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The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath

227 points by tjaerv 13y ago

quarterto 13y ago
Makes you wonder what's going to show up when (if?) diagnostic scans like this become widely available to consumers.
squozzer 13y ago
Sorry mate, off to the gas chamber with you. Genetics is destiny, and we have to think about national security, the children, and what the insurance companies think.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  As a continuation of this, it's worth watching Gattaca if you never have. Great film in it's own right too, pity Andrew Niccol's been off his game the last couple. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
  - jboynyc 13y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
imahboob 13y ago
I guess this is what talking to hundreds of psychopaths does to you...
daemonk 13y ago
He just went ahead and broke the blinding to look up who the scan belonged to? Is he allowed to do that even if he knows it belonged to a member of his family?
- michaelt 13y ago
  There's a difference between blinding for purposes of protecting subject privacy and blinding for purposes of preventing experimenter bias. In blind trials of new medications doctors can break the blinding at will (patent seems to be having an adverse reaction, was their treatment real or placebo?) as long as they record having done it and exclude the subject from the final results. If the scans were required to be anonymous for subject privacy, they wouldn't have kept the records needed to break the blinding.
dreamdu5t 13y ago
I learned nothing from this article but that neuroscience and psychology don't really have any concrete definition for psychopathy and they don't seem to have much predictive insights on it at all. Fascinating.
- RodericDay 13y ago
  Jon Ronson has a fairly decent book called "The Psychopath Test" that you may find interesting. It will basically reinforce your intuition though.
  - jrs99 13y ago
    you know what's interesting is that i've been seeing a lot of psychopath books out there recently. Like a publishing trend, where people are riding on the success of some other book. kind of like that 10,000 hours thing came out and many books about it all came out at once. it makes me wonder if that's all that it is, a trend in publishing.
    - thirdtruck 13y ago
      From what I've heard from writing podcasts, writing to the "current" trend is a fool's gambit because all those vampire books (for example) were purchased and in production for 1-4 years before they hit the shelves. Each house also knows what the other ones have in production and they tend to stack their releases, like with movie studios. In other words, there was probably a lot more hidden momentum behind Gladwell's books than anyone might admit or even recognize from the inside.
- tantalor 13y ago
  There was some anecdotal evidence to support the prediction, “I’m obnoxiously competitive. I won’t let my grandchildren win games. I’m kind of an asshole, and I do jerky things that piss people off,” he says. “But while I’m aggressive, but my aggression is sublimated. I’d rather beat someone in an argument than beat them up.” I think the takeaway is that sociopathy might be more normal than we thought.
deleted 13y ago
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stdbrouw 13y ago
Intriguing article, but I feel that Fallon might be a bit too hard on himself: once you think X you start interpreting everything so that obviously it corroborates X. "I forgot my wife's birthday" suddenly implies "I don't care about other people's emotions because I'm a psycho" instead of the explanation that is probably more sensible, namely "I can be forgetful sometimes". Maybe he should revisit his initial hypothesis that brain scans are quackery...
- neurotech1 13y ago
  IMHO "brain scans" are not quackery but how they are represented can be. In a scan like Dr. James Fallon (low frontal lobe activity) he could be impulsive and absent minded but not psychopathic. It all depends how the imaging data is normalized and interpreted. Also the PET scan doesn't show connective activity between neurons. Disclaimer: I'm not a PhD neuroscientist.
  - pekk 13y ago
    Okay, so the way that imaging data is interpreted is typically quackery, particularly when it is used to diagnose psychopathy
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  When the topic of psychopathy comes up for lunch room discussion, I sometimes go into depth of what I've personally learned on the subject (just something I'm interested in). When I go into it, most people I've talked to immediately ask me if they are psychopaths. It's funny how consistent that is. Maybe, despite the evidence pointing in that direction, he just didn't manifest a psychopathic brain. maybe.
  - wisty 13y ago
    > When I go into it, most people I've talked to immediately ask me if they are psychopaths I think a good answer is "if you care about the answer, then probably not - all a psychopath would care about is whether anyone found out".
- 13y ago
ChuckMcM 13y ago
So now he is a candidate for Special Ops :-) More seriously, its another data point in the nature vs nurture debate and one where even he points out, he is very competitive and can be rude even to children. Advice, don't cut this guy off on the freeway :-). One wonders how many people "discover" they are psychopaths when they do something psychopathic and it gives them a huge endorphin rush and then they want to do it again? If this guy got into a competitive situation and ended up literally beating his opponent into a bloody pulp, would his brain chemistry make it feel to him like the best sex [1] he had ever had? And then would he be able to not do it again? That is the interesting bit for me, while I am a big fan of the nurture hypothesis, can nature override it? And does it? [1] Pick what ever primal rewarding activity you want here, sex seems to be a fairly common one.
