathy include callousness, lack of guilt or remorse, superficial charm, and impulsivity. While psychopathy is associated with an increased risk of antisocial and criminal behavior, it does not inevitably lead to criminality. As a trait, psychopathy can be present in both clinical and non-clinical populations, with subclinical levels sometimes providing advantages in competitive or high-risk environments. Individuals high in psychopathy tend to show specificities in emotional processing, particularly a reduced responsiveness to others’ distress. For decades, the dominant scientific theory has been the Emotion Deficit Perspective (EDP), which posits that people with psychopathy are simply born “numb” to emotions like sadness …









