The Affect Misattribution Procedure as implicit measures of diminished distress and fear

Objective: The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is thought to be an implicit measure of affective processing. Participants view a negatively- or positively-valenced image then an ambiguous image. Despite requests to avoid being influenced by the primes, participants typically give the ambiguous images evaluative ratings which correspond with prime valence. Thus, misattributing the affect in response to the prime, to the ambiguous stimuli. As affective deficits, such as a lack of empathy and low fear, are thought to underpin psychopathy, the AMP might be an implicit measure to index affective deficits. Methods: Two AMPs were created: distress (distressing and neutral primes) and threat (threatening and neutral primes). Each participant completed one AMP and the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM). An online community sample (N = 637, 58.4% women and 41.0% men, age = 29.95 (12.74), 71.4% white) was recruited. Results: Both tasks yielded a strong AMP effect, where the ambiguous stimuli were rated significantly more threatening/distressing following the affective prime than the neutral prime. As expected, TriPM Boldness was associated with lower threat AMP scores. Against prediction, TriPM Meanness was not associated with distress AMP scores. However, the AMP data were bimodally distributed which suggests two distinct groups of responders: one group experiencing an effect of the prime, and another experiencing no effect. Conclusions: The AMPs appeared to index the boldness-threat axis but not the meanness-distress axis. In our opinion the nature of the bimodal distribution is important in any interpretation of the findings and requires further exploration.