The Role of Psychoticism in Aggressive-Theme Text Evaluation

A study of aggressive-theme text evaluation in people with different levels of psychoticism was performed. Based on their scores on H. Eysenck psychoticism scales, the respondents were classified into low-psychoticism (low levels of asocial tendencies) and high-psychoticism (high levels of asocial tendencies) groups. The respondents evaluated texts that described violence scenes using emotive and activational content scaling method. Differences between the two respondent groups were found on scales measuring fear and disgust, with respondents in the high-psychoticism group giving lower scores. Additional analyses indicated that inter-group differences in fear and disgust could not be explained by other personality traits (such as dispositional anxiety and neuroticism). The results are interpreted as evidence of lower empathy capabilities in peopler with high levels of psychoticism.