Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much: Psychopathic Traits, Externalizing Dimensions, and Interpersonal Proximity

Psychopathy involves disruptions in affiliation and threat sensitivity, but these are hard to disentangle behaviorally. This preregistered study (independent sample Ns = 175 and 173) used clinical-forensic and transdiagnostic measures relevant to psychopathy and an adapted interpersonal distance task. Participants indicated preferred proximity to different targets ranging in affiliation and threat after describing each target in their own words. As expected, participants preferred closer proximity to affiliative targets (e.g., a friend) versus threatening ones (e.g., a thief). However, psychopathic traits did not predict interpersonal proximity preferences. Notably, psychopathic traits (Factor 2; antagonism) were linked to response inconsistency, suggesting task disengagement. Exploratory findings showed that participants high in antagonism used more negative language to describe strangers, suggesting hostile attribution bias; however, this was unrelated to task behavior. Overall, the task did not reveal clear socioemotional differences linked to psychopathy. More engaging, ecologically valid methods are needed to better assess affiliation and threat processing in psychopathy.