Moral decision-making in people with psychopathic traits

This thesis explores the relationship between morality and psychopathy: by examining various models and paradigms, it focuses on the abnormalities that are shown by people with psychopathic traits during moral decision-making, and on their resulting disruptive behaviours. Such impairment is seen as determined primarily by a disrupted emotional processing, which prevents individuals with psychopathic traits from fully appreciating the emotional distress of other people and therefore provides little resistance against manipulative and egoistic actions. Indeed, the emotional component is proposed as being the mediator between adequate moral reasoning and inadequate choice of action. Furthermore, the issue of moral judgment is explored, as the literature provides contrasting accounts of its solidity within psychopathy. Aided by findings on neural correlates of morality and emotion, this work aims to offer more clarity on the mixed results obtained through moral dilemmas paradigms. Additionally, it covers neurobiological findings of the moral circuit, since reduced activity in various brain areas – such as the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex – is correlated to impaired decision-making in psychopathy. Lastly, this thesis investigates the efforts of treatment and the challenges faced by practitioners when confronted with people with psychopathic traits, as they are notoriously resistant to therapy interventions and present high violent recidivism rates even after treatment.