Psychopathy and Aggression: The Moderating Role of Dispositional Contempt

Objective: Although the relationship between psychopathic traits and reactive and proactive aggression is well established, relatively less is known about the role of emotions in this relationship. Traditionally, literature has focused on how the absence of emotions could explain the link between psychopathy and aggression, paying less attention to emotions that are present in psychopathy. The main aim of the present study was to examine the moderating role of dispositional contempt—an understudied but important emotional trait—in the relationship between psychopathic traits and both reactive and proactive aggression. Method: Self-reported psychopathic traits, reactive and proactive aggression, and dispositional contempt were measured among 521 participants recruited from the Dutch general population (M = 35.27, SD = 16.00, 18–87 years old). Correlation and linear regression analyses were used to examine the interaction effect between psychopathic traits and contempt in predicting reactive and proactive aggression scores. Results: Psychopathic traits and dispositional contempt had moderate-to-strong correlations with both reactive and proactive aggression, with relatively stronger effect sizes for proactive aggression. Further, our findings showed that contempt significantly strengthened the relationship between psychopathic traits and proactive aggression, whereas contempt did not significantly moderate the association between psychopathic traits and reactive aggression. Conclusions: These findings expand the growing literature on the role that emotional experience, especially contempt, can play in the link between psychopathic traits and aggression. In particular, future research should pay more attention to the role that other-directed, low-arousal, negative emotions play in psychopathy and its deleterious consequences.