September 23, 2016 • 53 mins
How common are psychopaths? Is it possible that you've met one? Join the guys as they explore the fact, fiction and controversy surrounding one of the world's most widely misunderstood mental illnesses.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nolan. They called me Ben, and you will
hopefully having yourself. It may not be the name that
you reveal to people, because names have power, and as
we will see in this episode, many people are not
looking people to be I feel like we were extra
dead pan in this opening today. Am I wrong? It
(00:45):
was somewhat unemotional. Wasn't a little detached, perhaps perhaps lacking
a fundamental empathy, cold and calculating. I have to say
it's it's just because I noticed in the past couple
of intros, I was all like, hey, I'm Matt, and
then we talked about something. That's because you are the
animated one. Okay, you know he's literally a cartoon. You're
(01:08):
not supposed to remember, we're talking about hidden things power,
you're not supposed to We contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said,
And you know, if you're familiar with the idea of
code switching, wherein someone will adapt a certain a certain
type of language depending upon the people they're speaking with
(01:30):
at a given time. If you're familiar with people who
will have you know, the the old Clark Kent, Superman,
Bruce Wayne Batman dichotomy, and they're a very very different
person at work. For instance, Listeners Matt Nolan I hang
(01:50):
out and are actually friends in the in the real world.
But that is an exception to a rule because often
when you work with someone, which we will explore later,
when you work with someone, you're working with a version
of that person. You're not working with the person who
(02:14):
you know. Derek from h R may secretly be the
world's best fly fisher. Derek is a monster wearing human
skin and I don't know how he gets it on
every morning. But the but the point is, like you
could you could know the world's best fly fisher, you
could know a monster. You could know, uh, this amazing person.
(02:37):
But all they may be to you is another Derek
from h R and listeners who are named Derek. On
the off chance one of you does work in human resources,
I promise you we made this example up. Any resemblances
are purely coincidental. Today we are talking about one of
the most notorious and one of the most miss under
(03:00):
stood mental illnesses in human civilization, and that is psychopathy.
I like saying it like that. It's fun psychopathy. Yes,
you're absolutely right. Psychopathy. When we say it that way,
it sounds like a pursuit of medicine, doesn't it. Yeah,
are some kind of like like a pterodactyl. Uh specific
(03:22):
kind of pterodactyl. Alright, so uh, the first first things first,
widely misunderstood. Right, So let's let's start with our definitions.
What is a psychopath? It is a It is summed
up by Uncle Sam's favorite Federal Bureau of Investigation with
(03:45):
the following quotation, a personality disorder that includes a cluster
of interpersonal, effective, lifestyle, and antisocial traits and behaviors. These
involved deception when it relation, irresponsibility, impulsivity, stimulation, seeking, poor
behavior controls, shallow affect, lack of empathy, guilt or remorse,
(04:10):
sexual promiscuity, callous disregard for the rights of others, and
unethical and antisocial behaviors. Now, if you're saying to yourself
a couple of those like they do, a couple of those,
you know, uh, you're probably not alone. Um, doesn't necessarily
make you a psychopath. This is a very broad definition. Um,
(04:33):
sort of a checklist if you will. But you know,
I think many of us are prone to impulsivity from
time to time. We all seek stimulation, you know, and um,
you know, occasionally we behave poorly. That's that's one of
the that's one of the key points here, because doing
some of this stuff every so often doesn't make you
(04:58):
a villainous person, you know what I mean. Good people exist,
and good people can do horrible things, especially when they
are in a society that normalizes it. Right. Uh, this
is an unfortunate reality. However, this definition is controversial. For
(05:18):
a long time, people believed that psychopaths were largely a
construction of the media. And these misconceptions about psychopaths can
be dangerous. Oh yeah, there's so many. There can be
problems when you're having an investigation. Let's say for law enforcement. Um,
(05:40):
let's say you're just having an interview with someone that
you perhaps believe is a psychopath. Oh my gosh, can
we do a fake interview? Now? Okay, we can illustrate
it if you want. Who who? Okay, so you guys
will be interviewing me for to hire me for a job. Okay,
at Circuit City, At Circuit City, can it be Blockbuster?
