The Effects of Psychopathy and Machiavellianism on Cognitive Dissonance Ashley Anne Murray University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]

The Effects of Psychopathy and Machiavellianism on Cognitive Dissonance Ashley Anne Murray University of Texas at El Paso, Aamurray@Miners.Utep.Edu

University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

2009-01-01 The effects of psychopathy and Machiavellianism on cognitive dissonance Ashley Anne Murray University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]

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This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE EFFECTS OF PSYCHOPATHY AND MACHIAVELLIANISM

ON COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

ASHLEY ANNE MURRAY

Department of Psychology

APPROVED :

______James M. Wood, Ph.D., Chair

______Theodore V. Cooper, Ph.D.

______Matthew H. Scullin, Ph.D.

______Theodore R. Curry, Ph.D.

______Patricia D.Witherspoon, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School

Ashley Anne Murray

2009

Dedications

This thesis is dedicated to my parents for their continued encouragement and support.

THE EFFECTS OF PSYCHOPATHY AND MACHIAVELLIANISM ON

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

ASHLEY ANNE MURRAY, B.A.

THESIS

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

The University of Texas at El Paso

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Psychology

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO

May 2009

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. James Wood for his wisdom, knowledge and patience in guiding me through this process. In addition, special thanks to Dr. Scott Lilienfeld for assisting as an outside

consultant and lending his expertise in psychopathy research to this project.

Abstract

Psychopathic traits include a lack of guilt, a lack of remorse, callousness and antisocial behaviors such as impulsivity and aggression. The current study examined the effects of psychopathic traits as measured by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised: Short Form (PPI-R: SF;

Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005) and the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psychopathy Scales

(LPSP; Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995), and of Machiavellianism (MACH), as measured by the MACH-IV (Christie & Geis, 1970), on cognitive dissonance in a sample of 164 participants. The induced compliance paradigm of cognitive dissonance was implemented by instructing each participant to complete a boring task inspired by the seminal cognitive dissonance experiment by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959). Afterward, feelings of guilt and psychological unease were induced by asking the participant to mislead a second participant

(actually a confederate) by telling him that the task was enjoyable. Participants’ level of guilt over telling the lie was experimentally manipulated. Half of the participants were directly and firmly instructed to tell the lie (low perceived choice, low guilt condition), whereas the other half of the participants were politely requested, but not instructed, to tell the lie (high perceived choice, high guilt condition). As predicted, participants low in psychopathy (as measured by the

PPI-R: SF and LPSP) exhibited the classic cognitive dissonance effect, whereas participants high in psychopathy did not exhibit the effect. Results for MACH were not significant. The implications of these results are important for cognitive dissonance research because they point to a subset of the population (psychopaths) possibly confounding results of past studies on cognitive dissonance. In addition, the results point to definitive cognitive differences between individuals with varying levels of psychopathy.

Table of Contents

Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………...……iii

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………...…………...v

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………...…....vi

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………...vii

List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..ix

List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………………..x

Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1

1.1 Cognitive Dissonance…………………………………………………………………1

1.2 Justification for the Current Study’s Procedural Design……………………………...7

1.3 Cooper’s New Look Theory of Cognitive Dissonance………………………………10

1.4 Psychopathy Effects on Cognitive Dissonance………………………………………12

1.5 Machiavellianism…………………………………………………………………….20

1.6 Machiavellianism and Cognitive Dissonance………………………………………..23

1.7 Hypotheses of the Present Study……………………………………………………..29

Chapter 2: Methods………………………………………………………………………………32

Chapter 3: Results………………………………………………………………………………..41

3.1 Confirmatory Analyses………………………………………………………………44

3.2 Exploratory Analyses.………………………………………………………………..55

Chapter 4: Discussion……………………………………………………………………………76

4.1 Classic Cognitive Dissonance Effect………………………………………………..76

4.2 Psychopathy and Cognitive Dissonance…………………………………………….78

4.3 Machiavellianism and Cognitive Dissonance……………………………………….88

4.4 Psychopathy Incrementally Predicting Abacus Task Enjoyment (Over MACH)…...90 vii

4.5 Additional Exploratory Analyses……………………………………………………91

Limitations and Future Directions……………………………………………………………….94

Conclusions………………………………………………………………………………………99

References………………………………………………………………………………………100

Appendix A……………………………………………………………………………………..107

Appendix B……………………………………………………………………………………..110

Appendix C……………………………………………………………………………………..114

Appendix D……………………………………………………………………………………..116

Appendix E……………………………………………………………………………………..121

Appendix F……………………………………………………………………………………...123

Appendix G……………………………………………………………………………………..129

Appendix H……………………………………………………………………………………..133

Curriculum Vita………………………………………………………………………………...134

viii

List of Tables

Table 1: Descriptive Information for the Psychopathy and Machiavellianism Predictors and Dependent Variable...... ……………………………………..………….43

Table 2: Multiple Regression Results. Criterion is Self-Reported Enjoyment of the Abacus Tasks. Predictors are the PPI-R: SF, LPSP, and MACH-IV Total Scores and Subscales. Each Row Represents Results From One Multiple Regression……………………..…...50

Table 3: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Psychopathy (PPI-R:SF) Incrementally Predicting Abacus Task Enjoyment Above Level of Machiavellianism…54

Table 4: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Psychopathy (LPSP) Incrementally Predicting Abacus Task Enjoyment Above Level of Machiavellianism…………..…….55

Table 5: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Machiavellianism Incrementally Predicting Abacus Enjoyment Over Level of Psychopathy (PPI-R: SF).……………….56

Table 6: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Machiavellianism Incrementally Predicting Abacus Enjoyment Over Level of Psychopathy (LPSP)………………….….57

Table 7: Correlations Between the Total Scores of the Psychopathy and Machiavellianism Measures…………………………………………………………………………………62

Table 8: Correlations Between the PPI-R: SF, LPSP, MACH-IV, Their Factors and Subscales..65

Table 9: Multiple Regression Results. Criterion is Self-Reported Guilt After Misleading the Confederate. Predictors are the PPI-R: SF, LPSP, and MACH-IV Total Scores and Subscales. Each Row Represents Results From One Multiple Regression……………...69

Table 10: Factor Solutions Between PPI-R: SF, LPSP, and MACH-IV Total Score……………70

Table 11: Factor Loadings of Total Item Factor Analysis……………………………………….72

Table 12: Factor Loadings of the Psychopathy and MACH Measures Subscales……………….75

Table 13: Interactions of Psychopathy Subscales and Factor Scales with Choice Condition by the Two Factor (Cognitive or Behavioral) Psychopathy Solution Demonstrated by Past Research (Self-Reported Enjoyment as Criterion)………………………………………86

List of Figures

Figure 1: Main Effect for Mean Task Enjoyment Across Choice Conditions…………………...45

Figure 2: Relationship of PPI-R: SF Total Scores to Reported Level of Task Enjoyment – Low Choice to Lie Condition Only……………………………………………………………47

Figure 3: Relationship of PPI-R: SF Total Scores to Reported Level of Task Enjoyment – High Choice to Lie Condition Only……………………………………………………………47

Figure 4: Relationship of LPSP Total Scores to Reported Level of Task Enjoyment – Low Choice to Lie Condition Only……………………………………………………………49

Figure 5: Relationship of LPSP Total Scores to Reported Level of Task Enjoyment – High Choice to Lie Condition Only……………………………………………………………49

Figure 6: Relationship of MACH-IV Total Scores to Reported Level of Task Enjoyment – Low Choice to Lie Condition Only……………………………………………………………52

Figure 7: Relationship of MACH-IV Total Scores to Reported Level of Task Enjoyment – High Choice to Lie Condition Only……………………………………………………………52

Chapter 1: Introduction

Psychopathy is a personality construct that has demonstrated negative consequences for society. For example, individuals with psychopathy are overrepresented in prison populations and commit more violent crimes (Hare, 1996). Though psychopathy is represented in approximately one to five percent of the population, it is represented in 15-25% of prison populations (Hare, 1996). To date, there is no identifiable treatment for psychopathy and no definitive understanding of the causes or etiology of this construct. Therefore it is important to identify the specific pervasive and maladaptive cognitive aspects of psychopathy in order to better treat and assess this personality construct. One of the first steps in this process is to identify how individuals with psychopathy differ cognitively and emotionally from people who lack these traits. The current study intends to identify a significant difference between individuals with higher and lower levels of psychopathy in regard to how they experience cognitive dissonance, and more specifically guilt.

1.1 Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a well researched psychological phenomenon that is defined as the tendency to change a previously held belief or moral to justify a behavior the person is asked to perform (Festinger, 1957). The key feature of cognitive dissonance that seems to cause individuals to change their cognitions following a dissonant action or thought is a feeling of unease (tension) that immediately follows the performance of the behavior. Therefore, it is theorized that people alter their beliefs in order to reduce the unpleasant feelings that arise due to the inconsistency among their cognitions and actions (Aronson, 1968; Festinger, 1957; Harmon-

Jones & Mills, 1999). Cognitive dissonance involves complex cognitive restructuring, and for this reason, the attitude change that results is often pervasive (Smith & Mackie, 2000). This

1 phenomenon has been consistently demonstrated in research and is considered a universal pattern of behavior across individuals.

The theory of cognitive dissonance was originally proposed by Leon Festinger in 1957.

He found that when people have little or no external justification for performing a behavior that goes against their personally held beliefs, they will often change their preexisting beliefs to match the action. For example, in a landmark study of cognitive dissonance, Festinger and

Carlsmith (1959) asked participants to perform a boring task (turning pegs on a board) and then asked them to tell the next participant (a confederate) that the task would be enjoyable for either a $1 or $20 compensation. The authors found that participants who were paid the smaller amount

($1), and thus had very little external justification for lying to the confederate, later reported to the experimenter that they enjoyed the hour-long peg turning task much more that the participants who were paid $20. Festinger and Carlsmith surmised that the results of this study demonstrated that the participants who were paid $20 to mislead a confederate had a high enough external justification for lying, and did not experience sufficient psychological tension over the discrepancy between their cognitions and behaviors to warrant an attitude shift.

However, participants who were only paid $1 to mislead the confederate experienced higher levels of psychological unease over the lie because of the insignificant amount of external justification, and thus had to rely on attitude shift to ameliorate their negative feelings.

Cognitive dissonance research defines people’s actions and beliefs as either consonant or dissonant with one another. Consonant cognitions are thoughts that are in accordance with a person’s other thoughts or behaviors (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). For example, if a person felt concern about the environment and decided to volunteer every Saturday to pick up litter on the highway, he would have consonant cognitions and behaviors (they match). On the other

2 hand, if two cognitions are not relevant to one another or a thought does not match one’s behavior, they are said to be dissonant, and create inner turmoil within the person, which then motivates the individual to reduce the dissonance. An example of this would be if a person was raised to believe that stealing was wrong, and then stole petty merchandise. Once this dissonant action is performed, the individual must then find a way to reduce the internal unease that the behavior created.

According to Smith and Mackie (2000), in order for cognitive dissonance to arise and create an attitude shift, four conditions must be met. First the individual must perceive his or her behavior to be inconsistent with what he or she would normally be inclined to do. Next the person must take responsibility for freely engaging in the behavior. In order for this condition to be met, the amount of external justification must be reduced or eliminated (i.e. no reward or punishment for completing the task). Third, negative physiological arousal needs to take place for the individual to want to change the way they feel. Finally, the individual must attribute the negative arousal to the action that he or she has just committed (Smith & Mackie, 2000).

People reduce dissonance in many ways (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). Examples of how people reduce dissonance include a) attempts to remove the dissonant cognition (i.e. a smoker would try to stop thinking about the negative aspects of smoking on health), b) reduce the importance of the dissonant cognition (i.e. a smoker placing higher importance on being more likely to die in a car accident than by smoking), c) increasing the importance of consonant cognitions over dissonant ones (i.e. smoking is enjoyable and makes me feel relaxed which is important to me) (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). As one can see, all of these methods of reducing dissonance involve focusing one’s thoughts and emotions away from the dissonant cognition (i.e. smoking is bad for me).

Cognitive Dissonance, Psychological Tension, and Physiological Arousal

Conceptually, Festinger (1957) theorized that cognitive dissonance contains “drive-like” properties that manifest as psychological tension and unease, and that the psychological unease can also manifest as physical tensions. Once a person experiences the psychological and physical unease, then often an attitude shift occurs that alleviates the tensions. An example that lends support for this theory that physiological arousal precedes cognitive dissonance came from a study conducted by Zanna and Cooper (1974). The researchers wanted to identify the physical arousal properties associated with cognitive dissonance. Zanna and Cooper gave participants a placebo pill and told 1/3 of them that the pill made people feel tense, 1/3 that the pill caused relaxation, and the final 1/3 that the pill had no effect. Next the authors instructed participants

(under the guise of a different experiment) to write a counterattitudinal essay advocating a campus ban of inflammatory speakers under high or low perceived choice. Participants in the low perceived choice condition were directly instructed to write the counterattitudinal essay whereas people in the high perceived choice group were politely asked to write the essay, giving them the choice to perform the dissonant action, which is a key factor in eliciting the tension associated with cognitive dissonance. The dependent measure of this study was the amount of attitude shift participants reported experiencing on a post experimental questionnaire.

Participants were given a questionnaire before the study began that assessed their preference for adopting a campus ban on inflammatory speakers, and only participants who opposed the ban were included in the study. The questionnaire asked participants to identify on a 31 point Likert scale how much they were in favor of a campus ban on inflammatory speakers. After the essay writing manipulation portion of the experiment (where participants under high and low perceived choice wrote a pro-ban essay), their opinion of the campus ban was again assessed with the same

31 point Likert scale. In addition, the effectiveness of the choice manipulation was assessed on the post experimental questionnaire with the question, “How free did you feel to decline to participate in this Ivy League Administrators research project”.

In the study by Zanna and Cooper (1974), an attitude shift (between the pre and post experimental questionnaires) toward favoring the speaker ban was the expected results for the control and relaxation inducing pill groups. The authors anticipated this attitude shift due to the previous research of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959). They hypothesized that if participants had no external justification for feeling negatively about writing a pro-ban essay when they previously had spoken against the ban, then they must change their cognitions, as previously suggested by Festinger (1957) in his cognitive dissonance theory. In accordance with Zanna and

Cooper’s hypotheses, results indicated that the individuals who were in the tension-inducing pill group reported significantly lower attitude shift because they were able to attribute their tenseness and negative feelings about performing the dissonant actions to the pill rather than to their internal turmoil. On the other hand, participants in the relaxation pill group evidenced the opposite reaction; these individuals experienced more attitude shift after writing the counterattitudinal essay due to their inability to attribute their tense feelings to an external source

(the pill). In other words, the people in the relaxation pill group were unable to locate an external source that explained their feelings of unease, and thus had to rely on attitude shift to ameliorate the tension they felt over the discrepancy between their beliefs and actions.

Zanna and Cooper (1974) also found that choice had an impact on attitude shift such that participants in the high perceived choice group evidenced more attitude shift than participants in the low perceived choice group. This finding further demonstrates the need for external justification to avoid attitude shift; participants who were given the choice to write the

5 counterattitudinal essay experienced more tension than the participants who were directly told to write the essay because of the perceived free will they exercised in writing the statements that went against their beliefs. Thus it appears that attitude shift is most likely to occur when individuals feel they freely chose to engage in the behavior and did not have any form of external justification for performing the dissonant action.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Induced Compliance Paradigm

Within the dissonance literature, several paradigms have been used to elicit attitude shift in participants (Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). Of these paradigms, the most common is the induced compliance paradigm (ICP), which is used in the current study. The induced compliance paradigm typically requires participants to perform an undesirable task which arouses dissonance once performed. The key to this paradigm is to induce the participant to engage in an activity that, due to personal predispositions, he or she would not ordinarily engage in. In addition, there must be low or nonexistent external justification to carry out the negative behavior. The absence of external justification is important because otherwise, if external rewards or punishments for the activity are present, the participant will use them to rationalize their actions and dissonance will not be aroused. In the ICP, attitude shift is expected to occur when the participant is induced to perform a counterattitudinal behavior in the absence of external justification.

Counterattitudinal behaviors are any that involve doing or saying something that one does not agree with, or would not normally advocate. Examples used in cognitive dissonance studies include writing counterattitudinal essays that have may have negative consequences for other people (Elkin & Leippe, 1986; Steele & Liu, 1983) or lying to someone about a task being enjoyable when it was not (Cooper & Worchel, 1970; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). Within the

ICP, participants are provoked by a researcher to perform the counterattitudinal behavior through

6 the manipulation of the participant’s amount of choice or reward. For example, the peg turning cognitive dissonance study previously mentioned (conducted by Festinger and Carlsmith in

1959) was the first study to use the ICP, and reward manipulation (through the use of $1 or $20 to mislead the confederate) was used to induce cognitive dissonance effects. These researchers found that if a person publically behaves in a manner that misrepresents his personal beliefs, he will experience cognitive dissonance, and that the magnitude of the dissonance will increase when there are fewer reasons for complying (such as less reward or more perceived free choice).

A famous study by Linder, Cooper, and Jones (1967) demonstrated that choice manipulation within the ICP can induce cognitive dissonance and thus attitude shift.

Linder and colleagues asked participants to write an essay (using either high or low perceived choice manipulation) supporting the ban of Communist speakers at their institution, knowing that the majority of students did not support this ban. Participants were screened to make sure that they did not agree with the ban and then were either directly instructed to write the supportive essay (the Low perceived choice group) or asked politely to write the pro-ban essay (High perceived choice group). Results indicated that participants in the high perceived choice group experienced more attitude shift, after completion of the essay, toward being in favor of a

Communist speaker campus ban than people in the low perceived choice group. Linder and colleagues interpreted these results as evidence that when people perceive that they have free will to engage in a dissonant action, they cognitively justify their actions (via an attitude or belief shift) to reduce the negative feelings the dissonant action produced.

1.2 Justification for the Current Study’s Procedural Design

The procedures outlined for the current study were selected due to the significant attitude shift results that were obtained by using these tasks in two previous experiments. First, Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) implemented the peg board task in their original study on cognitive 7 dissonance. Participants in the study were required to turn the pegs for one hour and then lie to the next participant (a confederate) about the task being enjoyable. The primary difference between the Festinger and Carlsmith study and the current proposal is that the former paid participants either $1 or $20 in order to identify what amount of external justification would lead to more attitude shift. The authors found that the participants in the $20 group had much less attitude shift about the task because they were able to use the external justification of lying for

$20, whereas participants in the $1 group evidenced significantly more attitude shift, due to the lack of any external justification for lying. The authors surmised that $1 was not enough money to justify lying for participants, so they instead had to change their own cognitions to make sense of their actions (lying to a stranger), thus they convinced themselves that the abacus task wan not boring.

A second important study used a boring task while asking participants to lie to a confederate. Cooper and Worchel (1970) replicated the Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study, but rather than using money as the external justification for lying, they used small amounts of experimental credit (1 extra credit vs. .5 extra credit) to induce attitude shift. However, regardless of the amount of extra credit the authors offered, 98% of participants agreed to the deception task, which indicates that the script the experimenters used was effective in inducing participants’ compliance to lie. The current experiment is using the Experimenter and

Confederate Scripts from the study by Cooper and Worchel, with only a few minor modifications to the original scripts. For example, the Cooper and Worchel study only manipulated a High perceived choice group, so their script was altered slightly in the present study so that it could also be used for the Low perceived choice group.

Justification for using the high perceived choice condition to elicit attitude shift comes from an experiment conducted by Zanna, Goethals, & Cooper (1975). Their study implemented the peg board task and asked participants to lie to a confederate that the task was enjoyable (they only used the high perceived choice condition to elicit guilt). The study had participants do the peg turning task for 20 minutes (as opposed to the Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study which required participants to do the task for one hour). Through asking participants to voluntarily deceive the next participant, the authors found that all participants (n=76) agreed to tell the next participant (really a confederate) that the peg turning task was enjoyable. They obtained this

100% compliance rate simply by asking the participant to tell the next person (a confederate) that the peg turning task was enjoyable. The study by Zanna and colleagues also provides support that conducting the peg turning task for only 20 minutes still induces sufficient boredom in participants. In addition, the study found a significant attitude shift toward reporting enjoying a dull task when voluntarily lying to a confederate (F = 8.48, p< .001) as compared to a control group who did not have to lie.

Finally, a study by Elkin and Leippe (1986) used both high and low perceived choice groups to examine different rates of attitude shift toward a previously counterattitudinal belief

(supporting the implementation of a student parking fee). In the high perceived choice group, participants were given the option to write a counterattitudinal essay (supporting the parking fee), while in the low perceived choice group participants were told directly to write the counterattitudinal essay. Participant’s feeling of guilt was manipulated by telling them that the counterattitudinal essay they wrote would be used by a panel and may possibly persuade them to implement the parking fee on the campus. Results indicated that all subjects participated in writing the counterattitudinal essay (100% compliance rates), regardless of what group they were

9 in, and subjects in the high perceived choice group evidenced more attitude shift towards paying for parking than participants in the low perceived choice group. The authors concluded that this attitude shift occurred due to the participants’ lack of external justification for writing the counterattitudinal essay (they agreed voluntarily to write it), which in turn caused feelings of guilt for voluntarily lying to the confederate. These results indicate that people are apt to perform counterattitudinal behaviors even when given a high perceived choice not to. Due to the study’s significant attitude shift (cognitive dissonance) results in the High perceived choice group, as opposed to the Low perceived choice group who did not get strong attitude shift results, the current study will compare high and low perceived choice groups to attain the different levels of cognitive dissonance.

