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BRIEF REPORT
Reduced Transfer of Affective Value to Instrumental Behavior
in Violent Offenders
Verena Ly
Radboud University Nijmegen
Anna Katinka Louise von Borries and
Inti Angelo Brazil
Radboud University Nijmegen and Pompestichting, Nijmegen,
the Netherlands
Behrend Hendrik Bulten
Pompestichting, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Roshan Cools
Radboud University Nijmegen and Radboud University
Medical Center
Karin Roelofs
Radboud University Nijmegen
Instrumental or goal-directed aggression is a core feature in violent offenders with psychopathic tendencies.
To understand this type of behavior, previous work in the field of aggression has focused on affective
processing, with mixed results. We propose that instrumental aggression is best understood in terms of the
consequences of affective processing for instrumental behavior rather than affective processing per se.
Therefore, we assessed the degree of affective biasing of instrumental action in a group of violent offenders
with psychopathic tendencies and healthy controls using a validated affective decision-making task. Partici-
pants learned whole body approach-avoidance actions upon instrumental targets based on monetary feedback,
while being primed by aversive versus appetitive facial stimuli. Unlike controls, instrumental behavior in
violent offenders was not influenced by the affective stimuli. Specifically, violent offenders showed reduced
instrumental avoidance in the context of aversive (vs. appetitive) stimuli relative to controls. This finding
suggests that reduced affective biasing of instrumental behavior may underlie the behavioral anomalies
observed in violent offenders with psychopathic tendencies. More generally, the finding underscores the
relevance of examining the interaction between affect and instrumental behavior for a better understanding of
dysfunctional behaviors in psychiatric populations.
General Scientific Summary
Goal-directed aggression is a core feature in violent offenders with psychopathic tendencies. Our
findings suggest that violent offenders show reduced affective influence on instrumental behavior
compared to healthy controls, possibly contributing to aggressive behaviors in this population.
Keywords: violent offenders, psychopathic tendencies, affective biasing, instrumental action, decision making
Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/abn0000166.supp
Verena Ly, Behavioural Science Institute and Donders Institute for
Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging,
Radboud University Nijmegen; Anna Katinka Louise von Borries, Behav-
ioural Science Institute and Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and
Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Ni-
jmegen and Pompestichting, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Inti Angelo Bra-
zil, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Centre for
Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen and Pompesticht-
ing; Behrend Hendrik Bulten, Pompestichting; Roshan Cools, Donders
Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Centre for Cognitive Neu-
roimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen and Department of Psychiatry,
Radboud University Medical Center; Karin Roelofs, Behavioural Science
Institute and Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Centre
for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen.
This study was supported by Mosaic Grant 017.007.043 from the Nether-
lands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to Verena Ly;
Starting Grant ERC_StG2012_313749 from the European Research Council,
VICI Grant 453–12-001 (NWO), and a grant from the Research and Docu-
mentation Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Safety and Justice awarded to Karin
Roelofs; and a James McDonnell Scholar Award awarded to Roshan Cools.
The authors reported no biomedical financial interests. Roshan Cools has been
a consultant, but not an employee or stock shareholder, for Abbott laboratories
and Pfizer. Karin Roelofs and Roshan Cools contributed equally to this work.
We thank S. Jellema and M. de Vries for assistance in data-acquisition, and P.
de Water for technical assistance.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Verena
Ly, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Centre for
Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, Kapittelweg 29,
6500 HB, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. E-mail: v.ly@donders.ru.nl
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 124, No. 4, 000 0021-843X/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/abn0000166
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Instrumental or goal-directed aggression is a core feature in
violent offenders with psychopathic tendencies. Typically, these
offenders are not affected by social affective cues that would
normally discourage violent instrumental acts. For instance, the
facial expression of a suffering victim would not hinder the use of
violence to obtain a victim’s money in these individuals (Glenn &
Raine, 2009). To explain such behavior, previous work in the field
of aggression has largely focused on alterations in affective pro-
cessing, with mixed results. Some studies have reported abnormal-
ities in the processing of aversive affect (Blair, 1999;Blair et al.,
2004;House & Milligan, 1976;Lykken, 1957;Patrick, Bradley, &
Lang, 1993), whereas other studies have not found such abnor-
malities in violent offenders with psychopathic tendencies (Arnett,
Smith, & Newman, 1997;Glass & Newman, 2009;Newman &
Kosson, 1986;von Borries et al., 2010). In contrast with these
studies, here we applied insights from contemporary literature on
the interaction between affect and instrumental behavior. Rather
than studying affective processing per se, we propose that an
understanding of instrumental aggression requires us to study the
consequences of affective processing for instrumental action. In
the current study, we tested the hypothesis that violent offenders
with psychopathic tendencies exhibit reduced affective influence
on instrumental action.
