I do not normally respond negatively about a cited study. This study you have cited is rather glib and very flawed. It could be a better evaluation of a person's mathematical ability as opposed to:
Fear seemed to play a large role in risk-avoidance behavior of the
normal participants.
The other flaw in this study, is to even attempt to correlate giving subjects the money (as it is no personal loss) and using a rather trivial amount, $20.
Any person with a basic understanding of mathematics, would know that the odds were in favor to betting each time. This cannot be compared to real life risk aversion, where there are unknown risks associated with return, and the financial investment is far greater (as it is coming from the individual's pocket).
My views are supported by the following study In fact the results could be accounted by this study
Mathematical-Verbal Ability Differentials and Somatic Expressions of Situational Anxiety.
Are there any observations of psychopaths' responses to negative expected values?
The following study would demonstrate that on an emotional level, a person with clinical psychopathy would have no response to negative expected values, but the cognitive (purely intellectual) awareness of negative expected values would be intact. This could play out in many ways given the circumstances, as life itself is never so clear cut.
Suffice to say, if it involves the fear of harming another of self harm, this would not be consideration for average psychopath.
CONTEXT: Psychopaths belong to a larger group of persons with
antisocial personality disorder and are characterized by an inability
to have emotional involvement and by the repeated violation of the
rights of others. It was hypothesized that this behavior might be the
consequence of deficient fear conditioning.
OBJECTIVE: To study the cerebral, peripheral, and subjective
correlates of fear conditioning in criminal psychopaths and healthy
control subjects.
RESULTS: The healthy controls showed enhanced differential activation
in the limbic-prefrontal circuit (amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex,
insula, and anterior cingulate) during the acquisition of fear and
successful verbal and autonomic conditioning. The psychopaths
displayed no significant activity in this circuit and failed to show
conditioned skin conductance and emotional valence ratings, although
contingency and arousal ratings were normal.
CONCLUSION: This dissociation of emotional and cognitive processing
may be the neural basis of the lack of anticipation of aversive events
in criminal psychopaths.
Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
I do not see how you have made the following deduction:
The quoted study's only valid if it shows that psychopaths respond properly to expected losses.
Mathematical-Verbal Ability Differentials and Somatic Expressions of Situational Anxiety
Robert L. Milliken and Bernard Spilka
The Journal of Experimental Education
Vol. 31, No. 1 (Sep., 1962), pp. 3-26
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20156598
Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
Birbaumer N, Veit R, Lotze M, Erb M, Hermann C, Grodd W, Flor H.
Source
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology and Section of Experimental Resonance Imaging of the CNS,
Department of Neuroradiology,
University of Tübingen,
Tübingen, Germany.