In a study that included 106 incarcerated male participants who were 21-67 years of age and assessed for psychopathic behavior, researchers found that psychopathic and nonpsychopathic individuals exhibited the ability to deliberately take the perspective of others, but that psychopathic individuals were less able than nonpsychopathic individuals to automatically take the perspective of others in a computer-based response-time task involving a human avatar, highlighting a previously unobserved cognitive deficit in psychopaths that might explain facets of psychopathic behavior.
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Article #17-21903 "Psychopaths fail to automatically take the perspective of others," by Lindsey Drayton, Laurie Santos, and Arielle Baskin-Sommers.
MEDIA CONTACT: Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Yale University, New Haven, CT; tel: 203-432-9257; e-mail: <arielle.baskin-sommers@yale.edu>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences