Schedule of Events | Symposia

Distinct and Shared Neural Mechanisms Underlying Dark Triad Traits During Facial Emotion Identification

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Roshni Lulla¹ (lulla@usc.edu), Jonas T Kaplan¹; ¹Brain & Creativity Institute, University of Southern California

The Dark Triad is a complex of personality traits that includes Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. These traits are associated with affective dysfunctions, including impaired empathic processing, inappropriate emotional responses, and inaccurate identification of emotional stimuli. Though it is expected that these behaviors are accompanied by functional differences across the brain, few have explored neural correlates of the Dark Triad. In investigating the traits separately, there is evidence for different neural systems at work within each trait despite all three associating with impairments in emotion identification, particularly across facial emotions. Here we analyze neuroimaging data from 52 participants while they viewed emotional faces. In separate blocks, participants were asked to either name the emotion or identify the intensity of the emotion of each face. We investigate differences associated with the Dark Triad composite score as well as with each trait individually. Activity during the naming condition contrasted with the intensity condition showed correlations with the composite score as well as with psychopathy and narcissism scores, but not Machiavellianism. Activity was positively correlated with the composite score and narcissism scores in the left supplementary motor area, and only with narcissism in a region of the left inferior frontal gyrus. Activity was negatively correlated with narcissism scores in the left precuneus and with psychopathy in the left insula. These findings illustrate similarities and differences in emotion identification amongst the traits, suggesting a compensatory response in integrative and motor processing regions as well as decreased activity in regions related to affective processes.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions