Summary by Jiana and the North American Research Committee.
Research Study Highlights
- People with psychopathy process pain normally when it is about themselves, but their brain activity seems to respond differently when imagining someone else in pain. Participants with high psychopathy scores showed reduced activity in brain regions related to empathy compared to participants with low psychopathy scores.
- Participants with high psychopathy scores displayed increased activity in the ventral striatum, a brain region linked to rewards, motivation, and goal-directed behavior, when imagining others in pain. The authors suggest this might indicate that some individuals with high psychopathy experience others’ pain as rewarding or arousing.
- The authors observed different patterns of connectivity between brain regions involved in empathic arousal for the two groups of participants (high vs. low psychopathy) as well as the two kinds of perspective-taking (imagine-self in pain vs. imagine-other in pain). Participants with high psychopathy showed positive connectivity during the imagine-self condition but negative connectivity during the imagine-other condition.
Background
Empathy, the capacity to understand and respond to another person’s emotions, is crucial for healthy human relationships. Having empathy allows a person to emotionally relate to others, and plays an important role in motivating a person to care about someone other than themselves. A common trait in psychopathic individuals is a lack of empathy. Psychopaths tend to show atypical emotional responses when perceiving another person in pain.
A key component of empathy is perspective taking, which is a person’s ability to see a situation from someone else’s point of view and to imagine their feelings in that situation. Studies have shown that consciously practicing perspective taking can trigger healthy empathic responses in people (Batson et al., 1997; Decety & Hodges, 2006; Decety et al., 2013). However, it is unclear whether perspective taking can trigger empathic responses in persons with psychopathy. This study investigated whether psychopathic offenders with differing levels of psychopathy showed differences in their brain activity while practicing perspective taking.
How was the study done?
The study involved 121 incarcerated men, divided into groups based on their level of psychopathy (low, intermediate, or high) according to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare, 2003). All participants were scanned using functional MRI (fMRI) to measure their brain activity while viewing images of people in physical pain or images of people making facial expressions that represent pain. They were given two instructions when viewing the scenarios:
- Imagine-Self – “Imagine that this situation is happening to YOU.”
- Imagine-Other – “Imagine that this situation is happening to SOMEONE ELSE.”
The goal of the study was to compare how the participants’ brain activity differed when they thought about themselves in pain versus when they thought about someone else in pain.
What did the researchers find?
During the imagine-self and imagine-other condition, all participants displayed normal activity in brain areas that have been linked to feeling physical pain. However, when looking at areas of the brain related to empathy, there were differences between the high and low psychopathy groups. Those scoring high in psychopathy showed the greatest activity in areas of the brain related to empathy during the imagine-self condition but displayed reduced activity in these areas compared to low psychopathy individuals during the imagine-other condition. Lower psychopathy scores were associated with greater activity in empathy-related brain areas, suggesting that lower levels of psychopathic traits were associated with greater levels of empathic responsiveness.
When conducting functional connectivity analysis, the authors observed differences in connectivity between the participants that varied with the perspective-taking condition. Positive connectivity means that when one area of the brain becomes active, another area typically becomes active at the same time. This reflects coordination and a functional relationship between two or more areas of the brain. High psychopathy offenders displayed positive connectivity between the amygdala and areas of the brain involved in empathic arousal during the imagine-self condition, but they displayed negative connectivity during the imagine-other condition. This suggests a possible dysfunction in the brain areas involved in empathic responsiveness to others’ pain in individuals with high levels of psychopathy.
Interestingly, high psychopathy offenders showed increased activity in the ventral striatum—a brain region associated with goal-directed processing, including rewards, motivation, and pleasure—when imagining others in pain. The authors indicate that this finding is consistent with the notion that some highly psychopathic individuals may not only fail to empathize with others’ pain but may actually find their pain rewarding.
Why is this important?
These findings help to explain why people with psychopathy may struggle to show concern for others’ suffering and have important implications for treating the disorder. The negative connectivity between areas of the brain involved in empathic arousal that was observed in high psychopathy participants suggests that psychopaths may process others’ distress differently due to abnormal brain functions. Participants with high psychopathy displaying activity in the ventral striatum during the imagine-other condition also shows a dysfunction in how they respond to others’ pain. By identifying these atypical neurological patterns, it may be possible to develop targeted interventions. One promising intervention approach is self-focused empathy training, where individuals imagine themselves in others’ painful situations. Training individuals with psychopathy to consciously engage in perspective taking and connect harmful experiences to their own feelings could be a valuable therapeutic strategy. Since empathy relies on a complex neural network (Reiss, 2017), and psychopathy is characterized by reliable neurological anomalies (Dolan & Doyle, 2007), studies like this one provide critical insights for designing more effective interventions for treating psychopathy.
References
Article Summarized:
Decety, J., Chen, C., Harenski, C., & Kiehl, A., K. (2013). An fMRI study of affective perspective taking in individuals with psychopathy: Imagining another in pain does not evoke empathy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, Article 489.
Other References:
Batson, C. D., Early, S., & Salvarini, G. (1997). Perspective taking: Imagining how another feels versus imagining how you would feel. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 751-758.
Decety, J., & Hodges, S. D. (2006). The social neuroscience of empathy. In P. A. M. Lange (Ed.), Bridging social psychology: Benefits of transdisciplinary approaches, (pp. 103–109). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Dolan, M., & Doyle, M. (2007). Psychopathy: Diagnosis and implications for treatment. Psychiatry, 6(10), 404-408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mppsy.2007.07.005.
Hare, R. D. (2003). Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Manual (2nd ed). Multi-Health Systems.
Reiss, H. (2017). The science of empathy. Journal of Patient Experience, 4(2), 74-77. https://doi.org/10.1177/2374373517699267.
