Psychopathic traits linked to distinct cognitive disruptions in learning

A new study published in Translational Psychiatry has found that people with elevated psychopathic traits show distinct disruptions in how they learn from rewards and punishments. Rather than uniformly struggling to process feedback, different psychopathic traits were linked to specific patterns of impaired learning and biased expectations about change in the environment.

Psychopathic traits include characteristics like superficial charm, impulsivity, lack of empathy, and antisocial behavior. Although often associated with criminal behavior, these traits exist on a continuum and can be measured across the general population.

Previous research has suggested that people high in psychopathic traits often make risky or harmful decisions because they have difficulty learning from their mistakes. However, most studies have used simple tasks with only two options to choose from, which does not fully capture the complex decisions people face in everyday life. The researchers in the new study wanted to better understand how psychopathic traits are related to learning in more naturalistic, real-world situations where many options must be weighed.

“Psychopathy is often linked to reduced punishment sensitivity and poor behavioral adaptation. I’m interested in the cognitive and neural mechanisms behind this, particularly why individuals with psychopathic traits fail to adjust when associations between choices and outcomes change (for instance, when a previously rewarded choice starts resulting in punishments),” explained study author Dimana Atanassova, a postdoctoral researcher at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour.

“One possibility is that they have impairments in volatility learning—the ability to detect and adapt to shifts in associations between choices and outcomes. While they can learn basic associations, they often struggle to update them when rewards or punishments reverse. In this study, I wanted to explore what happens in the brain when people have to learn new associations, and whether certain types of rewards and punishments might be more effective in this learning process.”

To investigate this, researchers recruited a community sample of 108 adults ranging in age from 19 to 54. Participants completed a foraging-style decision-making task designed to mimic real-world learning, where they had to repeatedly choose whether to stay with a known option or explore new ones. The outcomes were either monetary rewards and losses or personalized rewards and calibrated painful electric shocks, depending on the condition.

During the task, participants’ brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG), focusing on a brain signal known as feedback-related negativity, which is thought to reflect how the brain processes unexpected outcomes. Researchers also assessed psychopathic traits using a standard questionnaire measuring interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial tendencies.

The study applied a computational model known as the Hierarchical Gaussian Filter to track how participants formed predictions about the environment and updated these predictions when receiving feedback. Specifically, the model allowed the researchers to distinguish between learning based on immediate outcomes and learning based on broader patterns of environmental change, sometimes called volatility tracking.

The researchers found that people higher in antisocial traits tended to believe the environment was more unstable than it really was. They expected that rules and patterns would change frequently, which can lead to poor learning because it makes feedback seem less meaningful. This finding helps explain why individuals with antisocial tendencies often show persistence in maladaptive behaviors, even when the environment signals that a change is necessary.

“I was surprised to find that individuals with higher antisocial traits—those more prone to risky or rule-breaking behavior even without a criminal record—tended to expect the world around them to change very rapidly,” Atanassova told PsyPost. “It was as if they perceived their environment as so unpredictable that forming stable associations between actions and outcomes became nearly impossible. This stood out even more when compared to others in our sample, who were able to adapt and learn from the task much more effectively.”

The researchers also found that higher interpersonal psychopathic traits—characterized by superficial charm and manipulativeness—were linked to weaker learning from personally meaningful rewards. These individuals were less responsive to outcomes that should have been motivating, which may reflect a diminished sensitivity to positive reinforcement.

In contrast, higher psychopathic affective traits—such as callousness and lack of empathy—were linked to reduced learning from painful punishments. Individuals with elevated affective traits showed muted brain responses when painful outcomes occurred, suggesting that they did not adjust their behavior effectively after experiencing punishment. However, they showed stronger learning from personalized rewards, suggesting that naturalistic, meaningful incentives could partly overcome some of the learning deficits seen in this group.

Interestingly, the study also found that a particular brain signal, the feedback-related negativity, tracked not immediate wins or losses, but rather participants’ evolving predictions about how the environment might be changing. This signal was sensitive to how surprising feedback was relative to expectations about change, rather than simply reflecting whether an outcome was good or bad. The strength of this brain signal also varied depending on participants’ psychopathic traits, highlighting how these traits shape not just behavior but also the brain’s basic learning processes.

The results offer a nuanced picture of how psychopathic traits impact learning. Rather than a general insensitivity to feedback, specific traits are linked to distinct patterns of learning impairments. Antisocial traits bias people to see the world as more volatile and unpredictable. Interpersonal traits blunt the motivational pull of rewards. Affective traits weaken the impact of punishments, particularly painful ones, while leaving learning from rewards relatively intact.

“Not all people with high psychopathic traits learn the same way,” Atanassova explained. “Some are more affected by punishments, while others are more influenced by rewards. For example, people with more manipulative psychopathic traits responded well to painful punishments but seemed rather unmotivated by rewards. On the other hand, those lacking empathy didn’t react much to punishment and displayed more reward-driven behavior.”

“These differences also show up in the brain, especially in how people detect and adapt to changes in consequences. These results challenge the perspective that all people with psychopathic traits are punishment-insensitive and highlight the importance of finding the right motivator; as such the findings might be important for future research focused on how to rehabilitate people with psychopathic traits.”

The researchers noted some limitations. Their sample consisted of healthy community adults rather than individuals diagnosed with clinical psychopathy or involved in the criminal justice system. Although psychopathic traits are distributed throughout the population, future research could examine whether similar patterns are observed in clinical or forensic groups.

“Still, studying these traits in everyday people helps us understand how they affect learning and behavior more broadly, especially since psychopathic traits in the general population are also associated with heightened risk of aggression and violence,” Atanassova said.

“This study demonstrated that people with psychopathic traits detect and adapt to change in the environment differently—for some, because punitive outcomes are not really salient, for some, because they’re insensitive to reward, and for others because they have a bias that makes them think the world changes far too rapidly to be predicted. As next steps, we’d like to understand where those impairments come from: is there a genetic/biological element to them, perhaps heightened by certain early life experiences?”

The study, “Exploring when to exploit: the cognitive underpinnings of foraging-type decisions in relation to psychopathy,” was authored by D. V. Atanassova, J. M. Oosterman, A. O. Diaconescu, C. Mathys, V. I. Madariaga, and I. A. Brazil.