Upon discovering the links between free choice and reward leading to attitude shift when a dissonant act is completed, cognitive dissonance researchers attempted to identify specific components of decision making that would further explain the effects of cognitive dissonance.

The key features that have been postulated to explain how and why cognitive dissonance creates attitude shift include experiencing feelings of personal guilt (Cooper & Fazio, 1984), public commitment (Aronson, 1968) and perceived free choice to commit the behavior (Brehm &

Cohen, 1962). Researchers have come up with competing theories to explain the resulting cognitive shift that accompanies dissonance, and one of the most prominent theories is the New

Look theory.

1.3 Cooper’s New Look Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

The New Look theory posits that the effects of dissonance are a result of feeling personally responsible for instigating future negative consequences for oneself, or more often for others (Cooper & Fazio, 1984). Cooper and Fazio suggested in this theory that aversive

10 consequences are necessary for the arousal of dissonance. The authors defined aversive events as those that block one’s self interest, or events that the individual would rather avoid due to their undesirable nature. The New Look theory posits that the degree of dissonance aroused in an individual is dependent on the amount of desire a person has to avoid the negative consequences;

Cooper and Fazio term this phenomenon dissonance motivation. The New Look theory identifies the consequence of an action as the cause of the subsequent attitude shift. The consequence must be salient, and must cause the individual enough distress to warrant attitude shift.

Support for this theory came from a study conducted by Goethals and Cooper (1972).

These researchers induced participants (known to be in favor of drinking alcohol) to deliver an anti-drinking speech to a panel of people. Half of the subjects were informed that their speech convinced the panel that allowing drinking on campus was a bad idea, while the other half of participants were told that the speech they made had no effect on the listeners. Results indicated that only the participants who were led to believe that their speech had a negative effect on the panel (their speech convinced the panel that drinking was bad) experienced attitude shift toward being in favor of a drinking ban on campus. The participants who were told that they did not convince the panel did not experience attitude shift toward being against drinking on campus.

The authors concluded that unless the participant feels that he negatively impacted another person, then he will not experience enough guilt and dissonance to warrant an attitude shift.

Cooper and Worchel (1970) further demonstrated evidence for the New Look theory in their experiment which replicated the Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) peg turning task. However, in their study, participants were asked to deceive a confederate (only a high perceived choice group) for a small amount of experimental credit (1 credit or .5 credits). Results indicated that participants who felt they had the free will to deceive another person, and did so, experienced

11 such a negative consequence that in order to alleviate feelings of internal unease, they changed their own attitude and reported enjoying the peg turning task more than a control group who did not have to lie to another person (who experienced no aversive consequence to their behavior).

Therefore Cooper, in his New Look theory, postulated that most people experience cognitive dissonance following an aversive act that impacts another person or the self negatively, especially when the negative act violates normative social standards (Cooper, 1999).

The aforementioned aspects of Cooper’s New Look theory are crucial to the current study because we hypothesized that the average person will experience cognitive dissonance, and thus attitude change after committing an aversive act (lying to a confederate) which they felt they freely chose to do. The current experiment intended to explore Cooper’s New Look theory to not only validate it in a normal population, but also to test its effectiveness in a subpopulation that experiences lower levels of guilt and remorse. The current experiment intended to explore

Cooper’s New Look theory to not only validate it in a normal population, but also to test its effectiveness in a subpopulation that experiences lower levels of guilt and remorse. If the theory is correct that cognitive dissonance effects are due to feelings of tension or unease over having caused negative consequences to another individual, then it is the hypothesis of the current researchers that individuals who felt less guilt over breaking social norms would not be as cognitively affected by lying to another person. Therefore the person with less ability to experience guilt would not experience psychological distress from lying, and ultimately therefore not have an attitude shift.

1.4 Psychopathy Effects on Cognitive Dissonance

The New Look theory proposes that an important cause of cognitive dissonance is often the feeling of remorse that an individual experiences after performing a counterattitudinal

12 behavior with negative consequences for another person. The questions naturally arise: How would individuals with little or no guilt perform on a cognitive dissonance task that arouses guilt? Would people lacking these cognitive reactions experience cognitive dissonance and attitude shift following a dissonant action? In order to answer these questions, one must first identify a group of people that consistently exhibit a lack of concern for others, such as individuals with psychopathic traits.

Psychopathy is a pervasive heterogeneous personality construct that is particularly salient for the current study due to the callous nature of individuals with these traits. Psychopaths are individuals who exhibit no remorse, are callous, unemotional and lack concern for society’s morays. In addition they are often impulsive, antisocial, manipulative and do not have strong social bonds with others (Hare, 1993; Patrick, 2006). Approximately one percent of the population meets criteria for the diagnosis of psychopathy, though 15-25% of the prison population is diagnosed with psychopathy (Hare, 1996). Within the criminal population, individuals with psychopathy are not only overrepresented, but they also commit more violent crimes (over half in the United States) and recidivate four times more often than prisoners without psychopathy (Hare, 1993). As one can see, these crime statistics make this population a danger to society, and thus it is important to attempt to identify what underlying cognitive and behavioral differences exist in people with psychopathy.

Psychopathy is often discussed in relation to antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) by many scholars (Hare, 1993; Lilienfeld, 1994) because of the high number of correlated traits between the two personality constructs. Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is classified as an Axis II, Cluster B disorder by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV-TR) (American

Psychological Association; APA, 1994). Cluster B disorders are ones in which the individual

13 exhibits unpredictable, impulsive or dramatic behavior. The DSM IV-TR criteria necessary for a diagnosis of ASPD includes impulsive and aggressive behavior, conduct disorder (CD) in childhood, a history of criminal acts, and violent disregard for others (APA, 1994).

Psychopathy is differentiated from ASPD in that psychopathy incorporates the cognitive and internal states of the individual, in addition to his or her external behaviors (Hare, 1999). In fact, the cognitive and interpersonal features of psychopathy are considered to be the most crucial defining aspects of the personality construct (Patrick, 2006). Psychopaths have demonstrated an inability to internalize their culture’s moral or legal standards, and therefore many people with psychopathy do not abide by these rules.

Historically, Phillipe Pinel was the first scientist to document the condition of psychopathy in the early 19 th century (Meloy, 1998). Pinel noted that psychopaths exhibited no remorse or internal restraint. Hervey Cleckley (1941, 1976) furthered research on psychopathy in his book, The Mask of Sanity . Cleckley (1976) proposed that psychopathy is a personality construct which arises in childhood. He also was the first to define several cognitive and affective characteristics of psychopathy, such as superficial charm, emotional shallowness, deceitfulness, egocentricity, irresponsibility, and (most central for the current study) a lack of remorse, shame or guilt. In addition, he found that psychopaths often externalize the blame for their negative actions, are extremely impulsive and do not learn from punishment.

Within psychopathy research there has been some debate as to whether the construct is taxonic or dimensional (Hare, 1991; Marcus & Edens, 2004). For example, the Psychopathy

Checklist Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991), which is one of the prominent ways of assessing psychopathy, assigns individuals with an overall score on a scale from 0 to 40 with a cut off score of 29 generally indicating the threshold for a psychopathy diagnosis (Hare, 1991; Hare &

Neumann, 2006). The use of a cut-off seems to suggest a taxonic perspective. However, use of the scale indicates that the higher the score, the more psychopathic traits an individual expresses, which is also consistent with a dimensional view of psychopathy. Recent studies have used the

PCL-R to examine the dimensional aspects of psychopathy and have consistently come to the conclusion that psychopathy should be viewed as a continuum (Edens, Marcus, Lilienfeld, &

Poythress, 2006; Marcus & Edens, 2004). Aside from looking at psychopathy on a continuum, it is also important to examine the construct from multiple perspectives, such as behaviorally and cognitively.

Two Factor Model of Psychopathy

Today, a Two Factor Model of psychopathy, proposed by Hare (1991), is one of the primary models used to evaluate psychopathy (Hare & Neumann, 2006; Harpur, Hare, &

Hakstian, 1989; Murrie & Cornell, 2002; Rutherford, Cacciola, & Alterman, 1999). The Two

Factor model assesses both behavioral cues and intrinsic or internal personality traits to define psychopathy (Chapman, Gremore, & Farmer, 2003; Hare, 1991; Pethman & Erlandsson, 2002), and is the bases for the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991; Lykken, 1995) which is the principal assessment tool used to identify clinical psychopathy. Within the Two

Factor theory, the first factor describes the internal disposition of the individual, and includes eight items believed to gauge psychopathy from a cognitive angle. These personality traits include superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self worth, lack of empathy or guilt, pathological lying, and cunning manipulativeness (Hare, 1991; Raine, 2002). The second factor outlines the behavioral actions of an individual with psychopathic tendencies, and includes nine items used to assess a psychopathic personality. These traits include early problem behaviors, poor behavioral controls, and impulsivity, (Hare, 1991; Rutherford et al., 1999). Based on the aforementioned

15 cognitive components of psychopathy, the current researchers propose that these individuals will not experience the same degree of psychological unease from lying to a confederate that the non psychopathic individuals involved in the study.

Primary and Secondary Model of Psychopathy

A second differentiation model of psychopathy was proposed by Karpman (1941; 1948).

Karpman, following the work of Cleckley, divided psychopathy into two subcategories: primary and secondary psychopathy. It is important to note that the primary and secondary views of psychopathy mirror the Two Factor Model of psychopathy proposed by Hare (1991). In both instances, the primary factor (Factor 1) encompasses the cognitive, affective traits of psychopathy while the secondary factor (Factor 2) assesses the more antisocial behavior characteristics of psychopathy.

Individuals with primary psychopathy evidence cognitive manifestations of the construct such as low to non-existent trait anxiety, callousness and a lack of guilt or remorse. They tend to be unresponsive to treatment efforts and often have more severe symptoms associated with psychopathy (Karpman, 1941). For example, Karpman (1948) found that primary psychopaths are more apt to carry out their deceptive and manipulative behavior to reach an end goal, displaying a callous lack of emotion or concern for others whereas secondary psychopaths will occasionally act with higher human emotions such as empathy.

Secondary psychopathy is believed to come about through the effects of environmental stressors and life events, such as severe child physical or sexual abuse (Porter, 1996). The manifestation of secondary psychopathy, which has also been called sociopathy (Lykken, 1995), is mostly behavioral in nature, and secondary psychopaths tend to carry out the antisocial and deviant behavior as a reaction to deep emotional conflict or anger, rather than a callous

16 disregard for others (Karpman, 1941). Overall, primary psychopaths seem to have a permanent deficit in functioning, whereas secondary psychopathy encompasses a dysfunction created by aversive environmental factors. However, it is important to note that both primary and secondary psychopaths, to some degree, evidence manipulative and callous behavior, and display a lack of regard for others (Karpman, 1948).

Support for the view that psychopaths lack psychological distress comes in part from a study conducted by Patrick, Bradley and Lang (1993). The researchers attempted to elicit a startle reflex in psychopaths and non-psychopaths (as diagnosed by the PCL-R) by blasting a loud noise while having the participants view either pleasant or unpleasant photographs. Results showed that psychopaths exhibited a much smaller startle response to the noise when viewing the stimuli (both positive and negative pictures) as compared to the non-psychopaths. In addition,

Patrick and colleagues found a negative correlation between the PCL-R Factor One scores (lack of guilt, lack of remorse, etc.) and the level of eye-blink reaction. Eye blink reactions to the startle noise were measured with Beckman miniature Ag-AgCl electrodes positioned at the orbicularis oculi muscle beneath the participant’s left eye. The authors found that non psychopathic individuals’ eyes tend to blink more frequently than in psychopaths when aversive stimuli are presented.

Therefore, these results seem to indicate that individuals with high Factor One traits seem to evidence very little anxiety and less psychological distress towards aversive stimuli. The results of this study show that individuals higher in psychopathic traits experience less of a physiological, and thus perhaps less of a cognitive reaction to aversive stimuli. In addition a study conducted by Ray and Ray (1982) demonstrated that people high in psychopathy do not seem to care as much about what others think of them. The study found a negative correlation

17 between social desirability (as measured by the Marlow-Crowne social desirability scales) and psychopathy (r = -.32, p = .05). This finding also supports the current study’s hypothesis that individuals high on psychopathic traits will be less likely than other individuals to experience psychological unease over lying to a confederate or undergo an attitude shift to diminish this discomfort.

Cognitive dissonance studies have consistently demonstrated that individuals not only shift their attitude following a dissonant act, but also experience physical symptoms of distress as well. For example, a study conducted by Croyle and Cooper (1983) found that people have a heightened skin conductance responses following the “voluntary” commitment of a writing a counterattitudinal essay. Though no direct cognitive dissonance studies manipulating guilt have been replicated using psychopaths, studies that have used aversive stimuli, such as the anticipation of being blasted with a loud noise (80 to 120dB), have indicated that psychopaths

(compared to non-psychopath controls) evidence a hyporesponsive physical reaction (as measured by electrodermal measurements) to the aversive stimuli (Hare, 1978). Hare’s study, along with others like it (see Fowles, 1980; Lykken, 1957), indicate that psychopaths do not seem to experience anxiety at the same level that non-psychopathic individuals do. Therefore, it would follow that through the reduced physiological anxiety response identified in individuals with psychopathy, they will be unable to experience the psychological unease associated with the adverse stimulus (lying to a confederate) and thus not experience an attitude shift.

Past Research on Psychopathy and Cognitive Dissonance

Only one study has attempted to assess the effect of psychopathy on cognitive dissonance. A doctoral dissertation by Weir (2007) examined cognitive dissonance in a sample of 150 males from a drug treatment facility. All participants had been in prison or jail and had a

18 history of criminal activity. Level of psychopathy was assessed using the LPSP. Participants at the start of this study filled out an attitudes measure that assessed their opinions about the judicial system, treatment of criminals and drug abuse. Later in the experiment cognitive dissonance was induced by having participants copy a counterattitudinal statement from a sheet of paper that dealt with being in favor of harsher punishments for criminals and drug offenders

(views that these men would adamantly oppose). After participants copied the counterattitudinal statements they were instructed to tear up what they had written. At the end of the study, Weir again assessed participants’ attitudes regarding the judicial system, treatment of criminals and drug abuse with the same attitudes measure employed at the very beginning of the study. The pre and post-test use of the attitudes measure was to identify if participants’ opinions had shifted toward being in favor of harsher punishments for criminals after writing counterattitudinally in favor of it.

Weir hypothesized that primary psychopaths would experience cognitive dissonance significantly less than individuals with secondary psychopathy or non-psychopathic individuals because of the callous unemotional traits that are principally associated with primary psychopathy. However, results of Weir’s study found no significant difference across the three groups for attitude change following the dissonance inducing task. The analysis did find minor differences between the groups such that primary psychopaths did seem less effected by writing the counterattitudinal essays than the secondary and non-psychopaths, but again the results were not significant. Weir (2007) concluded that individuals with higher levels of primary psychopathy were deficient but not completely incapable of experiencing dissonance following an aversive behavior.

An important confound of Weir’s study was the lack of a control group. All participants wrote the counterattitudinal essay, so there was not a neutral group to compare the participants’ attitude shift following the essay copying to. Due to the lack of a control group it is impossible to know whether the experimental manipulation induced a dissonance effect in any of the groups.

Though his study did assess cognitive dissonance, it is still very different than the current study because Weir was not using guilt as the catalyst for attitude shift.

The current study examines the effect of guilt (or a lack of guilt) on cognitive dissonance while the counterattitudinal essay’s used as the dissonance stimuli in Weir’s study did not cause participants to feel guilt. Weir was not manipulating guilt in participants, but rather their cognitive reactions to discrepant behaviors and beliefs (physically writing in favor of something they cognitively disagreed with). Therefore, though relevant to more general issues concerning cognitive dissonance and psychopathy, his study was not directly relevant to the question of whether guilt-inducing manipulations evoke cognitive dissonance effects among individuals with higher levels of psychopathy.

1.5 Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism (MACH) is considered to be a similar concept to psychopathy

(McHoskey, Worzel, & Szyarto, 1998; Saruk, 1975). Both personality constructs are characterized by callousness, manipulation of others, and a disregard for social norms and morals

(Christie & Geis, 1970; Skinner, 1988). Based on these shared characteristics, many researchers have come to believe that the concepts may be the same, but are just being labeled differently by different branches of psychology (McHoskey et al., 1998). Psychopathy is typically studied by clinical psychologists, whereas MACH has been primarily researched in the fields of social and personality psychology.

However, other investigators (Wastell & Booth, 2003; Wilson, Near, & Miller, 1996) have pointed to MACH as an instrumental construct that is incorporated as a strategic way to pursue goals. MACHs tend to be calculating and rational and engage in ruthless activity to attain goals that are important to them. Psychopaths on the other hand are often much less self- controlled, and more impulsive while exhibiting a dearth of planning abilities. This may be one of the main differences between MACH and psychopathy, and this difference seems to point to cognitive distinctions between the two personality traits.

Christie (1970b) formulated the personality construct of MACH based on the writings of

16 th century political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli’s (1513) classic book The

Prince recommended that would-be rulers take a ruthless and cold-blooded approach to governance. Accordingly, Christie identified the traits of an individual with high MACH as using “successful” manipulation for personal gain, a lack of concern for moral standards, and a purely instrumental approach to interpersonal relationships. The MACH-IV is the principal measure used to identify Machiavellianism today. It was developed in 1970 by Christie and Geis

(1970) and is a self report assessment containing 20 questions that tap the traits of MACH.

Research attempting to explore the distinctions between psychopathy and MACH has found Machiavellians to evidence many shared traits with both primary and secondary psychopathy. For example, MACH characteristics related to Factor 1 of the PCL-R and primary psychopathy (as measured by the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psychopathy Scales, LPSP;

Levenson et al., 1995) include callousness, manipulation, and a lack of anxiety (Smith, 1999).

Qualities of Machiavellianism have also been found in secondary psychopathy, such as a thrill seeking behavior and a heightened need for external stimulation (Strelau, 1983). In addition, a study conducted by McHoskey and colleagues (1998) found that high scores on the MACH-IV

21 and high scores on the LPSP significantly correlated ( r = .62). Smith and Griffith (1978) also found a significant though modest correlation between the MMPI (Pd) scale and the MACH-IV

(r = .25) using a sample of 66 college students. These findings support the theory that MACH and psychopathy diagnoses have features in common and may in fact be tapping similar personality constructs. McHoskey and colleagues concluded after his study that psychopathy and

MACH should be more integrated in the literature.

However, other researchers have argued that there are crucial differences between psychopathy and Machiavellianism. For example, Smith (1999) has argued that many people with Machiavellianism are more apt to resemble a “successful psychopath,” as they tend to not have as many legal problems as primary psychopaths do, and are often overrepresented in the business industry as successful employees. In addition, other studies have resulted in smaller correlations between MACH and psychopathy (see Greenwald, 1967; Christie, 1970a). For example, Saruk (1975) compared MACH scores with psychopathy scores on the Psychopathic

Deviate (Pd) scale of the MMPI with incarcerated inmates as participants, and found no significant correlation between the two personality constructs. However, many researchers today have advised against using the Pd scale of the MMPI to gauge psychopathy due to the unreliable results this scale has offered when studying psychopathy (Patrick, 2006) and MACH (Skinner,

1982) in the past.

Additional distinctions in the current literature between MACH and psychopathy are that

MACHs tend be more represented in higher SES families, and have higher economic standing than the majority of psychopaths (especially secondary psychopaths) (McHoskey et al., 1998;

Smith, 1999). As a result of the aforementioned literature, MACH is most often associated with

“successful” psychopathy or non institutionalized psychopaths (Christie, 1970a).

1.6 Machiavellianism and Cognitive Dissonance

Though the literature is very sparse regarding the relationship between psychopathy and cognitive dissonance, a few studies have investigated the relationship between MACH and cognitive dissonance. Four of the studies are relevant to the current proposal due to the way that the researchers manipulated dissonance arousal. One hindrance in comparing the current study to previous ones on MACH and cognitive dissonance is that at the time these former studies were conducted, Cooper and Fazio’s New Look Theory of cognitive dissonance arousal had not been formulated, and thus guilt had not been considered as the cause of dissonance arousal at that point in time.

Bogart, Geis, Levy, and Zimbardo (1970) assessed the impact of social cohesiveness

(liking a partner versus not liking a partner) between high and low MACHs in a cognitive dissonance paradigm. Participants’ level of MACH and self-reported level of morality were pre- assessed using the MACH-IV. Next high and low MACHs were enticed to cheat on a test by a confederate posing as their partner in the experiment. The partner’s level of prestige was manipulated. For half of participants, the fake partner was presented as a high prestige partner (a graduate law school student with high grades) and the remaining participants were told that their partner was of low prestige (an industrial arts undergraduate student with poor grades). Bogart and colleagues hypothesized that after cheating, low MACHs in the low external justification group (low prestige partners) would decrease their self-reported ratings of morality (identify themselves as less moral than before) in order to cognitively justify their cheating behavior. Each participant was left alone in a room with their high or low prestige partner to complete a test containing un-solvable questions. After a while the fake partner “happened upon” answers to the questions on a desk in the room and attempted to get the participant to cheat with him by copying

23 the answers from the found answer sheet. After the cheating manipulation, the participant’s level of MACH (self-reported morality rating) was assessed again using the MACH-IV.

