| Summary: |
The 2030 Agenda calls for promoting: 1) "health and well-being" (GOAL3) by means of mitigating a wide range of health issues; and 2) "peaceful societies" (GOAL16) by reducing violence, crime and insecurity. Crime and violence have enduring effects on physical and mental health and, thus, pose a serious threat to public health and justice systems.
Psychopathy is considered a risk factor for crime/violence and is part of the antisocial spectrum. However, research on psychopathy is marked by conceptual bewilderment regarding the nature of the construct, hindering a deep comprehension of antisocial roots in psychopathy. Historically, psychopathy has been conceptualized as a unitary construct with studies being focused on the differences between supposedly homogenous groups of psychopaths vs. typical controls. Nevertheless, it is currently accepted that psychopathy is a
multidimensional construct, referring to a personality structure that comprises a constellation of heterogeneous traits. Now, the main ambition is to search for distinct correlates of these traits - namely of its antisocial expressions - to develop more targeted interventions and prevention strategies. On this matter, there is a growing consensus on the thesis that two distinct etiological processes underlie different manifestations of psychopathy: Low-Fear (LF) and Externalizing (EXT). EXT includes a set of characteristics (e.g., impulsivity, irresponsibility, and reactive aggression) and brain alterations (e.g., frontal dysfunction) that have a well-established role in antisocial behavior. However, EXT tendencies are not
specific to psychopathy. EXT co-occurs with other disorders (e.g., substance abuse), and for this reason, EXT profiles of psychopathy are commonly conceptualized as secondary psychopathy. In turn, LF is considered to be a nuclear feature of psychopathy, being operationalized under the concept of primary psychopathy. Despite that, it still remains unclear h  |
Summary
The 2030 Agenda calls for promoting: 1) "health and well-being" (GOAL3) by means of mitigating a wide range of health issues; and 2) "peaceful societies" (GOAL16) by reducing violence, crime and insecurity. Crime and violence have enduring effects on physical and mental health and, thus, pose a serious threat to public health and justice systems.
Psychopathy is considered a risk factor for crime/violence and is part of the antisocial spectrum. However, research on psychopathy is marked by conceptual bewilderment regarding the nature of the construct, hindering a deep comprehension of antisocial roots in psychopathy. Historically, psychopathy has been conceptualized as a unitary construct with studies being focused on the differences between supposedly homogenous groups of psychopaths vs. typical controls. Nevertheless, it is currently accepted that psychopathy is a
multidimensional construct, referring to a personality structure that comprises a constellation of heterogeneous traits. Now, the main ambition is to search for distinct correlates of these traits - namely of its antisocial expressions - to develop more targeted interventions and prevention strategies. On this matter, there is a growing consensus on the thesis that two distinct etiological processes underlie different manifestations of psychopathy: Low-Fear (LF) and Externalizing (EXT). EXT includes a set of characteristics (e.g., impulsivity, irresponsibility, and reactive aggression) and brain alterations (e.g., frontal dysfunction) that have a well-established role in antisocial behavior. However, EXT tendencies are not
specific to psychopathy. EXT co-occurs with other disorders (e.g., substance abuse), and for this reason, EXT profiles of psychopathy are commonly conceptualized as secondary psychopathy. In turn, LF is considered to be a nuclear feature of psychopathy, being operationalized under the concept of primary psychopathy. Despite that, it still remains unclear how this distinctive feature of psychopathy relates to antisocial behavior and how fear-related deficits operate in this relationship. Some authors propose that LF-related characteristics (e.g., low-anxiety, social dominance, superficial charm, and manipulation) and brain alterations (e.g., dysfunction in limbic systems) may predispose these individuals
to engage in more sophisticated, premeditated patterns of antisocial conducts (e.g., white-collar crimes) that are essentially different from those reported in high EXT (e.g., emotionally-charged, reactive aggression). Thus, the main assumption is that deficits in fear acquisition may be one of the driving forces behind cold-blood, callous-antisocial behaviors in the LF, primary expression of psychopathy. However, this set of premises requires further basic research on fear processing mechanisms before translating them into practice. The main goal of P-FEAR is to firstly explore dysfunctions in fear mechanisms in LF (basic level) and then evaluate whether such dysfunctions relate to patterns of premeditated aggression (translational level). For this purpose, we will decompose fear into conscious and automatic responses, two components that were recently described as implicated in psychopathy. Until recently, fear was studied as a unitary construct and, to date, there are no studies evaluating the full complexity of the fear components, especially when also equating how they relate to distinct manifestations of psychopathy and aggression patterns. As such, we have conceived an innovative fear-inductive task using Virtual Reality to measure fear responses i |