While psychopathy research has been growing for decades, a relatively new area of research is corporate psychopathy. Corporate psychopaths are simply psychopaths working in organizational settings. They may be attracted to the financial, power, and status gains available in senior positions and can cause considerable damage within these roles from a manipulative interpersonal style to large-scale fraud. Based upon prior studies, we analyze psychopathy research pertaining to 23 moral emotions classified according to functional quality and target. Based upon our review, (...) we suggest that psychopaths are high in moral emotions associated with other-directed negative signals, low in self-directed negative signals, and low in other-directed positive signals. We found no empirical articles related to self-directed positive signals. This understanding of the specific moral emotion deficits of corporate psychopaths provides greater theoretical understanding and practical implications of knowing which individuals not to promote, though more research is needed on moral emotions that are faked for manipulative reasons. (shrink)

The question of whether psychopaths are criminally and morally responsible has generated significant controversy in the literature. In this paper, we discuss what relevance a psychopathy diagnosis has for criminal responsibility. It has been argued that figuring out whether psychopathy is a mental illness is of fundamental importance, because it is a precondition for psychopaths’ eligibility to be excused via the legal insanity defense. But even if psychopathy counts as a mental illness, this alone is not sufficient to show the (...) insanity defense is applicable; it must also be shown that, as a result of the illness, specific deficits in moral understanding or control are present. In this paper, we show that a diagnosis of psychopathy will generally not indicate that a defendant is eligible for an insanity defense. This is because the group of individuals subsumed under the diagnosis is so heterogeneous that while some psychopaths do show significant impairments in affect and control which may impact on their responsibility, many psychopaths are not incapacitated in a way relevant to responsibility. (shrink)

The harm usually associated with psychopathy requires therapeutically, legally, and ethically satisfactory solutions. Scholars from different fields have, thus, examined whether empirical evidence shows that individuals with psychopathic traits satisfy concepts, such as responsibility, mental disorder, or disability, that have specific legal or ethical implications. The present paper considers the less discussed issue of whether psychopathy is a disability. As it has been shown for the cases of the responsibility and mental disorder status of psychopathic individuals, we argue that it (...) is undecided whether psychopathy is a disability. Nonetheless, based on insights from disability studies and legislations, we propose that interventions to directly modify the propensities of individuals with psychopathic tendencies should be balanced with modifications of the social and physical environments to accommodate their peculiarities. We also suggest how this social approach in some practical contexts that involve non-offender populations might be effective in addressing some of the negative effects of psychopathy. (shrink)

Three studies examined Jones’(Perspectives onPsychological Science, 9, 445-451,2014) suggestion that psy-chopathic individuals use mimicry to avoid detection. In study1, student, community, and offender participants posed fearfulfacial expressions while looking at a prototypical fear face.Expressions were coded for facial movements associated withfear and were rated on genuineness by a separate sample ofundergraduates. Across samples, psychopathic traits were as-sociated with increased use of typical action units for fearfulfacial expressions and with genuineness ratings. In study 2,undergraduates completed the Psychopathic PersonalityInventory and told a (...) story about a time when they did some-thing that theyshouldhave felt remorseful for but did not.Factor 1 traits were found to positively relate to genuinenessscores given by a separate sample of undergraduates. Finally,in study 3, four videos of false remorse stories told by violentoffenders were rated by a sample of undergraduates. Thetwo high factor 1 videos received significantly highergenuineness ratings, supporting the relationship betweenfactor 1 and affective mimicry. Overall, findings suggestthat the psychopathic traits (specifically, factor 1) may beassociated with the ability to accurately mimic emotionalexpression (fear and remorse) leading others to perceiveemotional genuineness. (shrink)