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Psychopaths among us

• metamemetics 17y ago
  What a loaded sensationalist witch hunt. Someone either is an axe murderer or they aren't. There is no physical thing known as Psychopathy, it is an arbitrary descriptive label known as a category used to group similar behavior together. It is not a scientific discovery but a classification. This psychology professor is just asserting the classification he's devoted his life's work to is now bigger and applies to more people. He is simply coming up with an excuse to inflate his self-worth and sell more books, even though he is not making any discoveries and doing research. He's not even making the genetics argument, and if he was I would post articles citing nutritional deficiencies as causes of aggression or how gene expression changes due to epigenetics. I just want to insist that anyone interested in reading up on psychology stick to the scientific research, specifically cognitive- psychology\neuroscience\computing\science
  • samd 17y ago
    Behaviors are caused by physical things, namely brain states, so it's perfectly reasonable to attribute a category of behavior to a physical characteristic of the brain. If people who behave fundamentally differently than others aren't physically different then what accounts for their behavior?
    • metamemetics 17y ago
      Your making what's known in social psychology as the Fundamental Attribution Error: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
      • AndrewHay 17y ago
        Can you enlighten us as to how he is making this error?
        • metamemetics 17y ago
          We are always biased to overestimate the component of behavior attributable to some intrinsic quality of the person. The classic example is Nazi Germany\The Holocaust. Everyone started asking how could the Germans commit so many horrible atrocities, it must be something intrinsic and Freudian about their personality maybe they have a strong need for discipline, etc. Then along comes Milgram and his famous electroshock study http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment , showing that Americans will perform actions even if they directly violate their internal beliefs, returning the primacy of behavior to the situation. It has been reproduced cross-culturally\many different times and variations. Another influential study is the Stanford Prison Experiments. Personally I still agree with the poster (samd) that everything is physical including brain states, and dualism is bonkers. But if we take that step, there is no longer a metaphysical ego holding personality. There is no distinction between individual and environment and the causality between the two is bidirectional, rendering the question moot.
          • samd 17y ago
            There is no distinction between individual and environment and the causality between the two is bidirectional, rendering the question moot. You are definitely on to something.
          • a-priori 17y ago
            See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_neuroscience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_neuroscience
          • rue 17y ago
            You could just as well make the argument that such "violating internal beliefs" is actually the exposed core and that such beliefs are the veneer furnished by upbringing.
          • berntb 17y ago
            Afaik, adoption studies support that psychopathy is inherited (to a large part) genetically.
      • samd 17y ago
        I don't think so, I haven't really made any claims about how much of their behavior is situational versus dispositional. I'm just saying that disposition plays some role.
    • aphyr 17y ago
      I agree that behaviors are caused by physical states. However, stating that people who behave in a fundamentally different way aren't physically different is misguided. Every person is physically different. The difficulty is that unless there are gross brain lesions, it's very hard to see what makes people with psychopathy different. It might be a slight difference in the sensitivity of key neurons to one of twenty neurotransmitters, for example, or a slightly different pattern of connections in one region. Psychology (like many sciences) is all about developing reliable abstractions for these complex physical states. The surprising thing is that it works: you can change the neurotransmitter balance of the brain in many cases just by sitting down and talking to people for a year.
  • itistoday 17y ago
    Where on earth are you getting this from? The guy has done excellent hard research, psychopathy is fairly well established at this point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy Further, there should be nothing outrageous in the claim that some people have radically different emotions from "normal people," especially considering the fact that you can take a pill and instantly change the sort of consciousness and emotions that you experience.
    • TimothyFitz 17y ago
      I think there's a fair point to make that calling one person a psychopath and another person not a psychopath is a purely arbitrary line drawn in the sand. Hare's test measures various responses and draws an arbitrary line (30 of 40 points) between which someone is or is not a psychopath. It's a classical false dichotomy that the article promotes in sensationalist terms.
      • itistoday 17y ago
        It may be arbitrary in the same sense the question, "Is that a fast car?" is arbitrary, but in exactly the same sense you can compare and make statements regarding the degree to which someone exhibits psychopathic traits, and as his research shows, this isn't something that's simply caused by a bad upbringing. The fact that it's not a black & white issue doesn't mean that there aren't concrete physical differences between the brains of the general population and the 1% of the population labeled as psychopaths. It's the same situation for any mental "disorder", i.e. Asperger Syndrome, etc.
