Psychopathy and Empathy: The Role of Attention

Background: Psychopathy has been shown in the literature to have significant consequences for both the individuals themselves and the people and societies around them. The Response Modulation Hypothesis (RMH) posits that the processes underlying psychopaths’ difficulties are related to narrow, goal-directed attentional focus. The RMH has had good support in the literature, yet, it has not (with one exception) been applied to psychopaths’ difficulties with empathy. Aims: This study examined the RMH’s effects on psychopaths’ use of empathy, extending prior research by using ecologically valid, emotionally laden stimuli to induce empathic responding. It was hypothesised that individuals higher in psychopathy would shower greater empathy when asked to focus their attention on empathy-related information. Method: This study utilised a between-subjects, experimental design. 129 participants took part in an online survey where they were asked to watch an empathy-inducing vignette. Participants were randomised into either ‘control’, ‘empathy’ or ‘non-empathy’ groups, which asked participants to focus their attention on different aspects of the vignette. Participants’ written description of the vignette was also coded for the number of emotion words used to determine whether this differed across conditions. Results: Contrary to the hypothesis, no significant effect of task instruction, nor its interaction with psychopathy was found for participants’ empathic responding to the vignette. Furthermore, although the number of emotion words used somewhat differed across conditions (with more words being used in the empathy condition), these differences were not significant. Emotion words were also not significantly associated with psychopathy or empathy. Conclusion: Overall, this study did not find empirical support for the RMH in relation to psychopaths’ use of empathy. However, results are discussed in the context of the present study’s sample and methodology. Suggestions for future research to address the limitations of this study are made