I naturally have pretty low empathy, and mild narcissistic, manipulative, and impulsive tendencies. But I recognised in my teens that those traits were going to do me more harm than good if I let them get away from me, so I sought to change myself and open up more. Now even though there might be a cold core to my personality, it’s surrounded by a deep layer of warmth that I’ve cultivated over time because I just want to, maybe because I have a loving and supportive family.
Am I a psychopath? Nah, but probably somewhere on the “spectrum” if you like. It could be undiagnosed ASD or adult ADD or any number of other things. But I don’t think that’s even necessarily the right question. All that matters is the reality of living with the mind you’ve got; being labelled with a “condition” just gives you some finer instruments like therapy and medication to help accomplish that.
I used to think I had changed in the same way you did. Now I realize that the majority of (male) teenagers are narcissistic, manipulative and impulsive. Fortunately most of them grow out of it sometime in their 20s. See "A Clockwork Orange".
Sure, those are normal teenage things to some extent. Externally, there’s not much difference between actually not caring, and acting like you don’t care or just failing to consider consequences because you’re high on testosterone or whatever.
People with ASD are a lot of different things, but not usually manipulative. We're usually the ones who are being manipulated because we're too oblivious or too trusting for our own good.
Regardless, glad you're coping. If it's ADHD though, the meds can really make a huge difference in quality of life. But I understand if you'd rather not seek treatment when the alternative is being diagnosed with a personality disorder.
Sure—I didn’t mean to suggest that those traits are associated with ASD, but rather that I could be misinterpreting my own experiences, which could be caused by something entirely different. Self-diagnosis isn’t very reliable.
You’re right that I’m concerned about possible diagnoses. I’d like to know what’s “different” about me, but if it’s “bad” and would be used as justification to treat me with suspicion and remove my agency, then I’d rather nobody else know. :P
I'm not sure a having a brain scan that shows you're chronically underutilizing your empathy centre makes you a psychopath. I'm sure Elon Musk's brain scan would look similar to the writer's. If we are going to continue use the word as a synonym for "human to avoid at all costs", it's about being an unrepentant predator of other humans.
To conflate psychopath with hardcore -NTJ is to demonize hardcore -NTJ's, which can actually be a very valuable flavor of human for society. We should judge people by their impact crater, not by the perculiarities of their brain scans.
If you look at the psychopathy questionnaires, they have a heavy focus on the unrepentant predator side of things (e.g. https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/LSRP.php). The author does not sound like an unrepentant predator, so I think without the benefit of seeing his brain scan, few psychologists/psychiatrists would diagnose him as a psychopath.
Whenever I try to research this subject, I just give up for the vagueness, lack of consensus, and general lack of solid information. I'm sure there's some out there - I just can't find it on the Internet. In particular, I'm always frustrated about 'psychopaths' (empathy-lacking, narcissistic, manipulative) being wholly lumped in with violent predators (serial killers, who seem to get visceral gratification from hunting and physically destroying other humans).
There's lots of good information, but you need some basic background information for context. It is hard to establish that because so much communication is rooted in weird attempts at signalling "I'm a good person who isn't guilty of what you are accusing me of!"
The reality is that sociopaths have very high IQs and serial killers are typically small business owners, in part because it allows them freedom and control over their schedule that a full time employee typically lacks.
But when I have tried to comment on that on HN in the past, it tends to not go over well because people feel I am saying "Businessmen are evil asshats inclined to be serial killers" which isn't what I am saying at all.
Serial killers tend to have certain traits. But that doesn't mean having certain traits is some one way non refundable ticket to serial killer land.
It's interesting to me how those traits predispose individuals towards certain paths, some positive and some not. But traits are not some Greek Tragedy style inescapable destiny. And that's a really hard thing to talk about.
I have a general interest in psychology, that I suppose is rooted in my own psychological struggles. A long time ago I was hospitalized for severe PTSD with psychotic features. I'd been in a state of unmitigated terror for a couple of days, when I felt a surge of activity and a sensation of chilliness in my head. In an instant, I felt at peace, but my most basic drives had flipped 180 degrees. Destruction and violence were very good and rewarding. The person talking to you now was reduced to a small monitor process who was witnessing this in horror. That monitor process managed to find a nurse and communicate enough to get me into isolation for the night. It passed after 10 minutes, and nothing like that ever happened again. But I'll never forget what it was like. It made me ask the question: what if killers aren't consciously transgressing at all? What if they're oblivious, because their reward pathways are telling them their behavior is fine, maybe even important? But I've never been able to find any literature about this. Most articles about "the mind of the psychopath" seem to project a lot, as if they assume the subject is "like them, but they don't care about hurting people." I suppose that Sadistic Personality Disorder might be closer to what I'm talking about? Haven't found much of interest about that either though. Haven't found anything at all about the possibility that some people have a mindset so alien, that no healthy person could come close to understanding it, without an exceptionally astute metaphor.
For a time, I ran a small private email list to discuss research related to brain wiring through the lens of the personal experiences of youth who were not neurotypical. This included my two sons. The list was set up to serve the emotional, social and psychological needs of my oldest son. I think he was about 15 or 16 at the time. When he lost interest, the list died and I ultimately disbanded it.
You might find it helpful to look into brain research rather than psychological research. A lot of psychological research is really poorly done. But brain research has a lot of interesting tidbits based on some very solid experiments.
You might also look for historical case files about individuals, plus read biographies and fiction with an eye towards getting insight into individuals and how they experience the world.
Yes, people who are not neurotypical simply operate differently, so differently that a lot of what is written on the subject is biased to the point of uselessness.
You might find the writings of Temple Grandin of interest. You might find it useful to join online parent support groups and lurk. You might get good book recommendations out of that, plus useful anecdotal information.