Instrumental behavior refers to actions that are outcome-
oriented. It is well-known that instrumental behavior can be biased
by affect (Damasio, 1997). The impact of affect on instrumental
behavior is illustrated, for example, by the finding that chicks
cannot learn to run away from a food cup in order to obtain food
(Hershberger, 1986). In this example, the (appetitive) affective
value of food is naturally coupled with an innate tendency to
approach the food. This affective approach response hampers the
instrumental run-away (or avoidance) response to obtain the food.
Such affective biasing also exists in humans as evidenced by
empirical work, where aversive and appetitive stimuli have been
shown to facilitate or suppress instrumental responses (Bray, Ran-
gel, Shimojo, Balleine, & O’Doherty, 2008;Cavanagh, Eisenberg,
Guitart-Masip, Huys, & Frank, 2013;Geurts, Huys, Ouden, &
Cools, 2013a;Guitart-Masip, Duzel, Dolan, & Dayan, 2014;Lovi-
bond, Chen, Mitchell, & Weidemann, 2013;Ly, Huys, Stins,
Roelofs, & Cools, 2014;Talmi, Seymour, Dayan, & Dolan, 2008).
Thus, appetitive and aversive values transfer to and interact with
instrumental behavior. Generally, affective biasing of behavior is
crucial for healthy adaptive behavior (Damasio, 1997). Abnormal
interactions between affect and instrumental behavior have been
suggested to play an important role in behavioral anomalies ob-
served in psychiatric disorders (Dayan, Niv, Seymour, & Daw,
2006;Seymour & Dolan, 2008) and aggression in particular
(Crockett & Cools, 2015;Geurts, Huys, den Ouden, & Cools,
2013b).
To study affective biasing of instrumental behavior in relation to
aggression, we compared a group of violent offenders with varying
degrees of psychopathic tendencies to a group of healthy controls on
a recently developed paradigm, in which we combined an affective
decision-making task with a stepping platform (Ly et al., 2014). The
task required participants to learn by trial and error, based on mone-
tary outcomes, to make whole body approach/avoidance actions in
response to instrumental targets, while being primed by affective
(angry/happy) faces. Using this paradigm, we have previously shown
in healthy participants that angry (vs. happy) face-primes facilitate
instrumental avoidance (vs. instrumental approach), indicating affec-
tive biasing of instrumental action (Ly et al., 2014). We hypothesized
that affective biasing would be reduced in violent offenders (vs.
controls). Thus, we anticipated that violent offenders would exhibit
reduced potentiation of instrumental avoidance (vs. approach) by
angry (vs. happy) face-primes.
Method
Participants
Thirty-eight male inmates were recruited from high-security
forensic psychiatric institutes (Pompestichting and Oldenkotte) in
the Netherlands. They have received a court-imposed placement
under a hospital order with at least four years of imprisonment for
committing violence offenses repeatedly, including murder,
slaughter, battery, rape, while suffering from psychiatric illness or
disorder. As a control group, 19 healthy men, without criminal
records and a history of psychiatric disorders were recruited from
the staff of the same institutes. Considering the uniqueness of the
population, the testing environment, and the time period when
testing was possible, these were the maximum numbers of inclu-
sion (we aimed for a total of 40 violent offenders and 20 controls).
For a detailed description of the characteristics of the sample, see
online supplementary material.
Following previous studies (Brazil et al., 2011;von Borries et al.,
2010,2012), exclusion criteria were all major Axis-I and Axis-II
disorders except for cluster B personality disorders in violent offend-
ers, psychotropic medication, cannabis or other drug use one week
before, alcohol or oxazepam use within 24 hr before experiment,
visual disorder, and neurological disorder. Furthermore, individuals
with conditions affecting posture and limb movements—not eligible
for the experimental task—were excluded.
All participants received oral and written information about the
experiment and gave written informed consent. They received
payment as a reimbursement for participation. The study was
performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and
approved by the local ethical committee.
