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Cognitive Neuropsychiatry

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The influence of subclinical psychopathic traits onresponding to others’ awkward requests

Karishma Vyas, Leila Jameel & Shelley Channon

To cite this article: Karishma Vyas, Leila Jameel & Shelley Channon (2016) The influenceof subclinical psychopathic traits on responding to others’ awkward requests, CognitiveNeuropsychiatry, 21:3, 228-241, DOI: 10.1080/13546805.2016.1174681

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13546805.2016.1174681

Published online: 26 Apr 2016.

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The influence of subclinical psychopathic traits on respondingto others’ awkward requestsKarishma Vyas, Leila Jameel and Shelley Channon

Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, UK

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Psychopathy is characterised by a postulated deficit inemotional empathy, with intact cognitive empathy. Althoughstudies have examined performance on laboratory tasks withinincarcerated populations, there is a paucity of work exploring howsubclinical psychopathic traits translate into everyday socialinteractions.Methods: The present study investigated this by screening 502university students with the Psychopathic Personality Inventoryand comparing 20 high-scoring (10F; mean age = 19.85 years) and19 low-scoring (15F; mean age = 21.00 years) participants on theirresponses to the Social Strategy Task. This comprises socialscenarios that each end with an awkward request posed by themain character. Participants provided verbal responses and ratedthe awkwardness of each situation. Verbal responses wereclassified into positive or negative social strategies, denoting theextent of compliance with requests.Results: The groups were compared using analysis of variance and t-tests. The high psychopathic trait group used fewer positive socialstrategies than the low group was less polite in emotional toneand perceived situations as less awkward.Conclusions: The findings are considered in relation to thepostulated dissociation between intact cognitive empathy andimpaired emotional empathy. The potential implications forclinical interventions are briefly discussed.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 19 December 2014Accepted 30 March 2016

KEYWORDSPsychopathy; socialbehaviour; social cognition;empathy

Psychopathy is a multifaceted disorder, chiefly typified by emotional, interpersonal andbehavioural deficits, including a reduced capacity for remorse and diminished attachmentsto others, a propensity for callous or antisocial behaviour (e.g., Cleckley, 1967), aptitudefor skilful manipulation, and a superficially charming façade (e.g., Hare, 1993). Themost widely used tool for assessment of psychopathy was developed by Hare (1980,1991), which conceptualises the disorder as comprising two factors relating to behaviouralproblems, emotional and interpersonal deficits. More recent studies have suggested threeor four separate factors to be more appropriate (see Cooke & Michie, 2001; Hare &Neumann, 2008).

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Karishma Vyas k.vyas@ucl.ac.uk

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Psychopathy is thought to be characterised by intact cognitive empathy or mentalising,the ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of others (e.g., Frith & Frith, 2006), butimpaired emotional empathy, the ability to experience vicarious arousal and resonatewith others’ feelings (Blair, 2008). With respect to cognitive empathy, intact performancein psychopathy has been documented on a range of tasks, including ability to identify themental states of story characters, and to pass “faux pas” tasks and “false belief” tasks (e.g.,Dolan & Fullam, 2004). With regard to emotional empathy, a number of studies havedemonstrated errors in identifying others’ emotions from facial expressions, especiallyfear (e.g., Blair & Coles, 2000) and recognition of vocal affect (Stevens, Charman, &Blair, 2001). Research focusing on psychopathic traits in the general population hasalso identified emotional empathy deficits in those high in psychopathic traits. Forinstance, one study found that adolescents with moderate versus low levels of psycho-pathic traits reported lower levels of affective empathy (Brouns et al., 2013). A furtherstudy found that psychopathic traits were associated with limited overall empathy, diffi-culty describing feelings and externally oriented thinking (Jonason & Krause, 2013).Recent work also found that psychopathic traits were associated with weaker empathicresponses to happy stories and reduced tendency to feel empathic concern (Seara-Cardoso, Neumann, Roiser, McCrory, & Viding, 2012). Finally, one neuroimagingstudy in which participants were shown pictures of others in pain found that psychopathictraits were negatively correlated with activity in brain areas associated with empathy, suchas the anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus and anterior cingulate cortex (Seara-Cardoso,Viding, Lickley, & Sebastian, 2015).