The results of the study concluded that both high and low MACHs succumbed to cheating at approximately the same rate (50% [16/32] of high MACHS and 46% [13/28] of low

MACHs). However, Bogart and colleagues (1970) found that high MACHs were more instrumental in their cheating behavior such that they cheated significantly more with the high prestige partner than with the low prestige partner. Low MACHs cheated an equal amount across low and high prestige partner pairings. In addition Bogart and colleagues identified an “anti- dissonant” effect such that high MACHs actually increased their self-ratings of morality by reporting that they were more moral after cheating when paired with a low prestige partner (low external justification condition) whereas low MACHs, as predicted, decreased their self-ratings of morality (reported they were less moral) when paired with low prestige partners (low external justification condition). In other words, when high MACHs were in the condition with no external justification present for their actions, and thus would have to rely on changing their thoughts to match their behaviors, they did not undergo this attitude shift, rather they seemed to create more dissonance between their thoughts and actions by reporting themselves as more moral after cheating with the low prestige partner. This is opposite to the classical cognitive dissonant studies where participants experience an attitude shift that matches their behaviors when little or no external justification is present to explain their actions.

In contrast, the classic dissonance effect was exhibited by participants in the Bogart et al.

(1970) study with low levels of MACH: they reported that they were not moral individuals after they cheated with a low prestige partner. Therefore, it appears high MACH individuals are

24 relying on unique aspects of the situation other than external justification to create attitude change.

A very similar experiment was reported by Bogart (1971) in which she again assessed the effect of MACH on cognitive dissonance by enticing participants cheat on a task with a high or low prestige partner. However, in this experiment, a control group was employed to assess differences between high and low MACHs who were asked to cheat as opposed to those who were not asked to cheat. As in the earlier study by Bogart, et al. (1970), participants’ level of

MACH and self-reported level of morality were pre-assessed. Next high and low MACHs were persuaded to cheat on an essay writing assignment by a confederate posing as their partner in the experiment. The partner’s level of prestige was manipulated, this time in four different ways to include their fake level of MACH as well. The four categories of fake participants included High

MACH, High Prestige (graduate law student), High MACH, Low Prestige (business administration student), Low MACH, High Prestige (physics major) and Low MACH, Low

Prestige (industrial arts student). Results indicated that high MACH participants cheated significantly more than low MACHs (66% of high MACHs versus 41% of low MACHs), and that they discriminated their cheating significantly more than low MACHs such that high

MACHs cheated more with the high prestige partners than the low prestige partners (81% versus

56%). As in the previous study by Bogart, et al. (1970) an anti-dissonance effect was again found for High MACH participants such that high MACHs again increased their self-ratings of morality (reported they were more moral) when in the low external justification condition (paired with low prestige partners) while low MACHs decreased their self-ratings of morality (reported they were less moral) when in the low external justification condition (paired with low prestige partners). This study also pointed to a difference between high and low MACHs experience of

25 cognitive dissonance by identifying the abnormal anti-dissonance reaction from individuals with higher levels of MACH.

A study by Epstein (1969) used a methodology that apparently induced guilt in participants. Epstein examined the difference between high and low MACH participants’ ability to be persuaded by induced counterattitudinal behavior. Epstein pre-assessed participants’ level of MACH (with the MACH-IV) and through the use of a median split, chose a sample of 40 high

MACH men and 40 low MACH men. She told them that they were involved in a radio debate on fluoridating water supplies. Epstein also pre-assessed their position on water fluoridation to make sure all participants were in favor of the procedure. Half of the participants were in the non-role playing condition (20 high MACHs and 20 low MACHs). They were instructed to read a counterattitudinal essay against fluoridating water in town and then were post-experimentally assessed about their position on water fluoridation to see if reading the essay had created an attitude shift in these participants. The other half of participants were in the role playing condition. They not only read the counterattitudinal essay, but next they were asked to deliver an impromptu speech against fluoridation that would be recorded and played on radio stations across the state. In the taped speech the participants had to give their name and advocate for a ban on fluoridation, which was dissonant to their personal beliefs. After delivering the speech, they too were post-experimentally assessed about their position on water fluoridation to see if their opinion had changed to be more against fluoridation. Results indicated an interaction between high and low MACHs with the role playing conditions. High MACHs in the non-role playing condition evidenced significantly more attitude change than the high MACHs in the role- playing condition, and more attitude change than the low MACHs in the non-role playing condition. This too is an anti-dissonance effect in that dissonance has been shown to produce

26 attitude change when people perform behaviors that go against their personal beliefs, and in the case of the non-role playing condition, the participants did not engage in any dissonant behavior, they simply read a counterattitudinal essay written by someone else. Conversely, as predicted, low MACHs in the role-playing condition evidenced significantly more attitude change towards being against fluoridation than high MACHs in the role-playing condition. In addition low

MACHs in the role playing condition evidenced the most attitude change out of any condition.

The finding that low MACHs experienced the most attitude shift when they had to give a speech on the radio against fluoridation supports the classic cognitive dissonance phenomenon. In addition, the role playing low MACH results potentially relate to our study if their attitudes shifted because they felt guilt for publically denouncing a belief that they held. Epstein’s study is relevant to the current study due to the methodology she used in the role playing condition.

Participants were asked to publically (via a radio broadcast) deliver a speech advocating for beliefs that they opposed. Therefore, because delivering a public anti-fluoridation speech would most likely produce feelings of guilt in participants, Epstein’s study provides some support for the current study’s predicted results.

One final study on MACH and cognitive dissonance is loosely related to the current study, although in this final example, the experimental methodology did not induce guilt in participants. Burgoon, Miller & Tubbs (1972) had participants write counterattitudinal essays advocating the removal of college student draft deferments under high and low justification. In the study, justification was manipulated with classroom credits; participants in the high justification group received five classroom credits for agreeing to write the counterattitudinal essay and participants in the low justification group received only one credit for writing the essay. Results indicated a significant interaction between level of justification (high versus low)

27 and level of MACH (high versus low). Low MACH participants experienced attitude shift toward being in favor of draft deferments when in the low justification group. This was consistent with the classic cognitive dissonance effect: When low MACH participants had no external justification for writing the essay, they changed their beliefs to match their actions. In contrast, high MACHs experienced attitude shift toward being in favor of the draft deferments only when in the high justification group but not in the low justification group. The authors explain this relationship by using incentive theory. They posit that high MACHs attitudes are persuaded by rewards, which stems from their desire to gain power and prestige (and rewards) with no regard for other people.

Burgoon et al. (1972) explained their findings as reflecting high MACHs’ lack of concern about lying or moral standards. Christie and Geis (1970) have also discussed the findings of Burgoon et al. and conjectured that they reflect the high MACH’s lack of concern for other people. Specifically, Christie and Geis suggest that high MACHs view people more as objects to be manipulated rather than as people with feelings and emotions.

The main difference between the current study and that of Burgoon et al. (1972) is that our study assessed cognitive dissonance through the use of guilt induction while their study did not induce guilt in participants. The methodology involved in their experiment was not designed to create guilt in participants, rather it was simply created to examine attitude shift after performing a counterattitudinal act with no negative consequences. Therefore, though Burgoon and colleagues’ study assessed cognitive dissonance effects in participants with MACH, it does not appear directly relevant to the hypothesis underlying the present study.

Overall, past research has demonstrated that individuals high in MACH are resistant to the classic cognitive dissonance effects of attitude shift after performing a behavior that they

28 cognitively oppose. In fact, the past research has shown that individuals with high MACH often experience attitude shift in the opposite direction or conditions that low MACHs do. These results have been explained as consequences of the underlying personality characteristics that high MACH individuals possess (callousness, manipulative nature and lack of regard for others).

Since these characteristics are also traits of psychopathy (especially primary psychopathy), it is reasonable to expect that the negative associations demonstrated between MACH and cognitive dissonance will also be found between psychopathy and cognitive dissonance in the present study.

1.7 Hypotheses of the Present Study

Cognitive dissonance studies analyzing the affects of MACH have shown a significant effect, such that high MACHs do not evidence the classic attitude shift following the performance of a dissonant act. The current study sought to determine whether individuals with high psychopathy scores exhibit a similar pattern.

In the current study we analyzed guilt-induced cognitive dissonance effects in individuals with varying levels of psychopathy. Participants’ level of psychopathy (and MACH) was identified by having them fill out two self report measures on psychopathy and one self-report measure on MACH. They completed a boring abacus task that involved manually pushing balls one at a time across an abacus for 20 minutes. After the task, the participants were either politely asked (High perceived choice to lie group) or directly instructed (Low perceived choice to lie group) to tell a fellow student (actually a confederate) that the abacus task was enjoyable. After misleading the confederate, the participants completed a post-experimental questionnaire that assessed their personal enjoyment of the abacus task and their level of guilt over deceiving another person.

First it was hypothesized that the classic cognitive dissonance effect would be replicated.

We expected that, regardless of psychopathy or MACH level, participants in the High Choice to

Lie condition would evidence more attitude shift towards enjoying the abacus task than participants in the Low Choice to Lie condition. These results were expected to be a replication of the classic Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study, except that instead of manipulating reward we would demonstrate the effect using choice as the dissonance manipulator.

The second hypothesis was that individuals with higher levels of psychopathy (and

MACH) would report disliking the abacus task (as measured by the post experimental questionnaire) across both the High and Low perceived choice to lie groups. We expected these results due to the lack of guilt commonly found in individuals with higher levels of psychopathy and MACH. Therefore, we theorized that individuals with high levels of psychopathy would not experience guilt, even when they felt that they voluntarily (High perceived choice to lie group) chose to mislead another participant. Due to this lack of guilt, the high psychopathy (and high

MACH) participant would not have had the attitude shift associated with cognitive dissonance, and would not report enjoying the abacus task.

The third hypothesis pertained to the individuals with low or nonexistent levels of psychopathy and MACH. We predicted that participants with low levels of psychopathy would report enjoying the abacus task more after lying to a future participant only if they were in the

High perceived choice to lie group. These results were believed to be due to the guilt inducing nature of voluntarily agreeing to lie to a person, as opposed to the Low perceived choice group, where participants were told directly to lie to the next participant as part of the study requirements. These results were also expected for people who scored low in Machiavellianism due to the similarities between the two personality constructs.

The fourth hypothesis was that psychopathy would better account for a demonstrated lack of guilt than would MACH. Though this hypothesis did not have a strong, empirically supported theoretical background, we were interested in learning whether the psychopathy construct would yield different results from MACH, suggesting that the psychopathy construct is including relevant and distinct personality dimensions that the MACH construct does not include.

In addition, this study explored the relationship between primary and secondary psychopathy with the level of self reported abacus task enjoyment. Specifically, the study examined differences in the reported level of abacus task enjoyment between individuals with high scores on primary as compared to secondary psychopathy. Also, the study explored particular facets of psychopathy (such as callousness) and their relationship to reported enjoyment of the abacus task.

Chapter 2: Method

Participants

The current study was conducted with 164 (103 females, 61 males) undergraduate students at the University of Texas El Paso. The sample size for the current study was determined by examining past research on cognitive dissonance effects on MACH. These studies typically included 50 to 80 participants and yielded statistically significant results. We conservatively concluded that the present study should include approximately twice as many participants as these earlier studies to ensure appropriate power for the current study.

Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 44 years (M =19.66 years, SD = 3.17 years), with 82.3% between the ages of 18 to 20. The ethnicity of the sample was predominately Hispanic (85.4%), with the remaining participants’ ethnicities: Anglo-American (6.7%), African American (1.8%),

Asian (.6%) and Other (5.5%). Participants were drawn from Introductory Psychology courses at the University of Texas El Paso and were given 1.5 experimental credits for their participation.

Measures

The Psychopathic Personality Inventory—Revised: Short Form (PPI-R: SF; Lilienfeld &

Widows, 2005).

The current study used the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised: Short Form

(PPI-R: SF) which is a shortened version of the PPI-R. It is a self-report measure of subclinical psychopathic tendencies. The PPI-R: SF contains 56 items that are scored using a Likert scale between 1 and 4 (1=False, 2=Mostly False, 3=Mostly True, 4=True). The PPI-R: SF yields one overall total score and two factor scores (Fearless Dominance [FD] and Self-Centered

Impulsivity [SCI] ) as well as scores on eight content scales: (a) Machiavellian Egocentricity

(ME; 20 items), (b) Social Influence (SOI; previously Social Potency; 18 items), (c)

Coldheartedness (C; 16 items), (d) Carefree Nonplanfulness (CN; 19 items), (e) Fearlessness (F;

14 items), (f) Blame Externalization (BE; 15 items), (g) Rebellious Nonconformity (RN; previously Impulsive Nonconformity; 16 items), and (h) Stress Immunity (STI; 13 items). The

Fearless Dominance factor includes the Social Influence, Fearlessness, and Stress Immunity content scales and the Self Centered Impulsivity factor is comprised of the Machiavellian

Egocentricity, Rebellious Nonconformity, Carefree Nonplanfulness, and Blame Externalization content scales (the Coldheartedness content scale is part of the overall total but is considered separate from either of the two summed factors (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger,

2003). These factors correspond to the two-factor structure (PPI-I and PPI-2) of the original version of the PPI which are also similar to the Two Factor Structure of psychopathy proposed by Hare (1991) in the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised. Specifically, the Fearless Dominance factor assesses the cognitive deficits of psychopathy while the Self Centered Impulsivity factor reviews the antisocial behavior traits of psychopathy.

Currently, there are no published studies that have analyzed the reliability and validity of the PPI-R: SF, but because it is a shortened version of the PPI-R (it is comprised of the 7 highest loading questions from each of the eight subscales of the PPI-R), the demonstrated psychometric properties of the PPI and PPI-R are relevant to evaluating the PPI-R: SF.

Lilienfeld and Andrews (1996) evaluated the convergent and discriminant validities of the PPI with an undergraduate sample and found evidence of convergent validity with the

California Psychological Inventory Socialization scale (r = -.59), Levenson’s (1990)

Psychopathy Scale (r = .37) and with the Hare (1985) Self Report Psychopathy Scale—Revised

(r = .91). Lilienfeld and Widows (1995) demonstrated internal consistencies for the PPI-R overall total and content scales to range from α = .78 to α = .92. They also found test-retest reliabilities (mean test-retest interval = 19.94 days) to range from r = .82 to r = .93. The PPI-R

33 has been found to correlate significantly with both the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale–II (SRP-

II; Hare, Harpur, & Hemphill, 1989) and the LPSP (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995), as well as with self-report measures of antisocial personality disorder, substance use, sensation seeking, and pathological functioning (Lilienfeld & Widows, 2005).

Levenson’s Primary and Secondary Psychopathy Scales (LPSP; Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick,

1995)

The LPSP is a 26-item self report measure that identifies both behavioral and emotional aspects of psychopathy. The measure breaks down into two subscales, Primary Psychopathy (16 items) and Secondary Psychopathy (10 items). Each item is scored on a 1 to 4 point Likert Scale

(1 = Disagree Strongly, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Agree, 4 = Agree Strongly). Levenson and colleagues

(1995) found that the Primary scale has good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .82), and that the Secondary scale had marginal internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = .63). In addition, they found that the two scales correlate moderately (r = .40). Lynam and colleagues (1999) found convergent validity between the PPI and the LPSP to be moderately high (r= .64).

MACH-IV Scale (Christie & Geis, 1970)

The MACH-IV is a 20-item self-report measure that identifies Machiavellianism, which is characterized by being callous, manipulative and behaving in a way that only benefits oneself.

The items are arranged in a Likert scale ranging from 1 (Very Strongly Agree) to 5 (Very

Strongly Disagree) with 3 being a neutral choice (No Opinion). Internal reliability has been found to be rather consistent with studies demonstrating moderate alpha coefficients, α=.74

(Austin, Farrelly, Black, & Moore, 2007), and α=.70 (Fehr, Samsom, & Paulhus, 1992). Christie and Geis (1970) found split half reliabilities from .69 to .88. Finally, Machiavellianism has

34 shown moderate correlations with primary (r = .65, p<.001) and secondary psychopathy (r = .49, p<.001) as measured by the LPSP (McHoskey et al., 1998).

Post-experimental Questionnaire

The post experimental questionnaire was administered after the participant completed the abacus task, and after they misled the confederate in the experiment. The questionnaire was based on the post experimental measure used in the Cooper and Worchel (1970) study on cognitive dissonance. The measure contains eight items that assess how enjoyable the participant perceived the abacus task, how guilty they felt for lying to the confederate, and how voluntary the person felt the deceiving of the confederate was (see Appendix B). The item assessing participants’ enjoyment of the abacus task was the primary dependent measure of the current study.

The questionnaire was designed so that it appeared to be a survey conducted by the

Psychology Department attempting to analyze how effective all of the departmental research was. The questionnaire was sealed into an envelope by the participant upon completion in order to create the illusion of the confidentiality of their answers from the experimenter. The questionnaire was designed to appear separate from the current experiment in order to prevent any biasing of participants’ responses by compliance effects (i.e. participants answering the way they perceive the experimenter would want them to answer). The majority of the questions on this questionnaire were obtained from the Cooper and Worchel post experimental questionnaire.

The main adaptation the current study made to the original measure was the use of a 1-7 point

Likert scale to rate responses instead of the 1-31 point Likert scale utilized by Cooper and

Worchel. In addition, in the present study the last 2 questions on the questionnaire were changed

35 to identify how voluntary the participant found the task to be, and if the deceiving of the confederate elicited feelings of guilt in the participant.

Demographics Form

A brief demographics form was presented at the beginning of the packet of psychopathy and MACH self report measures (Appendix B). It was given before the self-report measures and assessed participants’ age, gender and ethnicity. This form took approximately one minute to complete.

Procedure

Participants were Introductory Psychology students recruited through an online computer experiment program provided by the University of Texas at El Paso, and were given 1.5 experimental credits for their involvement in the current study. Upon entering the lab, the participant was seated in the hall to wait for the experimenter. Meanwhile, the experimenter text- messaged the confederate to let him (or her) know that the participant had arrived. Upon receiving the text message, the confederate knew to wait approximately 15 minutes before entering the lab and acting out their role. Next the participant was guided into a room and given an informed consent form (Appendix F) which was explained to them. The form explained the confidential nature of the study, and that the study was about personality traits’ influence on motor skills and reaction time. After the experimenter explained the consent form, the participant read and signed the form.

Abacus Task

An abacus task was implemented to induce boredom in participants. The task was loosely modeled on the boring peg turning task used in the Cooper and Worchel (1970) and Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) experiments on cognitive dissonance. In the abacus task, a large abacus

36 was placed flat on the table in front of the participant. He or she was instructed to move the wooden balls one at a time across the abacus using only their right hand. The participant was instructed to slide the balls across the abacus one at a time, starting at the top row and moving down the board, until they reached the bottom row. Once he or she had slid all of the balls (one at a time) to the right side of the abacus, the participant was instructed to start at the top again and to slide the balls back across the abacus one at a time, beginning at the top row and moving down the abacus until they had reached the bottom row again. Participants were told to work at their own “natural” pace, and to continue sliding balls across the abacus one at a time, going row by row until instructed to stop. After 10 minutes the experimenter instructed the participant to stop and then start the task over with their left hand instead of their right hand. During this task the experimenter was seated directly across from the participant with a clipboard and a stopwatch and acted as though she was monitoring the participant’s progress (e.g. occasionally writing notes on the clipboard and appearing to time the participant’s progress with the stopwatch).

Approximately 15 minutes into the task, a knock was heard on the door, and the confederate came into the room to ask if this was where the experiment was being held. The experimenter looked up and quickly told the confederate that he was in the right place and asked him to wait in the hall until she was done running the current participant. The confederate apologized for his interruption, shut the door behind him, and sat in the hall to wait for his interaction with the participant. While waiting in the hall the confederate pretended to be doing homework or listening to his Ipod to give the illusion that he was just another participant waiting to do the experiment. After the participant had moved the balls across the abacus with his or her left hand for 10 minutes, the experimenter signaled the participant to stop the task. The abacus task lasted 20 minutes, 10 minutes per hand.

Choice Conditions

After the abacus task was completed, the experimenter stopped the participant and recited from memory one of the Post Abacus Task scripts to the participant. For half of participants, the experimenter recited from memory the High Perceived Choice to Lie script (see Appendix A), and the other half of the participants were recited the Low Perceived Choice to Lie script

(Appendix A). The scripts were alternated randomly between participants. Following the choice manipulation portion of the experiment, and guilt induction, participants were given the post experimental questionnaire to complete, as this was the main dependent measure of the study.

