Empathic competencies in violent offenders

PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH

卷:210

Article

Seidel, Eva-Maria¹  Pfabigan, Daniela Melitta¹  Keckeis, Katinka²  Wucherer, Anna Maria¹  Jahn, Thomas¹  Lamm, Claus¹  Derntl, Birgit³ 

[1] Univ Vienna, Dept Basic Psychol Res & Res Methods, Fac Psychol, Social Cognit & Affect Neurosci Unit, A-1010 Vienna, Austria

[2] Justizanstalt Wien Mittersteig, Prison Mentally Disordered Offenders Sect Austria, Vienna, Austria

[3] Rhein Westfal TH Aachen, Dept Psychiat Psychotherapy & Psychosomat, Sch Med, Aachen, Germany

关键词: Affect;    Social;    Skin conductance;    Criminals;    Violence;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.psychres.2013.08.027

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Violent offending has often been associated with a lack of empathy, but experimental investigations are rare. The present study aimed at clarifying whether violent offenders show a general empathy deficit or specific deficits regarding the separate subcomponents. To this end, we assessed three core components of empathy (emotion recognition, perspective taking, affective responsiveness) as well as skin conductance response (SCR) in a sample of 30 male violent offenders and 30 healthy male controls. Data analysis revealed reduced accuracy in violent offenders compared to healthy controls only in emotion recognition, and that a high number of violent assaults was associated with decreased accuracy in perspective taking for angry scenes. SCR data showed reduced physiological responses in the offender group specifically for fear and disgust stimuli during emotion recognition and perspective taking. In addition, higher psychopathy scores in the violent offender group were associated with reduced accuracy in affective responsiveness. This is the first study to show that mainly emotion recognition is deficient in violent offenders whereas the other components of empathy are rather unaffected. This divergent impact of violent offending on the subcomponents of empathy suggests that all three empathy components can be targeted by therapeutic interventions separately. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free