In contrast, people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are thought to be able to res-onate with others’ emotional states, but not to understand them, although the evidence forintact emotional empathy is somewhat mixed (see Blair, 2008). A recent study examiningempathic responding in these two conditions (Gillespie, McCleery, & Oberman, 2014)concluded that emotion recognition deficits in psychopathy may result from amygdalahypoactivity, whilst similar deficits in ASD may stem from general impairments in faceprocessing, resulting from abnormal functioning of the fusiform face area. In anotherstudy, Lockwood, Bird, Bridge, and Viding (2013) directly contrasted psychopathy andASD and found that psychopathic traits were negatively correlated with self-reportedemotional empathy, but not with performance on a cognitive empathy task. Conversely,autistic traits were negatively correlated with cognitive empathy but not with emotionalempathy. Studies comparing psychopathic tendencies and ASD in children have also sup-ported this dissociation in empathy. Children with conduct disorder and callous-unemo-tional traits (considered to be precursors of adult psychopathy; Frick & Viding, 2009)performed as well as controls on measures of cognitive empathy but reported less fearor empathy for victims of aggression (Jones, Happé, Gilbert, Burnett, & Viding, 2010)and also reported feeling less emotionally affected after watching videoed social inter-actions (Schwenck et al., 2012); children with ASD showed the opposite pattern.

The postulated deficit in emotional empathy in psychopathy may facilitate a disregardfor social norms and moral codes. Whilst those with psychopathic traits have been foundto differentiate appropriately regarding the moral permissibility of various actions (Cima,Tonnaer, & Hauser, 2010) and to judge moral transgressions to be more serious than con-ventional transgressions (e.g., Blair, Mitchell, & Blair, 2005), they are significantly lesslikely to make reference to the victims of moral transgressions (e.g., Blair, 1995).

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Moreover, those with psychopathic traits appeared to suspend their judgment of wrong-doing when told to imagine that a behaviour such as hitting someone was no longer pro-hibited, whereas control participants maintained their view that this constitutedwrongdoing (Blair, Monson, & Frederickson, 2001). This implies that those with high psy-chopathic traits may be capable of behaviours that cause significant social harm. Whilstbehaviour that is in breach of the law has attracted considerable attention, there is apaucity of work elucidating the potentially negative effects of psychopathy on social per-formance at a more subtle, everyday level.

With regard to everyday functioning, the capacity to prioritise others’ best interestsover our own plays a vital role in maintaining reciprocal and harmonious social relation-ships. In addition to the benefits for those receiving help, those providing help also derivesignificant benefits, including increased life satisfaction (Wheeler, Gorey, & Greenblatt,1998), and self-esteem (Gecas & Burke, 1995). One key factor thought to drive selflesssocial behaviour is the degree to which perceiving another individual’s distress elicits acorresponding empathic response (e.g., Bierhoff & Rohmann, 2004). Both cognitive andemotional empathy are thought to be important drivers of prosocial behaviour (Lock-wood, Seara-Cardoso, & Viding, 2014). Thus, impairment in either component ofempathy might lead to difficulty perceiving or resonating with someone’s distress. Thisin turn could diminish the motivation to help, and thereby reduce the capacity for proso-cial behaviour (Jameel, Vyas, Bellesi, Roberts, & Channon, 2014). The typical conceptual-isation of psychopathy focuses heavily upon antisocial behaviour, and potentially risksunderestimating the other components of interpersonal and emotional dysfunction(Blackburn, 2007). Although the majority of studies have focused on prison populations,this may not have relevance for everyday social interactions. Studying non-institutiona-lised people with subclinical psychopathic traits reduces the potentially confounding influ-ence of criminality (Kirkman, 2002), and permits examination of the interpersonal andemotional aspects of psychopathy. This in turn may illuminate how characteristics, suchas manipulation and exploitation, can hinder everyday social interactions with others. Afew recent studies have explored the ramifications of high levels of psychopathic traits forsocial behaviour. Higher trait levels have been negatively associated with co-operation(Curry, Chesters, & Viding, 2011). A recent study on social motivation linked high psycho-pathic trait levels to goals relating to self-image and success, as opposed to meaningful orlong-term relationships with others (Foulkes, McCrory, Neumann, & Viding, 2014).

