Psychology News
A team of researchers at the University of Bari, Italy, explored the link between psychopathy and the creation of false memories. The study is published in the British Journal of Psychology.
The Study
The researchers asked 120 participants, aged 18–65 years, to complete the Psychopathic Personality Inventory. They assessed the participants’ self-centered impulsivity, fearless dominance, and cold-heartedness.
The latter also took tests on working memory, anxiety, and depression. The Emotional False Memory paradigm was used for memory testing.
The Findings
The results revealed that psychopaths undergo general emotional memory impairment. People with psychopathic personality traits develop false memories of emotionally negative events.
In fact, they store emotional life events with less clarity and more fearless dominance (FD) in autobiographical memory, compared to people who lack psychopathic traits.
The authors remarked: “By shedding light on the conditions of their emotion-processing difficulty, future research should be directed to the understanding of the specific mechanisms that impair memory (in particular, the encoding of the event) in individuals high in psychopathy.”
To Know More You May Refer To
Mirandola, C., Lanciano, T., Battista, F., Otgaar, H., & Curci, A. (2023). Psychopathic personality traits are linked to reduced false memories for negative events. British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953), 114(1), 176–193. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12604