LONDON: Psychopathic people can feel fear, but have trouble in the automatic detection and response to threat, a new study has found.
For many decades, lack of fear has been put forth as a hallmark feature of psychopathy, the impairments which would lead to bold risk-taking behaviour.
Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands reviewed brain and behavioural data pertaining to fear and psychopathy and found that psychopathic individuals have trouble detecting threats.
There was, however, little evidence that the conscious experience of fear was affected, indicating that it may not be completely impaired in psychopathy.
It is the first study to provide empirical evidence that the automatic and conscious processes can be independently affected within one psychiatric disorder.
Researchers reviewed the available evidence for the potential existence of the relationship between fear and psychopathy in adult individuals.
They generated a model that separates brain mechanisms involved in automatic detection and responding to threats from those involved in the conscious experience of fear as an emotion.
Using this model as reference, they performed a conceptual analysis of the work of earlier theorists, going back to as early as 1806.
They found that only one theorist incorporated the construct of fear into an etiological model of psychopathy. (AGENCIES)
Follow our WhatsApp channel