    • metamemetics 17y ago
      Psychopathy is a label that's not even widely used anymore. It's not a diagnostic in the DSM. This guy is a super old-timer who mainly works with police. 'Psychopathy' was a catch-all category that he is making increasingly more catch-all. We make categories because they are useful, but this categorization wasn't specific enough to be useful which is why it isn't used anymore. "According to Hare, the consensus among researchers in this area is that psychopathy stems from a specific neurological disorder which is biological in origin and present from birth[10] although this was not what was reported by a 2008 review which instead indicated multiple causes and variation between individuals" I am obviously not arguing that antisocial behavior doesn't exist, murder obviously is an action that has happened at least once before. What I am arguing strongly against is the idea that people are born intrinsically evil. Also the point he hammers in is all about "empathy", but empathy is also absent in autism... his category is too broad to be usable at helping people. Treating an individual as an individual rather than a category allows you to take off the blinders and address there specific situation better to promote more positive change. The methodology of categorizing someone as having an intrinsic psychological disorder is extremely pessimistic and hinders resocialization. It has also been out the door with the advent of positive psychology, here is a speech by a president of the american psychological association: http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psy... http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/10773.html http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/10773.html The above is a completely different approach to looking at antisocial behavior. It is also one that leads to positive outcomes. It is also quantifiable.
  • Vivtek 17y ago
    First, "this psychology professor" is trying to get people not to misuse his work, as reading the article would have told you. He is, in fact, "the scientific research". The reason he's not doing research now, as you seem to be asserting, is that he is retired. From doing research, you see. Secondly, if you don't believe in psychopathy, you clearly haven't met my mother-in-law. (And I only wish I were joking.)
• 100k 17y ago
  There is an excellent book by psychologist Martha Stout called "The Sociopath Next Door" which examines this subject. The author claims as many as 1 in 25 Americans is a sociopath. http://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-Stout/dp/076791581X http://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-Stout/dp/07... Indeed, this book changed my perception of human nature -- some people are un-reformable. Most of them aren't serial killers, they're just dicks who get their rocks off by controlling other people. Think your asshole boss, or a jerk you knew who was always using people.
  • Confusion 17y ago
    It's rather soothing to be able to label your 'asshole boss' with an epithet like 'sociopath', but that doesn't make it correct. It's just makes it easier to be less critical and believe someone that is arguing that. It's ridiculous to suggest that 1 in 25 people could be a sociopath. Sociopathy is a disorder, a mental illness, a way in which someone can differ from the norm. If it would affect 4% of the population, it would be an essential part of the norm. Instead of labeling these people as 'sociopaths', why not accept that not everyone has the empathic abilities we'd hope for? Why not accept that, in spite the lack of empathic ability, such people can still lead meaningful lives and can care for others? Calling them 'sociopaths' is just another way of dehumanizing those we don't like, so we don't have to face to darker sides of our own humanity.
    • chrischen 17y ago
      > Sociopathy is a disorder, a mental illness, a way in which someone can differ from the norm You don't know that sociopathy is a mental illness or disorder. That was also explained in the article. For all you know someone who achieves universal enlightenment might become a sociopath because he/she realizes that we all eventually die and nothing that happens in this world matters, or something like that. In fact I'd say it's simply an effect of a different world view, and the ones getting caught are the dumber/impulsive ones while the smarter ones are the ones we label as "assholes."
      • Confusion 17y ago
• pufuwozu 17y ago
  After they'd heard Hare speak they realized they were dealing with a psychopath, someone who could feel neither guilt nor sorrow. They changed their interrogation tactic to, "So you murdered a couple of prostitutes. That's minor-league compared to Bundy or Gacy." The appeal to the psychopath's grandiosity worked. He didn't just confess to his other crimes, he bragged about them. Nice, reverse psychopathy.
• TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
  Hmm. Unreformable? It doesn't appear so. As the case with the police using reverse psychotic techniques encouraged the perp to brag, we could also find out other techniques that show these types of people how to care. Now, they may not have empathy. Not everyone does in the same degree, but that's ok, as that is what makes us unique. The interesting research would be to see if there are techniques that would help a psychopath to integrate into society while limiting destructive tendencies. Perhaps others are doing this research, but Ive heard none of it.
  • anamax 17y ago
    > As the case with the police using reverse psychotic techniques encouraged the perp to brag, we could also find out other techniques that show these types of people how to care. The conclusion doesn't seem to follow from the premise. Can you fill in some more of the intermediate steps?
    • TheAmazingIdiot 17y ago
      Sorry, I was just presuming another path of treatment would be possible. As evidenced in the article, normal people show remorse after committing violent crimes. Police take that as a way to focus their attention during an interrogation to get the suspect to admit fault. In a psychopaths case, appeals to emotioon does not work. Instead the example that worked was to compare to the "greats" of what they committed. That lead the suspect to start bragging and admit fault. Perhaps, in this similar vein, that psychopaths are trainable. They have different emotional processes and thoughts. Perhaps we can make a training course that focuses on using their uniqueness to reform them. And as I said, these steps would require a great deal of research with all types of psychopaths, and not just the ones in prison.
