Psychopaths feel fear but show impaired response to threat

Psychopathic people can feel fear, but have trouble in the automatic detection and response to threat, a new study has found.
For many decades, lack of fear has been put forth as a hallmark feature of psychopathy, the impairments which would lead to bold risk-taking behaviour.
Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands reviewed brain and behavioural data pertaining to fear and psychopathy and found that psychopathic individuals have trouble detecting threats.
There was, however, little evidence that the conscious experience of fear was affected, indicating that it may not be completely impaired in psychopathy.

It is the first study to provide empirical evidence that the automatic and conscious processes can be independently affected within one psychiatric disorder.
Researchers reviewed the available evidence for the potential existence of the relationship between fear and psychopathy in adult individuals.

They generated a model that separates brain mechanisms involved in automatic detection and responding to threats from those involved in the conscious experience of fear as an emotion.
Using this model as reference, they performed a conceptual analysis of the work of earlier theorists, going back to as early as 1806.
They found that only one theorist incorporated the construct of fear into an etiological model of psychopathy.

The evidence for impairments in brain areas involved in the experience of fear was less consistent than is often assumed, indicating that the experience of fear may not be completely impaired in psychopathy.
The researchers then conclusively showed that psychopathic individuals have trouble in the automatic detection and responsivity to threat but may in fact feel fear, providing direct empirical support for the claim that the conscious experience of fear may not be impaired in these individuals.
An additional meta-analysis examining the five other basic emotions found that there may also be impairments in the experience of happiness and anger, but the lack of consistency in the current literature precluded the generation of strong claims.

The proposed model not only applies to psychopathy, but can also be used to further increase conceptual precision and generate new hypotheses for research on mood and anxiety disorders.
"While psychopathic individuals may suffer from a dysfunctional threat system, people with posttraumatic stress disorder may have a hyperactive threat system, which later leads to them feeling fearful," said Inti Brazil from Radboud University.
The results are published in Psychological Bulletin.