Facial affect recognition in psychopathic offenders

The present research examined whether psychopathy was associated with impaired facial affect recognition. Participants were selected from a medium-security prison. Emotion recognition was assessed with the pictures of Facial Affect (PFA; Ekman & Friesen, 1976) and the Facial Discrimination Task (FDT; Erwin et al., 1992). Psychopathy scores were obtained by reviewing Psychopathy Checklist-Revised scores contained in inmates' files (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003). Participants also completed the Hare Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-II; Hare, 1985, 1991). Results failed to support the hypothesis that psychopathy is associated with deficits in facial affect recognition. Scores on the PFA revealed that both psychopathic and non-psychopathic inmates had difficulty identifying expressions of sadness and fear. This finding parallels those reported for non-clinical samples of students (Kirouac & Dore, 1983, 1985) as well as clinical groups such as patients with schizophrenia (Okada et al., 2003).