      • rue 17y ago
        The article actually mentions a rehabilitation plan based on the subject's self-interest.
  • orblivion 17y ago
• jimduey 17y ago
  Another article about sociopathy: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_sociopathic_epidemic.html http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/the_sociopathic_epide...
  • malkia 17y ago
    Sorry, but this article is nothing but political propaganda.
    • jcmhn 17y ago
      It appears more like a subtle joke than propaganda: a right-wing conspiracy story told in the style of left-wing sociobabble.
• tigger2010 17y ago
  I recently read a book called "Evil Genes" by Barbara Oakley. One of the interesting stories she tells is about how some of the research into Machiavellian behavior got started. The original research group decided to focus on "everyday" manipulative, lying, power-hungry behavior. Looking for test subjects, they found plenty of instances, but ended up picking a category of people to study - their own PhD advisors. The point is, mild versions of psycho/socio-pathic behavior are unfortunately commonplace. Changed my perception of people's behaviors in very fundamental ways.
• AndrewHay 17y ago
  "The Psychopathy Checklist consists of a set of forms and a manual that describes in detail how to score a subject in twenty categories that define psychopathy. Is he (or, more rarely, she) glib and superficially charming, callous and without empathy?" What question springs to my mind is, given that these people have something like their 'appreciate other people's emotions' bits of their brains not working properly, why don't we see many female psychopaths? Off the top of my brain, I can come up with a few likely answers: 1: Female 'psychopaths' don't exhibit the same sorts of criminal behavior that male psychopaths do. 2: Females are less susceptible to being a 'psychopath'
  • ardit33 17y ago
    They are the same (if you read hare's books), but it seems that women are more likely to be diagnosed as Histrionic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorder
• abstractbill 17y ago
  They have traits similar to ideal leaders. You would expect an ideal leader to be narcissistic, self-centred, dominant, very assertive, maybe to the point of being aggressive. Is it just me, or would anyone else not follow a person who matched this description?
  • a-priori 17y ago
    They're missing the most important characteristic from that list: charisma. These natural leaders (who may be psychopaths/sociopaths) have a way of drawing people to themselves and making people like them and follow them in a way that makes them ignore all the things in that list.
    • abstractbill 17y ago
      That makes more sense. I don't think I've ever met anyone who would match this description though (the only person who comes to mind when I think about it is Steve Jobs).
      • staunch 17y ago
        He's the perfect example. Objectively a narcissistic asshole, yet there are many people who would gladly work for him over almost anyone else.
        • po 17y ago
          Do you honestly think that Steve Jobs (the person, not the businessman) has no feeling of empathy for others? Psychopath != narcissistic asshole
          • gwern 17y ago
            You're right that a lot of the Jobs anecdotes can be spun both ways (for example, when he told Knuth he read all the books; or how exactly he got his new organ); and it's hard to know the empathy bit without getting close to him. So let's look on the grander scale. Philanthropy is hardly unknown to the Silicon Valley; there's Bill Gates giving away scores of billions, or the Google guys, or Steve Wozniak's past decades of work. So Jobs is certainly aware that his peers consider charity a good use of their billions. And Jobs is rich - WP tells me 5.5 billion & increasing, and any plausible financial management plan has him having sold off a fair bit of stock (just to reduce risk if nothing else). And Jobs has the personal motivation: he is, I am surprised to learn, a Buddhist. Is there any global religion which in general puts as much emphasis on good works & not possessing billions as Buddhism? Yet, Jobs apparently does not significantly give to charity: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070620152256AAtA8WX http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070620152256AA... Keep in mind that even your basic tithe of 10%* would mean dozens or hundreds of millions a year being given away to someone. A narcissistic asshole, one might well expect, would give money away like a drunken sailor to show how awesome and munificent and successful he is, and immortalize his name on foundations and buildings and scholarships etc. A psycho/sociopath... not so much. * I realize that I can't simply take 5.5 billion and divide by 10 years, but with numbers as big as these, whether we go by net worth or income doesn't matter so much.
• necrecious 17y ago
  It is expected that there would be different strategies employed by a population. Game theory can derive this result. John Maynard Smith introduced the idea of a evolutionarily stable strategy. The idea is to use the classic game theory payoff matrix successively to determine a stable mix of strategies used by the population. Some payoff matrix aren't stable since one of the strategies can dominate the others and causing the dominated strategy to be extinct in the population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy The types of strategy typically discussed are: * Doves (always peaceful) * Hawks (always attack) * Bully (feign attack) * Retaliator (peaceful until attacked)
• earl 17y ago
  This is a blog by a parent raising a he has identified as a psychopath. The description of his son's behaviors is both interesting and chilling. http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/ http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/
  • tonystubblebine 17y ago
    Wow. That's a fascinating read. Thank you for sharing.
