Beth A. Visser

The social predator hypothesis suggests that people with psychopathic traits are skilled in judging vulnerability in others, which enables successful victim selection. The current study investigated this premise using recorded dyadic interactions. In Phase 1, we recorded female participants (victims/nonvictims) in dyadic interactions with a confederate. Videos were coded for known cues of vulnerability/submissiveness and dominance. As expected, women with sexual victimization histories displayed more cues of submissiveness than those without victimization histories (specifically, less vocal tone variability). Furthermore, trustingness was associated with victimization history. In Phase 2, undergraduate men ( N = 123) rated the women on various adjectives relating to vulnerability and dominance after viewing the dyadic interactions. Psychopathic traits were positively correlated with accuracy overall for ratings of naivety and cynicism. Importantly, the positive relationship with accuracy held for victims only. Psychopathic traits were negatively related to accuracy in nonvictims.

Previous studies have reported positive associations between psychopathic traits and fear enjoyment. The current studies were conducted to examine potential mediators in this relationship. Because enjoyment of fear may be contingent on feeling that one is not actually in danger, Study 1 investigated whether a sense of invincibility would mediate the relationship between psychopathy and fear enjoyment. Undergraduate students and MTurk participants ( N = 825) viewed exciting and fear-inducing video clips and self-reported their positive and negative reactions. As expected, psychopathy was related to both aspects of fear enjoyment (lessened negative response and heightened positive response). However, invincibility was only a significant mediator with respect to the former. Thus, in Study 2, we examined boredom proneness as a second potential mediator ( N = 425). As in Study 1, invincibility was a significant mediator in the relationship between psychopathic traits and lessened negative responses and in the relationship between psychopathic traits and positive responses. Boredom proneness was not a significant mediator. Results suggest that invincibility does help explain why psychopathic traits are related to fear enjoyment, but boredom proneness does not.

Recent research conceptualizes revenge as a communicative activity designed to send messages to targets, but few methods exist for researchers to draw inferences about the message properties and meanings that perpetrators wish to impart in their revenge messages. In this essay, we demonstrate how the Doll Aggression Task (DAT) can be paired with heatmap data visualization to address this challenge and help researchers draw conclusions about the communicative dimensions of revenge behavior. Using illustrative data from a study of revenge in romantic relationships, we spotlight novel insights into the communication of revenge that can be gleaned from the application of heatmap visualizations to the DAT.