Ana Seara-Cardoso

Emotion Regulation Moderates the Association between Empathy and Prosocial Behavior

Theory and evidence suggest that empathy is an important motivating factor for prosocial behaviour and that emotion regulation, i.e. the capacity to exert control over an emotional response, may moderate the degree to which empathy is associated with prosocial behaviour. However, studies to date have not simultaneously explored the associations between different empathic processes and prosocial behaviour, nor whether different types of emotion regulation strategies (e.g. cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) moderate associations between empathy and prosocial behaviour. One hundred–and-ten healthy adults completed questionnaire measures of empathy, emotion regulation and prosocial tendencies. In this sample, both affective and cognitive empathy predicted self-reported prosocial tendencies. In addition, cognitive reappraisal moderated the association between affective empathy and prosocial tendencies. Specifically, there was a significant positive association between empathy and prosocial tendencies for individuals with a low or average tendency to reappraise but not for those with a high tendency to reappraise. Our findings suggest that, in general, empathy is positively associated with prosocial behaviour. However, this association is not significant for individuals with a high tendency for cognitive reappraisal.

Functional Neuroscience of Psychopathic Personality in Adults

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that involves a constellation of traits including callous-unemotionality, manipulativeness, and impulsiveness. Here we review recent advances in the research of functional neural correlates of psychopathic personality traits in adults. We first provide a concise overview of functional neuroimaging findings in clinical samples diagnosed with the PCL-R. We then review studies with community samples that have focused on how individual differences in psychopathic traits (variously measured) relate to individual differences in brain function. Where appropriate, we draw parallels between the findings from these studies and those with clinical samples. Extant data suggest that individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits show lower activity in affect-processing brain areas to emotional/salient stimuli, and that attenuated activity may be dependent on the precise content of the task. They also seem to show higher activity in regions typically associated with reward processing and cognitive control in tasks involving moral processing, decision making, and reward. Furthermore, affective-interpersonal and lifestyle-antisocial facets of psychopathy appear to be associated with different patterns of atypical neural activity. Neuroimaging findings from community samples typically mirror those observed in clinical samples, and largely support the notion that psychopathy is a dimensional construct.

Affective resonance in response to others’ emotional faces varies with affective ratings and psychopathic traits in amygdala and anterior insula

Despite extensive research on the neural basis of empathic responses for pain and disgust, there is limited data about the brain regions that underpin affective response to other people’s emotional facial expressions. Here, we addressed this question using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess neural responses to emotional faces, combined with online ratings of subjective state. When instructed to rate their own affective response to others’ faces, participants recruited anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate, inferior frontal gyrus, and amygdala, regions consistently implicated in studies investigating empathy for disgust and pain, as well as emotional saliency. Importantly, responses in anterior insula and amygdala were modulated by trial-by-trial variations in subjective affective responses to the emotional facial stimuli. Furthermore, overall task-elicited activations in these regions were negatively associated with psychopathic personality traits, which are characterized by low affective empathy. Our findings suggest that anterior insula and amygdala play important roles in the generation of affective internal states in response to others’ emotional cues and that attenuated function in these regions may underlie reduced empathy in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits.

Neural responses to others' pain vary with psychopathic traits in healthy adult males.

Disrupted empathic processing is a core feature of psychopathy. Neuroimaging data have suggested that individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits show atypical responses to others’ pain in a network of brain regions typically recruited during empathic processing (anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, and mid- and anterior cingulate cortex). Here, we investigated whether neural responses to others’ pain vary with psychopathic traits within the general population in a similar manner to that found in individuals at the extreme end of the continuum. As predicted, variation in psychopathic traits was associated with variation in neural responses to others’ pain in the network of brain regions typically engaged during empathic processing. Consistent with previous research, our findings indicated the presence of suppressor effects in the association of levels of the affective-interpersonal and lifestyle-antisocial dimensions of psychopathy with neural responses to others’ pain. That is, after controlling for the influence of the other dimension, higher affective-interpersonal psychopathic traits were associated with reduced neural responses to others’ pain, whilst higher lifestyle-antisocial psychopathic traits were associated with increased neural responses to others’ pain. Our findings provide further evidence that atypical function in this network might represent neural markers of disrupted emotional and empathic processing; that the two dimensions of psychopathy might tap into distinct underlying vulnerabilities; and, most importantly, that the relationships observed at the extreme end of the psychopathy spectrum apply to the nonclinical distribution of these traits, providing further evidence for continuities in the mechanisms underlying psychopathic traits across the general population.

EMOTICOM: A Neuropsychological Test Battery to Evaluate Emotion, Motivation, Impulsivity, and Social Cognition

In mental health practice, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments are aimed at improving neuropsychological symptoms, including cognitive and emotional impairments. However, at present there is no established neuropsychological test battery that comprehensively covers multiple affective domains relevant in a range of disorders. Our objective was to generate a standardized test battery, comprised of existing, adapted and novel tasks, to assess four core domains of affective cognition (emotion processing, motivation, impulsivity and social cognition) in order to facilitate and enhance treatment development and evaluation in a broad range of neuropsychiatric disorders. The battery was administered to 200 participants aged 18–50 years (50% female), 42 of whom were retested in order to assess reliability. An exploratory factor analysis identified 11 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, which accounted for over 70% of the variance. Tasks showed moderate to excellent test-retest reliability and were not strongly correlated with demographic factors such as age or IQ. The EMOTICOM test battery is therefore a promising tool for the assessment of affective cognitive function in a range of contexts.

