Reduced Laughter Contagion in Boys at Risk for Psychopathy

Abstract

SummaryHumans are intrinsically social animals, forming enduring affiliative bonds [1]. However, a striking minority with psychopathic traits, who present with violent and antisocial behaviors, tend to value other people only insofar as they contribute to their own advancement [2, 3]. Extant research has addressed the neurocognitive processes associated with aggression in such individuals, but we know remarkably little about processes underlying their atypical social affiliation. This is surprising, given the importance of affiliation and bonding in promoting social order and reducing aggression [4, 5]. Human laughter engages brain areas that facilitate social reciprocity and emotional resonance, consistent with its established role in promoting affiliation and social cohesion [6, 7, 8]. We show that, compared with typically developing boys, those at risk for antisocial behavior in general (irrespective of their risk of psychopathy) display reduced neural response to laughter in the supplementary motor area, a premotor region thought to facilitate motor readiness to join in during social behavior [9, 10, 11]. Those at highest risk for developing psychopathy additionally show reduced neural responses to laughter in the anterior insula. This region is implicated in auditory-motor processing and in linking action tendencies with emotional experience and subjective feelings [10, 12, 13]. Furthermore, this same group reports reduced desire to join in with the laughter of others—a behavioral profile in part accounted for by the attenuated anterior insula response. These findings suggest that atypical processing of laughter could represent a novel mechanism that impoverishes social relationships and increases risk for psychopathy and antisocial behavior.

Reduced Multivoxel Pattern Similarity of Vicarious Neural Pain Responses in Psychopathy

“…The robustness of our findings is supported by their consistency with similar prior work (Decety, Chen, et al, 2013;Decety, Skelly, & Kiehl, 2013;Lockwood et al, 2013;Marsh et al, 2013;Meffert et al, 2013;Seara-Cardoso, Viding, Lickley, & Sebastian, 2015) but should be confirmed in larger sample sizes. It is important to note, the extent to which our findings would generalize to a wider array of affective outcomes, including empathy for positive emotional states (recently suggested to be disrupted as well in psychopathy [O'Nions et al, 2017]), cannot be determined from this study because we considered responses only to painful stimuli in the present study. This increased the specificity of our findings, as the nature of self-other neural mapping implies that distinct patterns of activation should be observed for distinct affective and sensory states.…”

Towards understanding atypical social affiliation in psychopathy

“…5,42 Laughter: A recent study by our research group is the only investigation to date to focus on how children at risk of developing psychopathy process genuine laughter. 44 We asked the children to listen to clips of genuine laughter in the scanner. After the scanning session they listened to the laugher stimuli again and reported their desire to join in with the laughter.…”

Psychopathy to Altruism: Neurobiology of the Selfish–Selfless Spectrum

“…Meta-analyses of 26 studies found emotional recognition of facial expressions and vocal cues was significantly impaired in young and adult psychopaths for all of the basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise ( Dawel et al, 2012 ). Their inability to recognize fear and sadness was especially pronounced, but they also exhibit reduced neural response to laughter ( O’Nions et al, 2017 ). Such blunted emotions affect perceptions, thought processes and actions toward others, fostering both boldness and lack of remorse.…”