While psychopathy may be a relatively rare pathology (or, at least, diagnosis), accounting for just 1% of the general population, psychopathic traits can be found in many individuals. They exist on a continuum, with some individuals showing more and others fewer of these traits, and to different degrees.
One relatively robust finding among studies is that individuals with psychopathic traits tend to resort to proactive (i.e., goal-oriented) aggression more readily than others. However, the findings on reactive (i.e. impulsive) aggression are less convergent. The authors of a recent study in Biological Psychology set out to clarify this relation, in the specific context of aggression oriented towards innocent parties.
Indeed, if the source of one’s frustration is absent or inaccessible, reactive aggression can be re-oriented toward innocent bystanders. The authors give the example of school shootings, underscoring the importance of recognizing the psychosocial precursors to aggressive behavior.
The study was designed as follows: individuals were asked to play a response-time game, in which their “opponent” was in fact, and unbeknownst to them, a computer with predetermined game outcomes.
Players received punishment upon losing (a loud sound played over headphones), but in a first series of games were unable to punish their opponent. Later, they were given the opportunity to punish their opponent—but were made to understand that it was not the same person as has punished them. It was an innocent player. Like their “opponents”, players could vary in severity the punishments they inflicted.
It was hypothesized, and the results confirmed, that individuals higher on psychopathic traits (HP) tended to take out their frustration on the innocent, second player, despite understanding that this was a separate person, unrelated to their original opponent who “chose” to punish them severely.
Interestingly, this was only the case when punishments happened quite frequently. In a second trial, where severe punishments were limited to 20% of cases, HP individuals did not demonstrate the same misdirected reactive aggression. This suggests that a certain “upper limit” exists to which individuals can moderate their reactive response, after which they will take out their frustration on unrelated, innocent persons.
The game scenarios are a far cry from the violence and destruction of school shootings. Importantly, incarcerated individuals, in previous research and as mentioned by the authors, have demonstrated an opposite effect, whereby higher psychopathic traits lead to less misdirected reactive aggression. Thus, conclusions must be drawn carefully. Few individuals high on psychopathic traits are likely to perpetrate violent crimes based on the misdirection of reactive aggression.
Nonetheless, it is important to understand exactly how and why some individuals are more or less likely to take out their frustration on innocent persons, and what interventions there may be for identifying specific tendencies and modifying behavior.
The study, “High levels of psychopathic traits increase the risk of transferring reactive aggression to innocent people after provocation: Evidence from an ERP study“, was authored by Yuchao Wang, Qun Yang, Bing Zhu, Shuer Ye, Xuehong Tian, and Frank Krueger.