Bad meets Evil: Relations of psychopathy and sadism to two forms of empathy (CROSBI ID 653863)
Prilog sa skupa u zborniku | sažetak izlaganja sa skupa | međunarodna recenzija
Podaci o odgovornosti
Wertag, Anja
engleski
Bad meets Evil: Relations of psychopathy and sadism to two forms of empathy
Empathy, in the most general sense, refers to the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, and comprises of an emotional and a cognitive component. The most severe deficits in empathy are linked to psychopathic and sadistic personality traits. Psychopathy represents a complex construct that includes a set of related personality characteristics and behavior, including interpersonal manipulation, affective callousness, erratic lifestyle and tendency towards antisocial behavior, and its relations to different forms of empathy are well established: most of the previous studies suggest that psychopathic traits, especially affective callousness, are negatively related to emotional empathy, with no deficits in cognitive empathy. However, this is not the case with sadism, which refers to enjoyment of other people sufferings and predicts antisocial behavior beyond psychopathy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate relations between two forms of empathy and psychopathic and sadistic traits in offender’s sample. Data was collected on 238 male prisoners from two prisons in Croatia (Mage was 42 years, with SD = 11.82). All variables were assessed with self-reports, using short form of Empathy Quotient which measures cognitive and emotional empathy, short form of Self-report psychopathy scale (SRP-29), and Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies (VAST), that makes a distinction between direct sadism (enjoyment of harming others physically or verbally) and vicarious sadism (enjoyment of observing others being harmed). The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that psychopathic traits do not have a contribution in predicting cognitive empathy (F(4, 140)=0.48, p=.75), while sadism explained 6% of the variance above psychopathy (F(2, 138)=4.36, p=.01), with only vicarious sadism having a significant contribution (β=-.38, p<.01). On the other hand, psychopathic traits accounted for 15% of emotional empathy variance (F(4, 135)=6.19, p<.01), where affective callousness was the only significant predictor (β=-.48, p<.01), while sadism had only a marginal contribution above psychopathy (F(2, 133)=3.01, p=.05). Taken together, these results reflect theoretically meaningful relations and highlight the importance of distinguishing between different forms of empathy.
Bad meets Evil: Relations of psychopathy and sadism to two forms of empathy
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Podaci o prilogu
36-36.
2017.
objavljeno
Podaci o matičnoj publikaciji
Savremeni trendovi u psihologiji: Knjiga sažetaka
Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet Univerziteta u Novom Sadu
978-86-6065-434-4
Podaci o skupu
Savremeni trendovi u psihologiji
predavanje
19.10.2017-21.10.2017
Novi Sad, Srbija