Psychopaths: Are They Really Fearless?

Joseph P. Newman spoke at Loyola University Chicago's lakeshore campus on Tuesday, October 1st about his studies on psychopathy. Newman is a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison and has conducted experiments on subjects in prison. He starts off with giving us a bit of background about psychopathy and that 20% of male prisoners have it, while 9-10% are female prisoners with psychopathy. Newman talks about the stereotypical psychopath as portrayed in movies or what we've assumed as being evil, violent, and uncontrollable. What psychopathy actually is can be understood through some of Newman's hypothesis' and experiments. 

The "Low Fear" Hypothesis states that a distal cause creates a low fear, the subject has poor fear conditioning, then a proximal cause creates a poor passive avoidance. Basically, a psychopath does not get scared from getting lectured by their parents, so they were not conditioned with fear meaning that they never learned from that mistake. Newman proceeded to relate the low fear condition with being an amygdala-mediated deficit. He tested this by having the subjects sit through pictures ranging from being nice and cute to scary pictures which were accompanied by a white noise to startle the subjects. The results showed that subjects were not startled and appeared to be oblivious to what they were seeing. Newman proceeded to tell us about how he constructed his theory from Shapiro (1965) who said that psychopaths remain oblivious because of an impaired integration. Newman wanted to test the oblivious subjects by making them focus on fear hoping for the possibility of scaring them. He was able to conclude that psychopaths are very sensitive to fear if focused, not when they are oblivious. Another test that focused primarily on Newman's work was an example of instructed fear conditioning while under threat. It consisted of forcing participants to focus on words of colors that were a different color and be able to build up on that memory. The experiment was meant to see how much attention the participants were able to give.

Joseph Newman's graph (edited) showing results of psychopaths and non-psychopaths when being startled

So what makes subjects commit crimes? Newman states that there is an instigation of aggression, followed by self-regulation, which has either a non-violent response or a violent aggression. Usually, you would automatically self-regulate yourself by thinking of the consequences then you make a better choice. The key is being aware of the conflict. In the case of a psychopath, there is an instigation of aggression followed by a violent aggression. There is no self-regulation involved. The subjects with psychopathy do not pause/reflect after their error. The key to this is failure to learn from mistakes.

Not only is there an attention issue, but Newman also noted that there is a deficit in the white matter of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex connected to the amygdala. Information is slowed down from the right and left hemispheres. There are other widespread connectivity impairments throughout the brain. A similar article talks about the specific areas of the brain affected by Kate Kelland's article called, "Psychopaths Have Distinct Brain Structure, Study Finds." Kelland states that the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal of psychopaths had less gray matter than those areas of non-psychopaths. She says that, "Damage to these areas is linked with a lack of empathy, a poor response to fear and distress and a lack of self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment." It appears that subjects with psychopathy do not react unless they are forced to focus on something in order to have an effect/reaction.

Again, there is a difference between seeming perfect but their behavior is not. To conclude, psychopaths appear normal, but the brain is not actually wired correctly.
They think locally and sequentially. A person with psychopathy does not automatically show empathy when shown a violent picture, only when they are told to focus will they show empathy for a violent picture. A person with psychopathy would have to notice and make use of unimportant information in order to not remain oblivious to situations. Newman hopes to be able to use his work to come up with strategies for treating the problem. Newman states that, "there's something intrinsic about them that makes them resistant to society." 

Kelland, Kate. "Psychopaths Have Distinct Brain Structure, Study Finds." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 07 May 2012. Web. 13 Oct. 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/07/psychopath-brain-structure-_n_1497753.html>.