Abstract
Psychopathy is a developmental disorder associated with increased risk of instrumental and reactive aggression and with chronic and violent antisocial behavior in both youth and adults. Individuals with psychopathy show specific impairments in stimulus-reinforcement learning, emotional processing, and moral decision making. These deficits have been tied to dysfunctional amygdala response and to problems appropriately representing reinforcement expectancies in ventromedial prefrontal cortex. While treatment recommendations are currently sparse, recent work has shown that previous assessments of treatment amenability in this population may have been overly pessimistic.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second Edition |
Publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
Pages | 451-456 |
Number of pages | 6 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780080970875 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780080970868 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 26 2015 |
Keywords
- Aggression
- Antisocial behavior
- Antisocial personality disorder
- Callous-unemotional traits
- Conduct disorder
- Psychopathy
- Violence
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Social Sciences