Fear conditioning in Psychopaths

Psychopathic (n 11) men were given an aversive conditioning task while theie ERP's and skin conduction was measured (Rothemund et al., 2012). In the experiment there was a painful cue that was the unconditional stimulus, whereas neutral faces were used as the conditional stimulus. The findings of the experiment showed that psychopatic individuals are impaired in fear conditioning. These psychopatic individuals showed no startle reflecs as well as no difference in skin conductance (Rothemund et al., 2012). The P100 ERP component was found to be attenuated.