Neuroticism and psychopathy predict brain activation during moral and nonmoral emotion regulation

Impaired Decoding of Fear and Disgust Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgment in Alcohol-Dependent Individuals

“…Our regression models also directly investigated any influence of education, with the psychological variables entered after education. We think that the correlation with alcohol consumption reflects a consequence of alcoholism, but other explanations are possible, and future work should explore alternative premorbid factors including, especially, psychopathic traits (Bartels and Pizarro, 2011;Harenski et al, 2009) or altered attentional control (Van Dillen et al, 2012), which may also partially account for these findings. In sum, our study not only replicates the association between alcohol dependence and utilitarian moral judgment but also reveals that defective fear and disgust decoding are key predictors of utilitarian choices in personal moral dilemmas.…”

Neuroticism and conscientiousness respectively positively and negatively correlated with the network characteristic path length in dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex: A resting‐state fNIRS study

“…Interestingly, previous clinical study had validated that the depression patients exhibited the long characteristic path length (Meng et al., 2013). Additional reported work further demonstrated that neuroticism was positively related with brain activation in dlPFC during viewing negative pictures (Canli et al., 2001) or emotion regulation (Harenski et al., 2009). …”

“…Another interesting report demonstrated that the brain activation in left frontal cortical regions associated with negative pictures showed positive correlation with participants’ neuroticism scores (Canli et al., 2001). In an additional emotion study, participants were instructed to attempt decreasing emotional responses while viewing moral violation pictures, in which it was observed that the activation regarding voluntary emotion regulation in dlPFC was positively related to neuroticism (Harenski, Kim, & Hamann, 2009). …”

Clarifying the heterogeneity in psychopathic samples: Towards a new continuum of primary and secondary psychopathy

“…Furthermore, low-responsive children and adolescents display a left-ward bias in resting brain activity, which is associated with behavioral approach and reduced anxiety, whereas high-responsive youngsters show a right-ward bias, which has been associated with behavioral inhibition and increased anxiety (Balconi & Mazza, 2009, 2010Coan & Allen, 2003;Fox et al, 1995;Harmon-Jones & Allen, 1997;Hecht, 2011;Kagan & Snidman, 2004). Similarly, adolescents with callous-unemotional traits and adults who score high on core psychopathy features especially display right-hemisphere fronto-amygdalar structural abnormalities and hyporeactivity to aversive stimuli or when processing moral emotions (Carré et al, 2013;Fairchild et al, 2013;Glenn et al, 2009;Gordon et al, 2004;Harenski et al, 2009Harenski et al, , 2010Harenski et al, , 2014aHarenski et al, , 2014bJones et al, 2009;Kiehl et al, 2001;Kosson et al, 2002;Marsh et al, 2011;Marsh & Cardinale, 2014a;Müller et al, 2008;Tiihonen et al, 2000;Viding et al, 2012;Yang, Raine, Colletti, Toga, & Narr, 2010). Interestingly, Marsh et al (2014b) recently reported that extraordinarily altruistic individuals (those who donated a kidney to a complete stranger) displayed an enlargement and enhanced responsivity of specifically the right-hemisphere amygdala, which is the exact opposite of what is found in primary psychopathy.…”