- j_baker 13y ago
  This is a very good point. Generally, there's some element of nature and some element of nurture in a person's development. I mean you take two identical twins who are separated from birth and find that they're very similar in some respects and completely different in others. The point is that there's a difference between temperament personality. Some people are just wired to act a certain way and yet are raised to be a totally different way.
GhotiFish 13y ago
I've always viewed psychopaths as a sort of social predator, Something that would naturally spring up in any kind of environment subject to evolution. If you had a planet of sheep, you're going to eventually get sheep that eat other sheep. Morality is never involved in a strategy to survive. Likewise in a social environment, preying on others is effective. With no moral aversion to such behaviour, I had basically assumed all psychopaths would establish some kind of predatory behaviour in their lives. Manipulation, plagiarizing, discrediting, blackmailing, ect. On one level, it's not surprising to me to see an outlier such as Mr. Fallon, but I can't shake it. When you have those tendencies as part of who you are, then the question really becomes "why didn't you act on them?" Oh your mother loved you a whole bunch? I see. The human spirit is just indomitable isn't it? Uh huh. I suspect the simplest answer is: "he did." It would raise my spirits to know that pro-social psychopaths exist. Seeing as the incidence of psychopathic symptoms on average is about 1/100 people. I've also learned not to believe something because I wish it to be true. I fall on the nature side of the debate. It's a scary world.
- jrs99 13y ago
  if morality is never involved in a strategy to survive... why do you think it exists?
  - philwelch 13y ago
    Imposing morality on others is a survival strategy, but obeying morality yourself only becomes one once everyone else is imposing it on you.
    - Symmetry 13y ago
      To the extent that humams can see the extent to which other humans have morality, genuinely having morality is a very important survial strategy. Cooperation is important in hunter gatherer bands but unlike with farmers it's fairly straightforward for people who feel imposed-upon to sneak off and start their own band. Being seen to be immoral is a good way to end up dead, either killed or from dieing along the next time you become injured or sick.
j_baker 13y ago
"Psycopath" has no clinical meaning. The closest equivalent is Antisocial Personality disorder. In extreme cases, an antisocial can be a Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, but that's not always the case. It's worth pointing out that there is also such thing as an Antisocial personality style, meaning that a person has antisocial traits, but can keep them in check well enough to function in society. They tend to do well in roles that require aggression, and can make excellent entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. In fact, people are frequently surprised to find out that some of their most prized traits are Antisocial, they have some antisocial friends, and that they probably have one or two Antisocial heroes. Martin Luther King Jr and Mother Theresa leap to mind. TL;DR - It's simplistic to say "Trait A bad, Trait B good". There are plenty of narcissists, sociopaths, and paranoids that have done great things for society.
- chongli 13y ago
  It's worth pointing out that there is also such thing as an Antisocial personality style, meaning that a person has antisocial traits, but can keep them in check well enough to function in society. They tend to do well in roles that require aggression, and can make excellent entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. Just because somebody isn't a serial murderer doesn't mean they are beneficial to society. Ruthless businessmen and politicians can cause far more damage than Ted Bundy ever did.
  - j_baker 13y ago
    It's great that you point this out. Personality styles happen along a spectrum. You have some people who fit in well in society and do good things. Then you have some borderline cases where people can minimally fit into society albeit with many problems. Then you have people who just can't fit into society unless it's to cause damage. Depending on a person's background and talents, sometimes they're white collar and sometimes they're blue collar.
  - m_d 13y ago
    I haven't read it, so I can't vouch for it, but Snakes in Suits [1] is a frequently recommended book on this subject. [1] http://amzn.com/0061147893 http://amzn.com/0061147893
saalweachter 13y ago
He broke the blinding on a study? The monster!
- chris_wot 13y ago
  Surely doing a scan on his family and himself is a huge no-no?
  - saalweachter 13y ago
    Including yourself in a study is fairly routine. The rules for human experimentation - at least for some categories of psych studies - are a lot more lax when it comes to self-experimentation. The family thing was probably an approved part of the study. When looking for something with a suspected genetic component it makes a lot of sense.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
