Psychopathy and Aggression: The Role of Emotion Dysregulation

Abstract

The importance of psychopathy in the forensic and criminal justice domains is largely due to its robust associations with aggression and violent behavior. Hence, investigators have increasingly been interested in elucidating potential mechanisms linking psychopathy and aggression. Recent research highlighted previously overlooked associations between psychopathy and difficulties in emotion regulation, the process responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and managing one’s emotional experience, as well as for guiding behavior under intense emotional arousal. Yet, it remains unclear whether emotion dysregulation may be helpful to explain well-documented associations between psychopathy and aggression. The present study examined whether emotion dysregulation mediated associations (i.e., explained a significant portion of the shared variance) between psychopathy and aggression across community ( N = 521) and offender ( N = 268) samples. Participants completed self-report measures of psychopathy, emotion dysregulation, trait aggressiveness (i.e., anger, hostility, physical and verbal aggression), as well as reactive and proactive aggression. Across both samples, psychopathy had significant indirect effect on all indices of aggression through emotion dysregulation, with the exception of verbal aggression. These findings support the relevance of emotion regulation for the construct of psychopathy and its maladaptive correlates and highlight the potential relevance of focusing on emotion regulation as a possible target for interventions aimed at reducing aggression among individuals with psychopathic traits.

Psychopathy Moderates the Relationship Between Nature Connectedness and Cognitive Reappraisal

“…Such findings mirror positive relationships observed between psychopathy scores and the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies in the general population (Burns et al, 2015) as well as juvenile forensic samples (Heinzen et al, 2011). Given that expressive suppression strategies are widely considered to be maladaptive and associated with poorer life outcomes, the development of psychopathology, and aggressive behaviour (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010;Garofalo et al, 2020;Gross, 2002;Gross & John, 2003;Gross & Muñoz, 1995;Jazaieri et al, 2012), accurately delineating contributors to this association is an important next step.…”

“…Second, given items of the NRS6 rely strongly on self-reported affective reactions to nature, it would have been desirable to also consider the measurement of more general affective tendencies; allowing us to better contextualise and understand the nature of the observed results. Third, measurement of emotion regulation varied in comparison to recent literature (Garofalo et al, 2018;2020), which used the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004); a measure of broader emotion regulation strategy use that does not allowed for the distinct assessment of reappraisal and suppression strategy use, specifically. Finally, all data were self-reported and cross-sectional in nature; a particular problem for the measurement of psychopathy due to its strong relationship with deception and poor emotional self-insight (Sellbom, Lilienfeld, Fowler, & McCrary, 2018).…”

“…Burns, Roberts, Egan, & Kane (2015) found that both primary and secondary dimensions of psychopathy were inversely related to cognitive reappraisal strategy use, and positively related to expressive suppression strategy use. Moreover, Garofalo et al (2020) found that through mediation analysis, emotion dysregulation more generally accounted for some of the variation in the relationships between psychopathy and anger, hostility, and physical (but not verbal) aggression. Such findings reflect similar trends in forensic settings (Casey, Rogers, Burns, & Yiend, 2013;Garofalo, Neumann, & Velotti, 2018;Heinzen, Koehler, Smeets, Hoffer, & Huchzermeier, 2011), where psychopathic traits are positively associated with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (including, but not specific to expressive suppression).…”

“…Of note, conceptualisations of psychopathy vary within the literature; ranging from super-ordinate constructs ('psychopathy'), to individual facets, including affective and interpersonal (primary) and lifestyle and antisocial (secondary) dimensions. Although literature discussed within this article varies across these conceptualisations, in line with Garofalo, Neumann, and Velotti (2020), this study uses the composite construct of psychopathy due to its greater relevance for tailoring discussions in public (as well as criminal justice) arenas (see Reidy et al, 2015).…”

“…Such findings reflect similar trends in forensic settings (Casey, Rogers, Burns, & Yiend, 2013;Garofalo, Neumann, & Velotti, 2018;Heinzen, Koehler, Smeets, Hoffer, & Huchzermeier, 2011), where psychopathic traits are positively associated with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (including, but not specific to expressive suppression). Moving forward, and in line with Garofalo et al's (2020) urge to explore emotion regulation as a potential target for treatment intervention in reducing the adverse impact of psychopathy, work distinguishing between specific emotion regulation strategy use is timely and important.…”