Psychopathy and Fear Enjoyment: The Role of Invincibility and Boredom Proneness

Previous studies have reported positive associations between psychopathic traits and fear enjoyment. The current studies were conducted to examine potential mediators in this relationship. Because enjoyment of fear may be contingent on feeling that one is not actually in danger, Study 1 investigated whether a sense of invincibility would mediate the relationship between psychopathy and fear enjoyment. Undergraduate students and MTurk participants ( N = 825) viewed exciting and fear-inducing video clips and self-reported their positive and negative reactions. As expected, psychopathy was related to both aspects of fear enjoyment (lessened negative response and heightened positive response). However, invincibility was only a significant mediator with respect to the former. Thus, in Study 2, we examined boredom proneness as a second potential mediator ( N = 425). As in Study 1, invincibility was a significant mediator in the relationship between psychopathic traits and lessened negative responses and in the relationship between psychopathic traits and positive responses. Boredom proneness was not a significant mediator. Results suggest that invincibility does help explain why psychopathic traits are related to fear enjoyment, but boredom proneness does not.