Parsing Fear: A Reassessment of the Evidence for Fear Deficits in Psychopathy

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by interpersonal manipulation and callousness, and reckless and impulsive antisocial behavior. It is often seen as a disorder in which profound emotional disturbances lead to antisocial behavior. A lack of fear in particular has been proposed as an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological bulletin 2016-06, Vol.142 (6), p.573-600
Main Authors: Hoppenbrouwers, Sylco S, Bulten, Berend H, Brazil, Inti A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amygdala - physiopathology
Antisocial behavior
Antisocial personality disorder
Antisocial Personality Disorder - physiopathology
Antisocial Personality Disorder - psychology
Brain - physiopathology
Callousness
Conceptual models
Detection
Emotional disorders
Emotional Disturbances
Fear
Fear & phobias
Fear - physiology
Fear - psychology
Hippocampus - physiopathology
Human
Humans
Manipulation
Measurement
Meta-analysis
Neuropsychology
Parsing
Personality disorders
Prefrontal Cortex - physiopathology
Psychopathology
Psychopathy
Quantitative psychology
Social Perception
Systematic review
Thalamus - physiopathology
Threat
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Summary:Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by interpersonal manipulation and callousness, and reckless and impulsive antisocial behavior. It is often seen as a disorder in which profound emotional disturbances lead to antisocial behavior. A lack of fear in particular has been proposed as an etiologically salient factor. In this review, we employ a conceptual model in which fear is parsed into separate subcomponents. Important historical conceptualizations of psychopathy, the neuroscientific and empirical evidence for fear deficits in psychopathy are compared against this model. The empirical evidence is also subjected to a meta-analysis. We conclude that most studies have used the term "fear" generically, amassing different methods and levels of measurement under the umbrella term "fear." Unlike earlier claims that psychopathy is related to general fearlessness, we show there is evidence that psychopathic individuals have deficits in threat detection and responsivity, but that the evidence for reduced subjective experience of fear in psychopathy is far less compelling.
ISSN:0033-2909
1939-1455
DOI:10.1037/bul0000040