Hello, this is Dr Grande. Today's question is: What is the relationship between Psychopathy and Moral Judgement?
If you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel.
That way, you won't miss anything new.
Now, when we talk about the concept of Psychopathy, a lot of times we think of the diagnosis of Antisocial
Personality Disorder and we find that term in the Diagnostic and Statistical manual.
But really, Psychopathy is similar but it is still a distinct construct.
So, we see a lot of the same symptoms with Psychopathy that we see with Antisocial Personality Disorder
and some symptoms we would expect only to see with Psychopathy.
It's also important to remember that Psychopathy is not a mental health disorder,
Antisocial Personality Disorder, is.
So, with Psychopathy we would expect to see symptoms like violating society's norms,
criminality, being manipulative, callousness, being impulsive, being irresponsible,
and having lack of empathy.
Now, usually when we conceptualise Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality disorder,
we usually think of it, this way:
Just about everybody who has psychopathy would qualify for a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder,
but not everybody who qualifies for a diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder would have Psychopathy.
Now, if we look at those characteristics, I mentioned, and of course there are some other characteristics
we see with Psychopathy, as well,
it's easy to see why there is this theory.
That there is a deficit in moral competence, with Psychopathy.
And, when I use the term, Moral Competence, I'm specifically talking about the ability to
distinguish right from wrong.
So, to help answer this question about Psychopathy, moral judgement and moral competence,
I'm using an article that was published in 2012, by Young and colleagues.
This study looks at this question but from a novel angle.
Now, when we look at the research on Psychopathy and moral judgement
and a lot of the theories that are out there, we know that the major theory is that Moral Competence theory.
That there must be a deficit in the ability to distinguish right and wrong.
But there is also a theory about the Moral-Conventional Distinction.
That is this difference between harming somebody and violating a social norm.
One of the theories with Psychopathy is that individuals with these traits have difficulty in making that distinction.
They can't tell the difference between harming someone and violating a social convention.
Now, there's been a lot of research on Psychopathy and Moral Judgement
but a lot of the studies don't analyse, don't observe moral judgement, directly.
It's an abstract concept.
So, they look at concepts that are related to moral judgement and infer that individuals with Psychopathy
have deficits in that area.
When we look at some of the studies that attempt to directly measure moral judgement,
we see that they fail to identify any type of deficit in the area of moral dilemmas,
moral justification, or that moral-conventional distinction, I spoke about, a moment ago.
So, we have really mixed results, here. And this is quite unsatisfying because when we think about this,
we would look at this trait of Psychopathy and think, well, individuals with this trait are competent
to make these moral decisions, they have these same abilities to make moral decisions
as individuals without the psychopathic traits.
Yet, they continue to choose to act immorally. It doesn't seem to make sense.
Again, it's not a satisfying explanation.
So, this particular study I'm looking at, as I mentioned, tried to look at this problem, in a novel way.
Specifically, by looking at accidental harm. So, a lot of the other studies involved intentional harm.
So, we see, in this particular study, there were several participants who had Psychopathy
and that had a criminal history.
Now, we also saw, in this study, individuals without psychopathic traits,
but who also had a criminal history.
So, everybody in this study had a criminal history. The only difference was really: Psychopathy or no Psychopathy
So, there were four different types of scenarios, that these participants were expected to rate.
There were accidental harms: This is where there was neutral intent but a harmful outcome.
Attempted harms: This is where we have harmful intent but a neutral outcome.
Intentional harm: So, here we have harmful intent and a harmful outcome.
And the last one, of course would be neutral acts: where we neutral intent and neutral outcome.
So, the researchers had the individuals who had Psychopathy, rate these scenarios.
And the individuals who did not have it, rate these scenarios.
And they wanted to see if there were any differences between these two groups, across these four levels.
So, we know with accidental harm, that's that neutral intent but harmful outcome group.
We know that individuals sampled from the general population tend to make a moral judgement
about the individual and the action, even though there was no intent to do harm.
So, in those situations, individuals of the population still find that agent and that action, as morally wrong.
There is still blame that is delivered in that situation.
Now that blame is less than what we would see with intentional harm, but still, there is blame, there.
And the hypothesis, here, in this study was that individuals with psychopathic traits,
would not make that same decision. They would not hold the agent, accountable, morally.
They wouldn't see the agent or the action, as morally wrong.
So, what were the results from the study? Well, this hypothesis was supported.
In this accidental harm group, the individuals with psychopathic traits
found the action, less blameworthy.
But, there was no difference with the other groups:
Attempted harm, intentional harm or neutral acts.
So, these results could leave us with a number of theories
but the main theories here, we would see is that there is a difference in moral judgement.
In a sense, the individuals with Psychopathy were more rational.
We could also say that they were more forgiving or less sensitive
to the individuals who were affected by that harmful outcome.
Now, another theory that explains these results has to do with attentional bias.
And this theory essentially says that the individuals with psychopathy
focused more on intent and less on outcome.
So, they weren't necessarily more rational, they weren't more forgiving
or they weren't less sensitive to the situation of the victim,
the person who was harmed. But rather, they simply focused on the intent
and not on the outcome.
So, it didn't matter what the outcome was.
It only mattered what the intention was
Now, in looking at this study and reading other research on the same topic,
I kind of lean in favour of this attentional bias theory
I don't think the theory about individuals with Psychopathy being more rational, less forgiving,
or less sensitive, really fits as well as the attentional bias theory.
But again, one thing this study definitely tells us we need more research on Psychopathy
and moral judgement.
We're left with a few more answers being put in place and a few more questions being raised.
I hope you found this description of Psychopathy and moral judgement, to be interesting.
Thanks for watching.