High Perceived Choice to Lie Group

In the High Perceived Choice to Lie condition, the experimenter politely asked the participant to tell the next waiting participant (the confederate waiting in the hall) that the abacus task was fun and interesting (see Appendix A). The participant was informed that telling the person waiting in the hall about the task being enjoyable was not required, but that their assistance would be greatly appreciated. Once the participant agreed to the task (this study had a

100% compliance rate), he or she was taken into the hall where the “future” participant (actually a confederate) was seated and waiting. The (real) participant was introduced to the confederate and the experimenter explained to the fake participant that she had to set up quickly in the other lab room so the current participant was going to explain the experiment to him while she was gone. The experimenter then excused herself and left the hallway. The real participant was given about two minutes to tell the second (bogus) participant that the task was enjoyable. If the participant freely told the confederate that the task was going to be fun (92.7% of participants), then the fake participant thanked the real participant as follows: “Great, I’m really glad to hear that this is a fun experiment because all of the other experiments I have had so far have really

38 been boring. Thanks for telling me.” If the participant did not freely say that the task was enjoyable, the confederate attempted to prompt them by asking “So how was it?” This manipulation got an additional 3.7% of participants to verbalize that the task was fun and the confederate also thanked them with the same statement reported above. The statement thanking the participant for the information about their enjoyable rating of the task was intended to increase the real participant’s guilt about lying. Following the short conversation with the confederate, the experimenter went back into the hall and led the participant into the other lab room. After she had shut the lab room door behind them, the confederate filled out the

Confederate Manipulation Check form (Appendix H). The confederate checked the box on the form that indicated whether or not the real participant told him directly if the task was fun, if he had to prompt the participant, or if the participant did not tell him the task was enjoyable. Upon filling out the Confederate Manipulation Check form, the confederate put the form in its box in the lab, and promptly left.

Low Perceived Choice to Lie Group

In the Low Perceived Choice to Lie condition, the experimenter directly instructed (not requested) the participant to tell the next (fake) participant that the abacus task was fun and interesting (see Appendix A). Upon consent from the participant, the experimenter led him into the hall and introduced him to the confederate who was waiting as the future participant.

Identical procedures to the ones explained for participants in the High Perceived Choice to Lie group occurred at this point.

Post-experimental Questionnaire

Once participants had interacted with the confederate and been taken into the second lab room, they were given the post-experimental questionnaire. The post-experimental questionnaire

(Appendix B) contained eight items that quantified how enjoyable the participant found the abacus task to be, and assessed their self-reported feelings of guilt after misleading the confederate. The questionnaire was presented to seem like it was not part of the current experiment, but rather a general Psychology Department survey being conducted to assess departmental research being performed that semester. The questionnaire was administered with an envelope, and the participant was instructed to seal their questionnaire inside the envelope after completing it to promote the sense of confidentiality of their answers from the experimenter. The experimenter explained the questionnaire to the participant. To prevent possible compliance effects, the experimenter reiterated that she was not supposed to see the participant’s answers because the questionnaire was supposed to remain anonymous and was not part of the current study.

After the participant completed the post-experimental questionnaire and sealed it into the envelope, he or she was given a packet containing the LPSP [Appendix C]; PPI-R: SF [Appendix

D]) and MACH-IV [Appendix E]) and the demographics form (Appendix B) and asked to complete these questionnaires. The packet of measures took approximately 30 minutes to complete. After the participants filled out all of the self-report measures, they were debriefed as to the true nature of the experiment and asked to sign a second informed consent form (Appendix

F) that outlined to them the true purposes of the experiment. A debriefing script was used to ensure that all participants received the same information about the experiment (see Appendix

G). They were asked not to share with anyone the actual purpose and procedures of the experiment in order to prevent future participants from knowing ahead of time what the experiment was about. Participants were given 1.5 experimental credits for their participation.

Chapter 3: Results

Manipulation Check

There were 82 participants in the High Choice to Lie group and 82 participants in the

Low Choice to Lie condition. All participants verbally agreed with the researcher that they would tell the confederate that the task was enjoyable. A manipulation check was performed to determine whether they actually kept their agreement. The confederate marked on a form

(Appendix G) whether or not the participant told him or her that the task was enjoyable. Results of the manipulation check indicated that 152 (92.7%) of the participants complied with the researcher’s suggestion and told the confederate that the task would be enjoyable. An additional six (3.7%) told the confederate that the abacus task would be enjoyable, but only after they were prompted by the confederate asking, “How was the task?” One (.6%) participant told the confederate that the task was enjoyable but added that he was instructed by the researcher to say so. Three participants (1.8%) never told the confederate that the task was enjoyable. Two participants (1.2%) told the confederate that the task was boring. To preserve randomization, analyses for the study were run on all participants ( N = 164), including those who failed to report that the task was enjoyable. This approach to the analysis of experimental findings is known as

“intent-to-treat analysis” and yields an unbiased estimate of the effects of being assigned to each experimental condition (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). However, as will be reported later in the Results, supplementary analyses were also run that excluded the six participants who failed to tell the confederate that the task was enjoyable.

Descriptive Statistics

Before running analyses, procedures were carried out for dealing with missing data.

Seven participants did not fill out the psychopathy and Machiavellianism self-report measures

41 completely. Specifically, each of the seven neglected to answer precisely one item on a single scale. Scores for the missing items were imputed individually using regression, using the summed score of the other items on the same scale as the predictor, and the missing item score as the criterion.

Descriptive statistics were then calculated for participants’ self-reported abacus task enjoyment, for their total scores on the psychopathy and Machiavellianism self-report measures, and for their respective factor scores and subscales scores (see Table 1).

Table 1: Descriptive Information for the Psychopathy and Machiavellianism Predictors and Dependent Variable (N=164)

Standard Mean Minimum Maximum Deviation Total Enjoyment Rating of 4.01 1.69 1.00 7.00 Abacus Task High Choice to Lie Enjoyment 4.34 1.62 1.00 7.00 Rating of Task Low Choice to Lie Enjoyment 3.67 1.71 1.00 7.00 Rating of Task PPI-R: SF Total 125.65 16.28 90.00 170.00 Score Fearless Dominance 56.05 9.12 28.00 76.00 Factor Self-Centered Impulsive 54.36 9.89 35.00 84.00 Factor Machiavellian 13.60 3.52 7.00 25.00 Egocentricity Social 18.88 4.00 7.00 28.00 Influence Fearlessness 18.98 4.48 7.00 28.00 Coldheartedness 15.23 3.87 8.00 26.00 Rebellious 13.99 4.15 7.00 24.00 Nonconformity Blame 14.16 4.19 7.00 26.00 Externalization Carefree 12.62 3.29 7.00 23.00 Nonplanfulness Stress Immunity 18.20 4.53 7.00 28.00 LPSP 50.18 9.03 30.00 73.00 Total Score LPSP Primary 30.62 7.02 16.00 49.00 Factor LPSP Secondary 19.56 4.05 11.00 31.00 Factor MACH-IV 52.96 8.33 35.00 76.00 Total Score Deceit 8.50 2.84 4.00 16.00 Flattery 5.63 2.09 2.00 10.00 Immoral 8.83 2.41 3.00 15.00 Cynicism 10.66 2.96 5.00 20.00 Residual 19.34 3.59 10.00 29.00 Note. Total scale scores are in bold. Factor scale scores are in italics. Subscales are presented in regular font.

3.1 Confirmatory Analyses

Hypothesis 1: Replication of the Classic Cognitive Dissonance Effect

A regression was performed to determine whether the classic cognitive dissonance effect reported in earlier research was reproduced in the present study. The main dependent variable in this analysis was participants' self-report ratings of how much they enjoyed the abacus task (Self-

Reported Enjoyment). The independent variable was Choice Condition, (High Choice to Lie versus Low Choice to Lie). In this analysis and all other analyses, High Choice to Lie was coded as “1” and Low Choice to Lie as “0.” Based on prior studies of cognitive dissonance it was predicted that that participants in the High Choice to Lie condition would report higher levels of enjoyment than participants in the Low Choice to Lie condition. A linear regression was conducted and, as predicted, a significant difference in abacus task enjoyment was found between the High and Low Choice to Lie groups, R² = .039, F (1,162) = 6.66, p = .011, standardized β = .199, t(163) = 2.58, p = .011. A one-way ANOVA was also conducted and yielded exactly the same results as the regression, F(1,162) = 6.66, p = .011, d = .402. The High

Choice to Lie group had a mean enjoyment rating of 4.34 (SD = 1.62) (on a 1 to 7 rating scale with 1 being no enjoyment of the task and 7 being high enjoyment of the task) while the Low

Choice to Lie group reported a mean enjoyment rating of 3.67 (SD = 1.71) on the same scale (see

Figure 1). These results indicate that participants in the High Choice to Lie group, who felt that they had more choice whether to mislead the confederate about the task being enjoyable, reported enjoying the task more than participants in the Low choice to lie group.

Figure 1: Main effect for mean task enjoyment across choice conditions. r = .199

Hypothesis 2 & 3: Relationship Between Task Enjoyment and Choice Level Will Vary With

Psychopathy Level

The main hypothesis of the study was that individuals with lower levels of psychopathy

(and Machiavellianism) would show the classic cognitive dissonance effect by reporting higher enjoyment of the abacus task in the High Choice to Lie Condition than in the Low Choice to Lie

Condition, whereas individuals with higher levels of psychopathy would not report more enjoyment in the High Choice to Lie than in the Low Choice to Lie condition. In other words, a significant interaction was hypothesized between choice condition and level of psychopathy (and

Machiavellianism) in the prediction of self-reported enjoyment. In order to test this hypothesis, three multiple regressions were conducted, using the two psychopathy measures and the single

Machiavellianism measure.

First multiple regression: PPI-R: SF total scores. In the first multiple regression, the criterion was Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus test, and the predictors were Choice

Condition (High Choice to Lie versus Low Choice to Lie), PPI-R: SF total scores, and the interaction of Choice Condition with PPI-R:SF scores. It was hypothesized that the interaction term would significantly predict Self-Reported Enjoyment. Results of the multiple regression are shown in Table 2. As can be seen, the model in the regression equation was statistically significant, R² = .105, F(3,160) = 6.23, p < .001.

As hypothesized, the interaction of PPI-R: SF total scores and choice condition was statistically significant in predicting level of task enjoyment, standardized β = -.216, t(163) = -

2.11, p = .036 (Table 2). Figures 2 and 3 depict this interaction graphically. As can be seen in

Figure 2, there was not a significant relationship between PPI-R: SF scores and Self-Reported

Enjoyment of the abacus task in the Low Choice to Lie condition, standardized β = -.054, t(81) =

-.486, p = .628. In contrast, there was a significant relationship between PPI-R: SF scores and

Self-Reported Enjoyment in the High Choice to Lie condition, standardized β = -.374, t(81) = -

3.61, p = .001. This finding thus supported the hypothesis that individuals with lower levels of psychopathy would show the classic cognitive dissonance effect, but that individuals with higher levels would not.

Figure 2: Relationship of PPI-R: SF total scores to reported level of task enjoyment – Low Choice to Lie condition only. Standardized β = -.054, p = .628.

Figure 3: Relationship of PPI-R: SF total scores to reported level of task enjoyment – High Choice to Lie condition only. Standardized β = -.374, p = .001.

Second multiple regression: LPSP total scores. In the second multiple regression, the criterion was Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus test, and the predictors were Choice Condition (High

Choice to Lie versus Low Choice to Lie), LPSP total scores, and the interaction of Choice

Condition with LPSP scores. Again, it was hypothesized that the interaction term would significantly predict Self-Reported Enjoyment. Results of the multiple regression are shown in

Table 2. As can be seen, the model in the regression equation was statistically significant, R² =

.089, F(3,160) = 5.18, p = .002.

As hypothesized, the interaction of LPSP total scores and choice condition was statistically significant in predicting level of task enjoyment, standardized β = -.236, t(163) = -

2.34, p = .021. The interaction is depicted graphically by choice condition in Figures 4 and 5.

As can be seen from Figure 4, there was not a significant relationship between LPSP scores and

Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus task in the Low Choice to Lie condition, standardized β

= .023, t(81) = .208, p = .836. In contrast, there was a significant negative relationship between

LPSP scores and Self-Reported Enjoyment in the High Choice to Lie condition, standardized β =

-.327, t(81) = -3.09, p = .003 (Figure 5). Thus, this finding, like the finding concerning the PPI-

R: SF, supported the hypothesis that individuals with lower levels of psychopathy would show the classic cognitive dissonance effect, but that individuals with higher levels would not.

Figure 4: Relationship of LPSP total scores to reported level of abacus task enjoyment – Low Choice to lie condition only. Standardized β = .023, p = .836

Figure 5: Relationship of LPSP total scores to reported level of abacus task enjoyment – High Choice to lie condition only. Standardized β = -.327, p = .003

Overall Model High / Low Choice Psychopathy / Mach Predictor Interaction

Un- Un- Un- Std Stzd Std Stzd Std Stzd F (df) p Stzd t p Stzd t p Stzd t p Predictor Err β Err β Err β β β β

PPIR:SF Tot. 6.23 (3,160) <.001 .661 .252 .196 2.62 .010 -.089 .173 -.053 -.52 .607 -.536 .254 -.216 -2.11 .036 PPIR:SF1-FD 2.96 (3,160) .034 .670 .260 .198 2.58 .011 .175 .194 .104 .91 .366 -.382 .262 -.167 -1.46 .146 PPIR:SF2-SCI 6.90 (3,160) <.001 .657 .251 .195 2.62 .010 -.123 .168 -.073 -.73 .466 -.561 .254 -.220 -2.21 .028 Mach Egocen. 7.30 (3,160) <.001 .721 .251 .214 2.87 .005 .024 .178 .014 .14 .892 -.708 .252 -.295 -2.81 .006 Soc. Influ. 2.30 (3,160) .079 .677 .263 .201 2.58 .011 -.034 .200 -.020 -.17 .867 .128 .266 .057 .48 .631 Fearlessness 4.87 (3,160) .003 .660 .256 .196 2.58 .011 .177 .188 .105 .94 .348 -.634 .257 -.274 -2.47 .015 Coldhrtnes. 5.77 (3,160) .001 .733 .254 .217 2.88 .004 -.488 .193 -.288 -2.53 .012 .153 .257 .068 .59 .554 Rebel. Non. 4.45 (3,160) .005 .668 .256 .198 2.61 .010 .142 .179 .084 .80 .428 -.590 .257 -.243 -2.30 .023 Blm. Extern. 2.96 (3,160) .034 .678 .260 .201 2.61 .010 -.144 .190 -.085 -.76 .451 -.084 .261 -.036 -.32 .747 Carefree 4.90 (3,160) .003 .570 .258 .169 2.21 .029 -.430 .176 -.254 -2.44 .016 .171 .260 .068 .66 .511 Stress Imun. 2.57 (3,160) .056 .665 .261 .197 2.55 .012 .179 .183 .106 .98 .330 -.245 .262 -.101 -.93 .352 LPSP Total 5.18 (3,160) .002 .699 .255 .207 2.74 .007 .037 .171 .022 .22 .827 -.603 .258 -.236 -2.34 .021 Primary 4.20 (3,160) .007 .691 .257 .205 2.69 .008 .041 .176 .024 .23 .815 -.495 .259 -.199 -1.92 .057 Secondary 3.59 (3,160) .015 .682 .258 .202 2.64 .009 .018 .187 .101 .09 .926 -.377 .259 -.161 -1.45 .148 MACH-IV Tot. 4.92 (3,160) .003 .703 .256 .208 2.75 .007 -.173 .178 -.102 -.98 .331 -.314 .257 -.128 1.22 .223 Deceit 5.08 (3,160) .002 .696 .255 .206 2.73 .007 -.374 .167 -.221 -2.24 .026 .011 .260 .004 .04 .965 Flattery 3.68 (3,160) .013 .682 .258 .202 2.64 .009 .162 .173 .096 .94 .351 -.523 .261 -.204 -2.00 .047 Immoral 4.54 (3,160) .004 .705 .256 .209 2.75 .007 -.360 .184 -.213 -1.96 .052 .052 .257 .022 .20 .840 Cynicism 2.70 (3,160) .048 .680 .261 .201 2.61 .010 .002 .198 .001 .01 .991 -.212 .264 -.094 -.81 .422 Residual 3.02 (3,160) .032 .667 .260 .198 2.57 .011 .052 .171 .031 .30 .762 -.354 .264 -.136 -1.35 .181 Note. Significant p values (p < .05) are in bold. p values approaching significance (<.10) are in italics. Predictor Abbreviations: PPIR:SF Tot. = PPI-R:SF total score, PPIR:SF1-FD = PPIR:SF Factor 1 – Fearless Dominance Factor Score, PPIR:SF2-SCI = PPIR:SF Factor 2-Self Centered Impulsivity Factor Score, Mach Egocen. = PPI-R:SF Machiavellianism Egocentricity subscale, Soc. Influ. = PPI-R:SF Social Influence subscale, Fearlessness = PPI-R:SF Fearlessness subscale, Coldhrtnes. = PPI-R:SF Coldheartedness subscale, Rebel. Non. = PPI-R:SF Rebellious Nonconformity subscale, Blm. Extern. = PPI-R:SF Blame Externalization subscale, Carefree = PPI-R:SF Carefree Nonplanfulness subscale, Stress Imun. = PPI-R:SF Stress Immunity subscale, LPSP Total = LPSP total score, Primary = LPSP Primary subscale, Secondary = LPSP Secondary subscale, MACH-IV Tot. = MACH-IV total score, Deceit = MACH-IV Deceit subscale, Flattery = MACH-IV Flattery subscale, Immoral = MACH-IV Immorality subscale, Cynicism = MACH-IV Cynicism subscale, Residual = MACH-IV Residual subscale score. Model Abbreviations: Un-Stzd β = Unstandardized Beta, Std Err = Standard Error, Stzd β = Standardized Beta.

Third multiple regression: Mach-IV total scores. In the third multiple regression, the criterion was Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus test, and the predictors were Choice

Condition (High Choice to Lie versus Low Choice to Lie), Mach-IV total scores, and the interaction of Choice Condition with Mach-IV scores. Again, it was hypothesized that the interaction term would significantly predict Self-Reported Enjoyment. Results of the multiple regression are shown in Table 2. As can be seen, the model in the regression equation was statistically significant, R² = .085, F(3,160) = 4.92, p = .003.

Contrary to prediction, the interaction of Mach-IV total scores and choice condition was not statistically significant in predicting level of task enjoyment, standardized β = -.128, t(163) =

-1.22, p = .223. Thus, this finding failed to support the hypothesis that individuals with lower levels of Machiavellianism would show the classic cognitive dissonance effect, but that individuals with higher levels would not. The pattern of data is depicted graphically by choice condition in Figures 6 and 7. As can be seen from Figure 6, there was not a significant relationship between MACH-IV scores and Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus task in the

Low Choice to Lie condition, standardized β = -.104, t(81) = -.932, p = .354. In contrast, there was a significant negative relationship between MACH-IV scores and Self-Reported Enjoyment in the High Choice to Lie condition, standardized β = -.295, t(81) = -2.76, p = .007 (Figure 7).

Although one of the standardized betas (-.104) was non-significant and the other (-.295) was significant, the difference between the two betas was not significant, so the predicted interaction did not attain statistical significance.

Figure 6: Relationship of MACH-IV total scores to reported level of abacus task enjoyment – Low Choice to lie condition only. Standardized β = -.104, p = .354.

Figure 7: Relationship of MACH-IV total scores to reported level of abacus task enjoyment – High Choice to lie condition only. Standardized β = -.295, p = .007.

Hypothesis 4: Level of Psychopathy Will Incrementally Predict Abacus Task Enjoyment

The second main hypothesis was that psychopathy scores would incrementally predict

Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus task, above and beyond the predictive power of

Machiavellianism. To test this hypothesis, two hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted using Self-Reported Enjoyment as the criterion.

First hierarchical regression: PPI-R: SF total scores. The first hierarchical regression used PPI-R: SF total scores as the psychopathy measure. In the first step of the regression, the

Choice to Lie condition was entered as a predictor. In the second step, standardized total

MACH-IV scores and the standardized interaction term of MACH-IV total scores with choice condition were entered. In the third step, standardized PPI-R: SF total scores and the standardized interaction term of total PPI-R: SF scores with choice condition were entered as a predictor. Results are shown in Table 3. As can be seen, inclusion of PPI-R: SF scores and their interaction with Self-Reported Enjoyment significantly increased predictive power above and beyond scores on the MACH-IV, ∆R² = .041, F(2,158) = 3.67, p = .028. Although the change in

R² was significant, it is important to note that the standardized beta for the PPI-R: SF total scores was not significant in predicting task enjoyment when added to MACH-IV scores in predicting task enjoyment, standardized β = -.010, t(158) = -.09, p = .930. In addition the standardized beta for the interaction between PPI-R: SF scores and choice condition only approached significance when added to MACH-IV scores in block three (standardized β = -.205, t(158) = -1.86, p =

.065.

Table 3: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Psychopathy (PPI-R: SF) Incrementally Predicting Abacus Task Enjoyment Above Level of Machiavellianism

Un-Stzd Std Stzd Criterion and Predictor t p β Err β Step 1 R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011; (∆ R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011)

High or Low Choice to Lie .671 .260 .199 2.58 .011

Step 2 R² =.085, F(3,160)=4.92, p=.003; (∆ R² =.045, F(2,160)=3.94, p=.021)

High or Low Choice to Lie .703 .256 .208 2.75 .007 MACH-IV Total Scores -.173 .178 -.102 - .98 .331 Interaction MACH-IV & Choice to Lie -.314 .257 -.128 -1.22 .223

Step 3 R² =.125, F(5,158)=4.52, p=.001; (∆ R² =.041, F(2,158)=3.67, p=.028)

High or Low Choice to Lie .688 .252 .204 2.73 .007 MACH-IV Total Scores -.166 .195 -.098 - .85 .397 Interaction MACH-IV & Choice to Lie -.165 .273 -.067 - .60 .547 PPI-R:SF Total Scores -.017 .192 -.010 - .09 .930 Interaction PPI-R:SF & Choice to Lie -.507 .273 -.205 -1.86 .065 Note. ∆R²= R² change from Step 1 to Step 2, and from Step 2 to Step 3. Model Abbreviations: Un-Stzd β = Unstandardized Beta, Std Err = Standard Error, Stzd β = Standardized Beta. Significant p values (p < .05) are in bold. p values approaching significance (<.10) are in italics.