Everything I've read has said that sociopathy is uncorrelated with IQ. You can have genius sociopaths and dumb sociopaths. Genius sociopath is the stereotype. Dumb sociopath might be the jerk next door who calls the cops when your newborn cries in the middle of the night. Nobody thinks he might be a sociopath, even though the whole neighborhood thinks he's an insensitive, insufferable, but harmless jerk--typical sociopath behavior, even though not exclusive to sociopaths.
Sociopath is not actually a defined clinical term. It is one of the reasons I use it. It helps convey something people will tend to colloquially understand, but there is no formal definition, so its meaning is flexible.
But my understanding from an Intro to Psych class that I had years ago is that serial killers typically have six traits, including high IQ, plus other traits we would consider sociopathic, like lack of empathy.
Generally speaking, if someone has a low IQ, I just consider them to be mentally retarded and not pathological. I don't know why anyone would call someone sociopathic who lacks the mental faculty to comprehend the consequences of their actions.
> But my understanding from an Intro to Psych class that I had years ago is that serial killers typically have six traits, including high IQ, plus other traits we would consider sociopathic, like lack of empathy.
Your understanding is incorrect. Serial killers do not typically have high IQs.[1] In fact they have normal IQs on average, and typically present themselves within a standard deviation of the norm.
The high IQ serial killer is a popular meme, but is ultimately unfounded.
Television-serial serial-killers typically have high IQs. It's the part of the conceit that keeps the character from getting caught, so they can keep making new episodes. They're smart enough to stay one step ahead of the law, but the chief investigator is also smart, so the killer can never get more than two steps ahead. The possibility of getting caught out from just one misstep keeps the tension in the show.
Real serial killers are average intelligence, chased by cops with average intelligence. They get caught for the same reasons that get other criminals collared. They get sloppy, and they fall into predictable patterns, or the cops get lucky. The only reason they can commit the same crime multiple times is that real investigative police work is difficult without CSI-style magical technology. Most people could formulate a simple set of rules that would keep their crimes separate from their public identity--until one of them hits a corner case and leaks critical information.
Don't burgle houses with dogs. Always burn the clothes you wore. Never look inside the package. Use encryption and dead drops. Put thermite on incriminating storage devices. Never work the same postal code twice. Don't work with a pimp. Always pay the boss exactly what you owe. Don't surface the submarine until you get within 50m of the floating dock. Wives and kids are off limits. Don't spend your share conspicuously. Don't sample the goods. Don't talk about Project Mayhem. &c. &c. &c.
It doesn't require mastermind-level plotting. The hardest part about crime is finding a person willing to do it. A lack of empathy goes a long way towards that, and an unwillingness to take responsibility for the consequences of one's actions gets even closer. The smart criminals don't murder people; instead they go into real-estate fraud, money laundering, and insider trading. The money is better and the prosecutions rarer.
There's an excellent book called How to lie with statistics. It goes into detail about the various ways you can package the same data to support whatever point you want to make. Having read that book more than once, I like to try to dig into the guts of the data, if possible, to see if it really says what people claim it says, which is very often not the case.
The piece you link to lists the lowest IQ as Simon Pirela with an IQ of 57. I found the following two pieces about Pirela:
He was apparently involved in four murders, but I am failing to find good details. From what I am reading of the one case where I can find a few details, you could conclude he was pressured into helping commit murder by other people and this occurred in part due to his low IQ. They commuted the death sentence due to his disability. So even the law doesn't hold him fully responsible.
The research you cite lists people as serial killers who killed at least two people. I don't think this is really what most people have in mind when talking about serial killers. Other research defines it differently, only including people who have killed at least three people.
Saying that someone typically has a high IQ doesn't mean they always have a high IQ. If you drop the very low figure of Simon Pirela's 57 IQ from the data, I imagine that would substantially change the means, medians, etc. cited.
My best understanding is that serial killers are typically bright. And the link you have provided is not really compelling evidence to the contrary.
I have spent part of my afternoon looking at this information because a. I did take Intro to Psych a long time ago, so perhaps what I know is outdated and b. I have a sincere interest in knowing what the truth is. That matters far more to me than winning internet arguments. I'm not here to argue with anyone anyway. That's not what motivates me.
But I'm really not finding your source compelling. So my mind has not been changed. I see no reason to believe the stated conclusion of this piece is better information than what I have previously been told. In fact, it looks pretty sketchy to me.
I'd recommend looking at the source of this information more closely: http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Serial%20Killer%20Information... on page 12 it breaks down the statistics relating IQ and serial killers. While you might find reason to disagree with 2 murders as sufficient to warrant the serial killer title (for the record, the reason they include 2 is because that is the official FBI definition), that breakdown shows what the average IQ is for those who committed three murders, 4 murders, and 5 or more. It also breaks things down by organized vs. disorganized killers, whether or not they raped victims, and the method of killing, and the N value for each subset. The only breakdown with an average greater than a standard deviation from average is for the serial killers that killed using bombs. And that it because it's only N=3 and includes Ted Kaczynski. Also keep in mind the median IQ is 86, and removing a couple of data points like Simon Pirela will have little effect on that value.
I can also give a personal citation of my own if that might help convince you. My Dad is a clinical psychologist who gives lectures on Conduct Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder, and does work for the courts evaluating the mental competency of defendants. He's the one who first told me there is no correlation between serial killers and intelligence.
Unless I am missing something, that's 20 pages of aggregate stats on things like age, race and gender. There is very little info here about IQ. It doesn't give me the data I need to draw meaningful conclusions.
It breaks down the average IQ based on the number of victims, which is what you mentioned in your comment. You said that defining serial killer as having at least 2 victims is too low. But this data has the IQ averages for those who killed three or more, four or more, etc. And in all cases it shows the average as being between 90 and 100. All of this data is just basic aggregates from the Serial Killer Database (http://skdb.fgcu.edu/info.asp) by the way, if you're skeptical of the source. Is there something specific you need?
