اختلالات فکری و روانی و هوش هیجانی خصلتی

Psychopathic individuals are infamous for their chronic and diverse failures of social adjustment despite their adequate intellectual abilities. Non-cognitive factors, in particular trait emotional intelligence (EI), offer one possible explanation for their lack of success. This study explored the association between psychopathy and EI, as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003) and Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS, Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, & Palfai, 1995). Consistent with the Response Modulation (RM) model of psychopathy ( Newman & Lorenz, 2003), low-anxious psychopathic individuals had significantly lower scores on TMMS Repair and Attention compared to controls. Consistent with proposals by Patrick and Lang (1999) regarding PCL-R factors, these EI deficits related to different aspects of the psychopathy construct. Correlations revealed significant inverse associations between PCL-R factor 1 and Attention and PCL-R factor 2 and Repair. We propose that the multi-dimensional EI framework affords a complementary perspective on laboratory-based explanations of psychopathy.

Despite adequate intelligence, psychopathic individuals are infamous for their profound failure of social adjustment. Highlighting this paradox, Cleckley (1976) observed: “In complex matters of judgment…(the psychopath) shows no evidence of a defect. So long as the test is verbal or otherwise abstract, so long as he is not a direct participant, he shows that he knows his way about…When the test of action comes to him we soon find ample evidence of his deficiency” (p. 346). Through case studies, Cleckley illustrated how good, or even exceptional, cognitive abilities were not sufficient to ensure satisfactory decision-making and social adjustment. Limitations of using cognitive intelligence alone to predict life success have been long-recognized. In 1940 David Wechsler referred to “non-intellective” elements, including personal, affective, and social factors when describing “the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment” (Wechsler, 1940; p. 103). Shortly thereafter, he proposed that “non-intellective” abilities are essential for predicting one’s ability to succeed in life. Research on non-cognitive factors underlying life success provides the cornerstone for the field of emotional intelligence (EI). Generally, EI entails the abilities to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and in others. According to Salovey and Mayer (1990), the construct of EI refers to individual differences in the ability to process and use emotional information to promote effective functioning in everyday life. Higher EI predicts enhanced psychosocial functioning (e.g., Salovey and Grewal, 2005 and Schutte et al., 2001), including interpersonal factors (i.e., better social relationships) and intrapersonal factors (i.e., greater optimism). Thus, EI is a potentially important non-cognitive variable that may clarify why, despite adequate intelligence, some individuals have difficulty across multiple life domains ( Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004). Research on psychopathy provides substantial empirical support for Cleckley’s claim that psychopathy entails a peculiar incapacity to function successfully despite good intelligence. Although Hare’s (2003) PCL-R is not correlated with intelligence, psychopathic individuals identified with the instrument display a wide range of maladaptive antisocial behaviors that result in high incarceration rates and other negative consequences (Moriarty, Stough, Tidmarsh, Eger, & Dennison, 2001). In lieu of intellectual deficits, investigators frequently attribute this maladaptive behavior to deficient emotion processing. Indeed, laboratory research has documented psychopathy-related failures to attend to and make use of emotion stimuli (Newman & Lorenz, 2003), alter a dominant response set for reward in the face of growing punishments (Newman, Patterson, & Kosson, 1987), and discriminate among the affective aspects of words and faces (Blair et al., 2004). Despite the growing research literatures on psychopathy and EI, there appear to be no published articles documenting their association. In light of the intuitive connection between psychopathy and EI, the lack of research, and the potential utility of the EI framework for clarifying psychopathic behavior, this study investigates the association between psychopathy and EI. According to Salovey and Mayer (1990), EI consists of multiple dimensions, including, the inclination to allocate attention to one’s feelings, the ability to repair one’s mood, and clarity in discriminating affective states. Thus, in the interest of specifying the association between psychopathy and EI, we examine the association between the PCL-R and these three