While the concept of psychopathy is interesting, people shouldn't be lulled into believing that this category is more well defined than it really is. E.g. people often associate psychopathy with criminality, and yet only the part of the psychopathy test that directly relates to past criminal behavior, is predictive of future criminal behavior. I feel like psychopathy as a category is almost made for people who want an easy answer for the relationship between science and morality.
- xk_id 13y ago
  Wow, your last comment struck a chord in me. And it also reminded me of this incredible quote of A. N. Whitehead, the prominent mathematician: "Pitiless indeed are the processes of Time and Creative Thought and Logic; they respect the convenience of none, nor the love of things held sacred. Yet their work is the increasing glory of a world, - the production of psychic light, - the growth of knowledge, - the advancement of understanding, - the enlargement of human life, - the emancipation of Man." How about that?
bionerd 13y ago
This is exactly why I find the field of epigenetics[1] absolutely fascinating -- we are so much more than just the sum of our genes. Everything in our lives matters: our childhood, the stuff we eat, how much we sleep (or don't), how much physical exercise we have (or don't)... all these things have an influence on the levels of gene expression and that's what decides everything. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
- stephp 13y ago
  Yes, I am completely fascinated by this too. Kinda makes one paranoid, though! One article I read was cleverly headlined something like, "You are what your grandpa eats."
guttermaw 13y ago
This scientist seems to be using this Just So Story for self-promotion, and he has done so for years.[1][2] He has also attempted to profit personally.[3] He seems to have the expertise to know that this story is flimsy, and not well-founded in science. Using an unvalidated method in this way could be considered unethical itself. [4] Dr. Fallon's record of behavior might suggest a pattern of anti-social behavior. His job as a tenured UC professor is, in part, to educate the public. Instead he seems to give us sci-fi. Of course, I'm just being totally silly, and so is he (not sure about all the writers he has duped over the years.) [1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1278889... [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_killer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_... [3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-Personal/dp/1591846005 http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-... [4] http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-ethics-of-public-diagnosis-using.html http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-ethics-of-public...
- woah 13y ago
  Doesn't this "pattern of anti-social behavior" just prove his claims?
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    no, it provides anecdotal evidence
    - SilasX 13y ago
      Proving a claim about one particular person is necessarily going to cite anecdotes about them.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        Disproving the claim that this particular person is behaving in this way because of these brain structures is nearly impossible with the state of neuroscience as it currently is, so it isn't a something that can be viewed as anything other than an interesting hypothesis at this stage. You just wouldn't be able to achieve anything approaching a decent level of statistical confidence from studying a single subject, no matter how many anecdotes you cite about them.
auctiontheory 13y ago
Interesting, but this story feels very incomplete without some interviews with his family and his grad students. (Not that they would feel free to talk openly.)
contextual 13y ago
Makes me wonder if scientists and supporters of vivo animal testing are unwitting psychopaths, not just simply having low moral intuition.
taivare 13y ago
Had to watch ad from Goldman Sachs, prior to the reading.The manipulations of 'Pro-social' psychopaths.
atmosx 13y ago
What I see in this article is a huge lack of knowledge on the subject, not by the author but by the human kind as a whole.
Houshalter 13y ago
It scared me when I found out such a high percentage of people are sociopaths. I know many are non-violent and live within social norms, but it still unsettles me. How can you have empathy for someone who has no empathy for you or anyone else? Someone who has no guilt?
- lutusp 13y ago
  > It scared me when I found out such a high percentage of people are sociopaths. What, from psychologists? You do understand, don't you, that most of psychology is based on anecdotes, yes? Consider the term "sociopath" itself -- is there a thermometer or a high-tech scanner that flashes a red warning when a sociopath is under the sensor? Or is the label a matter of opinion? To give you a feel for how loose psychology is, for decades psychiatrists and psychologists treated a condition called "Asperger Syndrome", marked by a tendency to focus one's attention on very few things, even just one, and poor social skills. Eventually people complained that what was being described might be normal, even advantageous behavior, as a result of which a split took place -- half the psychologists begin making lists of famous, very successful people who were supposedly mentally ill with the condition (Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates and many more), and the other half petitioned to have the condition removed from the profession's