Intact Prioritization of Fearful Faces During Continuous Flash Suppression in Psychopathy

Affective state recognition and in particular the identification of fear is known to be impaired in psychopathy. It is unclear, however, whether this reflects a deficit in basic perception (`fear blindness') or a deficit in later cognitive processing. To test for a perceptual deficit, 63 male incarcerated offenders, assessed with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), detected fearful, neutral, and happy facial expressions rendered invisible through continuous flash suppression (CFS). Fearful faces were detected faster than neutral and happy faces. There was no reduction of the fear advantage in the 20 offenders diagnosed with psychopathy according to the PCL-R, and there was no correlation between the fear advantage and PCL-R scores. Deficits in the processing of fearful facial expressions in psychopathy may thus not reflect fear blindness, but impairments at later postperceptual processing stages.