(06:02):
Can it be a combination Circuit City and Blockbuster? Yes? Yes, okay, yeah,
because this is going to bring in lots of interesting
cross sections. And now now when we do this, bring
up questions that would address the things in the personality
of a psychopathic disorder, right, okay, all right and five
(06:25):
four three two one. Thank you for coming in. Ben,
It's nice to meet you. And you know, we hope
this goes along smoothly and we'll get you started as
soon as possible. Okay, we just got it written videos
and uh, selling hard drives. That's where it's an absolute pleasure,
you know what. I want to thank you guys so
(06:47):
much for the hard work that you do. Brian Nigel,
this is the start of something big. Uh, this is
this is beyond Circuit City. I've always loved, sir, it
gets I've always loved videos, I've loved renting things, and
I am enamored of this. I cannot wait here. Let
(07:10):
me let me shake your hands. I uh, I got
you guys, eat a present. Here you go, you go. Yeah,
that's a little that's a little forward. Ben you're you know,
we really appreciate what you're saying here. These are great things.
We we just uh, we need to get into this,
really into the meat of the responsibilities required to properly
(07:30):
um man a Circuit City Blockbuster location. Right, Oh, thank
you so much, Nigel. Let's jump in a big part
of the job. We'll be dealing with people. How do
you feel about people that they let me finish? Can
I finish? Please? Do me finish? How do you feel
about people? Feel? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I I feel things.
(07:53):
I've felt things. I've been a person with emotions. People
have those that's great for them, mean us, I mean,
you know. So let's do a little role playing here.
Let's do a little scenario, um where you are faced
with a customer who has a complaint about their videotape
(08:15):
that they have rented and they also, as it turns out,
have a faulty USB stick and they're coming to you
to rectify this situation. Why because it's your job? Why
should help him? Though? Because it's your job? Well, they
trust you, You're you're an employee here at Circuit City Blockbuster.
(08:36):
Well that's their fault. Interesting and sing just like an
example of very very slap dash, and for the psychopaths
in the audience, we are not we are not mocking you.
We are hoping to exhibit that emotional disconnect. So when
Noel playing Nigel, when Matt Plaine Brian, we're interviewing this
(08:58):
guy at the at the Circuit City slash Blockbuster. Uh,
there was the question where they said, how do you
you know? Feel what? What are your feelings? What? What
would you do if someone had a problem, And we're
hoping to exhibit that fundamental disconnect. So psychopaths are represented
(09:20):
in all races, all cultures, all socio economic backgrounds, every
continent except for Antarctica of course, every uh, every income level,
every creed. You know. However, and this may interest fans
of our fellow podcasters, Uh stuff, Mom, never told you.
(09:42):
It turns out that statistically speaking, more men are psychopaths
rather than women. And you know, fake dichotomy of gender aside.
There there's some interesting methodology there because it they may
well be the case, like we talked about with serial killers,
that just more men are caught, perhaps there are more
(10:06):
uh that perhaps there are more women who are just
better at hiding psychopathy. So some are intelligent others will
be you know, not so much, not as much as
you would expect. Hannibal lecters. They're not all you know,
And this goes into um, this goes into some of
(10:29):
the media stuff, all right. So psychopaths do understand right
from wrong. So the example we did earlier when I
was doing some character who didn't didn't get you know,
why it would be bad to steal a laptop. The
thing is they know they are subject to society's rules,
(10:51):
but they will disregard them to pursue their own interests.