The present study was designed to investigate how the postulated empathic deficitsassociated with psychopathy translate into everyday social behaviour. The independentvariable was psychopathic trait group membership (i.e., whether participants were highversus low in psychopathic traits). Psychopathic traits were measured using the Psycho-pathic Personality Inventory-Short Form (PPI-SF; Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001) a self-reportquestionnaire that has commonly been used to assess subclinical psychopathic traits (e.g., Han, Alders, Greening, Neufeld & Mitchell, 2012; Long & Titone, 2007). Since thePPI-SF was not designed as a clinical tool, there is no established diagnostic cut-offscore. Previous work comparing the highest- and lowest-scoring participants from alarge sample who completed the PPI-SF has proved sensitive to group differences ontasks assessing verbal emotion processing (Long & Titone, 2007), and a similar approachhas been used successfully in studies comparing those with high versus low autistic traits(Jameel et al., 2014; Jameel, Vyas, Bellesi, Cassell, & Channon, 2015). The PPI-SF was used

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as a measure of self-reported psychopathic traits in the present study. Participants alsocompleted the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner,Martin & Clubley, 2001), a self-report measure of autistic traits. Three sub-factors ofthe AQ (communication, imagination and social skill) were of particular interest, sincethese contained items relating to cognitive empathy; it was expected that the groupswould not differ on these sub-factors.

One measure that has been used to study everyday prosocial behaviour is the SocialStrategy Task (Channon, Collins, Swain, Young, & Fitzpatrick, 2012). This consists ofscenarios describing everyday awkward situations that require weighing one’s own inter-ests against those of another person. The task has been shown to differentiate betweenindividuals high and low in social skill, since the former showed greater considerationfor others. In the present study, groups of participants who were high versus low inself-reported psychopathic traits were compared on this task. There were two dependentvariables. First, the types of social strategies employed by participants were measured byclassifying their verbal responses to awkward requests according to the degree of compli-ance. Second, participants rated the awkwardness of the scenarios. It was expected thatthose high in psychopathic traits would employ fewer positive social strategies (involvingvarying degrees of compliance) and more negative strategies (involving non-compliance)when responding to awkward requests. It was also expected that the high trait group wouldreport feeling less awkward in these social situations and generate responses that were lesspolite in emotional tone as compared to those low in psychopathic traits.

Methods

Screening

Participants and procedureEthical approval was obtained from the UCL Research Ethics Committee. An opportunis-tic sample of 502 full-time university students (217m, 285f), aged 18 or over was recruitedfor the screening phase of the study. Participants provided informed consent before com-pleting the PPI-SF (Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001). Participants who were not fluent in Englishwere excluded from the sample. Participants were informed that they might be invited to asecond stage of the study, for which they would receive payment. Scorers who fell withinthe upper and lower tenth percentiles were contacted and invited to take part in the secondstage of the study. This consisted of 47 individuals (26m, 21f) in the upper range and 51individuals (11m, 40f) in the lower range.

