Psychopathic individuals exhibit but do not avoid regret during counterfactual decision making

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Abstract
Significance: Psychopathic individuals display a chronic and flagrant disregard for social norms through their callous behavior and lack of regret for its consequences. Although psychopathy research largely attributes this to deficits in affective responsiveness, recent proposals suggest that value-based decision making may also contribute to the maladaptive behavior of psychopathic individuals. Using a counterfactual decision-making paradigm, we found that higher scores on psychopathy were associated with higher levels of retrospective regret. Despite this, however, individuals higher on psychopathy made riskier choices and were less influenced by prospective regret when making decisions. These findings support the idea that the maladaptive behavior of psychopathic individuals is related to deficits in domain-general cognitive processes, such as counterfactual decision making, rather than a primary affective deficit.
Funding Information
  • American Psychological Foundation (N/A)
  • APA | American Psychology-Law Society (N/A)
  • Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation (N/A)
  • Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Law, Brain and Behavior (N/A)
  • Brain and Behavior Research Fund (N/A)
  • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (N/A)

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