diagnostic guidebook. The critics won that battle, Asperger's has been removed, and in a delicious irony, there is now a new therapy meant to get people to focus more, show more intense dedication to a few pursuits, or even just one. Sound familiar? The new fad is called "Grit", and it extols the virtue of the same behaviors that the Asperger's people thought marked one as mentally ill and in need of treatment. In short, until about five years ago, people paid psychologists to be treated for the defect of too much focus and concentration on too few activities. Now they pay psychologists to develop that very ability -- it's now fashionable to be focused. To see how psychology works, all you need to do is read its history, see how many fads come and go without any serious science being done. But this era is drawing to a close -- people are beginning to abandon psychiatry and psychology, including some heavyweights like the sitting director of the NIMH: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-scientific-backlash-against-the-dsm.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...
  - 13y ago
dbbolton 13y ago
Antisocial personality disorder and (Hare's) psychopathy are defined largely by behavior, so this title is extremely misleading. However, I supposed "neuroscientist discovers that his brain shares some anatomical similarities to known psychopaths" isn't as catchy a title.
roma1n 13y ago
I tought psychopathy was defined defined by unacceptable social behavior, i.e. "pro-social psychopath" does not make a lot of sense.
tokenadult 13y ago
I took care to read the fine submitted article and then share it among Facebook friends of mine (who include psychologists who study human behavior genetics and neuroscientists) before commenting here. Two things come to mind after reading the comments posted earlier here. 1) Most people who have read about genetic influences on human behavior have not read the masters, but rather their disciples. The masters of behavior genetics research take care to write about the concept of "reaction range," the variety of possible behavior patterns that MIGHT arise from an individual with a given genotype under differing environmental influences. It is apparent that the reaction range for many human behaviors is very broad even if genotype is fixed.[1] 2) Simply adding some brain-scan data to some hypothesis pulled out of a hat will make even the most wild and crazy hypothesis more plausible to lay readers. Neuroscience is hard, and so far there are not a lot of neuroscience conclusions about human behavior that are well replicated and well backed up by theory.[2] [1] The review article Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182 http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/Johnson%20Current%20Directions%20Psych%20Science%202010%20(G%20and%20E%20in%20IQ).pdf http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/... looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial selection. "Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA [general cognitive ability] and height, the likely influences of gene-environment correlations and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances. This would be especially the case if height and GCA and other psychological traits are only single facets of multifaceted traits actually under more systematic genetic regulation, such as overall body size and balance between processing capacity and stimulus reactivity. Genetic influences on individual differences in psychological characteristics are real and important but are unlikely to be straightforward and deterministic. We will understand them best through investigation of their manifestation in biological and social developmental processes." [2] The book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-Neuroscience/dp/0465018777 http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-... explains the gaps in current knowledge about neuroscience of human behavior and why a few brain scans in a few subjects don't tell us much about brain function before other study methods are applied to the problem.
nzp 13y ago
Sigh. This is one of those scientific subjects that has become a popular topic in the mainstream, and with it come a lot of misconceptions. So it's not surprising to me how many comments are skeptical of what this guy writes. It's unfortunate because the article sums what we almost certainly know about the phenomenon, albeit in a way that is clearly geared to promote his book. It's marketing, but things he says are based on a fair amount of decent science. It's just that long tables of statistical data and lectures on neurophysiology don't sell as many books as amusing personal anecdotes.
reasonnotreason 13y ago
He talks about all his behavior alleles (?) but gives us no idea of a baseline in the general population. He talks about how his brain has this same scan as a psychopath, but doesn't tell us how many people have this same scan in the general population. It is all glossed over for a good talk. This science has now evolved into books. I saw him on NOVA originally. Who would know who he is outside his academia world, if not for this silly discovery ? This is such poor science. I'd question if having him look over a stack of brain scans to find correlations with certain behaviors to be of value. Seems like you'd be better off finding some layperson, teach them how to read these heat map type things and let them find the correlations. Like A/B testing for the brain. Then you don't have all these biases leading to book deals. chuckle.