Second hierarchical regression: LPSP total scores. The second hierarchical regression used LPSP total scores as the psychopathy measure. In the first step of the regression, the Choice to Lie condition was entered as a predictor. In the second step, standardized total MACH-IV scores and the standardized interaction term of MACH-IV total scores were entered. In the third step, standardized LPSP total scores and the standardized interaction term of total LPSP scores with choice condition were entered as a predictor. Results are shown in Table 4. As can be seen, inclusion of total LPSP scores and their interaction with Self-Reported Enjoyment did not significantly increase predictive power above and beyond MACH-IV scores, ∆R² = .026,

F(2,158)= 2.33, p=.101.

Table 4: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Psychopathy (LPSP) Incrementally Predicting Abacus Task Enjoyment Above Level of Machiavellianism

Un- Std Stzd Criterion and Predictor Stzd t p Err β β Step 1 R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011; (∆ R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011)

High or Low Choice to Lie .671 .260 .199 2.58 .011

Step 2 R² =.085, F(3,160)=4.92, p=.003; (∆ R² =.045, F(2,160)=3.94, p=.021)

High or Low Choice to Lie .703 .256 .208 2.75 .007 MACH-IV Total Scores -.173 .178 -.102 - .98 .331 Interaction MACH-IV & Choice to Lie -.314 .257 -.128 -1.22 .223

Step 3 R² =.111, F(5,158)=3.94, p=.002; (∆ R² =.026, F(2,158)=2.33, p=.101)

High or Low Choice to Lie .712 .254 .211 2.81 .006 MACH-IV Total Scores -.282 .212 -.167 -1.33 .186 Interaction MACH-IV & Choice to Lie -.023 .296 -.009 - .08 .939 LPSP Total Scores .188 .204 .111 .92 .358 Interaction LPSP & Choice to Lie -.609 .297 -.238 -2.05 .042 Note. ∆R²= R² change from Step 1 to Step 2, and from Step 2 to Step 3. Model Abbreviations: Un-Stzd β = Unstandardized Beta, Std Err = Standard Error, Stzd β = Standardized Beta. Significant p values (p < .05) are in bold. p values approaching significance (<.10) are in italics.

3.2 Exploratory Analyses

Exploratory Analysis: Incremental Prediction of Task Enjoyment by Machiavellianism

The analyses reported thus far were confirmatory and based on a priori hypotheses. A series of exploratory analyses were also carried out, as reported in the following sections of the

Results. In the first set of exploratory analyses, two hierarchical multiple regressions were run to identify whether MACH-IV total scores incrementally predicted Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus task, above and beyond the predictive power of psychopathy scores.

First hierarchical regression: Incremental predictive power of MACH-IV total scores over PPI-R: SF total scores. The first exploratory analysis was conducted to examine whether

MACH-IV scores incrementally increased prediction of abacus task enjoyment, above and beyond the predictive power of PPI-R: SF scores. A hierarchical regression was conducted. In step one, the Choice to Lie condition was entered, in step two standardized PPI-R: SF total

55 scores and the standardized interaction term of total PPI-R: SF scores with choice condition was entered, and finally in step three the standardized total MACH-IV scores and the standardized interaction term of MACH-IV total scores with choice condition were entered. As can be seen in

Table 5, the inclusion of MACH-IV total scores and their interaction with Choice Condition did not significantly increase predictive power, ∆R² = .020, F(2,158)= 1.85, p= .160.

Table 5: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Machiavellianism Incrementally Predicting Abacus Enjoyment Over Level of Psychopathy (PPI-R: SF)

Un- Std Stzd Criterion and Predictor Stzd t p Err β β Step 1 R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011; (∆ R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011)

High or Low Choice to Lie .671 .260 .199 2.58 .011

Step 2 R² =.105, F(3,160)=6.23, p<.001; (∆ R² =.065, F(2,160)=5.82, p=.004)

High or Low Choice to Lie .661 .252 .196 2.62 .010 PPI-R:SF Total Score -.089 .173 -.053 -.52 .607 Interaction PPI-R:SF & Choice to Lie -.536 .254 -.216 -2.11 .036

Step 3 R² =.125, F(5,158)=4.52, p=.001; (∆ R² =.020, F(2,158)=1.85, p=.160)

High or Low Choice to Lie .688 .252 .204 2.73 .007 PPI-R:SF Total Scores -.017 .192 -.010 -.09 .930 Interaction PPI-R:SF & Choice to Lie -.507 .273 -.205 -1.86 .065 MACH-IV Total Scores -.166 .195 -.098 -.85 .397 Interaction MACH-IV & Choice to Lie -.165 .273 -.067 -.60 .547 Note. ∆R²= R² change from Step 1 to Step 2, and from Step 2 to Step 3. Significant alpha levels are in bold. Moderate alpha levels are in italics. Model Abbreviations: Un-Stzd β = Unstandardized Beta, Std Err = Standard Error, Stzd β = Standardized Beta.

Second hierarchical regression: Incremental predictive power of MACH-IV total scores over LPSP total scores. A similar hierarchical multiple regression was performed to examine whether MACH-IV scores incrementally increase prediction of abacus task enjoyment above and beyond the predictive power of LPSP scores. An incremental hierarchical regression was conducted. In step one, the Choice to Lie condition was entered, in step two standardized LPSP

56 total scores and the standardized interaction term of total LPSP scores with choice condition was entered, and finally in step three the standardized total MACH-IV scores and the standardized interaction term of MACH-IV total scores with choice condition were entered. As can be seen in

Table 6, the results of this analysis, like the previous one, were not significant, ∆R² = .022,

F(2,158)= 1.98, p= .142. The inclusion of Machiavellianism in the regression equation did not significantly increase predictive power, above and beyond the predictive power of LPSP scores.

Table 6: Hierarchical Multiple Regression Results: Level of Machiavellianism Incrementally Predicting Abacus Enjoyment Over Level of Psychopathy (LPSP)

Un- Std Stzd Criterion and Predictor Stzd t p Err β β Step 1 R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011; (∆ R² =.039, F(1,162)=6.66, p=.011)

High or Low Choice to Lie .671 .260 .199 2.58 .011

Step 2 R² =.089, F(3,160)=5.18, p=.002; (∆ R² =.049, F(2,160)=4.30, p=.015)

High or Low Choice to Lie .699 .255 .207 2.74 .007

LPSP Total Score .037 .171 .22 .827 .022 Interaction LPSP & Choice to Lie -.603 .258 -.236 -2.34 .021

Step 3 R² =.111, F(5,158)=3.94, p=.002; (∆ R² =.022, F(2,158)=1.98, p=.142)

High or Low Choice to Lie .712 .254 .211 2.81 .006 LPSP Total Scores .188 .204 .111 .92 .358 Interaction LPSP & Choice to Lie -.609 .297 -.238 -2.05 .042 MACH-IV Total Scores -.282 .212 -.167 -1.33 .186 Interaction MACH-IV & Choice to Lie -.023 .296 -.009 -.08 .939 Note. ∆R²= R² change from Step 1 to Step 2, and from Step 2 to Step 3. Significant alpha levels are in bold. Moderate alpha levels are in italics. Model Abbreviations: Un-Stzd β = Unstandardized Beta, Std Err = Standard Error, Stzd β = Standardized Beta.

Exploratory Analysis: PPI-R: SF Subscales as Predictors

The second set of exploratory multiple regressions was conducted using the eight subscales of the PPI-R: SF and their interaction with Choice Condition as predictors. Each subscale measures a different unique aspect of psychopathy. The goal of the analyses was to

57 determine which aspects of psychopathy were related to self-reported abacus task enjoyment.

A series of multiple linear regressions were conducted with abacus task enjoyment as the criterion. In each multiple regression, the predictors were Choice to Lie condition, the standardized total score of the individual PPI-R subscale, and the interaction term of the standardized individual subscale total score with Choice to Lie condition. Results are shown in

Table 2. All of the PPI-R: SF subscales except for the Stress Immunity and Social Influence subscales had significant model equations. In addition, three subscales also produced significant interactions with choice condition in predicting level of task enjoyment, (a) Machiavellian

Egocentricity, standardized β of the interaction = -.295, t(163) = -2.81, p = .006, (b)

Fearlessness, standardized β of the interaction = -.274, t(163) = -2.47, p = .015, (c) Rebellious

Nonconformity, standardized β of the interaction = -.243, t(163) = -2.30, p = .023. The remaining five subscales did not have interactions with choice condition that significantly predicted task enjoyment.

Exploratory Analysis: PPI-R: SF Factors as Predictors

Next two multiple regressions were carried out, one for each of the two factors of the

PPI-R: SF. The intention of these analyses was to determine if these factors of psychopathy

(cognitive traits or behavioral traits) would account for the lack of cognitive dissonance found in individuals with higher levels of psychopathy.

First multiple regression: The Fearless Dominance factor of the PPI-R: SF. The Fearless

Dominance factor (PPI-R: SF-1-FD) is comprised of three of the eight subscales of the PPI-R:

SF: the Social Influence subscale, the Fearlessness subscale, and the Stress Immunity subscale. A multiple regression was run with Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus test as the criterion, and

Choice Condition (High Choice to Lie versus Low Choice to Lie), the standardized PPI-R: SF-

1-FD total scores, and the interaction of Choice Condition with the standardized PPI-R: SF-1-FD total scores as the predictors. Results of the multiple regression are shown in Table 2. As can be seen, the model in the regression equation was statistically significant, R² = .053, F(3,160) =

2.96, p = .034. However, the interaction of PPI-R: SF-1-FD total scores and choice condition was not statistically significant in predicting level of task enjoyment, standardized β = -.167, t(163) = -1.46, p = .146.

Second multiple regression: The Self-Centered Impulsivity factor of the PPI-R: SF. Next, a similar multiple regression was run replacing the PPI-R:SF-1-FD with the Self-Centered

Impulsivity factor scale scores (PPI-R: SF-2-SCI). The Self-Centered Impulsivity factor is comprised of the Machiavellian Egocentricity subscale, the Rebellious Nonconformity subscale and the Carefree Nonplanfulness subscale of the PPI-R: SF. Results of the model in the multiple regression equation were statistically significant R² = .115, F(3,160) = 6.90, p < .001. In addition the interaction between the PPI-R: SF-2-SCI and choice condition was statistically significant as well, standardized β = -.220, t(163) = -2.213, p = .028. These results suggested that the more behavioral, antisocial behavior characteristics of psychopathy (impulsivity, blame externalization, lack of planning abilities) impacted cognitive dissonance arousal.

Exploratory Analysis: LPSP Factor Scales as Predictors

The next set of exploratory analyses were conducted on the LPSP’s two factor scales.

The LPSP breaks into a Primary Psychopathy Scale and a Secondary Psychopathy Scale. The

Primary Scale identifies the more cognitively based aspects of psychopathy, much as the PPI-R:

SF-1-FD Factor does. The Secondary Psychopathy Scale of the LPSP measures the behaviorally based dimensions of psychopathy (impulsivity, asociality), much like the PPI-R: SF-2-SCI

Factor. Two hierarchical regressions were conducted to examine the interaction between each of the LPSP factor scales and choice condition in predicting abacus task enjoyment.

First multiple regression: LPSP Primary Factor scores. First a multiple regression was employed with the Choice to Lie condition, the standardized Primary Factor total scores of the

LPSP and the interaction term of the standardized Primary Factor total scores with the Choice to

Lie condition as the predictors. Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus test was the criterion in the multiple regression. The results of the regression model equation were statistically significant

R² = .073, F(3,160) = 4.20, p = .007. However, the results of the interaction between the Primary

Factor and choice condition only approached statistical significance, standardized β = -.199, t(163) = -1.92, p = .057.

Second multiple regression: LPSP Secondary Factor scores. The Secondary factor of the

LPSP accounts for the environmental, behaviorally based traits associated with psychopathy

(impulsivity, asociality). A multiple regression was run replacing the LPSP Primary factor scores with the LPSP Secondary factor scores. In other words, the predictors were Choice to Lie condition, standardized LPSP Secondary factor scores, and the interaction of Choice to Lie with standardized LPSP Secondary factor scores. Again, Self-Reported Enjoyment of the Abacus task was the criterion. Results of the multiple regression model equation were statistically significant

R² = .063, F(3,160) = 3.59, p = .015. However, results of the interaction between the Secondary factor of the LPSP and choice condition were not statistically significant, standardized β = -.161, t(163) = -1.452, p = .148.

This analysis of the LPSP Primary and Secondary factor scales suggests that the cognitive dimensions of psychopathy may best account for a lack of cognitive dissonance in this experiment. These results support the notion that it is these cognitive deficits assessed by the

Primary Scale of the LPSP (lack of guilt, callousness, lack of concern for others) that best account for individuals with higher levels of psychopathy not experiencing the attitude shift found in people with lower levels of psychopathy.

Exploratory Analysis: MACH-IV Subscales as predictors

The next set of exploratory analyses examined the five subscales of the MACH-IV as predictors of task enjoyment when interacting with Choice to Lie condition. Though the interaction of total MACH-IV scores and choice condition was not a significant predictor of a lack of task enjoyment, the subscales were analyzed using multiple regression in order to determine if any aspect of MACH might account for a lack of cognitive dissonance in individuals with higher levels of MACH. In the regressions, the predictors were Choice to Lie condition, the standardized MACH-IV subscale total scores, and the standardized interaction term of total MACH-IV subscale scores with Choice to Lie condition. Results are reported in

Table 2. All of the regression model equations for each subscale were statistically significant.

Though all model equations were significant, only the interaction of choice condition with the

Flattery subscale of the MACH-IV was significant in predicting reported abacus task enjoyment, standardized β = -.204, t(163) = -2.00, p = .047. The interaction terms of the remaining four subscales of the MACH-IV were not significant.

Exploratory Analysis: Follow-up Multiple Regression Analyses with No-Lie Participants

Removed

As previously indicated, all multiple regressions reported here were run a second time, but including only the sub-set of participants who lied to the confederate (N=158). The results of these follow-up multiple regressions (with N = 158) all led to the same substantive conclusions as the analyses already reported (with N = 164), with one exception. The only analysis that

61 changed significantly was the multiple linear regression looking at the interaction between the

Primary factor of the LPSP and choice condition. In the original multiple regression (N = 164), this interaction only approached statistical significance. In the follow-up multiple regression (N

= 158), this interaction attained statistical significance standardized β = -.216, t(157) = -2.02, p =

.045.

Exploratory Analysis: Correlations of Psychopathy and Machiavellian measures

Pearson’s r correlations were run on the three psychopathy and MACH measures and their respective factors and subscales to identify associations among the measures.

Correlations of psychopathy and Machiavellianism total scores. Correlations among the

PPI-R:SF, LPSP, and MACH-IV total scores are reported in Table 7. As can be seen, all three measures were significantly correlated with each other. The largest correlation was between

MACH-IV and LPSP total scores, r = .510, p < .01.

Table 7: Correlations Between the Total Scores of the Psychopathy and Machiavellianism Measures

PPIR:SF LPSP MACH-IV

Total Score Total Score Total Score PPIR:SF 1 Total Score LPSP .345 † 1 Total Score MACH-IV .376 † .510 † 1 Total Score Note. † Correlations significant at the .01 level.

Correlations of PPI-R: SF and LPSP factor scores. Pearson’s r correlations were run on the factors of the PPI-R: SF and the LPSP in order to illuminate the relationship among these factors in the present sample of participants. Results are shown in Table 8.

First, the PPIR: SF total score correlated significantly with both the Primary ( r = .322, p

<.01) and the Secondary ( r = .212, p < .01) factor scores of the LPSP. The PPI-R: SF Factor Two

Scale of Self-Centered Impulsivity (behavioral characteristics of psychopathy) positively correlated with the LPSP total ( r = .509, p <.01) Primary ( r = .368, p < .01) and Secondary ( r =

.498, p < .01) factors. In contrast, the PPI-R: SF Factor One Scale of Fearless Dominance (PPI-

R: SF-1-FD) correlated significantly only with the Secondary Scale of the LPSP ( r = -.156, p <

.05). This correlation indicates that as scores on the PPI-R: SF-1-FD increase, scores on the

LPSP Secondary Scale decrease. However, it should be noted that this correlation is very weak.

Correlations of PPI-R and MACH-IV factor scores and subscale scores. As can be seen in Table 8, the PPI-R: SF total score correlated significantly with all of the MACH subscales except for the Cynicism subscale. Interestingly, PPI-R: SF Factor 2, Self-Centered Impulsivity, which assesses the behavioral characteristics of psychopathy, correlated significantly with the

MACH-IV total score (r = .478) and all of the subscales of the MACH-IV: Deceit (r = .383),

Flattery (r = .210), Immorality (r = .297), Cynicism (r = .242), and Residual (r = .279) at p < .01 level of significance. PPI-R: SF Factor 1, Fearless Dominance, which assesses the cognitive aspects of psychopathy, did not significantly correlate with the MACH-IV total score or any of its subscales. These exploratory findings suggest that the Self-Centered Impulsivity factor of the

PPI-R: SF accounts for the relationship of MACH-IV scores with PPI:R:SF scores.

Correlations of LPSP and MACH-IV factor scores and subscale scores. As shown in

Table 8, MACH-IV total scores significantly correlated with both the Primary (r = .467, p <.01) and Secondary (r = .327, p < .01) factors of the LPSP. The LPSP total score and factor scales

(Primary and Secondary) correlated significantly with the total MACH-IV score and all of the

MACH-IV subscales except for the Flattery subscale (see Table 8 for the correlations). This

63 finding is interesting because the Flattery subscale was the only element of the MACH-IV found to be a significant predictor of abacus task enjoyment in the interaction with choice condition mentioned previously, and yet it did not correlate with the LPSP at all.

Table 8: Correlations Between the PPI-R: SF, LPSP, MACH-IV, Their Factors and Subscales

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

1.PPIR 1 2.P1FD .761 † 1 3.P2SCI .771 † .240 † 1 4.M Ego .516 † .068 .712 † 1

5.Soc In .471 † .658 † .141 .087 1 6.Fear .645 † .727 † .362 † .104 .244 † 1 7.Cold .443 † .232 † .124 .191* .071 .076 1 8.Rebel .738 † .478 † .717 † .357 † .231 † .522 † .147 1 9.Blm E .264 † -.129 .629 † .348 † -.047 .090 -.194* .161* 1 10.Care .500 † .210 † .540 † .175* .101 .203 † .229 † .305 † .041 1

11.Stres .476 † .711 † .000 -.044 .198* .258 † .330 † .240 † -.306 † .132 1 12.LPSP .345 † -.024 .509 † .534 † -.018 .065 .209 † .241 † .369 † .186* -.097 1 13.Prime .322 † .059 .368 † .473 † .082 .031 .275 † .171* .219 † .105 .015 .902 † 1 14.Secon .212 † -.156* .498 † .370 † -.183* .090 -.011 .241 † .443 † .233 † -.243 † .664 † .277 † 1 15.MACH .376 † .076 .478 † .477 † .150 .105 .182* .244 † .278 † .264 † -.083 .510 † .467 † .327 † 1 16.Dece .356 † .085 .383 † .380 † .096 .121 .320 † .190* .094 .384 † -.033 .312 † .295 † .185* .631 † 1 17.Flat .189* .030 .210 † .192* .200* -.019 .186* .087 .062 .236 † -.097 .139 .118 .104 .570 † .304 † 1 18.Immor .176* -.003 .297 † .276 † .022 .069 -.013 .143 .296 † .040 -.093 .405 † .345 † .306 † .589 † .153 .202 † 1 19.Cyn .152 .030 .242 † .316 † -.025 .092 -.052 .160* .092 .072 -.008 .449 † .449 † .223 † .454 † .169* .057 .152 1 20.Resid .231 † .073 .279 † .266 † .133 .049 .086 .146 .231 † .076 -.019 .248 † .226 † .161* .689 † .244 † .213 † .197* .175* 1 Note. † Correlation significant at .01 level. * Correlation significant at .05 level Predictor Abbreviations: PPIR = PPI-R:SF total score, P1FD = PPIR:SF Factor 1 – Fearless Dominance Factor Score, P2SCI = PPIR:SF Factor 2-Self Centered Impulsivity Factor Score, M Ego = PPI-R:SF Machiavellianism Egocentricity subscale, Soc In = PPI-R:SF Social Influence subscale, Fear = PPI-R:SF Fearlessness subscale, Cold = PPI-R:SF Coldheartedness subscale, Rebel = PPI-R:SF Rebellious Nonconformity subscale, Blm E = PPI-R:SF Blame Externalization Subscale, Care = PPI-R:SF Carefree Nonplanfulness subscale, Stress = PPI-R:SF Stress Immunity subscale, LPSP = LPSP total score, Prime = LPSP Primary subscale, Secon = LPSP Secondary subscale, MACH = MACH-IV total score, Dece = MACH-IV Deceit subscale, Flat = MACH-IV Flattery subscale, Immor = MACH-IV Immorality subscale, Cyn = MACH-IV Cynicism subscale, Resid = MACH-IV Residual subscale score.

