Ecological Momentary Assessments as a New Approach to Understand Differential Socio-Affective Features Characterizing Psychopathy Dimensions

Abstract

Vize and colleagues have made a significant contribution by applying ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine ecological features of socio-affective functioning in psychopathy. This approach offers real-time insights on those phenomena, moving beyond traditional self-reports and lab-based experiments. Although most findings were null, they challenge established views, suggesting a need to refine current psychopathy conceptualizations. In this commentary, I underscore the potential of EMA to advance further understanding of psychopathy, emphasizing other methodological EMA features beyond the ones considered in the study. Such new features may be important to provide ecologically valid methodologies to extend this initial evidence in future research.