Emotional content analysis among psychopathic individuals during emotional induction by IAPS pictures

Abstract

Background Emotional processes among psychopathic individuals have been consistently investigated. Although content analysis is interesting for evaluating emotional characteristics, few data exist concerning Psychopath’s speech content following affective and neutral images. Method Population included male forensic inpatients (n=47) from Security Hospital. The inpatients were divided into: “Psychopaths” (n=24, PCL-R total score >25), “Intermediates” (n=12, score from 15 to 24.9) and “Non-psychopaths” (n=11, score <14.9). TROPES analyses and EMOTAIX scenario tools examined the narrative’s emotional characteristics. We tested the hypothesis that psychopaths 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 psychopaths 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.