(Dis)honesty, psychopathy, and their relation to empathic concern

File(s)
Date
2012-09Author
Agnello, Connie L.
Department
Psychology - Experimental
Advisor(s)
Lishner, David
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The goal of the present research was to examine the relation between honesty-humility
and psychopathy, along with their relationship to empathic concern and helping behavior
by manipulating perspective taking and measuring feelings of empathic concern for
willingness to help a person in need. Measures of psychopathy were assessed using the
SRP- III, and the PPI-R: SF. The personality dimension of honesty-humility was
measured using a portion of the HEXACO-PI-R: SR (100 item version). Empathic
concern was evaluated using the 6 items that Batson (2011) suggests best defines the
construct. Based on previous work, it was hypothesized that (a) psychopathy and
honestly-humility would be negatively associated with one another; (b) psychopathy
would be negatively associated with empathic concern and helping; and (c) honestyhumility
would be positively associated with empathic concern and helping. A
perspective taking manipulation was used to further examine whether the associations of
the traits of empathic concern and helping would be mitigated if the participants actively
imagined the perspective of the person in need. Correlational analyses revealed a
negative relation between honesty-humility and the psychopathy measures. When
measures of psychopathy were decomposed into facet measures of fearless dominance,
impulsive antisociality, coldheartedness, Factor 1 (primary psychopathy), and Factor 2
(secondary psychopathy), only individuals higher in Factor 1 reported significantly lower
levels of empathic concern (after controlling for gender). Logistic regression analyses
indicated that the interaction between coldheartedness and perspective taking
significantly predicted helping behavior, such individuals higher in coldheartedness were
less likely to help, but only when participants were asked to imagine the other?s
perspective.
Subject
Empathy
Truthfulness and falsehood
Antisocial personality disorders
Psychopaths
Permanent Link
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/63493Type
Thesis
Description
A Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Science-Psychology Experimental