The “Joker” laugh: Social judgments towards affective deviants in a sample of young offenders with callous unemotional traits

Abstract

We assessed negative bias in Colombian young offenders towards affective deviants (those who violate emotional norms). Postulating that affective deviants elicit an “uncanny/creepy” feeling resembling that produced by psychopaths, we explored social judgments of affective deviants in individuals with callous-unemotional (CU) traits. 188 young offenders evaluated a target displaying congruent or incongruent affective displays in response to pictures eliciting positive/negative affect, depending on the condition. Affective deviants were rated as creepier and less trustworthy, and more likely to have bad moral character, than targets who displayed normative affect. Further, affective deviants who displayed positive affect in response to negative stimuli were rated as having worse moral character than those who displayed negative affect in response to positive stimuli. CU traits predicted lower trustworthiness judgments of targets in congruent conditions, but higher trustworthiness judgments of targets in incongruent conditions. CU traits also predicted higher desired social distance and creepiness judgments in congruent conditions. Creepiness ratings correlated with judgments of bad moral character, suggesting that this emotional response may be involved in moral evaluations of strangers. These findings indicate that deviant affective displays produce a variety of negative social judgments, with CU traits playing a role in these social cognitive heuristics.

Introduction

Arthur Fleck, the main character in the 2019 movie Joker, is a comedian with a disorder akin to Tourette's syndrome, causing him to break into laughter at socially inopportune moments. Throughout the film, we witness how this causes Arthur to be classified as a “freak”, an object of mockery and social rejection, before he eventually turns the affliction to his advantage by integrating it into his persona as a feared arch-villain (Skryabin V, 2021). Although fictional, Arthur's road to perdition illustrates an implicit rule of social perception: emotional unpredictability can signal to observers that an individual is dangerous (accurately, in the case of the Joker) and trigger avoidance.

From an evolutionary perspective, the existence of negative social cognitive biases against violators of emotional norms (affective deviants; Szczurek et al., 2012) seems reasonable. Affective deviants are, by definition, outside normative expectations, meaning that they are difficult to “read” emotionally and unpredictable behaviorally (ambiguous and thus dangerous; Olivera-La Rosa, 2018). Considering the likely importance of inter-group conflict in shaping human history (Turchin et al., 2013), evolutionary theory suggests that when confronted by an unfamiliar social agent, it is crucial to detect emotional signals of their good or bad intentions (Becker et al., 2011). Accurate appraisal of others' moral intentions can help engage appropriate behavioral responses (e.g., approaching vs avoiding them; Atkinson & Adolphs, 2005). Since rapid evaluation is vital when faced with a dangerous individual, this may have led to the evolution of an automatic pathway of moral inference (Olivera-La Rosa, 2018). Indeed, inferring moral character is a ubiquitous practice (Graham et al., 2013). Moral character may play a more important role than variables such as warmth or competence in driving overall impressions of social targets (Goodwin et al., 2014); and affective reactions to valenced stimuli are crucial diagnostic signals for moral character judgments (Kastendieck et al., 2020; Szczurek et al., 2012). The latter finding is consistent with findings that people infer multiple social judgments about unfamiliar individuals from minimal perceptual cues (Todorov et al., 2013).

Given the extent of research on moral character, it is surprising that we have little empirical evidence on the effects of deviant affective displays on social judgments. Recently, Kastendieck et al. (2020) showed that affective deviants were judged as less moral, trustworthy and pleasant than those who showed normative expressions. This is consistent with previous findings that people use emotional expressions as cues to the expresser's personality traits (Szczurek et al., 2012). Likewise, some authors argue that creepiness is an unpleasant emotional response, associated with untrustworthiness and the violation of social norms, that arises in the context of social interactions. A sense of creepiness, then, may be an adaptive response that increases vigilance towards a socially dangerous target (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). Similarly, research on the “uncanny valley” suggests that deviant facial expressions signal social ambiguity and psychopathic traits (Olivera-La Rosa, 2018; Tinwell et al., 2013).

Is it possible that affective deviants are socially rejected because they are perceived as psychopathic, and therefore as potential threats? The present study built on the reviewed literature to explore one facet of this question. If perceptions of deviant facial expressions and violation of social norms are interpreted as signals of “anomalous” emotional processing (characteristic of psychopathic individuals), it is worthwhile exploring social judgments of affective deviants in individuals with callous-unemotional (CU) traits. Therefore, in the present study we examine whether social judgments of affective deviants are modulated by CU traits in young offenders.

The study of social perception in young offenders with CU traits is particularly relevant for research on affective deviants. CU traits (e.g., lack of empathy, lack of guilt, failure to put effort in important activities, and poverty in emotional expressions) characterize a clinically important subgroup of young people who exhibit serious conduct problems and antisocial behavior (Kimonis et al., 2013; Ray & Frick, 2020). Some authors have conceptualized CU traits as a “downward” extension of adult psychopathy to youth (Docherty et al., 2017), representing the affective dimension of the broader construct of psychopathy in adults (Barry et al., 2000). Indeed, psychopathic traits are associated with poor emotional processing (van Dongen J, 2020), hindering psychopaths from perceiving the affective phenomena that usually guide human moral behavior (Blair, 2007). A recent meta-analysis found that youth with higher CU traits showed lower empathy (Waller et al., 2020), which is consistent with them also being less accurate in recognizing emotions in facial expressions (Dadds et al., 2008; for a comprehensive study of CU traits and emotional processing, see Waller et al., 2020).

Consequently, the fact that youth higher in CU traits exhibit impaired emotional processing suggests that CU may compromise evaluations of the target's emotional incongruence, which may modulate social judgments of affective deviant. Therefore, whether CU traits influence social judgments of affective deviants is an interesting research question. We built on previous findings that, relative to targets who display normative affective reactions, affective deviants were rated lower on various dimensions of social judgments (Kastendieck et al., 2020; Szczurek et al., 2012). This led us to explore the following research question: Are negative social judgments of affective deviants present in a sample of young offenders high in CU traits? To answer this question, we tested the following hypotheses:

H1

The main effect found in the literature (targets displaying incongruent affective displays elicit more negative social judgments than normative targets) would replicate in Colombian young offenders.

H2

Affective deviants would be rated as “creepier” than normative targets.

H3

CU traits would modulate social judgments of affective deviants, such that young offenders higher in CU would rate affective deviants as less socially negative (relative to lower-CU peers).

H4

There would be a negative bias in judgments of affective deviants, such that targets displaying positive affect in response to negative stimuli would be evaluated more negatively than those displaying negative affect to positive stimuli.