227 points by tjaerv 13y ago

Makes you wonder what's going to show up when (if?) diagnostic scans like this become widely available to consumers.

Sorry mate, off to the gas chamber with you. Genetics is destiny, and we have to think about national security, the children, and what the insurance companies think.

mattmanser 13y ago
As a continuation of this, it's worth watching Gattaca if you never have. Great film in it's own right too, pity Andrew Niccol's been off his game the last couple. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
- jboynyc 13y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

imahboob 13y ago

I guess this is what talking to hundreds of psychopaths does to you...

daemonk 13y ago

He just went ahead and broke the blinding to look up who the scan belonged to? Is he allowed to do that even if he knows it belonged to a member of his family?

michaelt 13y ago
There's a difference between blinding for purposes of protecting subject privacy and blinding for purposes of preventing experimenter bias. In blind trials of new medications doctors can break the blinding at will (patent seems to be having an adverse reaction, was their treatment real or placebo?) as long as they record having done it and exclude the subject from the final results. If the scans were required to be anonymous for subject privacy, they wouldn't have kept the records needed to break the blinding.

dreamdu5t 13y ago

I learned nothing from this article but that neuroscience and psychology don't really have any concrete definition for psychopathy and they don't seem to have much predictive insights on it at all. Fascinating.

RodericDay 13y ago
Jon Ronson has a fairly decent book called "The Psychopath Test" that you may find interesting. It will basically reinforce your intuition though.
- jrs99 13y ago
  you know what's interesting is that i've been seeing a lot of psychopath books out there recently. Like a publishing trend, where people are riding on the success of some other book. kind of like that 10,000 hours thing came out and many books about it all came out at once. it makes me wonder if that's all that it is, a trend in publishing.
  - thirdtruck 13y ago
    From what I've heard from writing podcasts, writing to the "current" trend is a fool's gambit because all those vampire books (for example) were purchased and in production for 1-4 years before they hit the shelves. Each house also knows what the other ones have in production and they tend to stack their releases, like with movie studios. In other words, there was probably a lot more hidden momentum behind Gladwell's books than anyone might admit or even recognize from the inside.
tantalor 13y ago
There was some anecdotal evidence to support the prediction, “I’m obnoxiously competitive. I won’t let my grandchildren win games. I’m kind of an asshole, and I do jerky things that piss people off,” he says. “But while I’m aggressive, but my aggression is sublimated. I’d rather beat someone in an argument than beat them up.” I think the takeaway is that sociopathy might be more normal than we thought.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

stdbrouw 13y ago

Intriguing article, but I feel that Fallon might be a bit too hard on himself: once you think X you start interpreting everything so that obviously it corroborates X. "I forgot my wife's birthday" suddenly implies "I don't care about other people's emotions because I'm a psycho" instead of the explanation that is probably more sensible, namely "I can be forgetful sometimes". Maybe he should revisit his initial hypothesis that brain scans are quackery...

neurotech1 13y ago
IMHO "brain scans" are not quackery but how they are represented can be. In a scan like Dr. James Fallon (low frontal lobe activity) he could be impulsive and absent minded but not psychopathic. It all depends how the imaging data is normalized and interpreted. Also the PET scan doesn't show connective activity between neurons. Disclaimer: I'm not a PhD neuroscientist.
- pekk 13y ago
  Okay, so the way that imaging data is interpreted is typically quackery, particularly when it is used to diagnose psychopathy
GhotiFish 13y ago
When the topic of psychopathy comes up for lunch room discussion, I sometimes go into depth of what I've personally learned on the subject (just something I'm interested in). When I go into it, most people I've talked to immediately ask me if they are psychopaths. It's funny how consistent that is. Maybe, despite the evidence pointing in that direction, he just didn't manifest a psychopathic brain. maybe.
- wisty 13y ago
  > When I go into it, most people I've talked to immediately ask me if they are psychopaths I think a good answer is "if you care about the answer, then probably not - all a psychopath would care about is whether anyone found out".
13y ago

