Contagious yawning and psychopathy |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA;2. Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA;3. Department of Neurology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA;4. Department of Neurology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA;5. Department of Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA;1. Beijing Key Lab of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;2. Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China;3. Research Center of Emotion Regulation, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;4. State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and International Data Group (IDG)/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;5. Behavior Rehabilitation Training Research Institution, School of Psychology, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China |
| |
| Abstract: | Psychopathy is characterized by a general antisocial lifestyle with behaviors including being selfish, manipulative, impulsive, fearless, callous, possibly domineering, and particularly lacking in empathy. Contagious yawning in our species has been strongly linked to empathy. We exposed 135 students, male and female, who completed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), to a yawning paradigm intended to induce a reactionary yawn. Further, we exposed males to an emotion-related startle paradigm meant to assess peripheral amygdalar reactivity. We found that scores on the PPI-R subscale Coldheartedness significantly predicted a reduced chance of yawning. Further, we found that emotion-related startle amplitudes were predictive of frequency of contagious yawning. These data suggest that psychopathic traits may be related to the empathic nature of contagious yawning in our species. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
