Your response to PAIN could reveal whether you are a psychopath, scientists say

Whether you easily shake off bruises or find that a stubbed toe will knock you out for a week, each of us has our own unique response to pain.

But scientists now say that being able to grin and bear it could be a worrying sign of a dark personality.

According to scientists from Radboud University, people who can tolerate more pain are more likely to be psychopaths.

The study found that people with elevated levels of psychopathy are not only more resistant to pain, but also less able to learn from painful experiences.

Researchers believe this may be a major part of why people with these traits fail to learn from negative consequences.

In studies of the public, people with psychopathic traits failed to change their behavior even when confronted with painful electric shocks.

This insensitivity to punishment could combine with an excessive drive for reward, making psychopaths particularly impulsive and persistent.

Lead author Dr Dimana Atanassova says: ‘What we know from research is that people with psychopathic traits consistently fail to change their behavior even after being punished, suggesting they have difficulty learning from negative consequences of their actions.’

Psychopathy is one of the so-called “Dark Triad” personality traits characterized by pathological lying, manipulative behavior, lack of guilt, and tendencies toward poor behavioral control.

Not everyone with these traits is considered a psychopath and many members of the general public may have some degree of psychopathic tendencies.

Psychologists have long observed that people with these traits often do not learn from punishment or the negative consequences of their actions.

However, researchers have been unable to explain the specific mechanism behind this deficiency.

In this paper, the researchers propose that psychopaths’ inability to learn from painful outcomes could be due to an insensitivity to physical pain.

To test this theory, 106 members of the public completed questionnaires designed to detect levels of psychopathic tendencies such as lack of empathy or impulsivity.

After taking the test, each participant received a series of small electric shocks via electrodes on their arms.

Researchers recorded the point at which pain first became noticeable and the maximum level the participant was willing to tolerate.

And as the scientists predicted, the participants who scored highest on psychopathic tendencies were able to tolerate more pain than the average person.

In some cases, some participants were even able to reach the maximum electrode setting of 9.99 milliamps before reaching their pain tolerance.

Although it is not entirely clear why a psychopathic personality is linked to pain insensitivity, the researchers did find a clear link between these traits and learning behavior.

Doctor Atanassova said PsyPost: ‘The exploitative, antisocial behavior of people with strong psychopathic traits has often been viewed through the prism of callousness or lack of remorse – in a sense of simply not caring about the consequences.

‘But the findings of this study suggest that the problem may be partly explained by a deficit in the way they learn about consequences.’

In a second test, participants were given a computer game in which they had to choose between two different colored cards.

Every time they chose a card, there was a chance of a reward or negative consequence.

For the first set of 160 selections this was either a monetary reward of €0.10 (8p) or a financial penalty of losing €0.10 (8p).

However, in the second set of choices, participants were given a small reward of their choice or an electric shock.

Since the participants had no way of knowing how the odds changed, this was not intended to see how well they were performing.

Instead, the researchers were interested in seeing how the participants changed their behavior after receiving a negative result.

For example, if a participant were rewarded by selecting the green card three times in a row and then received a shock a fourth time, would he continue to choose the green card?

Using a computational model called the hierarchical Gaussian filter, the researchers looked at how participants updated their beliefs during the test.

What they found was that people with psychopathic traits were more uncertain in their initial beliefs, but soon established a pattern that they were reluctant to deviate from.

Instead of learning from a painful experience, as most people do, people high in psychopathic traits showed a tendency called “belief resetting.”

This means that they would quickly dismiss the painful outcome and return to their original beliefs even if they were proven not to work.

Interestingly, this pattern only emerged in the set of choices where pain was given as a result of incorrect choices.

The researchers say this could point to pain insensitivity as the root cause of the psychopathic inability to learn from experience.

Dr. Atanassova says this could also help explain why psychopaths continue their antisocial behavior even when it causes them problems.

“One of the hallmarks of psychopathy is aggressive, exploitative behavior with little regard for the well-being of others,” explains Dr. Atanassova.

‘They persist in a certain course of action even when they experience painful consequences due to a combination of insensitivity to pain and a disturbance in an underlying cognitive learning mechanism.

“Given the tendency of people with psychopathic traits to engage in violence and aggression, it is essential to understand why they fail to learn from negative consequences and how they process pain.”