Very interesting research, thank you for linking. I only wish they'd broken out IQ by broad motive, I imagine it would differ between those doing it for "thrill/lust/power" vs "financial gain".
Aggregated data is part of the problem. And even in that small data set, the average IQ trends up as the number of victims trends up. It comes a lot closer to average IQ than the overall number of 86, but it does trend up.
The piece you linked to seems to have an explicit political agenda of disproving the popular image of a serial killer as a young white male. And that makes the entire database questionable because if that is the goal, then you explicitly define things as broadly as possible so as to accomplish your political agenda.
I'm aware there are legitimately different profiles of serial killers. For example, your typical female serial killer has murdered multiple relatives by poisoning for the insurance money. This is very different from your typical male serial killer.
At this point I am tired and frustrated and I don't know how to sort out the answer to this question. I know we have IQ scores for a number of high profile cases that clearly fit my understanding of what a serial killer is and those IQs are on the high side, fitting my general understanding. I don't know where to look for data that doesn't have a political agenda of explicitly rebutting popular perception. For the moment, I feel stymied. And the reality is this is not important enough for me to keep digging into the question indefinitely. It's already eaten an excess of my time.
>And even in that small data set, the average IQ trends up as the number of victims trends up. It comes a lot closer to average IQ than the overall number of 86, but it does trend up.
Obviously, duh. It's not because serial killers tend to be of higher IQ, but because serial killers of higher IQ can get uncaught for longer, and thus manage bigger "number of victims".
> My best understanding is that serial killers are typically bright. And the link you have provided is not really compelling evidence to the contrary.
Your understanding is incorrect. But I read How to Lie With Statistics too, so I'm happy to help you with more sources for your perusal. Keep in mind that merely invoking How to Lie With Statistics does not refute a statistical analysis, you actually have to identify the problem.
3. This study conducts a meta analysis of published literature that finds no correlation between verbal intelligence and traits traditionally associated with psychopathy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28836093/ (also on bioRxiv if you'd like to read the non-paywalled version).
> But I'm really not finding your source compelling. So my mind has not been changed.
I suppose I should be transparent with you: I don't debate with people online to persuade them, I debate with people online to persuade the audience. I don't particularly mind if you're convinced, but it is important to me that misinformation not be spread unchallenged. So now we're at a crossroads. I've provided empirical evidence from a variety of cited sources, and you've provided an anecdote from an undergraduate course you took years ago. My sources might be incorrect! The beauty of science is that you can challenge its findings. I welcome you to challenge the sources I've provided as well (though I'd remind you that you've continually abstained from providing any of your own). But if you don't, that's also totally fine, because I think I've sufficiently demonstrated my point either way. Considering your lukewarm dismissal of an academic dataset based on a disagreement with one particular data point out of 206, it appears true crime television and your recollection of an old psych class are better authorities than published research.
Considering your lukewarm dismissal of an academic dataset based on a disagreement with one particular data point out of 206
I can't find info on the other 204. I see 2 names listed, one a famous case I already had heard about. So I tried to find details on the only other data point where I was provided a name and came up short on the kind of info I would like to see.
Your comments are not written in a good faith fashion. I don't plan to engage you further.
Being unable to comprehend the consequences of your actions is actually related to the defining symptoms: poor planning and impulse control. And serial killers do NOT tend to have high IQ, the average IQ of a serial killer is within normal.
Your assertions are inconsistent. In another comment, you admit that you know that sociopath is not a defined clinical term. Now you assert that there are "defining symptoms."
So, I think you need to back up a step and figure out what your point is.
When I use the term sociopath, I generally am talking about people who:
1. Lack empathy
2. Are narcissistic
3. Are manipulative
4. Do not have some innate sense of morality
5. Are very intelligent.
This fits with traits listed in the article under discussion. It fits with what I learned in a college class, Intro to Psychology, about traits typical of serial killers. It fits with what I have heard in true crime shows profiling serial killers.
So you and I are not on the same page, which is okay because it isn't a clinically defined term. But you and you are also not on the same page, and that makes it really hard to meaningfully engage you in discussion.
Sorry, I gave those defining symptoms in reference to Antisocial personality disorder, which is the clinically-defined term that most closely matches sociopathy. In fact, ASPD is defined by most of the criteria you gave for a sociopath (excluding intelligence). I should have included that, I apologize.
Again, serial killers do not tend to have higher IQ than the general population. It is a popular misconception, but it is incorrect all the same.
I highly recommend not basing opinions on true crime shows.
EDIT: I sincerely apologize, it was not my intention to insult you. I included that last line as a way to knock down one of your supporting arguments, not as a personal attack, or to imply that true crime shows were the reason you have these opinions. I actually originally had that section also rebutting your citation of an intro to psych class (how I'm guessing you took that class a while ago, the field has changed a lot since then, and depending on the exact year you might have been taking classes while sociopathy was a clinically defined term, etc) but I cut it down for the sake of brevity. That's an explanation, mind you, not an excuse. The intention of my words are irrelevant, all the matters is how they are received. I really am sorry, and I don't mean to belittle you or your experiences.
When a person deeply intertwines themselves into their argumentation, you are given the choice to argue around them or at them, or you can just nod at them. It's very hard to attack someone's personal credibility without being "personally insulting", and that especially includes questioning whether true crime tv cuts it for discussion. How does one do that not insultingly?
That's why, whether the effect is desired, the final result is constraining. You cannot lower someone's credibility non-insultingly.
I highly recommend not selectively pulling out one detail of many as an excuse to be dismissive. It's actually contrary to HN guidelines to argue in that fashion.
As already stated, I have taken college classes where this was touched upon. I have raised two children with a lot of personal challenges and I've read quite a lot of stuff.
