اختلالات فکری و روانی به عواطف منفی - اما نه به حساسیت اضطراب - مرتبط است

Although the hypothesis that psychopathic individuals are characterized by a reduced capacity for experiencing anxiety is central to many theories of psychopathy, most prior studies have examined anxiety and fear measures generally considered outdated in the literature. Moreover, prior findings are mixed, with several studies reporting no relationships between psychopathy and anxiety, and others suggesting negative relationships for the affective, interpersonal aspects of the disorder and positive relationships for the antisocial behavior dimension. To examine whether psychopathy dimensions are associated with contemporary measures of anxiety, the Anxiety Sensitivity Index and State Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait scale were administered to 157 male inmates. Participants also completed the MMPI-derived Welsh Anxiety Scale (WAS), commonly used in psychopathy studies. Analyses provide no evidence for a negative relationship between psychopathy’s affective, interpersonal factor and anxiety sensitivity after controlling for trait anxiety. Trait anxiety and WAS scores were positively associated with the antisocial behavior dimension of psychopathy. Findings do replicate prior relationships between the WAS and psychopathy, suggesting the WAS may measure aspects of negative affectivity that differ from anxiety.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with impulsive and often manipulative antisocial behavior. For over 50 years, conceptualizations of the disorder have been dominated by perspectives emphasizing psychopaths’ attenuated capacity for emotional experience (Cleckley, 1976). The specific hypothesis of a reduced capacity for fear and anxiety has occupied an especially central role in psychopathy research (Lykken, 1957). However, empirical evidence for an inverse relationship between psychopathy and self-reported anxiety has been equivocal. For example, Lykken (1957) reported that his sample of primary psychopaths scored no lower than non-criminal controls on the Taylor (1953) and Welsh (1956) anxiety scales, two measures of general anxiety or neuroticism; however, on his own measure, they reported less aversion to frightening/dangerous activities than non-criminals. Other researchers have reported no differences between groups on Lykken’s measure (Hare, 1972, Schmauk, 1970 and Widom, 1976). Some other early studies indicated no significant differences for other measures of neuroticism (Hare, 1982) and anxiety (Siegel, 1978), but most provided little information about psychopaths’ scores on self-report anxiety scales, and these studies are often criticized for relying on unreliable or poorly validated measures of psychopathy (Hare & Cox, 1978). Over the past two decades the measurement of psychopathy has become more refined and researchers have increasingly relied on a single instrument for assessing psychopathy, the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL; Hare, 1980), in its original or revised form (PCL-R; Hare, 1991 and Lilienfeld, 1994, for a review). This rating scale, based largely on clinical descriptions of the psychopath (e.g. Cleckley, 1976), addresses both the personality and behavioral manifestations of psychopathy, but does not directly assess for levels of anxiety or fear. Factor analyses have reliably identified two underlying, yet correlated, dimensions of the PCL-R (Harpur, Hakstian and Hare, 1988 and Harpur, Hare and Hakstian, 1989); Factor 1 represents a constellation of affective and interpersonal traits that describe a selfish, callous, remorseless use of others. Factor 2 consists of more behavioral manifestations of psychopathy, such as impulsivity, irresponsibility, juvenile delinquency, and proneness to boredom. Factor 2 is related to the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), chronic criminality, and substance abuse and appears to reflect the influence of an antisocial /criminal lifestyle (Harpur, Hare & Hakstian, 1989). As the measurement of psychopathy has improved, many of the relationships between psychopathy and emotional processing deficits have been widely replicated (Patrick, 1994 and Hare, 1998). However, the nature of the relationship between psychopathy and anxious or fearful affect has remained obscure. Recent studies continue to reveal no significant relationships between overall PCL-R psychopathy and a variety of scales validated as measures of anxiety, neuroticism, or fear (Patrick, 1994 and Schmitt and Newman, 1999). Patrick (1994) reported that self-report measures of emotional distress and fear were negatively related to PCL-R Factor 1 scores after controlling for PCL-R Factor 2 and positively related to Factor 2 after controlling for Factor 1. Because the two factors correlate 0.5 to 0.6, he suggested partial correlations with the PCL-R factor scores provide a more powerful way to see the unique relationship between low fear capacity and the affective and interpersonal features of psychopathy (see also Frick, 1998). In contrast, controlling for Factor 2 did not affect correlations between fear or anxiety and PCL-R total scores in Schmitt and Newman (1999).1 