Facial responsiveness of psychopaths to the emotional expressions of others

Psychopathic individuals show selfish, manipulative, and antisocial behavior in addition to emotional detachment and reduced empathy. Their empathic deficits are thought to be associated with a reduced responsiveness to emotional stimuli. Immediate facial muscle responses to the emotional expressions of others reflect the expressive part of emotional responsiveness and are positively related to trait empathy. Empirical evidence for reduced facial muscle responses in adult psychopathic individuals to the emotional expressions of others is rare. In the present study, 261 male criminal offenders and non-offenders categorized dynamically presented facial emotion expressions (angry, happy, sad, and neutral) during facial electromyography recording of their corrugator muscle activity. We replicated a measurement model of facial muscle activity, which controls for general facial responsiveness to face stimuli, and modeled three correlated emotion-specific factors (i.e., anger, happiness, and sadness) representing emotion specific activity. In a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we compared the means of the anger, happiness, and sadness latent factors between three groups: 1) non-offenders, 2) low, and 3) high psychopathic offenders. There were no significant mean differences between groups. Our results challenge current theories that focus on deficits in emotional responsiveness as leading to the development of psychopathy and encourage further theoretical development on deviant emotional processes in psychopathic individuals.

精神病态个体除表现出自私、操控性与反社会行为外，还存在情感淡漠与共情能力降低的特征。学界普遍认为，其共情缺陷与情绪刺激响应性减弱相关。个体面对他人情绪表情时产生的即时面部肌肉反应，可反映情绪响应性的表达维度，且与特质共情（trait empathy）呈正相关。但目前针对成年精神病态个体面对他人情绪表达时面部肌肉响应减弱的实证证据仍较为稀缺。本研究共纳入261名男性犯罪者与非犯罪者，在对皱眉肌（corrugator muscle）进行面部肌电记录（facial electromyography recording）的过程中，让被试对动态呈现的愤怒、快乐、悲伤与中性四种面部情绪表情完成分类任务。我们复现了面部肌肉活动的测量模型，该模型可控制被试对一般性面部刺激的响应水平，并构建了三个相关的情绪特异性因子（即愤怒、快乐与悲伤），用以表征情绪特异性肌肉活动。通过多组验证性因子分析（confirmatory factor analysis），我们比较了三组被试的愤怒、快乐与悲伤潜因子（latent factor）均值：1）非犯罪者组；2）低精神病态特质犯罪者组；3）高精神病态特质犯罪者组。结果显示，三组间未出现显著的均值差异。本研究结果对“情绪响应性缺陷是精神病态形成的核心诱因”的现有理论提出了挑战，并呼吁针对精神病态个体的异常情绪过程开展进一步的理论建构。