If we were turned back to that fbi H quote
the definition, I think to me, the most telling points
are the ones that really ring true the most at
the very end, callous disregard for the rights of others
and unethical and antisocial behavior um. And in addition to that,
(11:13):
the ones at the beginning deception, manipulation, irresponsibility. Because the
character that you played Ben starts off by trying to
put on that human mask. You know, it's a big,
big thing to try to overcompensate almost for a lack
of empathy, by attempting to display this overt you know,
(11:35):
almost cartoonish, as you like to say, Ben um display
of fake empathy. Uh to you know, the interviewers even
it did not sit right right. You know, we're sort
of looking at each other like, what's the deal of
this guy, you know, Blockbuster circuit city job. It's not
(11:56):
exactly you know, bringing about world peace. This guy is
way to overly enthusiastic. But to me, the idea of
a disregard for the rights of others, that is a
big part of psychopathy, where an individual wants to control
others and seize them as objects rather than um individuals
(12:19):
that have feelings and that have you know, a life.
It's more like pieces on a chessboard that they can
manipulate and control to their own ends. But people are
just objects in space. If you have a god complex,
that could be you know, the way you look at it.
So uh so that that's an excellent point, is that
(12:41):
lack of empathy. You know. The thing is that, according
to current research, although it's most often manageable, psychopathy is
not a curable a curable condition. And now it's now
we should discuss while we were stabbed definitions, we should
(13:01):
we should correct one of the the biggest misconceptions about
being a psychopath, which is the debatable difference between a
psychopath and a sociopath and what what do we what
do we know about this difference. To find the difference
between these two disorders, we look to the Diagnostic and
(13:23):
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the d s M
Addition five, fifth edition. What a sexy name, you know.
I'm just quick sidebar here. My wife is a psychologist.
A lot of people know that on the show already,
and as they make changes to the d s M,
it is really strange to see how vastly different disorders
(13:44):
become and how they get categorized and defined. Because homosexuality,
for a long time in the early days of the
d S and when it was listening, included a disorder, right, yeah, absolutely,
and then you know, look at the autism spectrum now
and all these other things. Anyway, let's get back into
right here. So the fifth edition, which is the latest one,
(14:04):
is when it came out. It shows that there are
common behavioral traits that are shared between both of these
and yes, sociopaths and psychopaths, but there are many differences.
What they share is the disregard for laws and social morays,
disregard for rights of others, a failure to feel remorse
or guilt, a tendency to display violent behavior. And in
(14:27):
addition to these commonalities, they have all of these differences.
So maybe could you describe just the average sociopath and
and broad strokes and sociopaths and the audience, of course,
are are offended, I imagine by being described as average
in any way. Sorry, Okay, so sociopaths tend to be
(14:52):
easily agitated, a little nervous. Maybe they can be volatile,
prone to emotional outbursts, fits of ray. You take that back, Yeah,
it's it's possible. Um. Sociopaths are likely to be uneducated,
at least somewhat, live on the fringes of society, unable
to hold down a steady job or even really stay
(15:13):
in any particular place for a very long time. Because
you have to to stay in a job or stay
in a place, you have to be able to work
in some way with groups of other people. Yes, hold
down holding down a job can be tremendously difficult for
both of these groups. Um. Many sociopaths are able to
form some kind of attachment to like one person, an individual, perhaps, sure,
(15:39):
maybe one group of people that they're able to really
blend in with um, but really overall, they seem to
have no regard for society in general, It's rules, its laws,
things that make it go on. I would imagine who
those attachments could border on the obsessive and are not
necessarily healthy in any way. Well, you know, like none
(16:00):
of us are a psychologists, but yes, I can imagine
that that is absolutely true. So any crimes, at least
the FBI. The FBI contends that any crimes committed by
a sociopath will tend to be impulsive, spontaneous, haphazard. I
don't know why I emphasized it that way, but that
does some pretty cool haphazard. So Noel, on the other hand,
(16:24):
what would you what would you say a psychopath would
be Like? Psychopaths, on the other hand, are completely unable
to form emotional attachments of any kind or feel empathy
with anyone. So while a sociopath might have, you know,
an obsession with a person, maybe someone at work, that
(16:44):
they sort of hold up as this the you know,
kind of like an object of their affection, you know
perhaps or yeah, are a close family member, maybe you
know a mother or father or a sibling. Perhaps, Um,
this psychopath would be completely isolated from any kinds of
(17:06):
relationships like that. UM go to great length in fact,
to isolate themselves. Psychopaths are much more manipulative and good
at it. Psychopaths are able to successfully mimic emotion, and
as as we mentioned at the top of the show
with our little scene, kind of give off this false
(17:28):
sense that they have empathy or that they can relate
to somebody. They are ultimately just trying to twist to
their own ends and appear to be completely normal to
unsuspecting people. UM Psychopaths are often very well educated, whether
within a system of education, higher learning, or just their
(17:51):
own job experience or job experience sure, or even just
you know, home home learning. They are obsessed with details,
and they will go to lengths to you know, find
out as much information as they can about what they're
interested in. Uh. Some are so good at manipulation and
mimicry that they have families. As you often hear about
(18:11):
the guy next door family long term relationships. They had
no idea, We had no idea. He was so nice,
he always was outside mowing his lawn. He would give
us the paper. All of these acts, though, figure into
that greater charade of trying to put on that human mask,
you know, and be seen as a productive member of society.