PPI-SFThis is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 56 statements on a 4-point, Likert-typescale with “False”, “Mostly False”, “Mostly True” and “True” as possible responses;higher scores indicate higher degrees of psychopathy (Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001). Toensure consistent responding, questionnaire items are counterbalanced such that psycho-pathic traits are associated with agreeing with half the statements and disagreeing with theremaining half. The PPI-SF has been found to have good internal consistency (Cronbach’salpha ranging from .90 to .93), test–retest reliability (r =0 .95) and strong convergent anddiscriminant validity with a wide range of self-report measures, psychiatric interview,

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observer rating and family history data (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). The PPI-SF containseight sub-scales representing personality traits central to the construct of psychopathy (1= social potency; 2 = coldheartedness; 3 = fearlessness; 4 = impulsive nonconformity; 5 =stress immunity; 6 =Machiavellian egocentricity; 7 = blame externalisation; 8 = carefreenonplanfulness). Further factor analysis has grouped these sub-scales into two factors(Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001). The first factor (PPI-1) consists of the first five of the eightlisted sub-scales, and the second factor (PPI-2) consists of the three remaining threesub-scales. Total PPI-SF scores and the PPI1 and PPI2 factor scores were calculated forthe whole sample; both PPI-SF factors were highly correlated with PPI-SF total score(p <0 .001). Internal consistency of the PPI total score in this sample was α = .79, andranged from α = .63 – .77 for all sub-scales and factors.

Testing

Participants and procedureA between-groups design was used to compare high PPI and low PPI participants. Ofthose contacted from the screening phase, 20 high-scoring (10m, 10f) and 19 low-scoring (4m, 15f) individuals agreed to take part in the testing phase of the study. All par-ticipants provided written informed consent before completing the Social Strategy Taskand a brief health screen relating to serious accidents or illnesses, or significant psychologi-cal or emotional difficulties; no exclusions were required on this basis. Participants werepaid for taking part. The groups did not significantly differ in age t(1,37) = 1.52, p = 0.13;19.85 years (SD 1.60) and 21.00 years (SD 2.96) for the high and low groups respectively.

PPI-SF total and factor scoresThe groups differed significantly on total PPI-SF scores, t(1,37) = 21.34, p < 0.001, and onboth the first PPI factor, t(1,37) = 14.87, p <0 .001, and the second PPI factor t(1,37) = 8.88,p <0 .001. Minimum and maximum ranges, and the means and standard deviations of thetwo high and low PPI groups for PPI-SF total and the two factor scores are presented inTable 1.

AQ social cognition sub-scalesThe AQ is a self-report questionnaire designed to measure autistic traits in the generalpopulation, comprising 50 items on a 4-point, Likert-type scale (Baron-Cohen,

Table 1. AQ and PPI-SF results.High PPI group M (SD) Low PPI group M (SD) Significance Effect size

PPI-SF scoresTotal (range = 56–224) 153.5 (9.09) 98.70 (7.05) <.001 0.91PPI-1 (range = 35–140) 103.25 (8.25) 66.20 (7.49) <.001 0.92PPI-2 (range = 21–84) 50.25 (7.20) 32.50 (5.30) <.001 0.77AQ sub-scale scores (%)Communication 64.50 (13.17) 62.63 (20.77) NS 0.05Imagination 54.00 (13.14) 49.47 (18.71) NS 0.14Social skill 41.00 (16.19) 37.37 (12.84) NS 0.12

Note: Mean scores and standard deviations for the high PPI and low PPI groups for the AQ social cognition sub-scales, andPPI-SF total and two factor scores.

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Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, & Clubley, 2001). These 50 items assess 5 sub-scales (socialskill, communication, imagination, attention switching and attention to detail) relating totypical areas of impairment in individuals with high levels of autistic traits. It has beenfound to have good internal consistency, ranging from moderate to high for all sub-scales (α = .63–77), and good test–rest reliability (r = 7; p =0 .002). The three sub-scalesrelating to social cognition rather than attentional functioning were of particular interestin the present study, since these comprised items pertaining to cognitive empathy andsocial performance, for example, “I find it easy to ‘read between the lines’ whensomeone is talking to me” (communication); “When I’m reading a story I find it difficultto work out the characters’ intentions” (imagination); and “I find it hard to make newfriends” (social skill). The high and low PPI groups were compared on their scores forthese three social sub-scales of the AQ as an index of cognitive empathy. A t-testshowed that as predicted there was no difference between high and low PPI groups inscores for communication (t(1,37) = .34, p =0 .738), imagination (t(1,37) = .88, p=0 .481), or social skill (t(1,37) = .77, p =0 .444). Means and standard deviations for theAQ sub-scale scores (reported as percentages) are presented in Table 1.