ChuckMcM 13y ago

So now he is a candidate for Special Ops :-) More seriously, its another data point in the nature vs nurture debate and one where even he points out, he is very competitive and can be rude even to children. Advice, don't cut this guy off on the freeway :-). One wonders how many people "discover" they are psychopaths when they do something psychopathic and it gives them a huge endorphin rush and then they want to do it again? If this guy got into a competitive situation and ended up literally beating his opponent into a bloody pulp, would his brain chemistry make it feel to him like the best sex [1] he had ever had? And then would he be able to not do it again? That is the interesting bit for me, while I am a big fan of the nurture hypothesis, can nature override it? And does it? [1] Pick what ever primal rewarding activity you want here, sex seems to be a fairly common one.

j_baker 13y ago
This is a very good point. Generally, there's some element of nature and some element of nurture in a person's development. I mean you take two identical twins who are separated from birth and find that they're very similar in some respects and completely different in others. The point is that there's a difference between temperament personality. Some people are just wired to act a certain way and yet are raised to be a totally different way.

GhotiFish 13y ago

I've always viewed psychopaths as a sort of social predator, Something that would naturally spring up in any kind of environment subject to evolution. If you had a planet of sheep, you're going to eventually get sheep that eat other sheep. Morality is never involved in a strategy to survive. Likewise in a social environment, preying on others is effective. With no moral aversion to such behaviour, I had basically assumed all psychopaths would establish some kind of predatory behaviour in their lives. Manipulation, plagiarizing, discrediting, blackmailing, ect. On one level, it's not surprising to me to see an outlier such as Mr. Fallon, but I can't shake it. When you have those tendencies as part of who you are, then the question really becomes "why didn't you act on them?" Oh your mother loved you a whole bunch? I see. The human spirit is just indomitable isn't it? Uh huh. I suspect the simplest answer is: "he did." It would raise my spirits to know that pro-social psychopaths exist. Seeing as the incidence of psychopathic symptoms on average is about 1/100 people. I've also learned not to believe something because I wish it to be true. I fall on the nature side of the debate. It's a scary world.

jrs99 13y ago
if morality is never involved in a strategy to survive... why do you think it exists?
- philwelch 13y ago
  Imposing morality on others is a survival strategy, but obeying morality yourself only becomes one once everyone else is imposing it on you.
  - Symmetry 13y ago
    To the extent that humams can see the extent to which other humans have morality, genuinely having morality is a very important survial strategy. Cooperation is important in hunter gatherer bands but unlike with farmers it's fairly straightforward for people who feel imposed-upon to sneak off and start their own band. Being seen to be immoral is a good way to end up dead, either killed or from dieing along the next time you become injured or sick.

j_baker 13y ago

"Psycopath" has no clinical meaning. The closest equivalent is Antisocial Personality disorder. In extreme cases, an antisocial can be a Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, but that's not always the case. It's worth pointing out that there is also such thing as an Antisocial personality style, meaning that a person has antisocial traits, but can keep them in check well enough to function in society. They tend to do well in roles that require aggression, and can make excellent entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. In fact, people are frequently surprised to find out that some of their most prized traits are Antisocial, they have some antisocial friends, and that they probably have one or two Antisocial heroes. Martin Luther King Jr and Mother Theresa leap to mind. TL;DR - It's simplistic to say "Trait A bad, Trait B good". There are plenty of narcissists, sociopaths, and paranoids that have done great things for society.

chongli 13y ago
It's worth pointing out that there is also such thing as an Antisocial personality style, meaning that a person has antisocial traits, but can keep them in check well enough to function in society. They tend to do well in roles that require aggression, and can make excellent entrepreneurs, attorneys, and politicians. Just because somebody isn't a serial murderer doesn't mean they are beneficial to society. Ruthless businessmen and politicians can cause far more damage than Ted Bundy ever did.
- j_baker 13y ago
  It's great that you point this out. Personality styles happen along a spectrum. You have some people who fit in well in society and do good things. Then you have some borderline cases where people can minimally fit into society albeit with many problems. Then you have people who just can't fit into society unless it's to cause damage. Depending on a person's background and talents, sometimes they're white collar and sometimes they're blue collar.
- m_d 13y ago
  I haven't read it, so I can't vouch for it, but Snakes in Suits [1] is a frequently recommended book on this subject. [1] http://amzn.com/0061147893 http://amzn.com/0061147893

saalweachter 13y ago

He broke the blinding on a study? The monster!