It's fine for you to disagree with me. But you are being personally insulting for no real reason.
So I plan to step away from further discussion with you. If you take additional personal potshots at me, my lack of reply is not some sort of confirmation that these low blows are in any way accurate.
> I highly recommend not selectively pulling out one detail of many as an excuse to be dismissive.
The other commenter didn't merely nitpick a detail, they attacked a central pillar in your comment's credibility. When you responded with irrelevant information about watching criminal dramas, the commenter (rightly) advised you not to get your information from entertainment media. I can't tell you how to feel personally, but frankly I'm not sure it could be worded any more gently. You really shouldn't get your information from TV. At a certain point it's difficult to correct someone else without coming across as patronizing. As for your other sources of information:
> As already stated, I have taken college classes where this was touched upon.
As I cited in another reply to you, those college courses either provided you with misinformation, or you misunderstood them. Reading "quite a lot of stuff" and raising children while encountering "personal challenges" also does not satisfy any empiricism for your claims.
> If you take additional personal potshots at me, my lack of reply is not some sort of confirmation that these low blows are in any way accurate.
This is irritating and comes across as controlling, in my opinion. You don't really have any authority on how other people interpret your lack of reply. Nor were the commenter's valid criticisms "potshots" or "low blows" - you're being factually incorrect, insofar as there is cited, demonstrable evidence available. In fact, I'll freely interpret your lack of response as a tacit concession!
Sociopath is a clinical term, it's just not in the DSM because it's not, per se, a disease or disorder. Being a sociopath doesn't, by itself, cause impairment as defined by the DSM. But that doesn't mean it's not a clinical term. Ask any psychiatrist or psychologist what the defining characteristics are of a sociopath and they could immediately recite the Hare Psycopathy Checklist.
And there are plenty of psychiatrists who treat sociopathy as such. It can cause the sort of impairment cognizable by the DSM, especially as children when the measure of impairment is different than as an adult (e.g. "unruly child", something that would be non-sense once they reach the age of majority). And in those cases while it might be formally treated under the rubric of Anti-Social Personality Disorder, clinicians understand that treatment (in as much as its treatable at all) requires understanding sociopaths as a distinct class with a very distinct pathology.
Sociopath in the vernacular does often connote a serial killer. Fair enough. But there's plenty of literature, for professionals and laymen, that discusses sociopathy in clinical, well-defined terms.
FWIW, AFAIU I don't think there's any real debate about whether sociopathy exists as a concrete human phenomenon. The debate is largely how big the umbrella--do we only include those who are "incurable" (i.e. neurobiologically lack the capacity for empathy, either at birth or from a combination of nature and nurture), or those which behave as-if they lack such capacity, but where the capacity is simply suppressed for other reasons. And of course, this begs the question of what, exactly, is empathy. Like sociopath, I think most agree that empathy is a thing (and much more concretely than, say, "love"). But is "cognitive empathy" a thing? And given these questions, how accurate can we ever hope to get in particular cases?
FWIW, here's a good, recent radio interview discussing a special clinic in Wisconsin that has seem good results treating sociopaths--not in making them stop being sociopaths who harm people, but at least in minimizing their harm to a level below that which is considered criminal.
Of course, most sociopaths are already non-violent. Empathy seems to be but one evolutionary mechanism for checking violence and dampening violent tendencies. It's not the sole mechanism and might not even be the most important.
> Sociopath is a clinical term, it's just not in the DSM because it's not, per se, a disease or disorder. Being a sociopath doesn't, by itself, cause impairment as defined by the DSM. But that doesn't mean it's not a clinical term. Ask any psychiatrist or psychologist what the defining characteristics are of a sociopath and they could immediately recite the Hare Psycopathy Checklist.
Sociopathy is not a clinical term, despite Robert Hare's research into the subject. I have spoken to psychologists and psychiatrists about this, as you're recommending - they only use terminology like "sociopathy" insofar as they use terminology like "insanity." It helps them quickly invoke a set of peripherally familiar traits when they're speaking to a lay audience, like clients or law enforcement.
The entire purpose of a clinical term is to label a disease or disorder. There's no such thing as a clinical term not being documented in clinical reference material, because that's implicitly definitional. Antisocial personality disorder is the clinical label for traits which are usually bundled together under the colloquial term "sociopathy" because "sociopathy" is just that - colloquial. For the same reason the legal insanity defense doesn't qualify it as a clinical term, psychologists do not actually use sociopathy because it's far too imprecise.
> Sociopath in the vernacular does often connote a serial killer. Fair enough. But there's plenty of literature, for professionals and laymen, that discusses sociopathy in clinical, well-defined terms.
Can you cite literature intended for a professional audience that actually uses sociopathy as a clinical term? Using sociopath in popular science books or books targeted to a lay audience doesn't count. That sociopathy occupies a zeitgeist among a lay audience is exactly why it's not used in a clinical setting. It has too many associations and inconsistencies that do not lend itself to a rigorous analysis, and is often abused to refer to whatever set of qualities someone wants to attribute to another party.
This might come across as pedantry, but I find it very frustrating when words like "sociopathy" or "psychopathy" or even "insanity" are all claimed to be clinical terminology. Claiming they are dilutes the clarity of actual diagnosable disorders in discussion, and somewhat legitimizes ad hominem attacks involving these terms. The terms are fun as a popular reference or for joking incredulity, but there is a serious lack of self awareness among all of the comments in this thread which keep trying to define and redefine terms which have no clinical definition.
Also, FWIW, the last time I asked a psychiatrist about sociopaths it was a very short conversation. He immediately replied that he doesn't see many because 1) there's no real treatment and 2) they usually have no reason to seek treatment.
My sense of the conversation was that the term evoked precisely the same concepts in both our minds (even if his had more nuance and depth), and nothing at all as a muddled as "insanity". I wanted to ask more questions but I figured, what was the point. All he could do would be to confirm what I've read and reiterate the open questions and debates.
