Abstract
There is much evidence that primary psychopathy is related to a deficit in emotion processing. The question remains, however, as to whether a deficit in self-conscious emotions hinders the ability to infer expected self-conscious emotions in others. Relying on an indirect testing of emotion attribution, we explored the possibility that primary psychopathy would predict difficulty in distinguishing between shame and guilt. Results showed that participants scoring high in primary psychopathy had more difficulties (i.e., they were less accurate) differentiating between guilt eliciting and shame eliciting events. The findings held even when controlling for age and gender. The importance of self-conscious emotions proneness when attributing emotions to others and implications for future research are discussed.
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Hakim Djeriouat declares that he has no conflict of interest in the conduct and the reporting of the research. Bastien Trémolière declares that he has no conflict of interest in the conduct and the reporting of the research.
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The conduct of this study was approved by the scientific and ethical board of the CLLE LTC. “All procedures performed in the study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards”.
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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study. The data reported in the present manuscript has not been previously published or simultaneously submitted elsewhere.
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Djeriouat, H., Trémolière, B. Shame and Guilt Situational Identification in Subclinical Primary Psychopaths. Curr Psychol 39, 238–245 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9756-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-017-9756-8