Elsevier

Clinical Psychology Review

Volume 17, Issue 8, December 1997, Pages 903-936
Clinical Psychology Review

Autonomic responsivity in psychopaths: A critical review and theoretical proposal

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-7358(97)00045-7Get rights and content

Abstract

The literature on autonomic responsivity in psychopaths is reviewed and critically evaluated with Fowles' (1980) psychophysiological adaptation of Gray's two-factor learning theory used as an organizing framework. It is concluded that, although much recent research has focused on assessing psychopaths' response to punishment in familiar paradigms, several intriguing new paradigms for assessing psychopaths' autonomic responsivity have been developed. A new conceptualization of the existing data is considered involving a motivational imbalance theory based on the Gray/Fowles model. This theory connects autonomic psychophysiological research on psychopaths to literatures on cognition, emotion, and behavior. Research directions for evaluating the validity of the theory are proposed.

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      In particular there are widely documented deficits in fear conditioning suggesting that psychopathic individuals are unable to learn a fear response in the way that others do (Hare et al., 1978) and reduced or absent autonomic differentiation between fearful and neutral stimuli across a variety of measures (e.g. Patrick et al., 1994; Levenston et al., 2000). In a detailed review of autonomic responsivity in psychopathy, Arnett (1997) notes that studies involving SC show a fairly consistent pattern of reduced electrodermal activity when psychopathic individuals process punishment or fearful stimuli, although response to positive material has been less well studied. In contrast the findings for cardiovascular (heart rate) response are less clear, with some showing acceleration in response to aversive stimuli (e.g. Hare and Craigen, 1974; Hare et al., 1978), while others suggest few psychopathy related differences (e.g. Patrick et al., 1993; Lorber, 2004).

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