Still under-emphasized in evaluations of anxiety and psychopathy are recent developments in the conceptualization and measurement of anxiety pathology. As theories of anxiety have evolved), the anxiety literature has moved away from instruments that measure personality-based constructs. According to Keedwell and Snaith (1996), Spielberger’s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, 1983) is now the most widely used anxiety measure. This measure was designed to address concerns that older measures were too global and to distinguish trait anxiety, the general tendency to experience anxiety in many situations, from state anxiety, the observable behaviors, physiological events, and cognitive symptoms associated with experiencing a stressor. However, reports relating STAI trait scores to psychopathy are inconsistent: Hare (1991) reported a near-zero correlation in one sample and a significant negative correlation in another. An anxiety construct that has received widespread attention in the anxiety disorders literature is anxiety sensitivity (AS), measured by the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI; Reiss, Peterson, Gursky, & McNally, 1986). AS is posited to be a stable dispositional variable reflecting the tendency to interpret the physiological, psychological, and social effects of anxiety experiences as aversive or dangerous (Reiss & McNally, 1985). Individuals with elevated AS will more often react negatively to anxiety experiences, whereas individuals with low AS might experience these symptoms as unpleasant but non-threatening (McNally, 1996 and McNally, 1999). In contrast, trait anxiety reflects a more general tendency to experience anxiety in many situations and AS has been conceptually and empirically distinguished from trait anxiety (e.g., Lilienfeld, 1999 and McNally, 1996). It has been suggested that AS is a lower-order trait nested hierarchically within the broader constructs of trait anxiety and higher-order personality traits (Lilienfeld, Turner, & Jacob, 1993). AS has predicted anxiety symptoms and disorders in longitudinal studies after controlling for trait anxiety, and is related to depression and maladaptive substance use (see Taylor's, 1999 review). Shostak and Peterson (1990) argued that very low levels of AS are maladaptive and speculated that AS may be particularly low in persons with ASPD, a disorder that overlaps substantially with psychopathy. An association between psychopathy and AS could elucidate the role anxiety plays in the experiences of the psychopath. In particular, very low AS could account for psychopaths’ unresponsiveness to environmentally provoked anxiety and stress. Under-reactivity to stressors and anxiety could in turn help to explain the antisocial lifestyle often seen in psychopaths, a lifestyle avoided by many because of the risks involved. Although the relation between AS and psychopathy has not previously been explored in clinical samples, a recent study by Lilienfeld and Penna (2001) examined relations between AS and measures of psychopathy among college undergraduates. They reported AS was not significantly related to self-report or interview measures of psychopathy. However, when they examined specific dimensions of psychopathy, a different pattern emerged. AS correlated positively with an interview-based measure of the affective and interpersonal features of the psychopath, Factor 1 of the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL: SV), but correlated negatively with various self-report scales designed to measure this facet of psychopathy. Although the observation of both positive and negative correlations raises the possibility of complex relationships between psychopathy and AS, only one of these correlations remained significant after controlling for trait anxiety. Thus, overall, this study suggests no unique relationship between Factor 1 of psychopathy and AS. Nevertheless, because their sample was characterized by relatively little variance in PCL: SV scores, Lilienfeld and Penna emphasized the need for investigations of AS in samples including more extreme psychopathy scores. The current study was designed to examine the relationship between psychopathy and anxiety in a sample of incarcerated adult males. Primarily, we attempted to bring up to date the assessment of anxiety in psychopaths by including measures currently used in the anxiety literature. We evaluated the relations between psychopathy, STAI trait anxiety, AS, and the WAS, an older measure commonly used in prior psychopathy studies. Similar to the approaches suggested by several psychopathy researchers (e.g., Frick, 1998 and Schmitt and Newman, 1999), relationships between specific dimensions of psychopathy and self-reported anxiety were examined after controlling for other dimensions thought to underlie psychopathy. In addition, based on evidence that psychopathy correlates differently with both self-report and laboratory measures among African American and European American inmates (Kosson, Smith and Newman, 1990, Newman and Schmitt, 1998 and Wallace, Vitale and Newman, 1999), we conducted separate analyses for the total sample versus European American and African American subsamples.