Psychopathy and Fear Enjoyment: The Role of Invincibility

Abstract

Previous research has found a significant positive relationship between psychopathic traits and fear enjoyment (Book et al., 2020; Hosker-Field et al., 2016a). Because enjoyment of fear may be contingent on not feeling like one is actually in danger (Hitchcock, 1949), the current study investigated whether a sense of invincibility could explain the relationship between psychopathy and fear enjoyment. Participants included two online samples, one from two universities, and one from MTURK (Total N = 825). Participants viewed exciting and fear-inducing videos and completed affective appraisals for each video. As expected, psychopathic traits were associated with less negative and more positive responses to the fear-inducing video. Also as expected, invincibility partially explained the relationship between psychopathy and fear enjoyment. Mediation analyses confirmed a significant indirect effect for negative (but not positive) ratings of the fear-inducing video. The results of the current study supply further support for the Fear Enjoyment Hypothesis (Hosker-Field et al., 2016a) and support invincibility as one possible mechanism of the relationship between psychopathy and fear enjoyment.