Moral ambiguity: how empathy and psychopathy inform moral decision making – a two study approach
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2018-06-26
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en
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The link between psychopathy, empathy and morality is currently not well understood, therefore, to elucidate this relationship, a two-study approach was taken. In study 1, participants with psychopathic traits (NPsychopathic offender = 24), non-psychopathic offenders (NNon-psychopathic offender = 31), and a control group (Ncontrol = 44) completed the Basic Empathy Scale in Adults (BES-A), and a set of thirty moral dilemmas (Greene et al., 2004). Study 1 tested a moderation model between psychopathy, the scores from the BES-A and the responses to the moral dilemmas and concluded that regardless of the BES-A scores there was no difference in how participants with psychopathic traits respond to moral dilemmas in comparison with a forensic control, and healthy control group. In study 2, the Galvanic Skin Responses (GSR) of a healthy control group (N = 16) were recorded when responding to morally pertinent images. The GSR time series were quantified using Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA), which is used to identify patterns in lagged time series. Based on the RQAs distinct physiological patterns between individuals when responding to morally pertinent images was uncovered. These two studies add insight to the discussion in psychopathy literature as to possible moderators of how people with psychopathic traits make moral decisions and informs further individualistic analyses into the physiology associated with morality.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen