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Psychopathy: A Psychological Analysis

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Recommended: Psychopathy in modern personality research

One major line of research offers explanations to the development of psychopathy. This line focuses on the biological effect it has on a person that could lead in becoming a psychopath. Past research studies have suggested that when an individual with psychopathic tendency imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making. One of the theories that offer an explanation to the biological effect that contributes to the development of psychopathy is that psychopaths lack the feeling of empathy unlike a normal person. The one research study that has been conducted to prove this theory was …show more content…

Participants were divided into three groups of level of psychopathic behaviour: highly, moderately, and weakly psychopathic. Participants scoring 30 and above on the PCL-R, were assigned to the high-psychopathy group. medium- and low-psychopathy groups were matched to high scorers on age, race and ethnicity, IQ (WAIS), comorbidity for DSM-IV Axis II disorders, and past drug abuse and dependence, from pools of incarcerated volunteers scoring between 21 and 29 and volunteers scored below 20 on the PCL-R respectively.. The results could be due to their criminal behaviour rather than their psychopathy. On the other hand, there is positive correlation between psychopathy and their sensitivity to the thought of pain but there is no correlation for the thought of other people in pain and psychopathic people as their emotion of empathy fails to activate as they become insensitive to the pain of others. While it is well established that individuals with psychopathy have a marked deficit in affective arousal, emotional empathy, and caring for the well-being of others, the extent to which perspective …show more content…

Past research has shown that high level of serotonin in a person causes aggression and impulsivity that could be seen as a characteristic common in psychopaths. One of the research that supports this theory is by Swedish researchers. Psychopathic behaviour seems to be linked to an imbalance in critical brain chemicals, reveals a study of violent and sexual offenders. The findings are based on 28 men up to the age of 45, all of whom had committed violent crimes, including murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, arson, rape, or sexual assault of

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A study conducted by Pascal Molenberghs tested the brain activity of both psychopaths and non-psychopaths when they shoot a civilian and soldier (Kluger, 2015). In-depth research showcased that the prefrontal and the frontal cortexes were active in those who were not diagnosed psychopaths, while there were no impulses present in the psychopaths’ cortexes. This shows that the psychopath was unable to express empathy to the victim, as they did not have any brain activity. When a person doesn’t have the emotional understanding in their morality, they are more suspect to commit more haphazard actions. This can result in the psychopath lashing out and

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