deadleeaims

Hi Dr. Raine,

Thank you for taking the time to read my question. I am an avid follower of your work on psychopathy. I am a graduate student running a study using event-related potentials to examine emotional processing in a sample of undergraduate males with high and low psychopathic traits. I have recently begun to analyze my data and found the High group had larger Late Positive Potential (LPP) amplitudes for disgusting images from the International Affective Picture System compared to the LPP amplitudes of the controls.

Can you share your thoughts on this finding? Is there reason to believe that disgust may be one of the few emotional responses that psychopaths experience?

Fortunately, I have just began my doctoral education so hopefully I can investigate this difference further. It is quite surprising that the response to the mutilation images differ so greatly from the disgusting images.

One thought I had were that the mutilation images are composed of human injury- horror movie type images, that may have more of an interpersonal element than the disgusting images which are pictures of vomit, bugs on rotting food, etc.

Hi Dr. Raine,

I have another question. If biology may predetermine destiny, are individuals with certain personalities or a specific neurobiological dysfunction not responsible for their violent behavior?

Thank you!

I am familiar with the low stimulation argument. However, the High psychopathic group showed smaller LPP amplitudes to the mutilation images compared to the controls, which are thought to be much more arousing than the disgusting images.

Do you have any thoughts about this?

Hi Dr. Raine,

Thank you for answering my other questions so thoroughly!

What are the books or research articles that influenced you the most early on in your career?

Do you have any advice for graduate students interested in a research career studying psychopaths and criminal behavior?