Why (and how) should we study the interplay between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind, and inhibitory control to understand moral cognition?

Findings in the field of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shed new light on our understanding of the psychological and biological bases of morality. Although a lot of attention has been devoted to understanding the processes that underlie complex moral dilemmas, attempts to represent the way in which individuals generate moral judgments when processing basic harmful actions are rare. Here, we will outline a model of morality which proposes that the evaluation of basic harmful actions relies on complex interactions between emotional arousal, Theory of Mind (ToM) capacities, and inhibitory control resources. This model makes clear predictions regarding the cognitive processes underlying the development of and ability to generate moral judgments. We draw on data from developmental and cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology research to evaluate the model and propose several conceptual and methodological improvements that are needed to further advance our understanding of moral cognition and its development.

Anticipation of guilt for everyday moral transgressions: The role of the anterior insula and the influence of interpersonal psychopathic traits

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterised by atypical moral behaviour likely rooted in atypical affective/motivational processing, as opposed to an inability to judge the wrongness of an action. Guilt is a moral emotion believed to play a crucial role in adherence to moral and social norms, but the mechanisms by which guilt (or lack thereof) may influence behaviour in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits are unclear. We measured neural responses during the anticipation of guilt about committing potential everyday moral transgressions, and tested the extent to which these varied with psychopathic traits. We found a significant interaction between the degree to which anticipated guilt was modulated in the anterior insula and interpersonal psychopathic traits: anterior insula modulation of anticipated guilt was weaker in individuals with higher levels of these traits. Data from a second sample confirmed that this pattern of findings was specific to the modulation of anticipated guilt and not related to the perceived wrongness of the transgression. These results suggest a central role for the anterior insula in coding the anticipation of guilt regarding potential moral transgressions and advance our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms that may underlie propensity to antisocial behaviour.

Antisocial and Callous Behaviour in Children

Antisocial behaviour is one of the most common reasons for a childhood referral to mental health and educational services and represents a substantial public health cost. Callous-unemotional traits can be used to distinguish children who are capable of pre-meditated antisocial behaviour and violence from those whose antisocial behaviour and violence are primarily impulsive and threat reactive. Decades of developmental psychopathology research have shown that children with antisocial behaviour are thus a heterogeneous group and, for interventions to be successful, it is critical that distinct subgroups of children receive services that best match their profile of vulnerabilities and strengths. Recent advances in genetic and brain imaging research in the field have made important contributions to our understanding of the developmental vulnerability that callous-unemotional traits represent. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the current evidence base with regard to genetic and neuroscience findings of callous-unemotional traits and antisocial behaviour with callous-unemotional traits. We also discuss the implications of these findings for prevention and intervention, and finish by outlining what we consider are necessary directions for future research.

Psychometric properties of the questionnaire of cognitive and affective empathy in a Portuguese sample

Empathy is an important concept in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Despite the controversy around its definition, most researchers would agree that empathy is a multidimensional phenomenon which involves a vicarious experience of another person’s affective state and an understanding of another person’s affective experience. Self-report measures of empathy constitute an important tool for both research and clinical practice. The main goal of this study was to adapt and study the psychometric properties of the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE), a worldwide used measure of empathy, in a Portuguese community sample (N = 562). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the factor structure of the original QCAE. Results show that the Portuguese version of the QCAE has sound psychometric properties, with good structural validity and internal consistency for both scales (i.e., affective and cognitive) and respective subscales of the instrument (i.e., Emotion Contagion, Proximal Responsivity, Peripheral Responsivity, Perspective Taking and Online Simulation). We tested both a five correlated factor structure (Model 1) and a second-order model that postulates the affective and cognitive dimensions (Model 2). Our results show that while both models present acceptable goodness of fit indices, Model 1 performs slightly better. In conclusion, the Portuguese version of the QCAE may prove a useful tool for future cross-cultural assessments of empathy in both research and clinical practice.

Why Do Children With Disruptive Behavior Disorders Keep Making Bad Choices

Disruptive Behavior Disorders (DBDs), such as Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder, are common reasons for a childhood referral to mental health and educational services and represent a substantial public health cost (1). Children with DBDs are not only at risk of developing antisocial personality disorder in adulthood, but they are also at risk of developing a number of other psychiatric and physical health problems (2, 3). What is striking for people who come to contact with these children, either in a research or clinical/educational settings, are the repeated poor choices they make. Children with DBDs often act impulsively, with apparently little ability to compute the consequences of their poor behavioral choices. Many of these children desperately want to make better choices, but are upset as they find themselves, yet again, in trouble that they did not see coming. Others, may pursue selfish goals, but with overly optimistic predictions of the likely outcome of their actions and experience subsequent frustrated aggression when things do not work out. In order to adequately formulate and target interventions that will help children with DBDs we need to better understand the information processing abnormalities that characterize their decision-making.