Experimental Paradigm
Following Ly et al. (2014), we combined the affective decision-
making task with a balance board to assess the degree to which
whole body instrumental actions are influenced by affective face
stimuli (see Figure 1). Participants performed the affective
decision-making task on the balance board, which allows accurate
assessment of bodily movement (see Figure 1B). Affective and
instrumental visual stimuli were presented on a screen in front of
them while performing the task. During the task, participants had
to learn optimal responses— by trial and error—to instrumental
targets based on monetary feedback (wins/losses of €0.20). Instru-
mental responses consisted of whole body go- and no-go-
responses upon the instrumental targets (see Figure 1B). Partici-
pants responded in two action-contexts, an approach- or an
avoidance-context, indicating whether a go-response upon an in-
strumental target was an approach- or an avoidance-action (see
Figure 1A). The action-contexts alternated in blocks. To induce
affective influence on the instrumental response, a task-irrelevant
(angry/happy) face stimulus was presented on each trial prior to
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2LY ET AL.
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the presentation of an instrumental target. This resulted in a mul-
tifactorial design, with affective prime (angry/happy), action-
context (approach/avoidance), and optimal response (go/no-go)
manipulated independently. For a detailed description of the ex-
perimental set-up and task, see the online supplementary material
or Ly et al. (2014).
Procedure
In a first session, participants were screened by interviews and
questionnaires. During the second session, participants were first
prepared for the affective decision-making task by practicing on
the balance board until they felt comfortable with stepping while
maintaining their view on the screen. They received instructions
for the task before each block of trials.
Data and Statistical Analyses
One participant responded deterministically to the affective
faces in the first block due to misunderstanding of the instructions
and was excluded from these analyses. Thus, analyses were per-
formed on data of 37 violent offenders and 19 controls.
Posturographic data-analyses were performed in MATLAB
R2009b (The MathWorks, Natick, MA). Statistical analyses were
performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 19 (IBM Corp., Armonk,
NY).
Affective Decision-Making Task
Affective biasing of instrumental action. Following Ly et al.
(2014), we calculated the proportion of instrumental go-responses
(P
go
⫽go/[go ⫹no-go]), and reaction time (RT) of optimal
instrumental go-responses. Mixed-design analysis of variance
(ANOVA) was used for our main analyses. Two ANOVAs with
P
go
and RT as dependent variables were performed with emotion
(angry/happy) and action-context (avoidance/approach) as within-
subject variables, and group (violent offenders/controls) as
between-subjects variable to assess whether the groups differed in
affective biasing of instrumental action.
The groups differed significantly in age and IQ (see online supple-
mentary materials). Because the groups are not randomly selected,
and the covariate is a preexisting group difference, it is misguided to
control for age and IQ differences by covarying these variables; an
analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) could lead to potentially spurious
Figure 1. Panel A: Affective decision-making task. Trial events from the (1) approach block and (2) avoidance
block. After face-prime offset (3,000 ms), the instrumental target appeared, to which subjects were required to
make a go- or no-go-response within 2,500 ms. Response feedback (500 ms) was provided before the monetary
outcome (1,000 ms). In these examples a go-response had been recorded as indicated by the orange-colored
squares during the response feedback phase. The duration of the intertrial interval was 3,000 ms on average.
Panel B: Balance board apparatus (left) and examples of a go-response (right) in (1) the approach block and (2)
the avoidance block. Approach-go: sideway step on the balance board toward the side of the instrumental target
(1). Avoidance-go: sideway step on the balance board away from the side of the instrumental target (2).
Approach-/avoidance- no-go-responses involved remaining stationary at the center of the balance board. See the
online article for the color version of this figure.
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3
AFFECTIVE BIASING OF BEHAVIOR IN VIOLENT OFFENDERS
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results (Miller & Chapman, 2001). We therefore conducted the anal-
yses without controlling for these differences in age and IQ. To
explore and rule out any potential influence of age and IQ, additional
analysis with a subsample of the violent offenders that best matched
the control group-average on age and IQ was conducted. These
additional analyses yielded comparable results with the primary anal-
yses (see online supplemental materials).
Accuracy. To assess whether performance was above chance
for the violent offenders and the controls separately, we tested the
proportion of optimal responses against 0.50 using one-sample
ttests. Moreover, a one-way ANOVA with group (violent offend-
ers/controls) as factor and the proportion of optimal responses as
dependent variable was used to assess whether there were group
differences in accuracy across the task as a whole. For all analyses,
significant interaction effects were followed up by simple (inter-
action) effects analyses. Alpha was set at .05.
