| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 犯罪防治研究所 === 99 === Psychopathy is one kind of developmental disorder characterized by affective deficits and a lack of morality. Research has shown that affective deficits were associated with the abnormal areas of the brain. Psychopaths may have deficit in empathy, moral judgment, and sexual behaviors. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the ability of pain empathy and moral judgment among psychopath sex offenders, non-psychopath sex offenders, and non-psychopath offenders.
Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was used to screen participants from Taipei Prison and Chiayi Prison in Taiwan. The experimental group consisted of 10 psychopath sex offenders, 10 Non-psychopath sex offenders and 10 non-psychopath offenders. They were required to participate in the pain empathy and moral judgment tasks.
Results showed that the three group did not have significant differences in discriminating the emotional valences of self-perspective from others-perspective. I also found that they assessed the emotional intensity of the two perspectives similarly. Namely, perspective-taking abilities were possessed by psychopath sex offenders, implying that they were able to recognize others’ negative affective clues. However, I speculated that the lack of empathy of psychopathic sex offenders may be attributed to their inability to produce affective responsiveness. The data of moral judgment showed that there were no differences in the three groups.I suggested that psychopath sex offenders may distinguish right from wrong, yet they did not pay attention to the adverse impacts arising from their behaviors on the victims. Based on the results, implications for policy and future research are proposed.
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