Social strategy taskThis consists of 10 vignettes describing everyday situations in which a character known tothe participant (i.e., friend, relative or colleague) poses an awkward question asking themfor a favour or a favourable opinion (Channon et al., 2012). The scenarios were designed topit self-interest against consideration for others, since it was in the characters’ interests forparticipants to comply with their requests, whereas compliance always incurred some kindof personal cost for the participants. This gives the opportunity to study participants’ pri-orities in situations with no clear-cut right or wrong answers. This task assesses bothbehavioural (i.e., how the participant would respond) and emotional aspects of social per-formance (i.e., their own affective response to the situation).

Example scenario. “Your cousin likes to visit your house. When she visits she takes yourthings without permission and wants you to pay to take her out to expensive places. Sheasks you: ‘Can I come and visit you next weekend?’”

Questions for each scenario.

(1) What would you say in this situation?(2) On a scale of 0–100, where 0 represents “not at all awkward” and 100 “extremely

awkward”, how awkward would you say this situation is?

Scoring of behavioural responses

Participants’ responses were rated for strategy usage and emotional tone by the secondauthor, a researcher, and by the third author, an academic and clinician, both of whomwere blind to group membership. The raters had an agreement rate of 95.38% for strategyusage, and 97.95% for emotional tone; all differences were resolved by agreement.

Strategy usageFor each scenario, participants’ responses were classified by raters into one of six cat-egories, giving total strategy scores from 0 to 10 for each of the six categories for each

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participant (reported as percentages). Responses were classified into categories accordingto the degree of prosocial behaviour and skill displayed in considering others’ feelings.Three of the categories were positive since they involved prosocial responses: simpleacquiescence, qualified acquiescence with an excuse, and qualified acquiescence withfactual feedback. Simple acquiescence referred to responses in which participants agreedto the characters’ requests without qualification (e.g., yes you can stay with me). Qualifiedacquiescence with an excuse referred to responses in which they partially or conditionallyagreed to the characters’ requests, with an excuse based either on altering the interpret-ation of the behaviour of the main character to a more favourable one or an excusebased on the participant’s difficulty in complying fully (e.g., Yes, come along but thistime I’d like to stay home and have dinner because it’s more cosy than a restaurant). Qua-lified acquiescence with factual feedback implied criticism by making direct reference tosome undesirable aspect of the main character’s behaviour as a justification for lack offull compliance (e.g., Yes, but I expect you to pay your share of whatever we have to pay).

Three of the strategies were negative, since they did not involve compliance with others’requests: justified refusal with an excuse that protected the main characters’ feelings (e.g.,Sorry but I’ve got other plans that weekend, maybe some other time), justified refusal withfactual feedback that implied criticism of the main character (e.g., No, I can’t afford tokeep taking you out), and outright refusal. Outright refusal strategies consisted ofsimple refusals to comply with the character’s request (e.g., No you can’t visit nextweekend).

Emotional toneEach verbal response was also given a score of 1–3 where 3 denoted polite tone (flatteringor empathic comments), 2 reflected neutral comments (no particular emotional tone), or 1if impolite or blunt. Total scores across the 10 scenarios were added for each participant,giving a single participant score with a range of 10–30 (reported as percentages).

Perceived awkwardnessAwkwardness ratings were averaged across the 10 scenarios (reported as percentages).

Results

Means and standard deviations (SD) for each of the Social Strategy Task measuresdescribed later are presented in Table 2. Examination of the data showed that all butone of the variables was normally distributed; outright refusal scores for the high traitgroup were skewed. A non-parametric test showed a similar result to a parametric test,and parametric analyses were therefore reported throughout. A significance level of 0.05was adopted, with a stricter level when post-hoc tests were conducted.