Results
Affective Decision-Making Task
Affective biasing of instrumental action. Mean proportion
of go-responses (P
go
) and RT are presented in Table 1. Consistent
with our hypothesis, we observed reduced transfer of affective
value to instrumental action in violent offenders compared with
controls. This was substantiated by an ANOVA of P
go
revealing a
significant Group (violent offenders/controls) ⫻Emotion (angry/
happy) ⫻Action-context (avoidance/approach) interaction effect,
F
(1,54)
⫽4.85, p⫽.032, p
2⫽0.082, 95% CI [0.000, 0.239]. This
interaction was due to the violent offenders differing significantly
from controls in terms of their affective bias of instrumental
approach-avoidance (see Figure 2). As expected, this interaction
effect was due to the presence of an affective bias effect in the
controls, F
(1,18)
⫽7.94, p⫽.011, p
2⫽0.306, 95% CI [0.018,
0.550], but not in the violent offenders, F
(1,36)
⫽0.54, p⫽.469,
p
2⫽0.015, 95% CI [0.000, 0.160]. Specifically, post hoc simple
effects analyses suggested that the affective bias effect in controls
was driven by enhanced P
go
for instrumental avoidance after angry
versus happy faces, F
(1,18)
⫽5.67, p⫽.029, p
2⫽0.240, 95% CI
[0.000, 0.499]. No other significant simple (interaction) effects
were found (all Fs⬍2.25).
The above effects were not accompanied by effects on the speed
of responding. ANOVA of RTs showed a significant main effect of
action-context (avoidance/approach), indicating that instrumental
approach was faster than instrumental avoidance in general,
F
(1,54)
⫽13.73, p⬍.001, p
2⫽0.203, 95% CI [0.044, 0.373], but
there were no other significant main and interaction effects (all
Fs⬍1.00).
Accuracy. Across the task as a whole, performance was better
than chance for both the controls (M⫽59.53, SEM ⫽1.60),
t(18) ⫽5.97, p⬍.001, d⫽1.370, 95% CI [0.728, 1.992], and the
violent offenders (M⫽55.53, SEM ⫽1.50), t(36) ⫽3.75, p⬍
.001, d⫽0.601, 95% CI [0.261, 0.965]. Moreover, there was no
significant difference between the groups in terms of overall
accuracy, F(1, 54) ⫽2.89, p⫽.095, p
2⫽0.051, 95% CI [0.000,
0.195]. Finally, additional ANOVAs of P
go
with overall accuracy
as a covariate showed that our critical effect of interest (the
affective bias effect) did not vary as a function of overall accuracy
(Emotion ⫻Action ⫻Accuracy; F(1, 53) ⫽1.46, p⫽.132, p
2⫽
0.027, 95% CI [0.000, 0,155].
1
Thus, the difference in affective
biasing effect between the violent offenders and controls cannot
not be explained by any effect on nonspecific cognitive processing,
such as decreased task engagement, in the violent offenders.
Discussion
The present study shows that violent offenders with psycho-
pathic tendencies exhibit reduced affective biasing of instrumental
1
Similar results were obtained using signal-detection analysis. There
was no difference between the groups in terms of d=as a sensitivity index,
F(1, 54) ⫽0.768, p⫽.385, p
2⫽0.014, 95% CI [0.000, 0.126]. Finally,
additional ANOVAs of P
go
with d=as a covariate showed that our critical
effect of interest (the affective bias effect) did not vary as a function of d=
(Emotion ⫻Action ⫻d=;F
(1,53)
⫽0.053, p⫽.819, p
2⫽0.027, 95% CI
[0.000, 0.040]).
Table 1
Data on the Affective Decision-Making Task
Violent offenders Controls
Proportion of go-responses
Avoidance
Angry 56.6 (2.3) 56.9 (1.9)
Happy 54.9 (2.0) 51.0 (2.5)
Approach
Angry 56.9 (2.2) 53.3 (1.7)
Happy 56.4 (2.2) 55.4 (1.9)
Reaction time
Avoidance
Angry 1414.4 (28.4) 1356.8 (52.8)
Happy 1421.6 (32.9) 1373.5 (55.1)
Approach
Angry 1310.4 (37.8) 1280.5 (48.3)
Happy 1301.9 (35.5) 1275.5 (44.7)
Note. Mean proportion of go-responses (%) and reaction times (ms) for
instrumental avoidance and approach (SEM) after angry and happy face
primes for the violent offenders and the control groups separately.
