Abstract
Individuals with psychopathy present with maladaptive tendencies that have been linked to disturbed processing of outcomes during decision making, in particular with respect to aversive outcomes. In general, individuals with psychopathy show risk-seeking behaviour, as well as excessive reward-oriented behaviour. This chapter provides an overview of theories and empirical work on maladaptive behaviour in psychopathy in the context of reinforcement learning and risky decision making. In addition, we capitalise on recent neuroscientific advances to discuss the empirical results and propose how the use of personalised rewards in experimental designs may help to create a more ecologically valid reflection of real-world maladaptive behaviour in psychopathy.
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Glimmerveen, J.C., Maes, J.H.R., Brazil, I.A. (2022). Psychopathy, Maladaptive Learning and Risk Taking. In: Malatesti, L., McMillan, J., Šustar, P. (eds) Psychopathy. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82454-9_11
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