  • scotty79 17y ago
    Citation from the blog: We offered Lucas $20 for taking out the garbage each week. Twenty dollars for five minutes of work, an extreme amount, just to see of our instinct was accurate. He seemed excited by the prospect of all that money and the first week eagerly took the garbage out. We immediately paid him the $20 he had earned. The following week I ended up taking the garbage out. Even though the $20 offer was still in effect, Lucas had no interest. It simply wasn’t worth it him to do something he didn’t want to do. We could have raised the offer to $100, or $1000 and it wouldn’t have mattered. Question: Does any one know how to alleviate motivational problem described above? Not in psychopath but in otherwise almost normal person.
    • BigZaphod 17y ago
      I'd love an answer or discussion about this, even if only for myself! Promise of money has never successfully motivated me to do anything. In fact, try as I might, I don't know what motivates me - and by all accounts, I'm a pretty introspective person! At least I know money by itself isn't enough - I guess that's a start, but I've been stuck there for years now. :/
      • techiferous 17y ago
        Certainly you end up making many decisions and doing many things each day, even if they are small things like brushing your teeth, right? So at least for some activities you've got motivation. What are the kinds of activities that you get stuck on?
• adammichaelc 17y ago
  This article reminds me of the submission, "Are You Capable of Being Ruthless to Get Ahead?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1184953 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1184953 It seems that the "ruthless" character may have been a psychopath.
• olalonde 17y ago
  I wonder what makes some psychopaths violent and others not.
  • mixmax 17y ago
    Probably circumstance.
• known 17y ago
  I believe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin pill cures psychopaths.
  • tdoggette 17y ago
    [citation needed]
    • known 17y ago
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4599299.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4599299.stm
      • tdoggette 17y ago
        The words "psychopath," "sociopath," and "antisocial [personality disorder]" do not appear on that page. The closest thing to your original claim is "'Our results might lead to fertile research on the role of oxytocin in several mental health disorders with major public health significance.'"
        • known 17y ago
          http://www.google.com/search?name=f&hl=en&q=oxytocin+sociopath http://www.google.com/search?name=f&hl=en&q=oxytocin...
• sukuriant 17y ago
  Am I the only one that finds it ironic that both this article and an article titled (though I haven't read it), "Why theatre was the most important class I ever took", are on the front page at the same time? I figured the theatre paper was on a subject related to a different article the other day (the title of which I've forgotten, but it was about a particular subculture fitting in to regular society by faking the role), but this was something I found rather interesting and ... ironic? [as an immediate side-note upon starting to read the theatre article: it doesn't seem to be on what I expected it to be, at all; furthermore, I'm finding the other subject quite interesting]
• Tycho 17y ago
  So... anyone here reckon they're a psychopath? ;)
  • orblivion 17y ago
    Reddit had a chilling "Ask Me Anything" thread little while back that you might be interested in: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/a5xvv/iama_diagnosed_sociopath_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/a5xvv/iama_diagnosed_s...
  • GFischer 17y ago
    Is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist / PCL-R available online? I only found the okcupid one (and I'm definitely not taking it from there :) ) No, I don't think I'm a psychopath (an introvert sure, aspergers or autism-related stuff maybe - I did score very high there - but probably not psychopath).
• eplanit 17y ago
  I don't know. That long, rambling, breathlessly-written article makes me wonder about its author's mental stability.
• aphyr 17y ago
  The thing that fascinates me about psychopathy, along with ASPD, autistic-spectrum, etc, is that many of these "disorders" or "syndromes" are just different ways that minds can work. Humans come in so many flavors! In some ways, it's the closest thing we have to interacting with alien intelligences: people who can communicate, process information, make plans, but who don't line up with our deeply ingrained expectations of eye contact, trust, low-risk behavior, or empathy. While I suspect that normal human behavior has significant adaptive advantages in promoting the success of the species, I frequently wonder about a society of people who are all autistic-spectrum, or who all exhibit schizoaffective disorder, or are all manic-depressive. Would their psychologists form diagnostic handbooks for the clearly maladaptive trait of aggressive interpersonal contact, or trusting another person to watch their children? Bonus question: if you're religiously inclined, do the deities of your choice love and respect these societies? Is there something morally superior about normal human behavior? What spiritual beliefs might they form for themselves?
• bryanh 17y ago
  A great, enlightening comment on Reddit's Sociapath IamA that discusses 13 rules for dealing with sociopaths: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/a5xvv/iama_diagnosed_sociopath_ama/c0g0qyk http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/a5xvv/iama_diagnosed_s...