HC VO
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
10
)
OG%( yppaH su
n
im yrgnA
Avoid
Approac h
P
go
yppaH sunim yrgnA
Controls Violent offenders
Figure 2. Affective biasing of instrumental action for controls and violent
offenders. Controls (vs. violent offenders) demonstrate enhanced avoid-
ance (vs. approach) after angry versus happy faces, suggesting that the
violent offenders versus controls show a decreased affective bias effect on
instrumental action. Error bars represent standard error of the mean.
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4LY ET AL.
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action versus healthy controls. Specifically, instrumental avoid-
ance (vs. approach) was potentiated by angry (vs. happy) faces in
healthy controls, but not in violent offenders. This suggests that
reduced transfer of affective value to instrumental action might
represent a psychological mechanism that contributes to instru-
mental aggression observed in violent offenders.
This is the first study showing that violent offenders lack affec-
tive biasing of instrumental action. Our finding is in line with a
previous finding that violent offenders with psychopathic tenden-
cies show reduced automatic avoidance tendencies upon angry
faces (von Borries et al., 2012). However, the present study ex-
tends this prior work by showing that violent offenders show
abnormal transfer of such affective responses to instrumental
avoidance. Broader literature involving aggression have mainly
focused on affective processing per se, with inconsistent findings,
suggesting subdued affective responding (Blair et al., 2004;House
& Milligan, 1976;Lykken, 1957;Patrick et al., 1993), but also
intact or even hypersensitive affective responding (Arnett et al.,
1997;Glass & Newman, 2009;von Borries et al., 2010). The
present finding highlights the importance to investigate the con-
sequences of affective processing for instrumental action, rather
than studying affective processing per se, in order to better under-
stand behavioral anomalies. This idea is particularly relevant in
light of contemporary literature suggesting that disordered behav-
ior involves abnormal interactions between systems regulating
affective and instrumental responses (Dayan et al., 2006).
In fact, a recent fMRI study indicated that violent offenders do
not differ from controls in amygdala signaling during affective
face processing, but rather differ in the degree to which the
amygdala signaling interacts with prefrontal regions associated
with affective action control (Volman et al., 2016). In line with
this, data from our control tasks suggest that the lack of an
affective bias in the violent offenders in the current study is
unlikely to be explained by reduced affective processing per se
(see online supplementary material). These preliminary findings
need to be replicated in future studies including thorough behav-
ioral and physiological tests assessing different components of
affective processing (e.g., recognition and responding) to disen-
tangle whether our current effects are explained by reduced affec-
tive processing per se, or rather the transfer of affect to instrumen-
tal action. Furthermore, future studies could benefit from including
a neutral control condition in order to disentangle whether effects
for behavior in violent offenders were specific to the aversive or
appetitive domain (angry vs. happy).
Given the heterogeneity in the current patient sample and vio-
lent offenders in general, it is crucial for future research to tease
out what characteristics or subtypes are conceptually related to
reduced affective biasing of instrumental action. Our exploratory
analyses suggest that reduced affective biasing effect in the violent
offenders is associated with a combination of low anxiety and high
premeditative aggression score (see online supplementary mate-
rial). It is important to note, that this finding is based on self-
reports and the aggression scores were remarkably low in the
offenders considering their violence offense history. Therefore, we
cannot rule out a bias in these data, for instance through dishonest
answering. Given this inherent limitation of self-reports, especially
when applied in this type of population, we have to interpret this
result with caution (Kockler, Stanford, Nelson, Meloy, & Sanford,
2006;Kuyck, De Beurs, Barendregt, & Van den Brink, 2013).
Nevertheless, the finding is consistent with literature suggesting a
modulatory role of anxiety in subtyping of aggression (i.e., reac-
tive vs. instrumental; Crowe & Blair, 2008;Frick & Ellis, 1999).
Future research is necessary to provide a better understanding of
the current findings in relation to aggression.
In sum, the results show that violent offenders versus healthy
controls exhibited reduced transfer of affective value to instrumen-
tal behavior. Our findings converge with the clinical observation
that individuals with a violence offense history are typically not
affected by social affective cues that would discourage instrumen-
tally aggressive acts (Glenn & Raine, 2009). This finding under-
scores the relevance of examining the interaction between affec-
tive processes and instrumental action for a better understanding of
aggression-related anomalies. Finally, this research offers a new
approach to investigate the role of affective biasing of behavior in
different psychopathological conditions.
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5
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Received August 31, 2015
Revision received April 8, 2016
Accepted April 11, 2016 䡲
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