The psychopath’s dilemma: The effects of psychopathic personality traits in one-shot games

If psychopathy is the absence of the cooperative dispositions present in normally-developing individuals, then individuals with higher levels of psychopathic personality traits should exhibit lower levels of cooperation in experimental games. The present study investigated whether Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) scores were negatively correlated with cooperation in one-shot prisoner’s dilemmas and bargaining games. The results show that specific PPI subscales (especially Machiavellian Egocentricity) were negatively associated with cooperation, and have diverse effects on bargaining. These results suggest that neither cooperation nor psychopathy are ‘monomorphic’, and that future research should identify how different aspects of psychopathic personality influence distinct types of social interaction.