Emotional Content Analysis Among People With Psychopathy During Emotional Induction by the International Affective Picture System

Abstract : Background Emotional processes among individuals with psychopathy have been consistently investigated. Although content analysis is interesting for evaluating emotional characteristics, few data exist concerning the speech content of individuals with psychopathy in response to affective and neutral images. Method Population included male forensic inpatients (n=47) from Security Hospital. The inpatients were divided into: “Psychopath” (n=24, PCL-R total score >25), “Intermediate” (n=12, score from 15 to 24.9) and “Non-psychopath” (n=11, score <14.9). TROPES analyses and EMOTAIX scenario tools examined the narrative’s emotional characteristics. We tested the hypothesis that individuals with psychopathy report fewer emotional words on all images, particularly on negative-valence images. Results Our results on the whole do not support this hypothesis but suggested rather a specific discordance in the verbal emotional treatment (exclusively PCL-R interpersonal factor) but not in terms of the subjective evaluation. Moreover, this factor was positively correlated with the number of the self-referring pronouns (“I”, me) setting whereas PCL-R Social Deviance factor was positively correlated with action verbs. Conclusion Speech outputs of individuals with psychopathy present specificities in terms of emotional content and verbal setting. The results are congruent with the notion that psychopathy combines both functionality and subtle impairment.