Social strategy task

Behavioural responsesStrategy usage. A t-test comparing the high and low PPI groups on the proportion of totalpositive versus negative strategies confirmed that there was a significant difference

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between the groups; t(1,37) = 2.61, p =0 .013.The high PPI group used significantly fewerpositive versus negative strategies.

Positive strategy usage. The high and low PPI groups were compared on their usage ofsimple acquiescence, qualified acquiescence with excuses and qualified acquiescencewith factual feedback. Using a strict significance level (0.05/3), the high PPI group usedsignificantly fewer acquiescent social strategies than the low PPI group, t(1,37) = 3.31, p=0 .002, but the groups did not significantly differ in their use of acquiescence qualifiedby excuses, t(1,37) = 1.25, p =0 .218, or acquiescence qualified by factual feedback, t(1,37) = 1.79, p =0 .081.

Negative strategy usage. Using a strict significance level (0.5/3), the groups did not signifi-cantly differ in their usage of justifications for refusal qualified by excuses, t(1,37) = 0.58, p= 0.566, nor justifications for refusal qualified by factual feedback, t(1,37) = 1.72, p = 0.095.The high PPI group used significantly more outright refusal strategies than the low PPIgroup, t(1,37) = 2.87, p = 0.007.

Emotional tone of responses. The responses given by the high PPI group were rated loweroverall for polite tone than those of the low PPI group, t(1,37) = 2.64, p =0 .012.

Perceived awkwardness.With respect to awkwardness, the high PPI group rated the scen-arios to be significantly less awkward than did the low PPI group; t(1,37) = 3.26, p = 0.002.

GenderSince the gender distribution was uneven in the low PPI group, these analyses wererepeated using analysis of covariances with gender as a covariate. The effect of genderdid not reach significance for any of these analyses (p >0 .05) and did not change theoverall pattern of results.

Discussion

Comparison of the groups on the Social Strategy Task showed that as expected, the highPPI group was less polite in emotional tone and also rated the situations to be less

Table 2. Social strategy task results.High PPI group M (SD) Low PPI group M (SD) Significance Effect size

Positive strategy usage (%)Total 46.50 (11.37) 57.37 (14.47) .013 0.84Acquiescence 10.50 (12.34) 23.68 (12.57) .002 1.06Qualification with excuse 20.00 (11.23) 24.21 (9.61) NS 0.40Qualification with negative 16.00 (12.31) 9.47 (10.26) NS 0.58Negative strategy usage (%)Total 53.50 (11.37) 42.63 (14.47) .013 0.84Justification with excuse 26.50 (11.82) 28.95 (14.49) NS 0.19Justification with negative 18.50 (10.40) 12.63 (10.98) NS 0.55Outright refusal 8.50 (10.89) 1.05 (3.15) .007 0.93Emotional tone (%) 69.33 (10.18) 77.72 (9.63) .012 0.85Awkwardness (%) 42.76 (13.36) 56.07 (12.05) .002 1.05

Note: Mean scores and standard deviations for the high PPI and low PPI groups for all measures.

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awkward than did the low PPI group. As predicted, the groups differed significantly instrategy usage, whereby the high group used fewer positive and more negative strategies.

When the positive and negative strategies were broken down into the individual sixcomponents, an interesting pattern emerged. The high PPI group used “acquiescence” sig-nificantly less and “outright refusal” significantly more than the low PPI group, but did notdiffer on the remaining four strategies. Whilst “acquiescence” and “outright refusal” rep-resent opposite responses (yes or no), they are nevertheless both relatively simple strat-egies. In comparison, the other four strategies are more sophisticated, requiring amodification of the request or a justification for rejecting it, by means of either factualfeedback or the generation of an excuse (Channon et al., 2012). Similar usage of moresophisticated strategies suggests that the groups were equally capable of reasoningabout the situations, whereas enhanced usage of simple, more harsh strategies by thehigh PPI group may reflect willingness to set boundaries at the expense of maintainingrelationships. In a previous study utilising the same task, individuals low in self-reportedsocial skill were also found to use more simple responses to awkward requests that did notto consider the consequences for the character, whereas those high in social skill tended togive more sophisticated responses that prioritised the characters’ feelings (Channon et al.,2012).

