Emotional capture by fearful expressions varies with psychopathic traits

Task-irrelevant emotional expressions are known to capture attention, with the extent of "emotional capture" varying with psychopathic traits in antisocial samples. We investigated whether this variation extends throughout the continuum of psychopathic traits (and co-occurring trait anxiet...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition and emotion 2018-02, Vol.32 (1), p.207-214
Main Authors: Ahmed, Saz P, Hodsoll, Sara, Dalton, Polly, Sebastian, Catherine L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antisocial personality disorder
Anxiety
Bias
Comorbidity
Distraction
Emotional disorders
Emotions
Facial expressions
Fear & phobias
Individual differences
Intervention
Lifestyles
Moderation
Reaction time
Reactivity
Sex offenders
Social behavior
Trait anxiety
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Task-irrelevant emotional expressions are known to capture attention, with the extent of "emotional capture" varying with psychopathic traits in antisocial samples. We investigated whether this variation extends throughout the continuum of psychopathic traits (and co-occurring trait anxiety) in a community sample. Participants (N = 85) searched for a target face among facial distractors. As predicted, angry and fearful faces interfered with search, indicated by slower reaction times relative to neutral faces. When fear appeared as either target or distractor, diminished emotional capture was seen with increasing affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits. However, moderation analyses revealed that this was only when lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were low, consistent with evidence suggesting that these two facets of psychopathic traits display opposing relationships with emotional reactivity. Anxiety did not show the predicted relationships with emotional capture effects. Findings show that normative variation in high-level individual differences in psychopathic traits influence automatic bias to emotional stimuli.
ISSN:0269-9931
1464-0600
DOI:10.1080/02699931.2016.1278358