Dealing With Shame – the ‘psychopathic Way’: Preliminary Investigation for a New Developmental Framework of Psychopathic Traits

Abstract

Although individuals with psychopathic traits are deemed as immune to emotional experiences, in recent year, some authors have advanced the hypothesis that a pervasive pattern of emotion dysregulation may characterize the developmental trajectories leading to a psychopathic personality structure. Shame has been proposed as crucial emotions to understand psychopathy. It has been argued that people, who often experience shame feelings during their childhood, may develop adaptive strategies to cope with them, which lead to maladaptive strategies to regulate shame feelings in adulthood. These maladaptive strategies may explain the increased likelihood for these individuals to violence when feeling ashamed. Whether these mechanisms may also explain the presence of high psychopathic traits remains a clinically valid theoretical hypothesis, which lacks empirical support.

Objective

To investigate whether maladaptive strategies to cope with shame feelings were associated with psychopathic traits.

Aims

To examine the association between four maladaptive shame coping were positively related with psychopathic traits.

Methods

A sample of male offenders incarcerated in Italian jails completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (Paulhus et al., 2015) and the Compass of Shame Scale (Elison et al., 2006).

Results

As hypothesized, maladaptive shame regulation strategies did predict psychopathic traits in the offender sample examined. Specifically, significant and meaningful associations occurred between avoidance and attack other coping styles and psychopathic traits.

Conclusions

The present study is among the first in providing evidence of a possible relationship between maladaptive strategies to cope with shame feelings and psychopathic traits, and such link can be informative to tailor treatment programs for these hard-to-treat patients.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.