Psychopathy is a personality disorder partly characterized by antisocial and aggressive behaviors, as well as emotional and interpersonal deficits including shallow emotions and a lack of remorse and empathy.
Psychopathic individuals have flagrant disregard for social and moral norms, with dysfunctional personal relationships, characterized by violence, exploitation, and philandering.
Psychopathic individuals incapable of feeling guilt or empathy, they respond abnormally to fear and pain, and other emotions are shallow compared to population norms.
Psychopaths refuse to adopt social and moral norms because they are not swayed by the emotions, such as guilt, remorse, or fear of retribution, that influence other human beings.
Psychopathy represents traits that are missing within a person’s personality, such as a lack of empathy and remorse.
A person who exhibits a lack of remorse is often perceived in a negative light.
It is widely accepted that remorse is the proper reaction to misconduct.
Remorse may originate in from either actual or contrived regret for the misconduct that results in being caught or causing harm.
Facial expressions of offenders on trial affect the jury’s attitude and, in turn, the sentencing decision.
Psychopathy represents traits that are missing within a person’s personality, such as a lack of empathy and remorse.
Remorselessness, a key feature of psychopathy, proves to be a strong predictor of juror attitudes.
Psychopaths can switch empathy on at will, and this enables them to be both callous and charming.
Participants in the high-psychopathy group exhibited significantly less activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and periaqueductal gray parts of the brain, but more activity in the striatum and the insula when compared to control participants.
People who score highly on psychopathy measures are less likely to exhibit affective empathy.
Psychopathy and lack of affective empathy correspond strongly.
Psychopathic individuals do not show regret or remorse.
It is associated with atypical responses to distress cues, such as facial and vocal expressions of fear and sadness.
It is associated with decreased activation of the fusiform and extrastriate cortical regions, which may partly account for impaired recognition of and reduced autonomic responsiveness to expressions of fear, and impairments of empathy.
Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognitions, behavior and experiences.
Psychopathology is separated into descriptive and explanatory types.
Descriptive psychopathology categorizes, defines symptoms as reported by people and observed through their behavior.
Explanatory psychopathology seeks explanations for certain kinds of symptoms according to psychodynamics or cognitive behavior.
Psychopathology is interdisciplinary: clinical psychology, social psychology, and developmental psychology, as well as neuropsychology and other psychology subdisciplines; psychiatry; neuroscience generally; criminology; social work; sociology; epidemiology; statistics.
Distinguish between mental disorder requires assessing a person along four dimensions: deviance, distress, dysfunction. and danger.
Deviance: specific thoughts, behaviors and emotions are considered deviant when they are unacceptable or not common in society.
Defining an individual’s actions as deviant or abnormal when their behavior is deemed unacceptable by the culture they belong to.
Distress refers to the negative feelings by the individual with the disorder.
The important characteristic of distress is the limit to which an individual is stressed by an issue.
Dysfunction refers to the maladaptive behavior that impairs the individual’s ability to perform normal daily functions.
Maladaptive behaviors prevent individuals from living a normal, healthy lifestyle.
Behaviors and feelings that are potentially harmful to an individual or the individuals around them are abnormal.
The term psychopathology may denote behaviors or experiences which are indicative of mental illness, even if they do not constitute a formal diagnosis.
Any behavior/ experience which causes impairment, distress or disability, particularly if it arises from a functional breakdown in either the cognitive or neurocognitive systems in the brain, may be classified as psychopathology.
Neuroticism is often described as the personal level of minor psychiatric symptoms.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a guideline for the diagnosis and understanding of mental disorders.
Major depressive disorder
iBipolar disorder
Dysthymia
Schizophrenia
Borderline personality disorder.
Bulimia nervosa
Phobias
Pyromania