Psychopathy is associated with several behavioral and psychophysiological deficits. Lynam (2002) has argued that the use of an overarching conceptualization of psychopathy can provide a parsimonious explanation of psychopathic pathology. The current study examined relations between tasks used to explore psychopathic pathology and dimensions from the Five Factor Model of personality. Undergraduate participants completed the NEO PI-R, the BART, a go/no-go task, an emotional morph task, and provided physiological responses to stimuli. While hypothesized relations to FFM psychopathy composites were generally unsupported, other interesting relations to traits were identified. Results indicated that hypoarousal to negative stimuli was negatively related to pan-impulsivity. Maladaptive risk taking was positively related to panimpulsivity and high self-directed negative affect. Response modulation deficits were negatively related to pan-impulsivity, low self-directed negative affect, and facets of openness. Deficits in empathic responding were positively related to other-directed negative affect and self-directed negative affect, and negatively related to pan-impulsivity and interpersonal assertiveness. Although it remains unclear whether the failure to support hypotheses was related to the study variables or population, results indicate that the FFM can provide additional information with regard to what deficit tasks assess.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uky.edu/oai:uknowledge.uky.edu:gradschool_diss-1743 |
| Date | 01 January 2009 |
| Creators | Derefinko, Karen J. |
| Publisher | UKnowledge |
| Source Sets | University of Kentucky |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations |
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