Introduction:

Psychopathy is a complex personality disorder characterised by callousness, manipulative behaviours, and a lack of empathy. The ability to recognise and interpret facial emotion is a vital component of empathy as it helps us infer emotional states and understand others’ intentions. Research investigating the effects of psychopathy on emotion processing is not consistent: whereas some studies indicate deficits in emotion recognition in people with high levels of psychopathy, others report that psychopathy does not affect emotion recognition. A meta-analysis was thus conducted to reconcile these contradictory findings and determine whether facial emotion recognition is impaired in adults with high levels of psychopathic traits.

Material and methods:

Following the PRISMA guidelines systematic database searches identified 4584 potentially relevant papers, of which thirteen studies met the stringent inclusion criteria (n = 835 participants).

Results:

The results of the random-effects meta-analysis indicated that facial emotion recognition was significantly poorer in adults with high levels of psychopathic traits compared to adults with lower levels of psychopathy.

Conclusions:

High levels of psychopathy are associated with deficits in recognising facial emotion, likely contributing to the interpersonal disturbances exhibited by psychopaths, and potentially compromising the ability to act in accordance with societal norms.