Error Processing in Psychopathy: An Analysis of Event Related Brain Potentials and Post-Error Task Behavior

Performance monitoring and error processing are crucial for learning from mistakes, adjusting responses, and adapting to the environment. Individuals with psychopathy present with failures in performance monitoring, particularly a failure to learn from experience, and error processing deficits have been reported in this population. Error processing literature has investigated its underlying mechanisms via two prongs, namely behavioral measures and electroencephalography (EEG) indicators. Behaviorally, error processing literature has focused on post-error slowing (PES) and post-error accuracy (PEA). Meanwhile, EEG research has identified two components of error-related brain potentials (ERPs) in error processing: error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe). This study investigated error processing in psychopathy, via a letter-shock task and assessing for both behavioral (i.e., PES and PEA) and psychophysiological (i.e., ERN and Pe) measures. While we predicted error processing deficits associated with impulsive-antisocial traits, instead we found error processing improvements associated with interpersonal-affective traits, with higher PEA and enhanced ERN amplitudes. Overall, our findings add to the literature on successful psychopathy, a controversial yet commonly-cited concept, defined as the display of core psychopathic traits while still able to achieve and maintain success.