chris_wot 13y ago
Surely doing a scan on his family and himself is a huge no-no?
- saalweachter 13y ago
  Including yourself in a study is fairly routine. The rules for human experimentation - at least for some categories of psych studies - are a lot more lax when it comes to self-experimentation. The family thing was probably an approved part of the study. When looking for something with a suspected genetic component it makes a lot of sense.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

While the concept of psychopathy is interesting, people shouldn't be lulled into believing that this category is more well defined than it really is. E.g. people often associate psychopathy with criminality, and yet only the part of the psychopathy test that directly relates to past criminal behavior, is predictive of future criminal behavior. I feel like psychopathy as a category is almost made for people who want an easy answer for the relationship between science and morality.

xk_id 13y ago
Wow, your last comment struck a chord in me. And it also reminded me of this incredible quote of A. N. Whitehead, the prominent mathematician: "Pitiless indeed are the processes of Time and Creative Thought and Logic; they respect the convenience of none, nor the love of things held sacred. Yet their work is the increasing glory of a world, - the production of psychic light, - the growth of knowledge, - the advancement of understanding, - the enlargement of human life, - the emancipation of Man." How about that?

bionerd 13y ago

This is exactly why I find the field of epigenetics[1] absolutely fascinating -- we are so much more than just the sum of our genes. Everything in our lives matters: our childhood, the stuff we eat, how much we sleep (or don't), how much physical exercise we have (or don't)... all these things have an influence on the levels of gene expression and that's what decides everything. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

stephp 13y ago
Yes, I am completely fascinated by this too. Kinda makes one paranoid, though! One article I read was cleverly headlined something like, "You are what your grandpa eats."

guttermaw 13y ago

This scientist seems to be using this Just So Story for self-promotion, and he has done so for years.[1][2] He has also attempted to profit personally.[3] He seems to have the expertise to know that this story is flimsy, and not well-founded in science. Using an unvalidated method in this way could be considered unethical itself. [4] Dr. Fallon's record of behavior might suggest a pattern of anti-social behavior. His job as a tenured UC professor is, in part, to educate the public. Instead he seems to give us sci-fi. Of course, I'm just being totally silly, and so is he (not sure about all the writers he has duped over the years.) [1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1278889... [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_killer.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_... [3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-Personal/dp/1591846005 http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-... [4] http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-ethics-of-public-diagnosis-using.html http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-ethics-of-public...

woah 13y ago
Doesn't this "pattern of anti-social behavior" just prove his claims?
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  no, it provides anecdotal evidence
  - SilasX 13y ago
    Proving a claim about one particular person is necessarily going to cite anecdotes about them.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      Disproving the claim that this particular person is behaving in this way because of these brain structures is nearly impossible with the state of neuroscience as it currently is, so it isn't a something that can be viewed as anything other than an interesting hypothesis at this stage. You just wouldn't be able to achieve anything approaching a decent level of statistical confidence from studying a single subject, no matter how many anecdotes you cite about them.

auctiontheory 13y ago

Interesting, but this story feels very incomplete without some interviews with his family and his grad students. (Not that they would feel free to talk openly.)

contextual 13y ago

Makes me wonder if scientists and supporters of vivo animal testing are unwitting psychopaths, not just simply having low moral intuition.

taivare 13y ago

Had to watch ad from Goldman Sachs, prior to the reading.The manipulations of 'Pro-social' psychopaths.

atmosx 13y ago

What I see in this article is a huge lack of knowledge on the subject, not by the author but by the human kind as a whole.

Houshalter 13y ago

It scared me when I found out such a high percentage of people are sociopaths. I know many are non-violent and live within social norms, but it still unsettles me. How can you have empathy for someone who has no empathy for you or anyone else? Someone who has no guilt?