"Clinical" is not defined by the degree of accuracy or precision relative to the objective truth of a phenomenon. Depending on the state of the science a clinical term could be extremely fuzzy or perhaps even an ontological misstep--i.e. a grouping of unrelated phenomena, or an overly restrictive grouping. But it can be still be a clinical term serving a clinical role.
You make great points, but I think 1) reasonable people can disagree and 2) your definition is overly pedantic. For example, a doctor can still discuss, in clinical terms, smokers (as individuals, as a class) who suffer from no discernible impairment warranting treatment. Without actual impairment such clinical vocabulary may ultimately be more fluid and hand-wavy than it otherwise might be if anchored by concrete presentations, but it's no less clinical in the sense of 1) a professional vocabulary with well-defined denotations and connotations 2) useful in the application of and study of clinical treatment of actual impairment. So, for example, doctors and researchers may use terms like diffuse intimal thickening (DTI) or nicotine dependence. Much like "lack of empathy" they beg many questions, but even so they raise the same questions among those familiar with the subjects.
I'll let those search results speak for themselves. If we're being pedantic I think many of them make my case. But in fairness those results taken as a whole probably augur in favor of the term "sociopathy" being, at best, borderline clinical.
And I don't really want to discuss this any further with folks nitpicking my comments. The individual I was addressing has replied and explained the reason for their interest and I have replied to that. So I plan to step away from this discussion since I don't think it's at all constructive and I don't like how I am being addressed.
No, it isn't. "Antisocial personality disorder", "dissocial personality disorder", "unspecified personality disorder", etc - these are all clinical terms. Neither psychopathy nor sociopathy are clinical terms. They are colloquial terms used variously for many things, and unfortunately people tend to use them inconsistently.
> And I don't really want to discuss this any further with folks nitpicking my comments.
It's not nitpicking to point out actual inaccuracies. This isn't pedantry, and thus far you've defended your points by citing 1) "true crime" television, 2) an intro to psychology class you took "years ago", and 3) your experience as a parent.
It should be noted that sociopath is not a formally defined psychological term currently in use. The modern terms closest to the term are conditions like Antisocial personality disorder and Conduct disorder. And those conditions are associated with lower, not higher, IQs. The same is the case for serial killers (http://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Serial%20Killer%20Information... and https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murde...). One of the primary symptoms of those conditions is poor impulse control and planning ability.
I've never seen the claim that serial killers tend to be small business owners, do you have a source for that?
That's because the terms "Psychopathy" and "Sociopathy" are criminal legal terms or shorthand and not clinical terms.
The clinical terms [1] are Dissocial Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Anti-Social Personality Disorder are most related, though many aspects of "psychopaths" can't be measured - for example how do accurately and repeatably measure "lack of empathy?"
It's frustrating how so many people redefine "psychopath" just to make a stronger statement about someone they don't like. When everyone is a "psychopath", no one is. If the word is supposed to mean something, it needs a narrower definition.
There are many mental disorders. Psychopathy is just one of them. Not every crazy person is a psychopath; not everyone who harms others is a psychopath. Psychopathy is a specific type of a disorder, not an umbrella term for "everything I dislike".
The best book I found on this topic is "The Psychopath Code" by Pieter Hintjens.
In real life, I met 2 people I would bet are psychopaths, in the clinical meaning of the word. I won't try to provide a short description, because short descriptions are not good enough to explain; if you didn't have the same kind of experience, you would probably just round the words to something else you are already familiar with.
A real psychopath is something like a spider in a human skin, with very good human-role-playing abilities. Your first experience is most likely going to be "this is a charming person". Only after longer interaction you will unconsciously start noticing patterns that feel somehow weird. But when you express doubt, there is always a good explanation and you will feel guilty for doubting afterwards. Only when they attack you, you will find yourself in a conflict with a non-human intelligence. And then you know that if you try to explain to someone who didn't have the same experience, they will never understand.
Psychopaths seem like masters of manipulation, so it makes sense to ask why this doesn't translate into a huge evolutionary advantage: why they don't already make 100% of the population. But it seems like an important part of their charm is being unknown. When you meet your first psychopath, they can manipulate you as they wish, because you have no idea what you are interacting with. Meet the second or the third one, however, and you have a chance to recognize the pattern. So when they exceed some fraction of the population, normies probably learn to recognize them and start killing them. But when they become rare again, they again get the advantage of being unknown.
A psychopath is simply a person who only has a certain subset of human emotions. That doesn't define what they will do; just like being a neurotypical humans does not define how one behaves. It just makes certain predatory behaviors more likely, because it removes some reasons not to do them (such as empathy) and adds some skills, such as being a better liar (humans are usually quite bad at lying, because they unconsciously display little signs of their emotions; but this does not happen when you simply do not have that kind of emotion).
But when you express doubt, there is always a good explanation and you will feel guilty for doubting afterwards.
This.
I think it's important to emphasize that those "good explanations" are usually lies, as lies are at the foundation of all the harm that psychopaths cause.
Normal people avoid lying if possible, psychopaths on the other hand are master liars and they make use of lies just whenever a lie serves them better than the truth.
The manipulation tactics that psychopaths use to reach their goals are also just based on lies. You can't be manipulated if you don't believe the lies. Of course psychopaths will primarily serve you lies that you want to believe but that doesn't make them more truthful.
Bottom line, if you want to stay safe from psychopaths, keep it like Reagan: "Trust but verify". And at the first sign of things not adding up, end the relationship and any contact.
I don't know. When I leave my bubble of scientists and techies I regularly come across people who will lie without reason, motive or gain, and I think some of them are more emotional than the mean.
