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Two major etiological theories on psychopathy propose different mechanisms as to how emotional facial expressions are processed by individuals with elevated psychopathic traits. The Response Modulation Hypothesis (RMH) proposes that psychopathic individuals show emotional deficits as a consequence of attentional deployment, suggesting that emotional deficits are situation-specific. The Integrated Emotions System theory (IES) suggests that psychopathic individuals have a fundamental amygdala dysfunction which precludes adequate responsiveness to the distress of others.

Participants performed a visual search task in which they had to find a male target face among two female distractor faces. Top-down attentional set was manipulated by having participants either respond to the face's orientation, or its emotional expression.

When emotion was task-relevant, the low-scoring …