dimensions. Although the association between psychopathy and EI has not, to our knowledge, been previously studied, research on psychopathy provides a basis for postulating a priori hypotheses. The Response Modulation (RM) model ( Patterson & Newman, 1993) holds that psychopathic individuals are deficient in allocating attention to process information, including emotional cues that are outside of their current attentional focus ( Newman & Lorenz, 2003). Moreover, consistent with the RM model, there is substantial evidence that once they perceive a situation in a particular way, psychopathic individuals are deficient in processing information that is incongruent with or contraindicates their current attentional set ( MacCoon, Wallace, & Newman, 2004). Thus, the RM model predicts that psychopathic individuals will allocate less attention to emotion cues but, paradoxically, experience more difficulty altering an emotion response once it is established. These predictions correspond to the attention and repair dimensions of EI described by Salovey and Mayer (1990). Assuming they allocate attention to the affective information, the RM model holds that psychopathic individuals can discriminate affective cues and states as well as non-psychopathic individuals. Thus, the model predicts no differences on the EI clarity dimension. However, other investigators have reported that psychopathic individuals are deficient in recognizing and discriminating between different affective stimuli (e.g., Blair et al., 2004). Consequently, we also examine the association between psychopathy and EI clarity. When evaluating hypotheses generated by the RM model, investigators routinely distinguish between primary and secondary psychopathic subtypes using a combination of PCL-R and Welsh (1956) anxiety scores. Classic descriptions of psychopathy (Cleckley, 1976) hold that primary or true psychopathy is incompatible with high levels of neurotic anxiety, yet many individuals with high PCL-R scores report high levels of neurotic anxiety (Schmitt & Newman, 1999). Thus, Newman and colleagues test hypotheses about primary psychopathy by comparing low-anxious psychopathic individuals to non-psychopathic individuals with correspondingly low levels of anxiety (Brinkley, Newman, Widiger, & Lynam, 2004). Consequently, hypotheses generated by the RM model will be tested by comparing low-anxious psychopathic individuals to low-anxious non-psychopathic controls. Another framework for generating hypotheses about EI and psychopathy relates to the two-factor model of psychopathy (e.g., Hare, Harpur, & Hakstian, 1990). According to this model, psychopathy is comprised of an interpersonal-affective dimension (Factor 1) involving deceitful, callous traits and an impulsive-antisocial dimension (Factor 2), characterized by irresponsibility and social deviance. Although psychopathy has long been linked to unusual affective processing, laboratory investigations suggest that psychopathy is associated with diverse affective processing deficits that are differentially associated with the PCL-R factors. For example, Patrick, Bradley, and Lang (1993) examined the extent to which unpleasant pictures increase startle reactivity in psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders and found that deficits in startle-potentiation by unpleasant pictures were relatively specific to Factor 1. These data have fueled speculation that psychopathy, especially the affective-interpersonal features of the disorder, are associated with abnormal amygdala functioning (e.g., Blair et al., 2004) with the implication that emotion stimuli may elicit inadequate activation and, thus, inadequate attention (e.g., Whalen, 1998) in psychopathic individuals. Conversely, Patrick, Cuthbert, and Lang (1994) found that the poor fear conditioning of psychopathic individuals was associated with the impulsive-antisocial (Factor 2) dimension and suggested that such deficits reflect a problem with the maintenance of neural representations, undermining the ability to associate fear with specific environmental events. Noting the association between Factor 2 and antisociality, substance abuse, suicidal behaviors, and heightened negative affect, Patrick, Hicks, Krueger, and Lang (2005) have linked this construct to a “general inhibitory diathesis” (p. 352) that seems to include difficulty inhibiting pre-potent affective states. In light of these proposals regarding the two-factor model of psychopathy, there is reason to believe that the PCL-R factors will relate to different components of EI. Specifically, we predict that (1) the affective-interpersonal dimension of psychopathy (Factor 1) will be associated with weaker attention to affective information and (2) the impulsive-antisocial dimension (Factor 2) of psychopathy will be associated with difficulty repairing (i.e., inhibiting) pre-potent affective states.1