lutusp 13y ago
> It scared me when I found out such a high percentage of people are sociopaths. What, from psychologists? You do understand, don't you, that most of psychology is based on anecdotes, yes? Consider the term "sociopath" itself -- is there a thermometer or a high-tech scanner that flashes a red warning when a sociopath is under the sensor? Or is the label a matter of opinion? To give you a feel for how loose psychology is, for decades psychiatrists and psychologists treated a condition called "Asperger Syndrome", marked by a tendency to focus one's attention on very few things, even just one, and poor social skills. Eventually people complained that what was being described might be normal, even advantageous behavior, as a result of which a split took place -- half the psychologists begin making lists of famous, very successful people who were supposedly mentally ill with the condition (Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates and many more), and the other half petitioned to have the condition removed from the profession's diagnostic guidebook. The critics won that battle, Asperger's has been removed, and in a delicious irony, there is now a new therapy meant to get people to focus more, show more intense dedication to a few pursuits, or even just one. Sound familiar? The new fad is called "Grit", and it extols the virtue of the same behaviors that the Asperger's people thought marked one as mentally ill and in need of treatment. In short, until about five years ago, people paid psychologists to be treated for the defect of too much focus and concentration on too few activities. Now they pay psychologists to develop that very ability -- it's now fashionable to be focused. To see how psychology works, all you need to do is read its history, see how many fads come and go without any serious science being done. But this era is drawing to a close -- people are beginning to abandon psychiatry and psychology, including some heavyweights like the sitting director of the NIMH: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-scientific-backlash-against-the-dsm.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...
- 13y ago

dbbolton 13y ago

Antisocial personality disorder and (Hare's) psychopathy are defined largely by behavior, so this title is extremely misleading. However, I supposed "neuroscientist discovers that his brain shares some anatomical similarities to known psychopaths" isn't as catchy a title.

roma1n 13y ago

I tought psychopathy was defined defined by unacceptable social behavior, i.e. "pro-social psychopath" does not make a lot of sense.

tokenadult 13y ago

I took care to read the fine submitted article and then share it among Facebook friends of mine (who include psychologists who study human behavior genetics and neuroscientists) before commenting here. Two things come to mind after reading the comments posted earlier here. 1) Most people who have read about genetic influences on human behavior have not read the masters, but rather their disciples. The masters of behavior genetics research take care to write about the concept of "reaction range," the variety of possible behavior patterns that MIGHT arise from an individual with a given genotype under differing environmental influences. It is apparent that the reaction range for many human behaviors is very broad even if genotype is fixed.[1] 2) Simply adding some brain-scan data to some hypothesis pulled out of a hat will make even the most wild and crazy hypothesis more plausible to lay readers. Neuroscience is hard, and so far there are not a lot of neuroscience conclusions about human behavior that are well replicated and well backed up by theory.[2] [1] The review article Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182 http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/Johnson%20Current%20Directions%20Psych%20Science%202010%20(G%20and%20E%20in%20IQ).pdf http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/... looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial selection. "Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA [general cognitive ability] and height, the likely influences of gene-environment correlations and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances. This would be especially the case if height and GCA and other psychological traits are only single facets of multifaceted traits actually under more systematic genetic regulation, such as overall body size and balance between processing capacity and stimulus reactivity. Genetic influences on individual differences in psychological characteristics are real and important but are unlikely to be straightforward and deterministic. We will understand them best through investigation of their manifestation in biological and social developmental processes." [2] The book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-Neuroscience/dp/0465018777 http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-... explains the gaps in current knowledge about neuroscience of human behavior and why a few brain scans in a few subjects don't tell us much about brain function before other study methods are applied to the problem.

nzp 13y ago

Sigh. This is one of those scientific subjects that has become a popular topic in the mainstream, and with it come a lot of misconceptions. So it's not surprising to me how many comments are skeptical of what this guy writes. It's unfortunate because the article sums what we almost certainly know about the phenomenon, albeit in a way that is clearly geared to promote his book. It's marketing, but things he says are based on a fair amount of decent science. It's just that long tables of statistical data and lectures on neurophysiology don't sell as many books as amusing personal anecdotes.

reasonnotreason 13y ago

He talks about all his behavior alleles (?) but gives us no idea of a baseline in the general population. He talks about how his brain has this same scan as a psychopath, but doesn't tell us how many people have this same scan in the general population. It is all glossed over for a good talk. This science has now evolved into books. I saw him on NOVA originally. Who would know who he is outside his academia world, if not for this silly discovery ? This is such poor science. I'd question if having him look over a stack of brain scans to find correlations with certain behaviors to be of value. Seems like you'd be better off finding some layperson, teach them how to read these heat map type things and let them find the correlations. Like A/B testing for the brain. Then you don't have all these biases leading to book deals. chuckle.