| Psychopathy is a personality disorder in which the individual exhibits interpersonal,emotional,lifestyle,and antisocial traits which are manifested by smoothness and argumentativeness,self-centeredness,lying and deception,lack of loyalty to others,lack of remorse and self-recrimination,shallowness of feeling,callousness,lack of empathy,guilt and self-recrimination,and irresponsibility for one’s actions.And such traits have been widely distributed in the population and even those who are not clinically diagnosed as psychopathic may exhibit typical psychopathic traits.In reality,psychopathic traits increase the tendency of individuals to engage in a variety of deviant behaviors,most of which are immoral.The relationship between psychopathic traits and moral judgment has been studied,but the results remain controversial.Most studies have aimed at examining the prediction of psychopathy on moral dilemmas or performance in moral reasoning and little attention has been paid to the moral judgment of psychopathic traits on behavior in daily life situations based on different moral foundations and the underlying psychological mechanisms.The present study explores how psychopathic traits predict dichotomous and multidimensional moral judgments of behavior in daily life situations based on five moral foundations using adapted well-integrated daily practical moral situations in a college student sample and a detention facility sample and further explores the mediating role of unpleasant emotions.This paper contains three studies:the first one is the development and rating of material based on the five moral foundations of daily immoral situations;the second one uses 260 college students as subjects in a paper-and-pencil questionnaire to explore the total psychopathy score and the prediction of both primary and secondary psychopathic traits on moral judgments under the five domains and the underlying mechanisms;the third one continues in the detention.The paper-and-pencil questionnaire was administered to 237 detainees in the detention facility as subjects to examine the relationship between total psychopathy scores and the two factors of primary and secondary psychopathic traits on moral judgments under the five domains and the underlying mechanisms.In the first study,33 daily immoral situation materials based on the five moral foundations applicable to college student subjects were developed and rated;18 immoral situation materials were applicable to detention centers.The results of the second study found that college student psychopathic traits were significant predictors of dichotomous moral judgments on the caring/harming basis of moral foundations,as well as multidimensional moral judgments on all five moral foundations.The predictive results of primary psychopathy on dichotomous moral judgments and multidimensional moral judgments were consistent with the findings of the total psychopathy score.Finally,the degree of unpleasantness fully mediated the relationship between psychopathic traits and moral judgments,and the mechanisms mediating the prediction of moral judgments by psychopathic traits and unpleasantness were mainly reflected in the primary psychopathic trait dimension.The results of the third study showed that psychopathic traits were significant predictors of dichotomous moral judgments on the authority/subversion basis of moral foundations and significant predictors of the acceptability of multidimensional moral judgments on the caring/harming and loyalty/betrayal bases.Primary psychopathy significantly predicted dichotomous moral judgments in the caring/harming,authority/subversion bases and significantly predicted acceptability scores of multidimensional moral judgments in the caring/harming,loyalty/betrayal,and purity/degradation moral bases.In addition,unpleasantness fully mediated the relationship between levels of psychopathic traits and moral acceptability in the caring/harming and loyalty/betrayal bases.Unpleasantness fully mediated the relationship between moral acceptability of primary psychopathic traits in the caring/harming,loyalty/betrayal,and purity/degradation bases.For secondary psychopathy,we did not find any significant results.In both studies,total psychopathy scores,primary and secondary psychopathy scores were not significantly related to binary moral judgments and multidimensional moral acceptability on customary infractions.Primary psychopathic traits were more significant predictors of moral judgments than secondary psychopathic traits.The present study revealed that psychopathic traits significantly predicted moral judgments of behavior in daily life situations in both college student and detention saumples,and this prediction was more in the care/harm domain as well as multidimensional immoral judgments.Thus,psychopathic traits are significant predictors of atypical moral judgments,and the relationship between psychopathic traits and moral judgments is related to the moral domain in which the immoral behavior is located,how moral judgments are made,and what group the participants are from.Furthermore,the results of both studies demonstrated that unpleasant emotions fully mediated the relationship between psychopathic traits and multidimensional moral judgments.The findings suggest that individuals with high psychopathic traits are indeed less emotionally sensitive(feel less unpleasant when making moral judgments)to unethical behaviors,especially those related to caring/harming.This study provides additional research evidence for a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between psychopathic traits and moral judgments and possible psychological mechanisms,as well as some scientific references on how to effectively carry out moral education efforts. |
