Psychopathy and Social Cognition

Several studies have found that psychopatic individuals have a diminished sensitivity to how other people feel (Deming et al., 2018). These authors investigated the neural underpinnings of self versus other in criminal offenders by way of fMRI. The participants made a trait judgment task consisting of three conditions, self, other, and case. Thus self-focussed versus other-focused was assed in psychopatic individuals. Diminished neural activations were found for self-judgments as compared to other judgments in the PCC as well as in the TPJ. These findings were especially associated with impulsivity.