Cognitive and emotional aspects of performance

Psychopathy is considered to be characterised by impaired emotional empathy and intactcognitive empathy (Blair, 2008). Whilst these abilities were not directly measured in thepresent study, the inclusion of AQ sub-scales gave some indication of cognitive aspectsof social skill, and the emotional tone and perceived awkwardness of the Social StrategyTask were thought to tap predominantly affective processes.

Looking first at cognitive aspects of performance, it is possible that group differences instrategy usage reflect that the high PPI group may not have comprehended the non-literalsubtext behind the scenarios. For instance, in the cousin’s visit scenario, there was animplication that the cousin specifically wanted a favourable response to “Can I comeand visit you next weekend?”. Failure to appreciate subtext may have led to less tactfuland less compliant responses, and to difficulties in anticipating the consequences forthe main characters. This interpretation of the present findings could be linked to possibledifficulties in cognitive empathy. However, there is relatively little evidence to support this.People with psychopathy demonstrate intact performance on a range of traditional cogni-tive empathy tasks (e.g., Dolan & Fullam, 2004). Moreover, the high and low PPI groups inthe present study did not differ in their scores on the AQ sub-scales relating to socialcognition.

Emotional rather than cognitive factors may have primarily driven differences betweenthe groups in performance on the Social Strategy Task. Deficits in emotional empathy havebeen consistently identified in psychopathy (e.g., Vaidyanathan, Hall, Patrick, & Bernat,2011). Taking the cousin’s visit example, participants may have initially wished toexpress their dissatisfaction and tell her that they did not like paying for everythingwhen she came to visit. However, by resonating emotionally with the potential distressthat this would cause her, they may have felt unwilling to give their honest opinion andsubstituted a more compliant, non-confrontational response. Since the high trait

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participants were generally less compliant and less polite than the low trait participants, itis possible that they lacked emotional investment in the social interactions and failed toexperience empathic distress at the prospect of non-compliance or using negative, dero-gatory language. They may have been concerned exclusively with their own interestsand thus were not motivated to address the needs of the characters.

A lack of consideration for the characters may also account for the group difference inawkwardness ratings. Greater expressed awkwardness in the low trait group may havereflected an internal struggle to reach a suitable compromise between their own prefer-ences (for example, wishing to tell the cousin that she could not come to stay) andthose of the main characters (the cousin wanting to visit). High awkwardness ratingsmay have thus arisen from the prospect of either fulfilling an undesirable request, or dis-appointing or upsetting the main character. If high trait participants did not care about thecharacters, and were happy to prioritise their own needs, they may have not experiencedthe same degree of awkwardness. Although no definitive measures of empathy wereincluded in the present study, the pattern of findings is consistent with the notion ofcompromised emotional but intact cognitive empathy in psychopathy (e.g., Blair, 2008;Lockwood et al., 2013).

Limitations and future directions

Whilst the sample sizes of the present were relatively small, the effect sizes were relativelylarge (Cohen, 1992), and thus it is unlikely that the study was underpowered. There was agender imbalance in the samples tested, reflecting gender differences in the upper andlower deciles of the screening sample. This is unsurprising given that psychopathy ismore commonly identified in males than in females (Verona & Vitale, 2006). Analysisof covariance suggested that gender did not make a significant contribution to the findings,and did not substantially alter the pattern of results, although it remains possible thatwithin-group gender differences in prosocial behaviour might emerge with largersample sizes.