Exploratory Analyses: Multiple Regressions with Self-Reported Guilt as the Criterion and Level of Psychopathy and MACH as Predictors

In addition to the multiple regressions that were run with Self-Reported Enjoyment

Rating of the abacus task as the criterion and the interaction between choice level and psychopathy (and MACH) level as the predictors, identical multiple regressions were conducted with level of guilt as the criterion in the place of Self-Reported Level of Enjoyment. Multiple regressions were run where the predictors were Choice to Lie condition, standardized psychopathy and MACH measure total, factor and subscale scores (individually), and the interaction of Choice to Lie with PPI-R: SF, LPSP, or MACH scales. In these analyses, level of guilt was the criterion. On the post experimental questionnaire, two questions assessed participants’ level of guilt for telling the “future participant” that the abacus task was fun. These two guilt related questions correlated highly with one another ( r = .789) and so their scores were added together and a new variable called “Guilt” was created from their sum.

Multiple regressions on the interaction between choice and level of psychopathy (and

MACH). The goal of these exploratory analyses was to further explore the role that guilt plays during cognitive dissonance arousal. Results of all multiple regression analyses with guilt as the criterion are presented in Table 9. As can be seen, the interaction between level of psychopathy

(and MACH) and choice condition as predictors of guilt was only significant for the Self

Centered Impulsivity factor of the PPI-R: SF. The multiple regression model equation for the

Self Centered Impulsivity factor was statistically significant R² = .056, F(3,160) = 3.14, p = .027.

In addition, results of the interaction between the Self Centered Impulsivity factor and choice condition were statistically significant, standardized β = .232, t(163) = 2.25, p = .026.

Interestingly, this regression was not only significant, but also positive. All other interactions of

66 total, subscale and factor scales of the PPI-R: SF, LPSP and MACH-IV with choice condition were not significant in predicting participants’ level of self-reported guilt.

The fact that all other total scores, subscales and factor scales did not attain significant interactions with choice condition using guilt as the criterion makes sense when considering cognitive dissonance theory. The cognitive dissonance literature indicates that there should not be an interaction on guilt because participants strive to reduce their feelings of guilt after engaging in counterattitudinal behavior discrepant with their beliefs. Therefore, participants with low levels of psychopathy, after misleading the confederate in the High Choice condition, would have immediately experienced cognitive dissonance, and thus their attitude would have shifted towards enjoying the task in order to reduce the psychological tension produced by voluntarily misleading the “future participant.” Therefore, by the time they answered the guilt questions on the post-experimental questionnaire, they would not feel guilt because their attitude had shifted to be in favor of the task.

Main effects for relationship between psychopathy and guilt. Finally, an important result of these exploratory analyses was that significant main effects were found between level of psychopathy (measured by the PPI-R: SF) and participants’ level of guilt following the deception task. Specifically, the PPI-R: SF total score, both factor scores (Fearless Dominance and Self

Centered Impulsivity), the Rebellious Nonconformity subscale, and the Stress Immunity subscale had significant model predictor equations (see Table 9). The model equation for the Fearlessness subscale approached significance, F( 3,160) = 2.43, p = .068, as well.

After model equations were accounted for, the PPI-R: SF had a significant relationship with level of guilt such that individuals with higher levels of psychopathy experienced less guilt than participants with lower levels of psychopathy, across choice conditions (standardized β = -

.359, t(163) = -3.46, p = .001). In addition, both factor scales of the PPI-R: SF (Fearless

Dominance and Self Centered Impulsivity) were significant in predicting guilt (standardized β =

-.292, t(163) = -2.57, p = .011, standardized β = -.314, t(163) = -3.05, p = .003) respectively.

Finally three of the PPI-R: SF subscales reached significance in predicting level of guilt in participants as well: Fearlessness, Stress Immunity, and Rebellious Nonconformity. The

Fearlessness subscale and the Stress Immunity subscales load on the Fearless Dominance factor of the PPI-R: SF, which is important to note because this factor assesses the cognitive aspects of psychopathy, including lack of guilt and lack of remorse. Therefore, these results provide support for the validity of the PPI-R: SF in assessing psychopathic traits such as guiltlessness.

Overall Model High / Low Choice Psychopathy / Mach Predictor Interaction

Un- Un- Un- Predicto Std Stzd Std Stzd Std Stzd F (df) p Stzd t p Stzd t p Stzd t p r Err β Err β Err β β β β

PPI-R:SF 4.56 (3,160) .004 .046 .597 .006 .08 .938 -1.419 .410 -.359 -3.46 .001 .851 .600 .147 1.42 .158 PPI FD 3.61 (3,160) .015 -.003 .603 <.001 -.01 .996 -1.151 .449 -.292 -2.57 .011 .309 .607 .058 .51 .611 PPI SCI 3.14 (3,160) .027 .055 .605 .007 .09 .928 -1.237 .406 -.314 -3.05 .003 1.376 .611 .232 2.25 .026 Mach Ego .95 (3,160) .417 .091 .618 .012 .15 .883 -.627 .438 -.159 -1.43 .154 1.018 .620 .182 1.64 .103 Soc Infl .32 (3,160) .811 .029 .623 .004 .05 .963 -.047 .474 -.012 -.10 .921 -.356 .631 -.068 -.56 .574 Fearless 2.43 (3,160) .068 .018 .609 .002 .03 .977 -1.166 .448 -.296 -2.60 .010 .875 .612 .162 1.43 .155 Coldhrt .52 (3,160) .671 .132 .621 .017 .21 .832 -.446 .471 -.113 -.95 .346 .113 .628 .021 .18 .857 Rebel 7.43 (3,160) <.001 .050 .583 .006 .09 .931 -1.718 .407 -.435 -4.22 <.001 .833 .585 .147 1.42 .156 Blm Ext 1.57 (3,160) .199 .062 .613 .008 .10 .919 -.330 .449 -.084 -.73 .464 1.190 .616 .220 1.93 .055 Carefree 1.26 (3,160) .290 -.067 .622 -.009 -.11 .914 -.814 .425 -.206 -1.92 .057 .669 .625 .115 1.07 .287 Stress 4.26 (3,160) .006 .177 .599 .023 .30 .768 -.972 .421 -.246 -2.31 .022 -.199 .601 -.035 -.33 .742 LPSP .41 (3,160) .744 .090 .621 .011 .15 .885 -.445 .415 -.113 -1.07 .286 .577 .627 .097 .92 .359 Primary .39 (3,160) .764 .090 .621 .011 .15 .885 -.443 .425 -.112 -1.04 .299 .549 .624 .095 .88 .381 Second .17 (3,160) .919 .080 .622 .010 .13 .897 -.301 .450 -.076 -.67 .505 .386 .624 .071 .62 .537 MACH-IV .02 (3,160) .996 .076 .623 .010 .12 .903 -.085 .433 -.021 -.20 .845 .116 .625 .020 .19 .852 Deceit .15 (3,160) .928 .071 .622 .009 .11 .910 -.172 .406 -.043 -.42 .673 .421 .634 .068 .66 .508 Flattery .25 (3,160) .864 .100 .622 .013 .16 .872 -.320 .416 -.081 -.77 .443 .150 .628 .025 .24 .812 Immoral .85 (3,160) .468 .082 .618 .010 .13 .894 .396 .443 .100 .89 .373 -.968 .620 -.175 -1.56 .121 Cynicism .52 (3,160) .669 .040 .620 .005 .06 .949 .368 .472 .093 .78 .436 .032 .627 .006 .05 .960 Residual .19 (3,160) .900 .069 .621 .009 .11 .912 -.309 .410 -.078 -.75 .452 .326 .630 .054 .52 .606 Note. Significant p values (p < .05) are in bold. p values approaching significance (<.10) are in italics. Predictor Abbreviations: PPI-R:SF = PPI-R:SF total score, PPI FD = PPIR:SF Factor 1 – Fearless Dominance Factor Score, PPI SCI = PPIR:SF Factor 2-Self Centered Impulsivity Factor Score, Mach Ego = PPI-R:SF Machiavellianism Egocentricity subscale, Soc Infl = PPI-R:SF Social Influence subscale, Fearless = PPI-R:SF Fearlessness subscale, Coldhrt = PPI-R:SF Coldheartedness subscale, Rebel = PPI-R:SF Rebellious Nonconformity subscale, Blm Ext = PPI-R:SF Blame Externalization Subscale, Carefree = PPI-R:SF Carefree Nonplanfulness subscale, Stress Imun. = PPI-R:SF Stress Immunity subscale, LPSP = LPSP total score, Primary = LPSP Primary subscale, Second = LPSP Secondary subscale, MACH-IV = MACH-IV total score, Deceit = MACH-IV Deceit subscale, Flattery = MACH-IV Flattery subscale, Immoral = MACH-IV Immorality subscale, Cynicism = MACH-IV Cynicism subscale, Residual = MACH-IV Residual subscale score. Model Abbreviations: Un-Stzd β = Unstandardized Beta, Std Err = Standard Error, Stzd β = Standardized Beta.

Exploratory Analyses: Factor Analyses of the Psychopathy and Machiavellianism Measures

In order to assess what specific constructs the self-report psychopathy and

Machiavellianism measures were identifying, several factor analyses were conducted. The goal of these analyses was twofold. First the intention was to categorize the unique traits of psychopathy and MACH that were being identified in the participants by these measures, and second, to distinguish overall factors of these personality traits that are similar across measures.

Factor analysis of PPI-R: SF, LPSP, and MACH-IV total scores. The total scores of the

PPI-R, LPSP and MACH-IV were factor analyzed using principal axis factor analysis. Squared multiple correlations were used to estimate communalities in the initial factor pattern, and solutions were iterated four times. Only one component in a preliminary principal components analysis had an eigenvalue greater than 1 (1.826), and the scree plot of the eigenvalues indicated a clear break after one factor. However, for exploratory purposes, three-factor and two-factor factor analytic solutions were also attempted. The three-factor solution yielded three factors, each corresponding to the three original variables. The two-factor solution yielded one large primary factor and a second factor with only trivial loadings (all loadings < .25). Therefore the one-factor solution was selected as the most informative. Oblique rotation was performed using

Promax. As can be seen in Table 10, one clearly defined factor emerged from the three variables.

The factor appears to tap psychopathic and Machiavellian tendencies and thus has been named

Psychopathic Machiavellianism.

Table 10: Factor Solutions Between PPI-R: SF, LPSP, and MACH-IV Total Scores

Psychopathic Measure Machiavellianism PPI-R: SF Total Score .505 LPSP Total Score .687 MACH-IV Total Score .743

Factor analysis of all psychopathy and Machiavellianism items. A second factor analysis was run using all of the individual items from the three self-report measures of psychopathy and

Machiavellianism (PPI-R: SF, LPSP, MACH-IV). Squared multiple correlations were used to estimate communalities in the initial factor pattern. Thirty-two components with eigenvalues greater than 1 emerged from a preliminary principle component analysis, and the scree plot indicated there were approximately 25 to 35 factors.

A principal axis factor analysis with Promax rotation was performed extracting 32 factors. However, only 15 of the 32 factors had two or more factor loadings greater than .50.

Therefore, several additional factor solutions were attempted to determine how many relevant meaningful factors were present. Finally it was determined that a nine-factor solution yielded the largest number of interpretable factors, with each factor including at least two variables with loadings greater than .50 (see Table 11). Upon analyzing the items that loaded into each of the nine factors, names were identified for each factor based on the common characteristics of the items. The nine factors are: Machiavellian Success, Thrill Seeking Behavior, Stress Immunity,

Feelings of Persecution, Inability to Plan, Social Disregard, Interpersonal Ease, Manipulative

Deceit, and Social Frustration.

Table 11: Factor Loadings of Total Item Factor Analysis

Factor Original Mach Thrill Stress Inabl Social Intper Manip Soc Persec Item Succes Seek Immun Plan Dsrgrd Ease Deceit Frustr L2 .654 .069 -.068 .217 .070 -.042 -.184 -.006 -.092 L4 .595 -.044 .044 .117 .044 .136 .029 .039 .064 L1 .586 .060 -.009 .106 .127 -.235 .195 -.023 -.099 L3 .576 .097 .027 .023 .144 -.046 .013 .007 .098 L5 .551 -.073 .131 -.047 .022 .026 .205 -.041 .028 L12 -.516 -.010 -.180 .000 .156 .147 .066 .073 .181 L8 .466 .030 .082 -.162 .093 -.021 .109 .022 .076 L14 -.428 -.032 .150 -.103 .202 .023 .131 .224 .230 L15 -.402 .053 -.078 -.039 .146 .000 -.023 -.215 .260 L6 .387 .001 .040 .050 .108 -.183 -.212 -.038 .132 L7 .368 -.121 -.216 .162 .165 -.095 -.154 .116 -.008 M9 -.322 -.099 -.009 .154 .100 -.300 -.076 -.191 .039 L26 .320 .165 .054 .101 .051 .073 -.198 .034 .042 L11 .318 .222 -.223 -.116 .059 -.030 .007 -.078 .219 M7 -.288 .108 -.090 -.102 -.014 -.006 -.085 -.158 -.168 M17 -.225 .031 .136 .012 -.018 -.160 .200 .210 .070 M3 -.195 -.159 -.087 -.057 -.017 .060 .077 .002 -.037 M16 -.179 .108 -.012 -.141 -.115 -.170 -.168 .008 -.052 P53 .074 .655 .052 -.031 -.075 .061 -.179 -.014 .066 P5 -.034 .637 .032 -.128 -.154 .077 -.138 -.115 .063 P38 .050 .555 .207 .034 -.038 .011 .010 -.143 -.086 P22 .080 .535 -.013 -.261 .023 .043 .003 .069 .045 P9 .063 .514 -.060 .179 -.002 -.148 -.023 -.130 .010 P19 .059 -.475 .057 .022 .049 -.074 -.052 -.068 .115 P16 .051 .468 -.166 .103 -.108 -.059 -.015 -.088 .104 P1 .157 -.407 .037 .046 .095 .019 -.047 -.145 .183 P52 -.033 .407 -.199 .050 -.123 .073 .128 .175 -.058 P36 .157 .353 .020 .130 -.014 .145 .143 .156 -.039 P30 .148 .308 -.267 .161 .024 -.059 -.049 .205 .125 P47 -.126 .261 -.067 .069 -.015 -.029 .134 .135 .237 P4 -.117 .259 -.250 .098 .046 .219 .116 .107 .033 P14 .251 .251 -.110 .005 -.109 .064 .117 -.168 .088 P48 .114 .031 .733 .054 .073 -.042 .023 -.035 .005 P39 .022 .086 .660 .134 .128 .066 -.007 .103 -.051 P28 .080 -.073 .609 -.008 -.017 .183 -.061 .187 .093 P11 .153 .007 .563 -.118 -.141 .266 -.026 .051 .112 P26 -.089 -.111 .543 .091 .141 .074 -.037 .075 .001 P13 -.004 .039 -.506 -.095 .129 .144 -.034 .084 -.135 M14 .084 -.035 .359 .209 -.062 -.125 .211 .069 -.164 P2 -.027 .189 -.335 .125 -.193 .005 .173 .083 .074 P23 .176 .050 -.309 .033 -.190 .082 .108 .075 .266 M19 -.188 -.022 .250 -.069 -.150 -.116 .088 .043 -.054 M2 -.219 -.015 .240 .176 -.233 -.101 .114 .054 .223 M20 -.048 -.039 .226 .064 -.158 -.178 .165 .049 -.121 P41 .012 -.047 -.009 .636 -.081 -.004 .058 .038 .096 L25 .011 -.033 .061 .591 -.093 -.048 -.050 -.112 .054 P50 -.019 .016 .024 .583 .021 .104 .049 -.020 .209 P24 .085 .012 .211 .546 -.065 .049 .073 .094 -.106 P6 .100 .147 .153 .490 -.028 -.050 .072 .072 -.036 P34 .163 -.039 .055 .440 .046 .154 .004 -.010 .058 L24 .141 -.093 -.172 .373 -.078 -.074 -.075 -.040 .186 M18 .005 .028 .104 -.329 -.005 -.129 .023 .179 -.057 M6 -.059 -.157 -.193 -.261 .146 -.019 .031 -.129 -4.48E-005 P42 .099 -.181 .073 -.073 .542 .057 .020 -.006 .023 P40 .148 -.231 .018 -.220 .521 -.001 .005 -.026 .033 L23 .003 -.268 -.162 -.030 .516 .086 .085 -.188 .070 M8 -.091 -.003 -.077 .103 -.504 -.044 -.117 -.056 -.045 P51 .035 -.096 -.050 -.042 .447 -.217 -.091 -.023 .153 P33 .123 .071 .178 .164 .447 -.042 .144 -.261 .042 P49 .056 -.025 -.056 -.138 .394 .215 -.169 -.059 .019 M10 .282 -.018 .046 -.162 -.374 -.041 .134 -.105 .119 P20 .254 .003 .063 -.132 .370 .026 .049 .226 -.287 L10 -.294 .313 .014 -.246 .366 -.174 .027 .004 .220 P56 .144 .083 -.144 .186 -.354 .072 .061 .136 .269 M5 .021 .040 -.001 -.154 -.350 -.077 -.050 .192 .238

Factor

Original Mach Thrill Stress Inabl Social Intper Manip Soc Persec Item Succes Seek Immun Plan Dsrgrd Ease Deceit Frustr M13 .124 .105 .157 -.226 -.311 -.216 .050 -.073 .163 L19 -.089 .054 -.123 .089 .286 -.129 -.004 .045 -.063 P45 -.207 -.081 .211 .045 .270 .255 .023 -.068 .043 L21 -.077 -.179 .056 .170 -.229 .042 -.118 .195 .187 P37 .111 .235 .211 .017 .024 .592 -.112 -.115 .017 P12 .044 .149 .138 -.123 .057 .571 .023 .003 .110 P27 -.144 -.152 .013 .056 .052 .547 .057 .095 .081 P10 -.096 -.031 -.030 .065 -.023 .453 .042 -.110 -.090 P55 -.184 -.010 -.177 .183 -.031 .41 9 -.035 .051 -.010 P54 .094 -.076 -.127 -.024 .339 .406 .163 .024 .151 P25 -.064 .128 .192 .275 -.051 .392 .087 -.284 .022 M12 -.115 -.023 -.024 .002 -.220 .245 -.052 -.120 -.130 P21 .067 -.141 .077 .154 .112 -.038 .740 -.057 .130 P15 -.059 .138 -.189 .099 .160 .144 .556 -.128 .054 P18 .103 .001 -.135 -.028 .097 .028 .533 -.021 -.237 P32 .023 .037 -.126 .159 .167 -.088 -.532 .093 -.016 P29 -.067 .211 -.109 .014 .089 -.199 .528 -.130 .037 P17 .133 .401 .250 -.067 .132 .016 .456 .011 -.085 P32 .004 .171 .026 -.039 .269 -.027 -.454 .174 -.147 P43 .071 .046 .112 -.059 .029 -.021 -.143 .557 .286 M1 -.330 .104 .013 .007 .040 -.115 .102 -.512 .106 L9 .363 -.112 -.006 -.046 .044 -.113 .085 .491 .120 L20 -.108 .030 .004 .035 -.085 .002 -.043 .463 -.082 L18 -.232 .055 .199 .085 -.004 -.055 -.263 .446 .025 P35 .118 -.031 -.024 -.029 -.011 -.083 -.145 .419 .171 M15 .036 -.053 .018 -.161 -.282 -.094 .088 .332 .081 P31 -.030 .176 .213 .160 .198 -.074 -.102 .319 .224 L16 -.154 -.015 .020 .024 .162 .153 .144 -.185 .164 L22 .024 -.112 .063 .204 .128 .107 -.156 .117 .527 L17 -.168 .124 -.069 .090 .048 .054 .000 .180 .518 P7 .070 -.190 .243 .173 -.011 -.023 .205 .025 .487 P46 .229 -.086 .172 .098 .009 -.145 .067 -.156 .448 P3 -.022 .073 .297 .034 -.100 .288 -.202 -.105 .392 P44 .109 .084 .013 .224 .077 -.051 -.199 .046 .280 M11 .038 .056 -.087 -.113 .019 .144 .093 -.025 .266 M4 -.205 .046 .092 .080 .080 -.037 -.123 -.177 -.263 L13 .143 -.030 -.189 -.079 -.140 -.124 .028 .139 .238 Note. Extraction Method: Principal Axis Factoring with Promax. Rotation converged in 9 iterations. Factor loadings > .40 are in bold. Abbreviations: Original Item Number= The item number from each of the three self-report measures used in this study: L = LPSP, P = PPI-R: SF, M = MACH-IV (ex. P48 = Item 48 on the PPI-R: SF), Mach Succes = Machiavellian Success, Thrill Seek = Thrill Seeking Behavior, Stress Immun = Stress Immunity, Persec = Feelings of Persecution, Inabl Plan = Inability to Plan, Social Dsrgrd = Social Disregard, Intper Ease = Interpersonal Ease, Manip Deceit = Manipulative Deceit, Soc Frust = Social Frustration.

Factor analysis of PPI-R: SF, LPSP, and MACH-IV subscales. Finally a principal axis factor analysis of the subscales of the three self-report measures of psychopathy and

Machiavellianism was conducted. Squared multiple correlations were used to estimate communalities in the initial factor pattern. In a preliminary principal components analysis, five components had eigenvalues greater than 1 (3.410, 2.093, 1.422, 1.209, 1.128) and the scree plot of the eigenvalues indicated a break around five factors.

Oblique rotation of the initial principal axis pattern was performed using Promax. A three, four, and six factor solution was attempted in addition to the five factor solution. In comparing the pattern matrices between factor models, each factor in the three-factor model was interpretable and had at least two loadings greater than .50, whereas the five-factor model included one factor that did not have at least two loadings greater than .50. In addition, the four- and five-factor models would not converge in fewer than 25 iterations. The three-factor model, compared to the four and five-factor models, also had the most meaningful factor loadings in terms of shared characteristics among the subscales in each factor. Therefore the three-factor model was selected. Table 12 reports the factor loadings for the three-factor model. Based on the common characteristics shared by the subscales in their respective factors, the following factor names were assigned: Antisocial Behavior, Coldhearted Callousness and Thrill Seeking.

Table 12: Factor Loadings of the Psychopathy and MACH Measures Subscales

Factor Antisocial Coldhearted Thrill Subscale Behavior Callousness Seeking PPI Blame Ext .707 -.152 .032 LPSP Secondary .630 .050 .023 PPI Mach Ego .467 .401 .070 PPI Stress Immun -.455 .148 .421 MACH Cynicism .424 .149 -.016 MACH Flattery .302 .191 .020 PPI Coldhrt -.307 .638 .035 MACH Deceit .130 .588 -.015 LPSP Primary .341 .486 -.071 MACH Immoral .088 .397 -.081 PPI Carefree .033 .309 .226 MACH Residual .251 .261 .004 PPI Rebel .209 -.011 .752 PPI Fearless .056 -.168 .746 PPI Social Influ -.131 .125 .295 Note. Extraction Method: Principal Axis Factoring with Promax. Rotation converged in 6 iterations. Factor loadings > .30 appear in bold. Subscale Abbreviations: PPI Blame Ext = PPI-R:SF Blame Externalization subscale, LPSP Secondary = LPSP Secondary subscale, PPI Mach Ego = PPI-R:SF Machiavellianism Egocentricity subscale, PPI Stress Immun = PPI-R:SF Stress Immunity subscale, MACH Cynicism = MACH-IVCynicism subscale, MACH Flattery = MACH-IV Flattery subscale, PPI Coldhrt = PPI-R:SFColdheartedness subscale, MACH Deceit = MACH-IV Deceit subscale, LPSP Primary = LPSP Primary subscale, MACH Immoral = MACH-IV Immorality subscale, PPI Carefree = PPI-R:SF Carefree Nonplanfulness subscale, MACH Residual = MACH-IV Residual Subscale, PPI Rebel = PPI-R:SF Rebellious Nonconformity subscale, PPI Fearless = PPI-R:SF Fearlessness subscale, PPI Social Influ = PPI-R:SF Social Influence subscale.

Chapter 4: Discussion

Four findings of the present study are particularly notable. First, as predicted, the classic cognitive dissonance effect was replicated in the sample as a whole. That is, participants in the

High Choice to Lie Condition reported enjoying the abacus task more than participants in the

Low Choice to Lie Condition. Second, as predicted, a significant interaction was found between

Choice Condition and level of psychopathy as measured by the PPI-R: SF and the LPSP.

Specifically, the classic cognitive dissonance effect was found among participants with lower levels of psychopathic traits, but not among participants with higher levels of psychopathic traits.

Third, contrary to prediction, no significant interaction was found between Choice Condition and level of Machiavellianism as measured by the MACH-IV. Fourth, level of psychopathy demonstrated incremental predictive power over level of MACH in predicting abacus task enjoyment. Each of these four findings is discussed below.

4.1 Classic Cognitive Dissonance Effect

One important finding of the current study was a significant main effect of Choice

Condition on abacus task enjoyment. Specifically, individuals in the High Choice to Lie condition reported enjoying the abacus task more than participants in the Low Choice to Lie condition.

This finding replicates the results of two earlier studies that examined cognitive dissonance in a similar manner. In studies by Cooper and Worchel (1970) and Festinger and

Carlsmith (1959), participants performed a tedious task and then were asked to mislead a fellow- student (actually a confederate) that the task was enjoyable. Half of participants were given only a weak external motivation to deceive the fellow-student (low monetary reward or half of an experimental credit), whereas the other half of participants were given a stronger external

motivation to deceive the fellow-student (a high monetary reward or multiple experimental credits). In both of these studies, participants with weak external motivation to engage in the deception reported enjoying the task more than did participants with stronger external motivation.

The main difference between the current study and the Cooper and Worchel (1970) and

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) studies is that external motivation (high or low) was manipulated by the aforementioned researchers whereas we manipulated participants’ level of perceived choice. However, there is a close conceptual relationship between level of external motivation and level of perceived choice from the perspective of cognitive dissonance theory. Previous research has indicated that both choice manipulation and external motivation have similar effects in creating cognitive dissonance. In both cases, external justification is being manipulated.

Participants in the low choice (direct instruction) condition attribute their actions to the influence of external pressures that forced them to perform the dissonant behavior. Participants rationalize that if given the choice, they would not have engaged in the behavior, and thus cognitive dissonance is avoided. The same conclusion is drawn when participants are given high external motivation to engage in a dissonant behavior such as a high monetary reward. Participants again rely on the external justification of high reward to explain their engagement in the dissonant act.

They rationalize their dissonant behavior by relying on the high reward as justification for behaving in uncharacteristically. Participants in the high reward condition rationalize that if the reward was not present as external justification, then they would not have engaged in the task, which results in a lack of cognitive dissonance as well. Alternatively, participants with either high choice (voluntary participation) or low reward cannot rely on external justification because none exists in these conditions. Thus attitude shift results from the need to ameliorate their

cognitive dissonance. Overall, external justification is needed to alleviate cognitive dissonance arousal, and this justification is provided by either an external motivation (reward) manipulation or by a low choice manipulation.

Self-perceived choice has frequently been used as the independent variable in cognitive dissonance studies. As in our experiment, these earlier studies found that self-perceived choice

(i.e., High versus Low Choice) had a significant main effect on cognitive dissonance Several of these studies reported that participants experienced an attitude shift toward being in favor of an undesirable task or belief only when they felt free choice to engage in the dissonant behavior, such as misleading a confederate or writing a counterattitudinal essay (Brehm & Cohn, 1962;

Chatzisarantis, Hagger, & Wang, 2008; Cooper, 1971; Davis & Jones, 1960; Festinger &

Carlsmith, 1959; Linder, Cooper, & Jones, 1967; Sénémeaud & Somat, 2009; Sherman, 1970).

Therefore, the current experiment has added empirical support to the body of cognitive dissonance research examining choice condition as a predictor of attitude shift.

4.2 Psychopathy and Cognitive Dissonance

The main hypothesis of this study was that people with low levels of psychopathy would experience cognitive dissonance about engaging in deception, whereas individuals with higher levels of psychopathy would not experience cognitive dissonance.

PPI-R: SF total scores and cognitive dissonance. Results supported our hypothesis in regard to psychopathy when measured by total scores on the PPI-R: SF. Participants with higher total scores on the PPI-R: SF reported significantly less enjoyment of the abacus task on the post- experimental questionnaire than participants with lower levels of psychopathy. Specifically, the interaction between Choice to Lie condition and total PPI-R: SF scores was significant in predicting abacus task enjoyment, standardized β = -.216, p = .036. True to our prediction,

participants with low to non-existent levels of psychopathy experienced cognitive dissonance only when in the High Choice to Lie condition, and not in the Low Choice to Lie condition.

Consistent with earlier studies (Cooper & Worchel, 1970; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959), it appears that low psychopathy participants in the Low Choice to Lie condition perceived that they had a strong external motivation for misleading their fellow-student (direct instruction to lie).

Thus they did not experience cognitive dissonance and could (accurately) rate the abacus task as boring. However, low psychopathy participants in the High Choice to Lie condition did not perceive that they had a strong external motivation for misleading their fellow student (they voluntarily agreed to tell the lie after being asked). The participants experienced cognitive dissonance in the form of psychological tension or guilt, which they reduced by convincing themselves that the abacus task was actually interesting, as they had told their fellow student.

On the other hand, participants with higher levels of psychopathy reported disliking the abacus task on the post-experimental questionnaire regardless of the Choice to Lie condition they were in. It appears that participants with higher levels of psychopathy did not experience cognitive dissonance (i.e., psychological tension or guilt) about misleading a fellow student.

Consequently, these participants did not experience a need to change their view of the abacus task or to rate it as more enjoyable than it really was.

PPI-R: SF subscales on cognitive dissonance. Exploratory analyses were conducted using the eight subscales of the PPI-R: SF. Each subscale measures a different facet of psychopathy. The goal of analyzing each subscale individually was to examine which aspects of psychopathy, if any, were related to a lack of cognitive dissonance. Three subscales produced significant interactions with choice condition in predicting level of task enjoyment:

Machiavellian Egocentricity (ME), Fearlessness (F), and Rebellious Nonconformity (RN). The

Machiavellian Egocentricity and Rebellious Nonconformity subscales load on the Self Centered

Impulsivity factor (antisocial behavior traits of psychopathy) of the PPI-R: SF while the

Fearlessness subscale loads on the Fearless Dominance factor (cognitive, personality based traits of psychopathy) of the PPI-R: SF.

The Machiavellian Egocentricity subscale identifies aggressive self-centered tendencies when interacting with other individuals (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003;

Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996). Items from this subscale include “I could be a good con-artist,” “I sometimes lie to see if I can get someone to believe me,” and “I tell people the part of the truth they want to hear.” This scale seems to identify psychopathic characteristics that would allow for individuals to have a lack of psychological tension or guilt over misleading others. Thus, in the present experiment, it appears that these traits may have inhibited participants’ experience of cognitive dissonance over lying to the confederate. The significant interaction of the ME scale and choice condition suggests that the participants in our study who lacked concern for misleading others or even prided themselves in their ability to mislead others (as the scale predicts) did not experience guilt or psychological stress.

The Fearlessness (F) subscale of the PPI-R: SF identifies willingness to engage in risky behavior with a lack of regard for the negative consequences of one’s actions. The Rebellious

Nonconformity subscale (RN) indicates reckless behavior with a lack of concern for future consequences (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003; Lilienfeld & Andrews,

1996). These scales are similar in that higher scores on the scales indicate an inability to comprehend future negative consequences of one’s actions. These subscales also were substantially correlated in the present study ( r = .522). In regard to the current experiment, it may be that participants who scored higher on the Fearlessness and Rebellious Nonconformity

subscales were unable to comprehend or feel concern for the negative impact their deceptive actions could have on their fellow student. Thus, participants with higher levels of fearlessness and rebellious nonconformity may have experienced less psychological tension, and less cognitive dissonance, about engaging in the deception than did participants with low levels of these traits. Because these findings are exploratory, further studies should analyze these variables so that strong conclusions can be made.

PPI-R: SF factors on cognitive dissonance. In exploratory analyses, the Self-Centered

Impulsivity factor of the PPI-R: SF was the only factor to have a significant interaction with choice condition in predicting abacus task enjoyment. That is, the dissonance effect was found among participants with low scores on the PPI-R: SF Self Centered Impulsivity factor, but not among participants with high scores. The Self Centered Impulsivity factor is comprised of the

Machiavellian Egocentricity subscale, the Rebellious Nonconformity subscale and the Carefree

Nonplanfulness subscale of the PPI-R: SF. The Self-Centered Impulsivity factor of the PPI-R: SF has been found in the literature to correlate with the behavioral traits associated with psychopathy such as a DSM diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, lower education levels, lower employment rates, lower SES, and increased drug and alcohol abuse (Benning,

Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003). Therefore, the present results suggest that the behavioral, antisocial behavior characteristics of psychopathy (impulsivity, blame externalization, lack of planning abilities) affected participants’ experience of guilt-induced cognitive dissonance.

In contrast, the interaction between the Fearless Dominance (FD) factor of the PPI-R: SF and choice condition was not a significant predictor of abacus task enjoyment. The Fearless

Dominance factor is characterized by low trait anxiety, social dominance and fearlessness when

engaging in risky actions. Individuals who score higher on the Fearless Dominance factor of the

PPI-R: SF are often described as the more “successful psychopath,” because they are characterized by higher SES, more advanced education, and a lack of substance abuse (Benning,

Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003) as compared to the type of psychopathy predicted by the PPI-R: SF Self Centered Impulsivity factor. In fact, studies have found that the two factors of the PPI-R: SF are orthogonal (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003; Lilienfeld &

Fowler, 2006). Therefore, the present results suggest that individuals with higher scores on the

Fearless Dominance factor of the PPI-R: SF may have the propensity to experience cognitive dissonance more than individuals with the more antisocial traits of psychopathy (as measured by the Self Centered Impulsivity Factor).

LPSP total scores on cognitive dissonance. The effect of psychopathy on cognitive dissonance was also examined using scores from the LPSP. Similar to the results using the PPI-

R: SF, the interaction of LPSP total scores and choice condition was statistically significant in predicting level of task enjoyment. Specifically, a significant relationship did not exist between

LPSP scores and Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus task in the Low Choice to Lie condition. However, in accordance with our prediction, there was a significant negative correlation between LPSP total scores and Self-Reported Enjoyment in the High Choice to Lie condition. This result further supported the hypothesis that individuals with lower levels of psychopathy would show the classic cognitive dissonance effect, but that individuals with higher levels would not.

LPSP factor scores on cognitive dissonance. Both the Primary and Secondary factors of the LPSP were examined in exploratory analyses to see if one factor’s constellation of psychopathic traits better accounted for a lack of cognitive dissonance than the other. The

findings of this analysis implicate the cognitive (callousness, fearless dominance, low trait anxiety) characteristics of psychopathy (as measured by the Primary factor), rather than the external behavioral markers (as measured by the Secondary factor), as cues to understanding the cognitive differences found in individuals with higher levels of psychopathy. The results of the interaction between the Primary (Cognitive) Factor and choice condition approached statistical significance (unless the data was analyzed with the six individuals who did not lie factored out).

Further analysis of the data found that the interaction of LPSP Secondary (Behavioral) factor scores with choice condition was not a significant predictor of abacus task enjoyment.

Interestingly, these analyses of the LPSP factor scales yielded results that seem contrary to the results concerning the PPI-R: SF factor scales. As already noted, the PPI-R: SF factor scale analysis suggested that the behavioral characteristics of psychopathy (as measured by the PPI-R:

Self Centered Impulsivity factor) were related to the absence of a cognitive dissonance effect. In contrast, however, the LPSP Secondary (behavioral) factor was not significantly related to whether the cognitive dissonance effect was found. Instead, the findings for the LPSP Primary

(cognitive) factor approached significance.

The conflicting findings regarding the PPI-R and LPSP factor scales may be partially explained by the fact that the LPSP’s Primary and Secondary factors have not shown a consistent relationship to other scales that measure the behavioral and cognitive dimensions of psychopathy

(Skeem & Lilienfeld, 2004). Levenson and colleagues (1995) reported that the two factors of the

LPSP mirrored the two factors of the PPI-R and the PCL-R. However, the discriminant and convergent validity of the LPSP factor scales have been inconclusive in several studies. For example, a study by Lilienfeld, Skeem and Poythress (2004) found that the LPSP Primary

(cognitive) factor (callousness, lack of guilt or remorse, low trait anxiety) of the LPSP was more

correlated with the secondary (Self Centered Impulsivity) factor of the PPI-R ( r = .62) than with the primary (Fearless Dominance) factor of the PPI-R ( r = .16).

In addition to the study by Lilienfeld et al. (2004), other researchers have obtained results indicating that the Primary (cognitive) Scale of the LPSP correlates higher with the secondary factor of the PPI-R (Self Centered Impulsivity) rather than the with the primary factor of the PPI-

R (Fearless Dominance; Wilson, Frick, & Clements, 1999; Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001).

Furthermore, the Primary (cognitive) scale of the LPSP appears to correlate more highly with antisocial behaviors, rather than with the callous cognitive traits it was designed to measure

(Lilienfeld, Skeem & Poythress, 2004; McHoskey, Worzel, & Szyarto, 1998). Therefore, the discrepancy in the results between the PPI-R: SF factor scales and the LPSP factor scales in the current study might be a result of the LPSP Primary scale not being discriminant or divergent enough from the antisocial behavior characteristics that are measured by the Secondary Scale of the LPSP and by the factor scales of other measures like the PPI-R. In other words, perhaps the

Primary Scale of the LPSP is not accurately identifying just the cognitive personality-based traits of psychopathy that is was designed to measure, and thus this imprecision of the factor is what led to the seemingly inconsistent results concerning the PPI-R: SF and LPSP factors.

Table 13 reports the significant (and insignificant) interactions between choice condition and level of psychopathy by individual subscale and factor scale scores. This table specifically sorts the subscales and factor scales by the main psychopathy factors evidenced in the literature

(cognitive or behavioral) that the subscales and factors load on. Past studies have consistently confirmed the subscales arranged below load on the factor indicated (either the more behavioral factor or the more cognitive affective factor) (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Iacono,

2005; Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003; Edens, Lilienfeld, Poythress, Patrick,

& Test, 2008; Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996; Lilienfeld &

Widows, 2005; Patrick, Edens, Poythress, Lilienfeld, & Benning, 2006; Poythress & Skeem,

2006; Uzieblo, Verschuere, & Crombez, 2007). By separating the significant subscale and factor score results in the current study by the respective factor they have been shown to load on

(cognitive or behavioral), the difference in our somewhat mixed results becomes clearer. The results evidence that, in the current study, Secondary psychopathy (Factor 2; antisociality, impulsivity, inability to plan, thrill seeking behavior) seems to relate more to a lack of cognitive dissonance in the sample of participants.

Cognitive Affective Factor Antisocial Behavior Factor Factor/Subscale Stdz β t p Stdz β t p PPI FD Factor -.167 -1.46 .146 PPI Soc Infl .057 .48 .631 PPI Fearless -.274 -2.47 .015 PPI Stress Imm -.101 -.93 .352 LPSP Primary -.199 -1.92 .057 PPI SCI Factor -.220 -2.21 .028 PPI Mach Ego -.295 -2.81 .006 PPI Rebel -.243 -2.30 .023 PPI Blm Ext -.036 -.32 .747 PPI Carefree .068 .66 .511 LPSP Second -.161 -1.45 .148 Note. Significant p values (p < .05) are in bold. p values approaching significance (<.10) are in italics. Predictor Abbreviations: PPI FD Factor = PPIR:SF Factor 1 – Fearless Dominance Factor, PPI Soc Infl = PPI-R:SF Social Influence subscale, PPI Fearlessness = PPI-R:SF Fearlessness subscale, PPI Stress Imun = PPI-R:SF Stress Immunity subscale, LPSP Primary = LPSP Primary subscale, PPI SCI Factor = PPIR:SF Factor 2-Self Centered Impulsivity Factor, PPI Mach Ego = PPI-R:SF Machiavellianism Egocentricity subscale, PPI Rebel = PPI-R:SF Rebellious Nonconformity subscale, PPI Blm Extern = PPI-R:SF Blame Externalization subscale, PPI Carefree = PPI-R:SF Carefree Nonplanfulness subscale, LPSP Second = LPSP Secondary subscale. The PPI-R:SF Colheartedness Scale is not included because it has not been shown to load on the Two Factor Solution. Model Abbreviations: Stzd β = Standardized Beta.

Possible Reasons for the Lack of Cognitive Dissonance in High Psychopathy Individuals

The results of the current study indicate that the more psychopathic traits a participant reported, including the callous unemotional traits such as a lack of guilt, remorse, or concern for others, the less likely the participant was to exhibit the classic cognitive dissonance effect. It is important to consider possible explanations for these results.

Psychopathy and lack of guilt. One of the main traits linked to psychopathy is a callous lack of guilt (Hart & Hare, 1997; Hare, 1993; Lykken, 2006; McHoskey, Worzel, & Szyarto,

1998). This lack of guilt and concern for others may be the cognitive deficit that allows for psychopathic individuals to commit violent crimes or manipulate others. If this is the case, then it is important to determine if a lack of guilt is occurring significantly more in individuals with higher levels of psychopathy compared to individuals with low or non-existent levels of psychopathy. Previous studies have examined guilt in individuals with psychopathy and have

almost universally found that individuals with high psychopathy lack guilt (Cima, Tonnaer, &

Lobbestael, 2007; Hare, 1993; Walsh & Wu, 2008).

Though a lack of guilt has already been strongly associated with psychopathy in the literature, it is important to now try to find the underlying cognitive pathways and mechanisms that are behind the inability to feel guilt in high psychopathic individuals. Understanding the cognitive deficits of individuals with higher levels of psychopathy can lead to better assessment strategies and possible intervention models to curb maladaptive behaviors at an early age. This study attempted to identify the role that guilt plays in eliciting cognitive dissonance by assessing dissonance effects in individuals with varying levels of guilt capabilities (high versus low psychopaths). The use of psychopathy as a moderating variable for cognitive dissonance is based on empirical research that has found a lack of guilt and contentiousness in individuals with higher levels of psychopathy.

