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Forensic psychology

Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers

Adapting a revealing test may expose those psychopaths who are most likely to kill.

Abstract

Psychopathic murderers are often portrayed as cold-blooded, emotionless and lacking in remorse1, but they are also adept at lying and at feigning the emotions in which they are deficient. Here we adapt a test known as the Implicit Association Test (IAT)2, which was previously used to assess concealed prejudices, to show that psychopathic murderers have abnormal cognitive associations regarding violence, which may underpin their actions. Such implicit measures may provide us with an important insight into the criminal mind.

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Figure 1

AP

Figure 2: Results of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) effect (difference in reaction time between incongruent and congruent conditions; see text), plotted as a function of psychopathy score (PCL-R4) for murderers (red) and non-murderers (blue).

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Correspondence to Nicola S. Gray.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Gray, N., MacCulloch, M., Smith, J. et al. Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers. Nature 423, 497–498 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/423497a

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