Psychopathy and sensitivity to the emotional polarity of metaphorical statements

Clinical and research evidence indicates that psychopathy is associated with anomalies in processing and using the emotional components of language. However, most research on the topic has involved simple verbal stimuli, thereby telling us little about how psychopaths process and use emotional mater...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality and individual differences 2003-11, Vol.35 (7), p.1497-1507
Main Authors: Hervé, Hugues F, Justus Hayes, P, Hare, Robert D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affect
Emotional metaphors
Language
PCL-R
Psychopathy
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Summary:Clinical and research evidence indicates that psychopathy is associated with anomalies in processing and using the emotional components of language. However, most research on the topic has involved simple verbal stimuli, thereby telling us little about how psychopaths process and use emotional material that is part of a more complex linguistic process. We administered an “Emotional Metaphor Q-Sort” task to 35 male inmates assessed for psychopathy with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R; Hare, 1991). The task consisted of metaphorical statements that had to be sorted along a continuum according to the direction and degree of their emotional valence, ranging from very negative to very positive. Although psychopaths and nonpsychopaths did not differ in their literal understanding of the metaphors, psychopaths made significantly more sorting errors than did nonpsychopaths, particularly with what should have been emotionally unambiguous metaphors. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that incarcerated psychopaths do not understand or make effective use of the emotional content of language.
ISSN:0191-8869
1873-3549
DOI:10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00365-3