Abstract
Objective: Two major etiological theories on psychopathy propose different mechanisms as to how emotional
facial expressions are processed by individuals with elevated psychopathic traits. The Response Modulation
Hypothesis (RMH) proposes that psychopathic individuals show emotional deficits as a consequence of attentional
deployment, suggesting that emotional deficits are situation-specific. The Integrated Emotions System
theory (IES) suggests that psychopathic individuals have a fundamental amygdala dysfunction which precludes
adequate responsiveness to the distress of others.
Methods: Participants performed a visual search task in which they had to find a male target face among two
female distractor faces. Top-down attentional set was manipulated by having participants either respond to the
face's orientation, or its emotional expression.
Results: When emotion was task-relevant, the low-scoring psychopathy group showed attentional capture by
happy and fearful distractor faces, whereas the elevated group showed capture by fearful, but not happy distractor
faces.
Conclusion: This study provides evidence for the RMH such that top-down attention influences the way emotional
faces attract attention in individuals with elevated psychopathic traits. However, the different response
patterns for happy and fearful faces suggest that top-down attention may not determine the processing of all
types of emotional facial expressions in psychopathy.