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High vs low trait primary psychopathy in males: Differences in cardiac responses to emotional film clips

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

F. Fusina  and
A. Angrilli
F. Fusina*
Affiliation:
Padova Neuroscience Center, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy Department Of General Psychology, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy
A. Angrilli
Affiliation:
Padova Neuroscience Center, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy Department Of General Psychology, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy Institute Of Neuroscience, National Research Council (CNR), Padova, Italy
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

Primary psychopathy, although not included in DSM-5, is a personality trait characterized by callousness, unemotionality and a low sensitivity to anxiety and fear. From a psychophysiological standpoint, individuals with this trait exhibit a number of alterations, most notably lower heart rate at rest and lower heart rate variability (HRV).

Objectives

We investigated the relationship between primary psychopathy and heart rate dynamics in response to emotional stimuli in a healthy community sample. In the high psychopathy participants we expected to find lower HRV and a general lower cardiovascular responsiveness to aversive emotional stimuli.

Methods

The study was carried out on male students with high (HP) and low scores (LP) of primary psychopathy according to Levenson’s LSRP. The stimuli were 15 short movie clips of different emotional content (Erotic, Scenery, Neutral, Compassion and Fear), lasting 2 minutes each and presented during ECG recording. Mean heart rate (HR) and HRV were analyzed.

Results

Concerning HR, a Category by Group interaction revealed that participants in the HP group did not differentiate among emotional movie clips, whereas those in the LP group manifested significant reduced HR to Fear and Scenery compared to the other clips. Concerning HRV, the main Group effect showed in HP participants a lower HRV than LP subjects, irrespective of the film categories.

Conclusions

Using ecological stimuli is considered more effective in evoking spontaneous emotions, and our results point to a clear alteration of emotional cardiovascular response in high primary psychopathy trait individuals selected from a community sample.

Keywords

psychophysiologypsychopathyheart rate variabilityemotion
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 64 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 29th European Congress of Psychiatry , April 2021 , pp. S444
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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