The Weak Spot: Psychopathic Traits and Environmental Cues for Exploitation

Abstract

The social predator hypothesis claims that people with psychopathic traits are capable of and often do engage in the exploitation of others for their own benefit. For people with psychopathic traits to be successful in this regard, they need to be able to judge the vulnerability of those they aim to exploit. Research has established that people with psychopathic traits are better able to detect behavioural cues of vulnerability (e.g. gait) that are related to previous victimization, but the current study examines how they might also use environmental cues to determine potential for exploitation. In this study, male participants (n = 118) engaged in an imagined victimization task where they watched video stimuli and verbally commented on features of the environment (e.g., lighting) and people (e.g., gender) that influenced their decisions about who to exploit. A thematic analysis found the following relevant themes when analyzing commentary provided by participants high vs. low in psychopathy: a) centering the self as the imagined perpetrator; b) motivation to assess vulnerability to victimization. Overall, it was found that psychopathic traits were positively associated with using person-based cues and negatively associated with using environment-based cues when making judgements related to exploitation. Men with psychopathic traits seem to focus more on person-based features rather than environment-based features when considering vulnerability and their decisions about who to target for exploitation.