It still throws me off, you have to basically vet or ignore any factual statement they make because it might either not have any correlation with reality at all or, if it is a statement about their intentions and feelings, they will not remember what they said in the future anyway and say they always had the new opinion.
A lot of people will lie all the time. Usually for emotional reasons. (insecurity, fear, etc). Most people don't lie specifically to manipulate, but rather to protect themselves from a more uncomfortable situation.
This also happens with personality-disordered people (particularly, Narcissists, and especially the Borderline PD people I know . . . they SEEM manipulative, and they technically are, but they're manipulating for a reason that's usually ego-defensive).
Psychopaths, on the other hand, will lie for no damn reason at all that makes any sense to a sane person.
> And at the first sign of things not adding up, end the relationship and any contact.
How about 'at the first proof of things not adding up'? Verification works both ways. If an isolated incident smells funny but checks out on investigation then maybe it was just a misinterpretation.
I agree except I think psychopath does translate into evolutionary advantage more and more now. People become more and more independent as everything can be bought by money. So only rules/laws can stop psychopath from parasiting on other people. But don’t you think that almost all politics are professional psychopaths? People just elect the best psychopath to allow him to do lawmaking for them all. I think no one should get politic power before he discloses his mental health or at least brain scan.
> There are many mental disorders. Psychopathy is just one of them. Not every crazy person is a psychopath; not everyone who harms others is a psychopath. Psychopathy is a specific type of a disorder, not an umbrella term for "everything I dislike".
Psychopathy is neither an umbrella disorder nor a specific disorder. Psychopathy is, like "insanity," a term used by laypeople. The reason why we use antisocial personality disorder, or unspecified personality disorder, or other similar clinical terms to refer to some of the qualities on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist is exactly because of the (correct) point you're making here:
> It's frustrating how so many people redefine "psychopath" just to make a stronger statement about someone they don't like. When everyone is a "psychopath", no one is. If the word is supposed to mean something, it needs a narrower definition.
Unfortunately, you're right, this nonsense precluded Hare's term from ever being useful, much like the term "heart attack" is not actually a useful medical diagnosis because it's been co-opted by the public. Which brings me to my next points:
> In real life, I met 2 people I would bet are psychopaths, in the clinical meaning of the word.
There is no clinical meaning of the word, because it's not a clinical term. Further, this description, while occupying a place in the popular zeitgeist of psychopathy, is incorrect:
> A real psychopath is something like a spider in a human skin, with very good human-role-playing abilities. Your first experience is most likely going to be "this is a charming person". Only after longer interaction you will unconsciously start noticing patterns that feel somehow weird. But when you express doubt, there is always a good explanation and you will feel guilty for doubting afterwards. Only when they attack you, you will find yourself in a conflict with a non-human intelligence. And then you know that if you try to explain to someone who didn't have the same experience, they will never understand.
Let's suppose you're referring to someone with a diagnosable disorder, such as antisocial personality disorder. The literature does not show that any such disorder uniformly presents with exceptional charisma, nor any of the other exciting qualities usually lumped in with psychopathy, like high intelligence. Popular depiction in the media and outright confirmation bias have encouraged this description, but it doesn't match with how most people meeting the bar for the diagnosable disorders closest to Hare's "psychopathy" actually are.
> Psychopaths seem like masters of manipulation, so it makes sense to ask why this doesn't translate into a huge evolutionary advantage: why they don't already make 100% of the population. But it seems like an important part of their charm is being unknown. When you meet your first psychopath, they can manipulate you as they wish, because you have no idea what you are interacting with. Meet the second or the third one, however, and you have a chance to recognize the pattern. So when they exceed some fraction of the population, normies probably learn to recognize them and start killing them. But when they become rare again, they again get the advantage of being unknown.
Again, none of this has a basis in clinical literature. Sometimes they are exceptionally good at manipulation, but in many cases their criminal behavior enjoys prolonged success because of chance circumstances, like bureaucratic incompetence in local law enforcement (e.g. not following up on reports of unsettling behavior by several neighbors).
Here's the overarching point: trying to rigorously define sociopathy or psychopathy in the clinical context is doomed to failure. It's even more doomed if you use descriptions like "a spider in a human's skin." There are two problems here:
1. Trying to formalize colloquial terminology with clinical definitions when they have been so overloaded by popular representation has the side effect of allowing ad hominem attacks that arbitrarily use the word to be somewhat legitimized, and
2. It does a disservice to people with actual diagnosable disorders people associate with sociopathy, who do not universally present with the qualities you have listed here. It also demonizes them, especially if they are socially inept and nonviolent.
Yeah, I'm getting it too. What the hell. Some digging around with Safari's inspector reveals a lot of inline CSS to change the font-size and line-height of text after the first couple hundred characters of every paragraph, with some paragraphs containing two <span>s with this CSS and no unmodified text.
(The late, great) Pieter Hintjens wrote a short book about psychopaths, which I found fascinating. It's available for free on his site: http://hintjens.com/blog:_psychopaths
I was at a dinner recently where a grandmother was discussing her granddaughter. The grandmother was discussing her because it is something they worry about. She's beautiful, smart, and a sociopath. They try to find alternative schooling for her but she keeps on getting kicked out.
Some anecdotes:
When the granddaughter injured her foot and was unable to do the balance beam at the gymnastics gym, her grandmother saw her work out on the pull up bar and do thirty pull-ups in a row.
The grandmother came downstairs one afternoon when the granddaughter and her brother and her parents were staying in their home. Right near, one of the outlets there was a fresh hole kicked in the drywall. The granddaughter said "Yes, I kicked the wall but I don't know where that hole came from".
The granddaughter was in the car with her parents and said something shocking that made everyone upset (it wasn't specified). She then got out of the car and started pummeling the hood.
Most children who are different in some way get treated pretty badly for it. Their behavior is presumed to be malicious and the adults around them don't know effective coping mechanisms. The adults often put out the fire with gasoline a la the beatings shall continue until morale improves.
