A recent study published in the journal Psychological Research has shed light on how sexual arousal and psychopathic traits can influence our sense of agency, the feeling of control over our actions and their outcomes. The researchers found that while sexual arousal tends to decrease the sense of agency, individuals with psychopathic traits exhibit a reduced effect of high arousal on their sense of agency.
Psychopathic traits are a set of personality characteristics that include reduced emotional responses, lack of empathy, manipulativeness, deceitfulness, and a tendency toward antisocial behaviors. Individuals with high levels of these traits tend to have a shallow emotional life, showing little remorse or guilt for their actions. On a physiological level, psychopathy is associated with abnormalities in brain areas responsible for emotional regulation and reward processing, such as the amygdala and the ventral striatum.
Psychopathy is significant not only because of its implications for individual behavior but also because it is associated with a disproportionate amount of crime and violence. Understanding how psychopathic traits influence various cognitive and emotional processes can provide insights into the behavior of individuals with these traits and inform strategies for managing their behavior in social and legal contexts.
The researchers conducted their new study to explore how positive emotional states affect the sense of agency in individuals with varying levels of psychopathic traits. The sense of agency is the feeling of being in control of one’s actions and their outcomes. Previous research has shown that negative emotional states can diminish the sense of agency, but less is known about the effects of positive high-arousal states.
“My mother worked at the Ministry of Justice in Germany in the mental health space which inspired me to study psychology and criminology,” said study author Anna Render, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Passau in Germany.
“These days, my husband and best friend both work in forensic clinics with people that have offended but have been deemed not fully liable for their actions due to addictions. I guess I am frequently reminded that evaluations about the sense of agency determine people’s lives in that space and there is little research about the sense of agency in people that show psychopathic traits, a very common personality trait among people that have offended.”
The researchers conducted an experiment with 59 participants aged between 18 and 35, recruited through flyers and social media platforms. The participants were divided into three groups: sexual arousal, calm pleasure, and neutral control. Each group watched a specific film clip designed to induce different levels of arousal and valence. The sexual arousal group watched a sexually explicit scene, the calm pleasure group viewed pleasant, romantic scenes, and the neutral control group observed a pedestrian street scene.
To measure the participants’ physiological responses during the film clips, the researchers recorded pupil dilation, skin conductance, and heart rate. These measures provided objective data on the participants’ arousal levels. Additionally, participants self-reported their feelings of arousal and valence using the affective grid, a tool that captures emotional experiences on two dimensions: valence (positive or negative) and arousal (high or low).
The sense of agency was assessed using the Libet Clock Task, a well-established method for measuring temporal binding. In this task, participants pressed a key and then estimated the timing of their action and its outcome (a tone). Temporal binding refers to the perceived compression of time between the action and its outcome, indicating a stronger sense of agency.
The researchers found that sexual arousal decreased temporal binding, indicating a reduced sense of agency. Participants who watched the sexually explicit film clip perceived a greater separation between their actions and the outcomes, suggesting that high-arousal positive states can diminish the feeling of control over one’s actions.
In contrast, the calm pleasure group did not exhibit significant changes in temporal binding. While the pleasant film clip did increase subjective arousal and valence, it did not affect the participants’ sense of agency in the same way as the sexual arousal clip. This finding suggests that the level of arousal, rather than valence alone, plays a crucial role in influencing the sense of agency.
Interestingly, individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits showed a different pattern. While their physiological responses to arousal were similar to those of other participants, their sense of agency was less affected by the high-arousal state induced by the sexual film clip. This indicates that psychopathic traits may buffer the impact of high arousal on the sense of agency, allowing individuals with these traits to maintain a stronger feeling of control over their actions even in emotionally charged situations.
“People’s personality, especially psychopathic tendencies, seem to play a role in the adjustment to high arousing emotional states,” Render told PsyPost. “Our emotional response influences our sense of agency. On average people tend to show less binding towards actions when sexually aroused, however, people high on psychopathy seem less vulnerable to those effects.”
“I was surprised that the effects, psychopathic traits lessen the effects of sexual arousal on temporal binding, were measurable in a lab context and on such a basic level of implicit processing (subjectively compressing the time interval between key presses and tones). It would not be surprising if differences arose in more relevant contexts, but that these alterations can even be observed with this set up says a lot, I think.”
The researchers also explored the role of physiological arousal and striatal dopamine levels (indicated by eye blink rates) in modulating the sense of agency. They found that greater increases in pupil dilation were generally associated with reduced action binding, except in the sexual arousal group where the effect was not significant. Higher blink rates, which suggest higher dopaminergic activity, were linked to increased action binding, indicating that dopamine might enhance the sense of agency.
The study provides new insights into how sexual arousal and personality traits interact to influence the sense of agency. But as with all research, there are some limitations to consider. The sample size was relatively small, limiting the generalizability of the results. Larger studies, particularly those including more individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits, would help to confirm and expand these findings.
“The sense of agency also is a complex construct and we merely measured one facet of it, temporal binding, thus we cannot generalize the effects at this stage to the entirety of the sense of agency,” Render said. “It would be amazing to find reliable but more wholesome way of measuring the sense of agency and more broadly to connect the cognitive field and the forensic field a bit more.”
The study, “Arousal, interindividual differences and temporal binding a psychophysiological study,” was authored by Anna Render, Hedwig Eisenbarth, Matt Oxner, and Petra Jansen.