Party Vibe

Thank you for your feedback, I have kept the description pretty vague and perhaps that was a mistake (I don’t think details should lead to demand characteristics, but was being on the safe side). I’m actually focussing on self-reported psychopathy, but have included other questionnaires to assess traits associated with this.
Previous research has suggested that a deficit in fear recognition is present in psychopathy (both clinical and self-reported), and also in regular cocaine use (used more than once a month). To the best of my knowledge, no study has directly compared the deficits seen in psychopathy to those seen in regular cocaine use, or investigated the combination of the two factors. This is the aim of my study.

I appreciate your point that a double blind experiment when people are actually using cocaine would be ideal, but unfortunately due to time constraints, lack of funding etc. this is not possible for me for this particular course/ project.

I am also in need of controls who do not use cocaine but use other drugs, if you are interested? 🙂

Thank you again for your feedback.

I believe that one MRI study of found decreased grey matter volume in areas of the brain that are associated with empathising and responding to fear (psychopathy vs controls), although I haven’t looked at this in very much detail as of yet. I don’t know if this has been observed in cocaine users though, I am looking forward to researching and finding out though! I was inspired by a clinical study that compared emotion recognition deficits in people diagnosed with Schizophrenia to those observed in alcohol dependence. Both conditions were associated with emotion deficits, but when they were combined (people diagnosed with schizophrenia who were also alcohol dependent) the deficit was reduced. I’m wondering if something similar may happen with psychopathy and cocaine use. Maybe, like you said, it could indicate some imbalance that is corrected by cocaine use.

As well as psychopathy, cocaine use is specifically associated with reductions in the recognition of negative emotions. I haven’t actually used cocaine myself, but friends of mine have and report that they feel more confident while using it. Perhaps this has something to do with being less able to pick up on negative emotional cues, although this is just my speculation. I am actually really looking forward to researching this!

I would be more than happy to report back here with results, either on a new thread or via a direct message.