The fit of rage at the end is not necessarily associated with sociopathy. That kind of lack of control is common with things like fetal alcohol syndrome and head injury syndromes.
I raised a sociopath. He's 30 now. We're close and get along well. My other son is not a sociopath, but has a violent temper. Neither has a criminal record and I find articles like the one under discussion rather unsophisticated and annoying.
My sons are okay in part because I never expected them to be born knowing things like "Lying is bad." One child went through a lying stage. The other did not. I successfully broke him of lying because I viewed it as "Wow, you dumb kid who has no idea how social stuff works" rather than "You evil badly behaved child doing bad things on purpose."
Why don't you like the article then? It's all about how the author attributes his success to his upbringing. He suggests that identifying psychopathic behavior earlier would allow parents and caregivers to help promote good coping mechanisms.
It's also very othering and very blamey. It labels the guy a sociopath and comes from an assumption that this is all downside, some kind of defect that he needs to work at compensating for.
Surgeons typically lack empathy. It is what allows them to cut into people. I could never do that job.
The guy is probably an excellent scientist because he's a sociopath. The article doesn't address that fact.
> It's also very othering and very blamey. It labels the guy a sociopath and comes from an assumption that this is all downside, some kind of defect that he needs to work at compensating for.
There's a lot of disparate things in these two sentences:
1. It's othering: so what? Everyone is unique and different, and any time you talk about those differences it's othering. If you view othering as a problem, then literally any conversation about differences between people is problematic.
2. Blamey? What is the article blaming him for, exactly?
3. I don't think the article assumes this is all downside. I also don't think you can ignore the fact that psychopathy has very serious downsides.
4. Psychopathy is absolutely something he needs to compensate for in order to be a prosocial member of society. The fact that he seems willing and able to compensate is amazing and admirable.
> Surgeons typically lack empathy. It is what allows them to cut into people. I could never do that job.
I'd love to see where you get your information that surgeons typically lack empathy. Maybe some do, but many don't and function just fine. I personally don't lack empathy, but I think I could cut someone open easily if it were to help them. I'm not a psychopath, I just have a strong sense of the difference between hurt and harm: I can hurt someone if it helps them rather than harming them.
> The guy is probably an excellent scientist because he's a sociopath. The article doesn't address that fact.
The article probably doesn't address that "fact" because there's very little to support a causal link.
I can't possibly know for any certainty, but is it possible this girl was abused? I know first hand normal and reasonable children will go crazy (simplified description) after trauma. And it doesn't just go away after time, some effects stick around forever or until they are faced and overcome. And even then it's hard to behave normally. (ie, massive amounts of anger and frustration but no way to relieve the pain)
It may do a great disservice to someone who is really suffering to get the label sociopath or psychopath undeservedly. But I also know there are people (I personally have dealt with) that just want to destroy you, and hate everyone...
My guess is a psychopath is somebody has gone through mental anguish in youth and has overcome it with the result that he can't be shamed by others any more than a hardened soldier can be frightened of a wasp. That mental anguish might have been the result of abuse but it might just be the product of an intelligent but mistaken understanding of life generally -- plenty of people are capable of mentally torturing themselves.
> My guess is a psychopath is somebody has gone through mental anguish in youth
That's an interesting theory. How long have you been working in the field, how many psychopaths have you met, and what is the strongest evidence for your theory?
Relax a little, the poster outright said it was a guess. They were just offering a POSSIBLE explanation based off of their personal views, no need to pull out your Empiricism 101 textbook.
My guess, actually, is that people who have done the work would not view this as a "possible explanation". It seems about as useful as speculating that "hey, maybe the earth is flat?"
But you never know, that's why I asked, hoping that someone OP or otherwise who has experience in the field would comment.
TFA is specifically taking about genetics and brain scans, which makes me curious as to how that would be reconciled with this "theory" about bad experiences, if indeed the OP was aware of the content of the article at all.
Is this girl a psychopath, or just traumatised though? The comment was made in the context of a story about psychopaths, so it seems to be intended implication that she is.
Unless they are trained psychiatrists/psycologists, that actually tested her, shouldn't this diagnose be suspect? Especially since it's likely to be biased by personal experience?
I'm guessing trauma which causes disassociation and can be somewhat reversed or healed because of the neuroplasticity of the brain. But a psychopath might be inherently wired to have disassociation between rational/logic part of his/her and brain and his/her emotions.
I think that's a reasonable assessment of the comment, but to evaluate the girl's behavior as psychopathic (strongly implied by context?) seems unproven. What if she is just a spoiled brat?
sometimes, just being branded "sociopath" or "psychopath" is just another form of abuse or victim-blaming.
The learned abusive-behavior, can also be how they relieve their frustration, and abusers themselves often started out as abuse victims. This is inheritable behavior; unrelated to genetics even.
I'm confused: How are any of those anecdotes related to sociopathic behavior?
None of them seem relevant to how the granddaughter sees other people. Perhaps the grandmother it's mis-labeling what are otherwise anger/coping-issues?
I confused sociopath with psychopath. Her grandmother described her as beautiful and charming when she wants to be. But she has episodes where something sets her off and she acts as if she is a completely different person.
Abuse theories aside, this is also consistent with borderline personality disorder. . . (and was a feature in my BPD daughter - who actually is a sweetie when she stays on her meds).
> I was at a dinner recently where a grandmother was discussing her granddaughter .. She's beautiful, smart, and a sociopath ..
My diagnosis: The granddaughter is being subjected to emotional abuse by one or more of her 'care givers' and acting out in this manner as she lacks the emotional maturity and verbal skills to express herself.
