Unravelling the Relationships between
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30-06-20
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en
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Abstract
Network theory and analysis is an emerging new approach to conceptualize psychopathology.
It suggests that a mental disorder is not solely an underlying or unobserved latent entity, but a
phenomenon arising from a cluster of interacting symptoms. It stresses the importance of
individual symptoms and symptom to symptom relations. However, this analytic strategy has
not been utilized in the field of psychopathy research. Therefore, the current study used a
network approach to examine the connectedness and strength among symptoms characterizing
psychopathy, namely: empathy, facial emotion recognition (FER), and insecure attachment.
Participants were patients (N = 16) from a clinical forensic department in the Netherlands.
Participants did the Static Facial Emotion Recognition Morphing Paradigm. In addition, they
completed questionnaires on empathy and attachment styles. Features of the psychopathy
network were investigated, including topology and network centrality. The networks revealed
that, after controlling for all other nodes in the network, empathy, attachment anxiety, and
attachment avoidance were (strongly) related to one another, whereas general FER
performance was found the be negligible to the network. The directed relative importance
network analysis indicated bidirectional relationships between empathy, attachment anxiety,
and attachment avoidance. The centrality measures revealed that empathy exerted more
influence on attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance than the other way around.
Together, this study emphasized the unique contribution of network analysis for
understanding individuals with higher psychopathic traits.
Keywords: psychopathy, empathy, facial emotion recognition, adult attachment,
network analysis
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen