ArticleScientific reports2017
Social cognition in aggressive offenders: Impaired empathy, but intact theory of mind.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Theory of Mind in Offending: A Systematic Review.Trauma, violence & abuse · 2022Pooled it
- Systematic review and meta-analysis of socio-cognitive and socio-affective processes association with adolescent substance use.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2021Pooled it
- Effects of brief mindfulness meditation on compassion and personal distress using the socio-affective video task.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- Dark Personality, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Convicted Offenders.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Harnessing the Neurobiology of Empathy and Compassion to Alleviate Burnout in Neurology.Annals of neurology · 2026Review
- Impact of intelligence on social cognition in mentally disordered offenders: preliminary evidence in schizophrenia and personality disorders.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Neuropsychological mechanisms of observational learning in human placebo effects.Psychopharmacology · 2025Review
- The Relationship between Cognitive Impairment and Violent Behavior in People Living with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: A Critical Review and Treatment Considerations.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2024Review
- Supraphysiological testosterone levels from anabolic steroid use and reduced sensitivity to negative facial expressions in men.Psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Review
- Intervening factors between risk of violence and aggressive behaviours among forensic inpatients: a scoping review.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Normalized affective responsiveness following deep brain stimulation of the medial forebrain bundle in depression.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Exploring core symptoms of alcohol withdrawal syndrome in alcohol use disorder patients: a network analysis approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Empathy and Violence in Schizophrenia and Antisocial Personality Disorder.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Diagnosing callous-unemotional personality traits by heart rate orienting responses to images inducing threat and distress.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Introducing the English EmpaToM task: A tool to assess empathy, compassion, and theory of mind in fMRI studies.Neuroimage. Reports · 2023Article
- Neurobehavioral indices of gaze perception are associated with social cognition across schizophrenia patients and healthy controls.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2023Article
- Decision-making under risk and theory of mind in adolescent offenders in provisional deprivation of liberty.Trends in psychiatry and psychotherapy · 2023Article
- Empathic disequilibrium as a new framework for understanding individual differences in psychopathology.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Situational assessment of empathy and compassion: Predicting prosociality using a video-based task.PloS one · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Aggressive, violent behaviour is a major burden and challenge for society. It has been linked to deficits in social understanding, but the evidence is inconsistent and the specifics of such deficits are unclear. Here, we investigated affective (empathy) and cognitive (Theory of Mind) routes to understanding other people in aggressive individuals. Twenty-nine men with a history of legally relevant aggressive behaviour (i.e. serious assault) and 32 control participants were tested using a social video task (EmpaToM) that differentiates empathy and Theory of Mind and completed questionnaires on aggression and alexithymia. Aggressive participants showed reduced empathic responses to emotional videos of others' suffering, which correlated with aggression severity. Theory of Mind performance, in contrast, was intact. A mediation analysis revealed that reduced empathy in aggressive men was mediated by alexithymia. These findings stress the importance of distinguishing between socio-affective and socio-cognitive deficits for understanding aggressive behaviour and thereby contribute to the development of more efficient treatments.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.