Psychopaths know right from wrong but don't care
Psychopaths know right from wrong but don't care
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DOI：
10.1093/scan/nsp051
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发表时间：
2010-03-01
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
Hauser, Marc D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cima, Maaike;Tonnaer, Franca;Hauser, Marc D.
成年精神病患者在情绪处理和抑制控制方面存在缺陷，从事道德上不恰当的行为，并且通常无法区分道德和常规违规行为。这些观察结果，再加上该学科的一个主流传统，即认为情绪过程是道德判断的必然原因，导致了这样的结论：精神病患者缺乏对道德是非的理解。我们测试了另一种解释：精神病患者对是非有正常的理解，但对道德上适当的行为有异常的调节。我们向精神病患者提出了道德困境，将他们的判断与年龄和性别匹配的（i）健康受试者和（ii）非精神病的犯罪者进行了对比。每个小组的受试者都认为人身伤害（即需要身体接触）的情况比非人身伤害更不允许，即使这两种类型的伤害都导致了功利主义的收益。然而，重要的是，精神病患者对不同困境的判断模式与其他受试者相同。这些结果迫使我们拒绝接受情绪过程对于道德困境的判断是因果必要的这一强有力的假设，相反，这表明精神病患者理解对与错之间的区别，但并不关心这些知识，也不关心他们道德上不恰当的行为所带来的后果。
Adult psychopaths have deficits in emotional processing and inhibitory control, engage in morally inappropriate behavior, and generally fail to distinguish moral from conventional violations. These observations, together with a dominant tradition in the discipline which sees emotional processes as causally necessary for moral judgment, have led to the conclusion that psychopaths lack an understanding of moral rights and wrongs. We test an alternative explanation: psychopaths have normal understanding of right and wrong, but abnormal regulation of morally appropriate behavior. We presented psychopaths with moral dilemmas, contrasting their judgments with age- and sex-matched (i) healthy subjects and (ii) non-psychopathic, delinquents. Subjects in each group judged cases of personal harms (i.e. requiring physical contact) as less permissible than impersonal harms, even though both types of harms led to utilitarian gains. Importantly, however, psychopaths' pattern of judgments on different dilemmas was the same as those of the other subjects. These results force a rejection of the strong hypothesis that emotional processes are causally necessary for judgments of moral dilemmas, suggesting instead that psychopaths understand the distinction between right and wrong, but do not care about such knowledge, or the consequences that ensue from their morally inappropriate behavior.