Situational Affordances and Psychopathy: Examining Contextual Influences on Exploitative Behavior in Economic Games

Abstract

Psychopathy is a personality construct most prominently characterized by traits such as callousness, manipulativeness, and lack of guilt and remorse (Hare, 2003). This dissertation focused on the relationship between psychopathy and exploitation, using economic games as a method to measure exploitative behavior. Specifically, the research investigated the interplay between psychopathy and environmental factors in shaping decision-making and social interactions. In Study 1, a meta-analysis was conducted to provide a quantitative summary of the empirical literature on the relationship between psychopathy and exploitative behavior in economic games. A novel theoretical framework, the Affordance-Based Framework of Prosocial Behavior (ABFPB), was used to identify moderators, generate hypotheses, and interpret the findings of the meta-analysis. The findings of Study 1 supported the notion that psychopathy was related to exploitation and found that this relationship was particularly strong in certain economic games. This relationship was also found to vary as a function of other moderators, such as whether the game was one-shot or iterated. In Study 2, a within-subjects experiment was conducted to determine if match length was a moderator of the psychopathy-exploitation and psychopathy-success relationships in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. While the relationship between psychopathy and exploitation did not differ as a result of match length, the relationship between psychopathy and success was contingent on the length of interactions. The findings are consistent with the view that psychopathic traits are more adaptive in environments characterized by transient, short-term relationship but incur significant costs in environments characterized by stable, long-term relationships. In sum, this dissertation provides a nuanced understanding of psychopathy as a contextually adaptive strategy. Furthermore, this dissertation highlights the importance of integrating personality and situation factors in the prediction and understanding of behavior.