اختلالات همدلی و هوش هیجانی خصلتی در اختلالات فکری و روانی و ماکیاولیسم

This study investigated the relationships between psychopathy (primary and secondary), Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and empathy, using an image task that required an appropriate empathic response to the emotional displays of others (happy, sad and neutral). Results indicated that primary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of positive affect from sad stimuli, while secondary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of negative affect in response to neutral stimuli, and the opposite pattern was found for trait emotional intelligence. Regressional analyses demonstrated that secondary psychopathy, Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and state anxiety are important predictors when stimuli are ambiguous.

The study of aversive personality traits has received much attention in the past few years, particularly the non-clinical traits of psychopathy and Machiavellianism (e.g., Lee and Ashton, 2005 and Vernon et al., 2008). Within the personality-based approach to psychopathy there is a consensus that guiltlessness, callousness, dishonesty, egocentricity, failure to form close emotional bonds, low anxiety proneness, superficial charm and blame externalisation all represent core features (Hare, 1991). Theoretically, psychopathy is regarded as a heterogeneous concept consisting of primary psychopathy, which is characterised by features such as cruelty and lack of affect and secondary psychopathy, which is characterised by features such as impulsivity, neuroticism and aggression (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995). Machiavellianism involves interpersonal strategies that promote the use of deception, manipulation and exploitation, and the Machiavellian individual can be described as cynical, domineering, aloof and practical (McHoskey, Worzel, & Szyarto, 1998). According to Christie (1970) Machiavellian individuals are successful manipulators characterised by: (a) lack of interpersonal affect in interpersonal relationships, (b) lack of concern with conventional morality, (c) lack of gross psychopathology, and (d) low ideological commitment. Various researchers have noted the conceptual similarity between Machiavellianism and psychopathy (e.g., McHoskey et al., 1998 and Mealey, 1995) and it has been suggested that they denote a single construct (Lee and Ashton, 2005 and McHoskey et al., 1998). However, Vernon et al. (2008) have demonstrated that Machiavellianism and psychopathy differ in heritability, and research indicates that although overlapping, they are distinct constructs (Paulhus and Williams, 2002 and Williams and Paulhus, 2004). Unsurprisingly, psychopathy (Malterer, Glass, & Newman, 2008) and Machiavellianism (Austin, Farrelly, Black, & Moore, 2007) have been recently associated with lower trait emotional intelligence (also known as trait emotional self-efficacy). Individuals high in trait emotional intelligence are good at managing their stress levels and demonstrate enhanced psychosocial functioning, such as better social relationships (e.g., Schutte et al., 2001). Being able to empathise is an important part of emotional intelligence and a defining criterion of clinical psychopathy is reduced empathic responding to victims (Hare, 1991). The ability to repeatedly cause serious harm to others is an indicator of a profound disturbance in an appropriate “empathic” response to the suffering of another (Blair, 2005). Empathy is known to inhibit and moderate aggression (Richardson et al., 1994 and Wheeler et al., 2002). Past research indicates that clinical psychopathic individuals show a selective empathic deficit in that they are impaired in the recognition of sad and fearful facial expressions (e.g., Montagne et al., 2005). Although investigators have recently begun to extend findings from emotional deficits to psychopathy in normal populations, only a few studies have looked at whether empathy deficits exist in non-clinical samples (e.g., Del Gaizo and Falkenbach, 2008 and Mahmut et al., 2008), this is surprising, especially when research with non-clinical samples has found that despite lower base-rates, there is evidence for diverse expressions of psychopathic traits across the population (Skeem, Poythress, Edens, Lilienfeld, & Cale, 2003). Del Gaizo and Falkenbach’s (2008) study indicated that primary psychopathic traits were positively correlated with accuracy of perception of fearful faces, while secondary psychopathic traits were not related to emotional recognition. Mahmut et al.’s (2008) study indicated that individuals scoring highly on psychopathy demonstrated low levels of empathy on an emotional empathy questionnaire; the EEQ (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972). Analogous to the psychopathic personality, conventional morality is not a concern to Machiavellian individuals; instead, they demonstrate shallow emotional involvement with others and sanction behaviour which is emotionally-manipulative (Austin et al., 2007). Because individuals high in Machiavellianism are likely to exploit others and to view others in a goal-oriented manner (they see people “as a means to an end”), unsurprisingly Machiavellianism has demonstrated negative correlations with empathy (e.g., Austin et al., 2007 and Wastell and Booth, 2003). The aim of the current study was to further explore the relationships between non-clinical psychopathy, Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and deficits in empathy using a purposely-designed visual task to assess appropriateness of empathic responses to the emotional displays of others. Hoffman (2000) defined empathy as “feelings that are more congruent with another’s situation than with one’s own situation” (p. 30), while Mehrabian and Epstein (1972) defined emotional empathy as a “vicariously emotional response to the perceived emotional experiences of others” (p. 525). These definitions suggest an affective reaction (“affective/emotional empathy”; see Losoya & Eisenberg, 2001), not just a cognitive ability to read another person’s thoughts or feelings correctly (“cognitive empathy”). Following this line of thought, this study is concerned with whether an individual experiences an appropriate empathic response rather than how capable he or she is of such an experience, hence the use of an empathy task that is not limited to emotion recognition. Although psychopathy is considered a heterogeneous concept, many emotional deficit studies have approached it as homogeneous, potentially missing important differences between the two. An important difference between primary and secondary psychopathy is that negative affect is notably absent from primary psychopathy, whereas secondary psychopathy is associated with negative affect (Del Gaizo & Falkenbach, 2008). For this reason, the current study included a measure of state anxiety in order to measure the levels of anxiety experienced by participants at particular points during the study. Following on from findings from previous research it was hypothesised that primary and secondary psychopathy and Machiavellianism would be associated with low emotional intelligence and empathic deficiencies, i.e. the expression of inappropriate affect in response to images of positive and negative affective content.