It should also be noted that this study adopted the approach of comparing the extremesof the screening sample, rather than testing across the whole range. A similar approachcomparing extreme sub-groups has been adopted in previous work (e.g., Long &Titone, 2007). The present study extended understanding of psychopathy as a continuumof traits by exploring how individuals high in psychopathic traits approach the socialworld and navigate solutions when faced with awkward social encounters. However, itis worth noting that all participants were recruited from a university, rather than froman institutional setting. Thus, the high trait group was likely to have comprised “successfulpsychopaths”. Whilst “unsuccessful psychopaths” tend to have criminal convictions,“successful psychopaths” typically do not, although they may engage in behaviours thatare not formally illegal, but that nonetheless breach social norms and violate the rightsof others (Gao & Raine, 2010). They may achieve personal or professional successes byusing covert and nonviolent means, perhaps at the expense of friends, family and col-leagues (Hall & Benning, 2006). Future studies could compare “unsuccessful psychopaths”with control participants, in order to examine the extent to which group differences inperformance in the present study are representative of social behaviour in moreextreme populations.

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In the present study, participants were selected on total PPI-SF scores, to contrast howhigh versus low levels of traits pertaining to global psychopathy might impact on everydaysituations. However, psychopathy is a multidimensional construct, and it would be inter-esting to explore how individual characteristics of psychopathy (affective, interpersonaland behavioural) might drive differences in everyday social behaviour. Future studiescould recruit participants on the basis of either of the PPI-SF factors (PPI-1 and PPI-2)or on the basis of specific PPI-SF sub-scales, and compare their performance on measuresof social behaviour. Some recent work suggests that this might be informative, linkingspecific traits associated with psychopathy with prosocial behaviour that is motivatedby strategic considerations such as the long-term value of a social relationship ratherthan by intrinsic reward (Gervais, Kline, Ludmer, George, & Manson, 2013; Manson,Gervais, Fessler, & Kline, 2014). Their findings also suggest that prosocial behaviourwould be less likely to occur when future interactions are unlikely, and hence any deficitsin prosocial behaviour in the present study may have been more pronounced if requestsfrom strangers had been included.

Implications for everyday functioning

A significant body of research into psychopathy has focused on the relationship to crim-inal behaviour and extreme violence. For instance, a range of studies investigatingempathy and moral decision-making has compared psychopathic and non-psychopathicprisoners. Studies such as these often use situations involving extreme physical harm oremotional distress. By contrast, the present study focused on social functioning at a com-monplace level. The findings highlight the potentially pervasive influence of psychopathictraits in everyday life, which may help to illuminate how subclinical psychopathic traitstranslate into everyday social behaviour. When interacting with people in the socialworld, those who feel less awkward in complex social situations and are unconcernedwith others’ distress may be less prone to do favours or to moderate their honest, poten-tially hurtful opinions. Further research is needed to clarify what characteristics of socialsituations might differentially influence those high and low in psychopathic traits, andwhat might be done to increase prosocial behaviour.

Clinical applications

The findings of this trait-based study indicated that those high in psychopathic traitsbehave less prosocially than those low in psychopathic traits. These findings are consistentwith the pattern of results from diagnostic studies in incarcerated populations; this in turngives an indication of what might be expected in terms of social behaviour and strategyusage in a more extreme, antisocial population. At present, there is a considerableamount of “therapeutic pessimism” surrounding the treatment of psychopathy (e.g.,Salekin, 2002). This reflects the failure of various treatment strategies and training pro-grammes to reduce recidivism rates (e.g., Pickersgill, 2011). There is also evidence tosuggest that in some instances, recidivism rates can increase after interventions (e.g.,Rice, Harris, & Cormier, 1992). It has been speculated that this might be attributable toan empathic dissociation; the capacity to understand situations whilst lacking emotionalinvestment might allow for treatment strategies to inadvertently strengthen any

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propensity for manipulation (Salekin, 2002). A deeper understanding of how those withpsychopathy navigate their social world might have the long-term potential to improvetraining programmes, for example, by making the benefits of prosocial behaviour andthe drawbacks of antisocial behaviour more salient.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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