An expert would also know that children are not diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder anyway, and for good reasons. I’m guessing that granny isn’t familiar with conduct disorder, and even if she was, unable to distinguish it from more likely issues plaguing the kid. Children can be sociopathic, any parent knows this, but that doesn’t make them sociopaths. Children are not fully developed, and it’s dsngerous and unethical to casually label them with a personality disorder.
I think your "diagnoses" (are you a medical professional?) of emotional abuse - along with the grandmother's diagnosis of sociopathy - are on very shaky ground. The girl may just have a temper. Many children outgrow this.
Some clarifications. The grandmother said she was a psychopath. I confused the terms. The granddaughter can be very charming and sociable. While nothing was said about parental abuse, I do remember her saying the mother was so controlling from a very early age of their granddaughter. Whenever the grandparents visited, she would simply not allow them to take their granddaughter off by themselves, as she always insisted on coming along. I can imagine that was not the best for the granddaughter.
> I happened to have a series of genetic alleles, "warrior genes," that had to do with serotonin and were thought to be at risk for aggression, violence, and low emotional and interpersonal empathy-if you're raised in an abusive environment.
I worry that violence breeds violence, literally. What will happen to kids growing up in Syria today, where effectively mass abuse takes place (unless different kinds of abuse have different effects)? What will happen to kids growing up in the U.S. and Europe today, where they experience the constant bombardment of hate, either by observation, participation, or as victims of it?
EDIT: How many extra abusers are we creating in the next generation, who can pass it down to their kids, etc. ... On the hopeful side, violence has decreased in the world over time; we can make make progress if we want to.
Just because you say you're a psychopath doesn't mean you are one. You'd expect a neuroscientist to be aware of the limitations of your ability to self-diagnose. My personal opinion is that he loves the attention he gets. He gets to play tough and loves it. He feels dangerous and special. It's an escape mechanism. He might even act like a sociopath on purpose, but he doesn't seem like one. He might be a narcissist. Or he might be just self-delusional. It's a sad situation regardless.
Well, here's my take on this; A disease is only a disease if it causes you dis-ease.
Some people howl and wail about a paper cut, others will continue through the day with a broken limb as if nothing happened. I am sure the same can be said for mental ailments; some people can't function with even the slightest sad thought, others can apparently become great scientists under the strongest psychopathy.
In this guy's case - he clearly does feel some dis-ease about his body. Whether or not the medical community agrees doesn't really matter, we have no ability to measure the mind, so we have to go off of what people tell us.
The biggest problem I see with this guy is that he's using the people around him as part of his therapy, whether or not they want to be a part of it.
>we have no ability to measure the mind, so we have to go off of what people tell us.
That's not true. We have no tools to study the mind like we study ballistics, with strict mathematical formalities, but we certainly can study other people's minds, based on what they say and do. And regarless, we don't have to take their word for it.
How have the neuroanatomical assumptions behind this article stood up under the focus on replicability which has evolved since its publication? Is there still good reason to believe that those scans imply psychopathy?
This article lurches into a rambling story about the biology of psychopathy without defining what psychopathy is, and the font keeps changing size for no apparent reason.
Could it be the diagnosis is simply wrong, i.e. brain scans are interpreted incorrectly? We know that brain is quite elastic and after an injury another part of the brain can take the functionality of non-working part. Maybe his brain routed around damage from pre-natal stage?
> My bias is that even though I work in growth factors, plasticity, memory, and learning, I think the whole idea of plasticity in adults—or really after puberty—is so overblown.
But he also said that his condition was somewhat overcome via "learned behavior". Depending on how you look at it, that's a layman's "plasticity". (the neuroscience term meaning something specific - the layman's term simply referring to the question of whether "people can change"). At the root of it is: does this person WANT to change? In TFA's case, he went from a state of either not being aware he had a problem, or not caring enough to want to change - to a state of wanting to change (and having the motivation and self discipline to overcome his impulses, and methodically role-play genuine feelings. What's at the root of this "want"? Fear of going to prison? Appreciation for his privileged position and overall success in life? How is that fundamentally different from a "Normal" person. And was his change a result of post-pubescent plasticity? Or is this neuroscientist getting dualist on us?
> It means, for example, that if you have to go to war, and sometimes you probably have to go to war—I'm not talking about a belligerent country starting war or fomenting discord, but if you have to go to war and to engage infantry—you do not send 18-year-olds into it, because their brains aren't set.
Unless the enemy infantry and fire-support are utterly incompetent or horribly outnumbered, the vast majority of such 18-year-olds will be killed in action. (And in the outnumbering case, the younger infantry are likely to be lower-rank and therefore could be easily selected for the more dangerous tasks.)
What consequences remain, then, of using 18-year-olds instead of 25-year-olds? Is the author actually implying that 18-year-olds' emotional deficiencies make them less competent as infantry?
I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they said, "We did tell you. We've all been telling you." I argued that they had called me "crazy," and they all said, "No. We said you're psychopathic."
To his credit that's a true scientist.
As far as evidence goes other people's opinions are low on the totem poll of acceptable evidence, but faced with overwhelming evidence he was forced to reexamine the anecdotal for correlation which he found and through his new lens was forced to accept. His response in writing his book and presenting his findings is the final step. I can only imagine given his condition how hard it was to accept the truth, but accept he did and the world is better place because of it.
Indeed. I often feel like I don't fully accept something until I've arrived at it in my own way somehow. It's similar to how a test for understanding a subject is whether you can put it "into your own words". I wonder if a similar effect could account for his ignorance of others' opinion of him. Almost certainly compounded by psychopathic inclinations to manipulate those around you, but never be manipulated.
Am I a psychopath? Nah, but probably somewhere on the “spectrum” if you like. It could be undiagnosed ASD or adult ADD or any number of other things. But I don’t think that’s even necessarily the right question. All that matters is the reality of living with the mind you’ve got; being labelled with a “condition” just gives you some finer instruments like therapy and medication to help accomplish that.