Psychopathy and the Detection of Insincere Facial Expressions

• In Event: The Influence of Genes, Aggression, and Emotional Dysfunctions in Criminal Behavior

Abstract

Psychopathic individuals have deficits in emotion recognition, yet they are manipulative, which necessitates sensitivity to social cues. One unanswered question is whether they can recognize whether an expression is genuine or not. We examined relationships between psychopathy and ratings of the “genuineness” of facial expressions. Participants completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale III. They viewed 30 images that depicted faces displaying either fake (posed) or genuine emotions of happiness, sadness, or surprise and rated how fake versus real they thought the expression was. Compared to males, females rated real images as more real, and fake images as more fake. Controlling for these gender differences, we found individuals scoring higher on the SRP-III showed less of a distinction between fake and real images of surprise than those lower on the SRP-III. This was primarily driven by ratings for the real images, which individuals higher in psychopathy rated as less real than those lower in psychopathy. This suggests psychopathic individuals may not have difficulty detecting insincere emotions, but rather in identifying when emotions of surprise are actually real. Overall, the findings raise questions about the stimuli that are often used in lab tasks that assess emotion recognition, which typically involve posed facial expressions.

Authors

• Leah Efferson, University of Alabama

• Andrea Glenn, University of Alabama

• Rebecca Kastner, Minnesota State Operated Forensic Services