Somatic Marker Functioning During Recovery From a Romantic Relationship with a Psychopathic Abuser: An Examination of Mental Health, Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth in Social Decision Making
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Damasio’s (1994) Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH) proposes a system in the brain that creates somatic markers, a mechanism which assists in integrating emotional information to aid in everyday functioning, including social decision making. Survivors of domestic abuse commonly experience mental health impairments that are associated with abnormalities in the somatic marker circuitry. These abnormalities are made apparent in deficits in facial affect processing and social impairments that contribute to the maintenance of these disorders. Whiffen and MacIntosh (2005) propose that the strategies survivors use to cope with distress can perpetuate and extend impairments to mental health by diminishing their ability to maintain supportive relationships. However, some survivors demonstrate growth or resilience despite their experiences, and utilize social support relatively well. The purpose of my research is to provide a conceptual investigation of the neuropsychological underpinnings of Whiffen and MacIntosh’s pathway by utilizing Damasio’s SMH. I examine survivors of a romantic relationship with a psychopathic abuser. Survivors of psychopathic abusers have received limited attention from researchers, but suggestions have been made regarding profound emotional and interpersonal outcomes (Pagliaro, 2009). Two studies were conducted to examine the extent that abusers’ level of psychopathic traits influenced survivors’ abuse experiences and recovery outcomes (e.g., mental health impairments, resilience). Participants (N = 105 and N = 392) were recruited from domestic abuse support websites and completed a series of close and open-ended questionnaires, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and a facial affect recognition task. A series of correlation and regression analyses revealed that abusers’ ascribed level of psychopathic traits were predicted by survivors’ experiences of abuse that was frequent, physically harmful, and versatile (i.e., physical, financial, sexual, and property abuse), and survivors’ diminished intensity of positive emotional experiences and elevated post-traumatic stress symptoms (Study 1a and 2). While both Factor 1 and Factor 2 psychopathy were predictive of frequent and physically harmful abuse, Factor 1 psychopathy was also predictive of survivors’ levels of anxiety (Study 1a).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".