ASPD and Experimental Psychopathology

Punishment seems to have little effect on future destructive behaviour of individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). One explanation of this is a deficiency in fear of arousal, which appears to cause antisocial behaviour in normal individuals. The lack of fear arousal is a contributor to poor avoidance learning, which in turn causes these individuals to get themselves into trouble, repeatedly.

What would happen if there was a possibility to make people with ASPD more psychologically reactive or fearful? Would it cause their deficiency in avoidance learning to disappear?

Stanley Schachter and Bibb Latane set out to answer this important question.

Method

Schachter and Latane selected two groups of inmates at state prisons on the basis of psychologists diagnoses and life history data. One group consisted of people with ASPD. These prisoners were described by prison psychologists as being completely free from any symptoms of anxiety, lacking any sense of responsibility or shame, being manipulators and habitual liars, able to commit antisocial acts without guilt or remorse, as well as lacking insight and unable to profit from negative experiences.

Most, if not all of these prisoners, would meet current diagnostic criteria for ASPD. A normal (non-psychopathic) group consisted of prisoners matched in age and intelligence, who did not exhibit this pattern of behaviour. Life history data showed that the psychopaths had been arrested more often (8.3 versus 3.3 arrests), and had spent most of their adult lives in prison (36.2% versus 18.1%).

The two groups of prisoners were recruited as paid participants in an investigation of a newly-developed hormone thought to enhance learning. "The researcher used an experimental apparatus which required the participants to learn a complicated mental maze, which consisted of a counter mounted on a metal cabinet, two pilot lights, and four switches.

The maze consisted of 20 choice points. At each choice point, the participant selected one of the four switches. If it was the correct one, a green light flashed and the learner advanced to the next point. If one of the three incorrect switches had been selected, a red light flashed; recording an error on the counter visible to the participant. When the 20th choice point was reached, the procedure began again from the start. The learner repeated the maze 21 times, with the objective being to learn the correct response at each choice point, minimising the total number of errors.

To study avoidance learning, one of the three incorrect switches at each choice point not only activated the red light and recorded an error, but it also resulted in a moderately painful electric shock to the learner. Thus, the learner would do well to learn to avoid not just the correct switch at each point, but also the one that delivered the shock (i.e. to do good and avoid evil).

To manipulate emotional arousal, the prisoners were injected with the experimental hormone, Suproxin, to see if it enhanced learning ability. The prisoners were informed that there would be no side effects. The injection was used to manipulate autonomic arousal. The contents of the injection were adrenaline, which would increase arousal; or placebo, which would inhibit it. Each participant worked until he learned two different mental mazes; one while under the influence of adrenaline and the other, while under the placebo. Half of them received adrenaline on the first maze and placebo for the second. The other half received injections in the reverse order.

Results

In the overall learning, the two groups of prisoners did not differ; their number of responses and errors were similar. This meant they did not differ in ability to learn the positively-reinforced 'correct' responses. Then, a major interest was the avoidance learning measure, which is the ability to learn the positively-reinforced 'correct' responses. Of major interest then, was the avoidance learning measure, (the ability to learn to avoid choosing the switch at each point of choice which would result in an electric shock). The variables of the dependents here were the percentage of incorrect responses made by each participant that resulted in electric shocks. The lower the percentage of shocked incorrect responses, the better the avoidance learning over trials through each maze. 

Avoidance learning under the placebo condition, in which both, those with ASPD and normal prisoners, experienced their normal arousal levels; the normal prisoners made a lower percentage of shock responses during later trips through the maze, indicating avoidance learning. In contrast, the psychopaths showed almost no evidence of learning during their later trials through the maze; they were still as likely to choose the shocked switch as in their previous trials.

If the lack of fear present in those with ASPD underlies their lack of conditioning, what would happen if one artificially increased their arousal levels? When injected with adrenaline, psychopaths showed dramatic evidence of avoidance learning. They actually performed better than the normal prisoners, whose performance on this complex task may have been somewhat impaired by increasing their already-existing fear responses.

Critical discussion

This study was done a half-century ago, but it's still considered a classic. Schachter and Latane tested a clinical explanation for a behaviour disorder under controlled laboratory conditions. They not only demonstrated that the deficiency in avoidance learning was presumed to underlie antisocial behaviour; but also showed that it could be reversed, if there was a possibility to experimentally create psychological arousal, which people with ASPD lacked.

The increased arousal produced by the adrenaline injection had a notable effect on the psychopaths, who learned to avoid even better than the normal prisoners did in the placebo condition. This could be due to the former's arousal in this fear-inducing was different from their normal experience.

It is important, however, to rule out other possible explanations for the results, such as whether the pain was experienced differently due to the injections motivating their shock avoidance? The researchers rule this out with evidence of the two groups' rates of pain being equally unpleasant under both injection conditions. Therefore, the psychopathic and normal prisoners apparently experienced pain equally when shocked.

This study exemplifies a research area known as Experimental Psychopathology, a study process on clinical populations in order to underlie a particular disorder under controlled conditions; such as a laboratory, using state-of-the-art science techniques from other areas of psychology such as social psychology, cognitive psychology, and behavioural neuroscience. This kind of research helps in identifying the mechanisms contributing to behavioral disorders.

It also allows researchers to test hypotheses derived from existing theories of psychopathology and, sometimes, to directly pit competing theories against each other. In this manner, clinical observation informs science, and science helps inform clinical understanding and the hopeful treatment of behavioural disorders.