Guilt and cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance has long been thought to be a universal feature of human behavior. Since the discovery of cognitive dissonance by Festinger in

1957, many other researchers have replicated the phenomenon with great success in a multitude of situations and across stimuli (for a review see Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). The main theory of cognitive dissonance that this project intended to analyze with regard to psychopathy was

Cooper and Fazio’s New Look Theory (1984) due to its focus on guilt as the catalyst for attitude shift.

According to Cooper and Fazio’s New Look Theory (1984), one of the crucial components for creating the attitude shift found in cognitive dissonance is that individuals must feel guilt (that their actions have brought negative consequences to themselves or others). The current study incorporated the New Look Theory by having participants voluntarily lie to

someone else about a boring task being enjoyable. Our hypothesis hinged on the theory that low psychopathy individuals would change their beliefs about the task (they would think it was fun) in order to relieve the guilt felt over misleading another individual. In contrast, since cognitive dissonance occurs due to guilt induction, we believed, and found, that individuals with higher levels of psychopathy (low guilt) did not experience dissonance. Therefore, the results of this study provide further evidence of the callous lack of guilt evidenced in psychopaths while supporting Cooper and Fazio’s (1984) theory that cognitive dissonance is invoked by guilt.

4.3 Machiavellianism and Cognitive Dissonance

Machiavellianism is characterized by the deliberate incorporation of callous unemotional behaviors with the goal of achieving success and domination through the use of the asocial affect and behaviors (Christie & Geis, 1970; Wastell & Booth, 2003; Wilson, Near, & Miller, 1996).

The centrality of success seems to be a characteristic of MACH that distinguishes it from psychopathy. Individuals with higher levels of MACH seem to engage in callous manipulative behaviors in order to achieve preconceived goals whereas psychopathic individuals do not necessarily plan their behavior to the same degree. In fact, several of the core traits associated with psychopathy involve a lack of planning ability, impulsivity and antisocial behavior that often involves illegal and violent activities (Hare, 1993).

Due to the callous, guilt free traits associated with MACH, the current study hypothesized, incorrectly, that high MACH individuals in the High Choice (and high guilt) condition would report significantly less enjoyment of the boring abacus task than individuals with low MACH.

MACH-IV total scores on cognitive dissonance. It was hypothesized that the interaction between MACH and choice condition would significantly predict Self-Reported Enjoyment of

the abacus task. However, this interaction was not statistically significant. Level of

Machiavellianism did not impact an individual’s self-rated level of enjoyment on the abacus task.

These results were surprising given the fact that MACH has significantly related to a lack of predicted attitude shift in past studies of guilt induced cognitive dissonance (Bogart, 1971,

Bogart, et al., 1970; Epstein, 1969). Though these previous studies on MACH did not specifically intend to analyze guilt-induction as the dissonance invoking stimulus, they did use methodology that would create guilt in participants.

Unlike the current study, these previous experiments found significant differences between individuals with higher versus lower levels of MACH. Also, in opposition with the current findings, these previous studies (Bogart, 1971; Bogart, Geis, Levy, & Zimbardo, 1970;

Epstein, 1968) found that individuals with high MACH were able to experience cognitive dissonance, often in the opposite experimental condition to the individuals with low MACH who experienced cognitive dissonance. These studies termed this effect “anti-dissonance.” The current study however, found no significant evidence of an anti-dissonance effect in our participants. In fact, the results for the MACH-IV scores exhibited a weak version of the interaction pattern that was seen with the two psychopathy predictors. Specifically, the MACH-

IV total scores had a significant negative correlation with Self-Reported Task Enjoyment in the

High Choice Group ( r = -.295, p < .01), but not in the Low Choice group ( r = -.104, p = .354).

Such findings seem to suggest that Machiavellianism, like psychopathy, influences cognitive dissonance effects. However, as already reported, the crucial analysis regarding this hypothesis, based on an interaction term of Machiavellianism with Choice condition, did not attain statistical significance.

It is possible that the present study failed to find a significant interaction between choice and level of MACH in predicting attitude shift because the MACH-IV is outdated. The MACH measure was created in 1970 and has not been altered since that time. In addition, many of the items on the measure use wording from Niccolo Machiavelli’s writing which dates back to 1513.

Further, many of the items may be considered somewhat sexist in current society as they focus on men exclusively. Participants’ responses may have been effected by this gender exclusivity.

Therefore concepts and items may not be current enough to be accurately identifying MACH characteristics in our sample. Given results from the present and earlier research, the failure to find a significant interaction between choice condition and Machiavellianism in the present study may well represent a Type II error.

4.4 Psychopathy Incrementally Predicting Abacus Task Enjoyment (Over MACH)

A hypothesis of the current study was that psychopathy would incrementally predict abacus task enjoyment and the cognitive dissonance effect, above and beyond the predictive power of the MACH. Results regarding this hypothesis were inconclusive. Inclusion of PPI-R:

SF scores and their interaction with Self-Reported Enjoyment significantly increased predictive power above and beyond scores on the MACH-IV. Although there was a significant increase in predictive power when adding PPI-R: SF scores to the MACH-IV scores, the beta for the interaction between PPI-R: SF scores and choice condition was only approached statistical significance. When total scores of the LPSP replaced the PPI-R: SF scores the results were not significant. Inclusion of total LPSP scores and their interaction with Self-Reported Enjoyment did not significantly increase predictive power above and beyond MACH-IV scores. Therefore, it seems that the hypothesis in regard to psychopathy incrementally predicting abacus task

enjoyment above MACH was neither confirmed nor disconfirmed in the present study. More research examining the issue is needed.

Conversely, two exploratory hierarchical multiple regressions were run to identify whether MACH-IV total scores incrementally predicted Self-Reported Enjoyment of the abacus task, above and beyond the predictive power of psychopathy scores. When both the PPI-R: SF and the LPSP were used as predictors, MACH did not significantly predict Self-Reported Level of Enjoyment over psychopathy. These results suggest, though only in a preliminary way, that level of MACH does not incrementally predict cognitive dissonance effects, above and beyond the predictive power of level of psychopathy.

4.5 Additional Exploratory Analyses

Exploratory Guilt Analysis

Multiple regressions were conducted with level of guilt as the criterion in the place of enjoyment rating. These analyses were exploratory with the goal of further exploring the role that guilt plays during cognitive dissonance arousal and maintenance. Results of these analyses indicated that the interaction between psychopathy measures and choice conditions did not generally significantly predict guilt. In fact, there was no reason to expect these interactions to be significant, based on cognitive dissonance theory. The cognitive dissonance literature argues that participants strive to reduce their feelings of guilt after engaging in counterattitudinal behavior discrepant with their beliefs. Thus participants with low levels of psychopathy who were in the High Choice to Lie condition would be expected to change their attitudes about lying to reduce their feelings of guilt immediately after telling the “future participant” that the abacus task was fun. Therefore, their reported guilt level on the post experimental questionnaire should not be significant. Due to cognitive dissonance, these participants would have already reduced

their level of guilt to low or non-existent levels by the time they were answering the questions on the post experimental questionnaire.

Main effects for relationship between psychopathy and guilt. An important result of these exploratory analyses was that significant main effects were found between level of psychopathy

(measured by the PPI-R: SF) and level of guilt that participants reported concerning their participation in the study. Specifically the PPI-R: SF had a significant relationship with level of guilt such that individuals with higher levels of psychopathy experienced less guilt than participants with lower levels of psychopathy, across choice conditions. In addition, both factor scales of the PPI-R: SF (Fearless Dominance and Self Centered Impulsivity) were significant in predicting guilt. Finally three of the PPI-R: SF subscales reached significance in predicting level of guilt in participants: Fearlessness, Stress Immunity, Rebellious Nonconformity. The

Exploratory Factor Analyses

Three factor analyses were conducted on the self-report psychopathy and MACH measures utilized in the present study. The goal of these analyses was to categorize the individual traits of psychopathy and MACH that were being identified in the participants by the measures and to distinguish overall factors of these personality traits that are similar across measures.

The first factor analysis found that the total scores of the three measures loaded together as one factor. The second factor analysis found that all of the items combined loaded on nine

interpretable factors: Machiavellian Success, Thrill Seeking Behavior, Stress Impunity, Feelings of Persecution, Inability to Plan, Social Disregard, Interpersonal Ease, Manipulative Deceit, and

Social Frustration. Each factor was found to represent unique characteristics of psychopathy and

MACH. Finally, a third factor analysis was run on the combined subscales of the measures. This analysis yielded three interpretable factors: Antisocial Behavior, Coldhearted Callousness and

Thrill Seeking. Though these factor analyses yielded factors that mirror others identified in the literature (Benning, Patrick, Hicks, Blonigen, & Krueger, 2003; Hare, 1991; Levenson et al.,

1995; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) the sample size of 164 participants was too small to draw significant or important conclusions from these factor analyses.

Limitations and Future Directions

The present study had several limitations. One potential limitation was the sole use of self-report measures for detecting psychopathy. Though the self-report measures that were used in the current study have been validated as measures of psychopathy (Levesnon et al., 1995;

Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996; Lilienfeld & Fowler, 2006; Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001), the use of a measure such as the Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991) might have shed additional light on the levels of psychopathy among our participants. Psychopathy scores on the

PCL-R are obtained from a semi-structured clinical interview of the participant as well as background and collateral information (Hare, 1991). Therefore the information about the participant’s personality is derived from multiple sources, rather than just self-report. A future replication of this study would benefit from also assessing level of psychopathy with the PCL-R or the PCL-R: SV (Hart & Hare, 1995) which is a screening version of the PCL-R.

A second limitation might have been the type of task used to illicit cognitive dissonance.

The study had participants move wooden balls back and forth across an abacus for 20 minutes.

Though this study attained significant results, perhaps the length of time may not have been long enough to induce boredom in all participants. Future studies could increase the amount of time participants are instructed to move balls across the abacus. For example, the original cognitive dissonance study by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) had participants turn pegs in a peg-board for one hour. That length of time would most likely ensure boredom in participants. It is important to note, however, that the time limit of 20 minutes employed in the present study was the same as in the study by Cooper and Worchel (1970), in which significant results were obtained when participants engaged in the boring task for 20 minutes.

In addition, the use of the abacus task as the stimuli could have impacted the results because some participants may have actually found the task enjoyable, and thus genuinely reported enjoying the task on the post-experimental questionnaire. This would confound our results because cognitive dissonance was not enacted in those participants. In order to combat the possible issue, the use of counterattitudinal essays as the stimulus would be a useful option for future studies. Counterattitudinal essays involve writing in favor of an issue that one is adamantly against. The use of counterattitudinal essays has been incorporated into the majority of cognitive dissonance studies (for a review see Harmon-Jones & Mills, 1999). Studies have shown that when participants write in favor of an issue that they are opposed to, this elicits cognitive dissonance (Baumeister & Tice, 1984; Elkin & Leippe, 1986; Harmon-Jones & Mills,

1999; Linder, Cooper, & Jones, 1967; Sénémeaud & Somat, 2009). Counterattitudinal essays have also been used in studying cognitive dissonance effects in participants with MACH

(Burgoon, Miller, & Tubbs, 1972) with significant effects.

Simply writing counter-attitudinal essays would not necessarily invoke guilt. The present study tested the hypothesis that guilt-invoking tasks create cognitive dissonance in individuals with low psychopathic traits but not individuals with high psychopathic traits. Therefore, the present results might not be replicated in a study that simply required the writing of counterattitudinal essays. However, a variant on this task exists in which writing a counter-attitudinal essay is used to persuade other individuals to a viewpoint with which the writer strongly disagrees. This task of writing a counter-attitudinal essay to persuade others is likely to evoke guilt and, according to the hypotheses of the present study, would be predicted to create a cognitive dissonance effect in participants with higher levels of psychopathy but not in participants with low levels of psychopathy. A control condition would be necessary, in which

some participants just write the counter-attitudinal essays, while others write counter-attitudinal essays that are then used to persuade other individuals. In this way we would be better able to determine whether any cognitive dissonance effects observed were due to guilt.

Guilt has been manipulated in participants with the use of counterattitudinal essays. The primary way that researcher’s incorporate guilt was to have the participant write a counterattitudinal essay and read it (or give it) to a panel of individuals with the intention of persuading the panel to be in favor of the topic to which the participant is actually against. In this way, participants feel guilt for attempting to convince others to support something that the participant actually opposes. For example, a study by Elliot and Devine (1994) had their college student sample of participants write essays in favor of a tuition raise for all students at their university. Before writing the counterattitudinal essays, participants were initially screened to make sure they were against a tuition increase on campus. Participants were told that the essay they wrote (pro-tuition increase) would be read by the university Board of Trustees to help determine if the tuition raise should be implemented. Participants’ guilt was activated because they were led to believe that their essay might cause a tuition increase for themselves and their peers. Results of the study found a significant shift in attitude towards being in favor of the tuition increase after participants had written the essay. The authors surmised that it was the negative consequences that their actions (writing the pro-tuition increase essay) could cause others that led to the attitude shift. Replicating the current study with the use of counterattitudinal essays that manipulate guilt rather than the abacus task may elicit stronger effects by eliminating the participants’ chance of genuinely enjoying the abacus task.

A third limitation the current study concerns its generalizability to new populations of participants. This study analyzed level of psychopathy exclusively among college

undergraduates. It is unclear whether the results obtained in this population will generalize to groups with higher levels of psychopathy, such as violent offenders or repeat-offender juvenile delinquents. Attempting a replication in a sample of violent offenders or juvenile delinquents would be a valuable step in understanding how the construct of psychopathy impacts cognitive dissonance.

A fourth possible limitation was the ethnic and cultural homogeneity of participants.

Approximately eighty-five percent of participants were Hispanic, and thus the generalizability of the results to non-Hispanic populations can be questioned. However, psychopathy has been shown to be a universal construct across ethnicities including Anglo Americans (Cooke, Kosson,

& Michie, 2001; Hare, 1996), African Americans (Cooke, Kosson, & Michie, 2001; Skeem, et al., 2004; Swogger, Walsh, & Kosson, 2008) and Hispanics (Sullivan, Abramowitz, Lopez, &

Kosson, 2006; Valdez, Kaplan, & Codina, 2000). MACH too has been shown to appear in

Hispanics (Martinez, 1981). Therefore, this limitation may not be a serious one.

Though ethnicity may not have impacted our results, cultural characteristics are another limitation to consider. Culture may impact the expression of psychopathic traits. A recent study by Smith and Madjarov (2008) found that individuals from Bulgaria evidenced higher levels of psychopathy and Machiavellianism than Americans (as measured by the LPSP and MACH-IV).

The authors attributed the higher levels of psychopathic and MACH tendencies to the coercive nature of the Bulgarian culture which teaches the youth to look out for themselves above all else.

The authors deduced that the personality characteristics of psychopathy and MACH allow for better survival outcomes in Bulgaria, and thus the traits have flourished there as adaptive rather than abnormal.

The current study was conducted in a university on the U.S.-Mexico border, where acculturation to American society varies in the university population. Many students commute over the border daily from Mexico to attend classes and are not highly acculturated to U.S. culture. Based on the Smith and Madjarov (2008) study and the location of the current experiment, level of acculturation may have impacted our results and should be accounted for in future studies.

An additional future direction would be that this study spurs psychopathy and cognitive dissonance research in new routes. As previously mentioned, only one other study has examined the effects of psychopathy on cognitive dissonance (Weir, 2007). However, Weir’s study contained methodological weaknesses (e.g. no control group for comparison purposes) and was not designed to address how psychopathic traits impact cognitive dissonance in guilt-inducing situations. Clearly more studies need to be conducted in order to examine if the significant results found in the present study will hold across other age groups, populations (such as violent offenders) and cultures. The results of this study could assist in better understanding the cognitive and emotional characteristics of psychopathy.

In addition, the results of this study pose new ideas for cognitive dissonance research.

The results of the current study suggest that level of psychopathy could potentially be confounding cognitive dissonance studies that rely on guilt or adverse consequences as the mechanism of dissonance arousal. Further replications of the present study are needed in the literature to examine the robustness of our results and their impact on cognitive dissonance arousal.

Conclusions

Until now, cognitive dissonance has been assumed to be a general cognitive effect found in all individuals. The results of this study suggest that this assumption may be incorrect. In the present study, individuals with higher levels of psychopathy did not seem to experience guilt- induced dissonance arousal. It may be that past studies might have yielded stronger cognitive dissonance effects if they had excluded participants with above-average levels of psychopathic traits.

In addition, the lack of a significant finding in regard to level of MACH indicates that more research needs to be conducted in assessing what maladaptive cognitive and behavioral impacts Machiavellianism has on individuals, and how MACH truly relates to psychopathy.

Understanding the cognitive characteristics of psychopathy (and MACH) is important due to the negative impact that individuals with these characteristics can cause society. For example, individuals with higher levels of psychopathy are four times more likely to recidivate after being released from prison (Hare, 1993; Hemphill, Hare, & Wong, 1998) are arrested at earlier ages, are more likely to use weapons and violence in their offenses, and have higher rates of offending than individuals without psychopathy (Hart & Hare, 1997; Hare & McPherson,

1984). It is important to discover what specific cognitive and emotional characteristics lead some individuals with higher levels of psychopathy to develop and behave maladaptively in society. If individuals with higher levels of psychopathy do not experience cognitive dissonance after lying to someone else, this finding points not only to a lack of guilt in such individuals, but also to a unique cognitive and emotional temperament that may be lacking dissonance arousal.

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Appendix A

Script to be Used With High perceived choice Group

“Thank you for your participation in this task. I’d like to explain what this has been all about so you have some idea of why you were doing this task. There are actually 2 groups in the experiment. In one group, the group you were just in, we bring the participant in and give him or her no introduction to the experiment. That is, all we tell them is the instructions for how to do the task, and they have no idea what the experiment is really about or what they will have to do.

But the other group, before they begin the task, we like to prep them. What I mean by this is that while they are still waiting in the hall we tell them what the experiment is going to be about, so we tell them it is a reaction task, that they will be timed and they will be pushing balls along an abacus, etc. Most importantly we also tell them that the task is going to be fun and enjoyable. We do this because we want to see if having a positive attitude about the task before you begin will affect your ability on the task. What we are interested in, is comparing the performance of people who know nothing about the experiment, such as yourself, with those people who expect the task to be interesting and exciting.

So normally we have another student who works for us, and that student preps the person while they are still in the hall, so tells them about the task and that it is going to be fun and then brings the person in to me to do the task. However, that person couldn’t be here today.

Now I have an unusual request that I have to make. I talked to my advisor, Dr. Wood, and he suggested that I might ask my real participant to talk to the next participant for me.

You don’t have to, but if you would be willing to do this for me, all I would ask you to do is to tell the next participant who is now in the hall, that this task is fun and enjoyable. So, I’d take you into the hall, introduce you to the next person, and then give you about 1 minute to

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begin your conversation and tell him or her that this experimental task will be fun. It’s up to you of course, but do you think you could help me out by doing this for me?

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Appendix A

Script for Use With the Low perceived choice Group

“Thank you for your participation in this task. I’d like to explain what this has been all about so you have some idea of why you were doing this task. There are actually 2 groups in the experiment. In one group, the group you were just in, we bring the participant in and give him or her no introduction to the experiment. That is, all we tell them is what they need to know to do the task, and they have no idea what the experiment is really about or what they will have to do.

But the other group, before they begin the task, we tell them what the experiment is going to be about and that it is going to be fun and enjoyable. We do this because we want to see if having a positive attitude about the task before you begin will affect your ability on the task. So normally we have another student who works for us, and what I do is take him into the hall that you were just in and introduce him as though he had just finished the experiment. This paid student then starts a conversation with the next participant and tells him or her about the experiment and how interesting and fun it was. What we are interested in, of course, is comparing the performance of people who know nothing about the experiment, such as yourself, with those people who expect the task to be interesting and exciting.

Now I have an unusual request I have to make. The student that we have hired to talk to the next participant about the study couldn't make it today. He just called a few minutes ago. My advisor told me to just have one of my actual participants do it. So, what you will have to do is to tell the next participant who is now in the hall, that this task is exciting, interesting and enjoyable. I’ll take you into the hall, introduce you to the next participant, and then give you about 2 minutes to begin your conversation and tell him or her that this experimental task will be fun. Are you ready?

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Appendix B

Demographic Information

Age : _____

Gender : _____

Ethnicity (check only one):

Mexican American ____

Mexican National ____

Hispanic ____

Caucasian ____

Asian ____

African American ____

Other ____

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Appendix B

University of Texas Psychology Department

Post Experiment Evaluation Form

This form is to be completed immediately following participation in a UTEP Psychology experiment. The department is evaluating the research that is currently being conducted, and would like your opinion on the effectiveness of the experiment you just participated in. Please take the time to fill out this brief survey. Please circle the answer that best describes your feelings about the experiment you just participated in. Your responses will remain confidential and will only be reviewed by departmental staff. Once you have completed the survey, place it in the envelope provided for you and seal the envelope .

The following items are about the experiment you just participated in. Please circle how much you agree with the following statement:

1. The task in this experiment was enjoyable.