Psychopathy-related traits and decision-making under risk and ambiguity: an exploratory study

Studies on the association between psychopathy and decision-making in laboratory tasks have revealed mixed results. These might be due to an insufficient consideration of the different aspects related to both psychopathy and decision-making. Here we measured different facets of psychopathy in a non-clinical sample using the triarchic psychopathy measure. Decision-making was assessed using a task that measured risk taking in both gain and loss domains under different levels of probability and ambiguity. Boldness was positively associated with risk taking in a gain context; Disinhibition was positively associated with risk taking in a loss context, especially under a high loss probability level. These results provide a differentiated picture of the relation between psychopathy-related traits and decision-making, which might be useful for the interpretation of results of previous studies and the design of future studies.