Fаciаl Emotion Recognition in Individuаls with high psychopаthic trаits

Psychopathy is a multidimensional personality construct characterized by affective, interpersonal, and behavioral traits, including shallow affect, low cognitive empathy, manipulativeness, and antisocial tendencies. One area of particular interest in psychopathy research is facial emotion recognition, as the ability to perceive and interpret emotional expressions is crucial for successful social functioning. This thesis provides a bibliographic review of existing research on facial emotion recognition in individuals with high psychopathic traits. It summarizes the main behavioral findings from experimental emotion recognition tasks and includes neurobiological evidence from structural and functional neuroimaging studies. The literature suggests that deficits are most consistently observed for distress-related emotional expressions, particularly fear and sadness. Neuroimaging findings further indicate atypical functioning in brain regions involved in emotional processing, including the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Overall, this thesis aims to provide a clearer overview of current findings, highlight inconsistencies across studies, and identify key limitations in the literature.