Psychopathy
Low anxiety and fearlessness

Cleckley's (1941) original description of psychopathy included the absence of nervousness and neurotic disorders, and later theorists referred to psychopaths as fearless or thick-skinned. While it is often claimed that the PCL-R does not include low anxiety or fearlessness, such features do contribute to the scoring of the Facet 1 (interpersonal) items, mainly through self-assurance, unrealistic optimism, brazenness and imperturbability. Indeed, while self-report studies have been inconsistent using the two-factor model of the PCL-R, studies which separate Factor 1 into interpersonal and affective facets, more regularly show modest associations between Facet 1 and low anxiety, boldness and fearless dominance (especially items assessing glibness/charm and grandiosity). When both psychopathy and low anxiety/boldness are measured using interviews, both interpersonal and affective facets are both associated with fearlessness and lack of internalizing disorders.

The importance of low anxiety/fearlessness to psychopathy has historically been underscored through behavioral and physiological studies showing diminished responses to threatening stimuli (interpersonal and affective facets both contributing). However, it is not known whether this is reflected in reduced experience of state fear or where it reflects impaired detection and response to threat-related stimuli. Moreover, such deficits in threat responding are known to be reduced or even abolished when attention is focused on the threatening stimuli.
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