Moral Reasoning in Psychopaths

Abstract

Psychopathic patients show a behavioral pattern that is characterized by indifference, impulsivity and antisocial behavior. To investigate moral reasoning we developed conflicts of everyday life with either moral or neutral content. These conflicts were then presented to a group of 12 psychopathic forensic patients as well as to a group of 12 non-psychopathic forensic patients.
Psychopathic compared to non-psychopathic patients reported significantly higher positive feelings when choosing an immoral response alternative than non-psychopaths. Furthermore, psychopaths picked significantly more often an immoral response alternative in the conflicts with moral content than did the non-psychopaths. These results indicate that impairment in emotional processing abilities may be at the core of antisocial behavior in psychopathy.