Psychology ETDs

Publication Date

5-31-1978

Abstract

Psychopaths have frequently been characterized as having little concern for the feelings and welfare of others. This characteristic has often served as a diagnostic criterion for the group and consequently has received little direct experimental study on its own right. The purpose of this study was to examine affective arousal related to social stimuli in a group of 20 psychopaths and 20 non-psychopaths selected from the patient population of a large west-coast maximum security hospital. The social stimuli were 10 tape-recorded "letters" which the patients were told to imagine were from a "girl friend." These tapes contained contradictory messages similar to those found by previous investigations to induce anxiety in normals. Half of the patients were asked questions pertaining to the contradictory content in the tapes, while the other half were asked questions focused on the non-contradictory content of the tapes. Groups also differed in the type of contingency which followed the questions, with half the subjects receiving neutral feedback for each "error" and the other half having a response cost contingency involving the loss of a monetary reinforcer for each "error." Both contingencies were false feedback since "errors" were defined by a predetermined schedule of reinforcement. Three measures of affective arousal were used. Fingertip Skin Temperature was taken throughout the experimental session; the Mahl Speech Disturbance Ratio was used to measure disfluencies in the subjects' speech during two speech samples, one before and one after the 10 tapes; and the 8-Parallel Form Anxiety Battery (8-PFAB) was administered at the beginning and end of the experimental session. The results showed that, with one exception, the contradictory communications did not significantly contribute to increases in anxiety in either the psychopaths or non­psychopaths. The one exception to this finding was with the 8-PFAB data for the psychopathic subjects who received the response cost contingency in combination with the questions focused on the contradictory content. This group showed an increase in anxiety which was greater than that shown by any other group. The results also showed that the response cost contingency generally induced higher levels of anxiety in the psychopathic than in the non-psychopathic group. The results were interpreted as a failure to support psychophysiological theories of psychopathy and as supportive of therapy methods for psychopaths involving monetary reinforcement.

Degree Name

Psychology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Psychology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Karl Peter Koenig

Second Committee Member

Douglas Peter Ferraro

Third Committee Member

Samuel Roll

Fourth Committee Member

G. Robert Grice

Sponsors

The Graduate Student Association at the University of New Mexico

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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