Psychopathy, Emotional Recognition, and Moral Judgment in Female Inmates

Abstract

Despite the lower levels of psychopathy in women than in men, the scientific interest in studying psychopathy in female participants is increasing. Nevertheless, the number of studies investigating psychopathy in women and associated phenomena remains low. The influence of psychopathy in women inmates on experimental tasks of emotional recognition and moral judgment was evaluated, aiming to contribute to this field of research. Utilitarian moral judgment was predicted by psychopathy, specifically by primary and secondary psychopathy, while primary psychopathy predicted a worse performance on the emotional recognition task. There was no significant influence of general intellectual abilities on either task. Contrarily to what was expected, emotional recognition did not prove to be a significant mediator of the relationship between psychopathy and utilitarian moral judgment. These results emphasize that the tendency to utilitarian moral judgment and worse recognition of facial expressions of emotion are associated to higher psychopathy scores in female inmates (especially primary psychopathy), but more studies are necessary to address the role of the emotional component in the process of moral judgment.

Keywords

• psychopathy
• women
• female
• imprisonment
• emotional recognition
• facial expressions identification
• moral judgment
• utilitarianism