(18:33):
That's an interesting thing because one of the key differences
is that when committing crimes right or what society regards
his crimes, psychopaths will carefully plan out every detail in
advance and have an escape plan, plan B, a contingency.
So whereas a sociopath will commit something impulsively, a psychopath
(18:59):
will be cool. It's calm and thorough, and these crimes
might not be violent, you know, it might just be
stealing a laptop from Circuit City, Slash Blockbuster It or
a VHS copy of Captain Ron, you know, which a
lot of people that's really hot right now in the
black market should have gone with Cabin Boy. Yeah, you
(19:22):
sank a lot of money into the VHS bootleg trade,
Cabin Boy. I want to talk about a few examples though,
of this kind of calculated this. And I say he
didn't didn't have to be a violent crime, which is true,
But of a good example of this kind of calculated
this can be seen in serial killers that are caught. So,
for example, Jeffrey Dahmer, you know, he was looking for
(19:44):
a very specific type of person that he wanted to
abduct that would fulfill his you know, fetish or his
sexual fantasy. He ultimately wanted to turn these people into zombies,
sex and dead sex slaves. So he had a very
very spe scific plan laid out for how to earn
these people's trust at these clubs where he would uh
(20:06):
you know, seek somebody out, and once he had injected
himself into a situation with the his mark more or less,
he would uh have them you know, kind of apply
them with drinks and then ultimately drug them and take
them home and do what he wanted to do with them, which,
like we said, it was some pretty grizzly stuff that
involved you know, drilling holes in their craniums and causing
(20:31):
them to be completely brain dead and pliable for whatever
he wanted to do. But the point is he had
a plan, He had a very specific plan outline for
how to accomplish his goals, and as he continued to
do it, over time, he refined that plan. So it's
all just very calculated, you know, um callous behavior that
(20:54):
is refined over time. Whereas, like you say, ban as
sociopath would be much more impulsive and might you know,
do something in the heat of the moment, but there's
not that level of fastidious study that goes into the process. Yeah,
that's a great point. Another example would be Ted Bundy,
for instance, who Ted Bundy, notorious serial killer and rapists
(21:19):
who was active during the nineteen seventies, also a necrophile. Uh.
He eventually confessed at thirty homicides in seven states during
the latter half of the nineteen seventies, but no one
knows how many women he actually killed. And he would
exploit these people when their trust. He actually defended himself
(21:43):
in court and then charmed the judge who said, you, sir,
would have been a fantastic attorney. Uh. Despite his psychopathic charm,
his case fell apart when he was identified as his
dental records matched bite marks on the bodies. That's tough
(22:05):
to walk away from, even if you are a slick
talking Ted Bundy psychopath. So one of the biggest differences,
which we'll get into in a bit, is that sociopaths
can learn this behavior childhood trauma. You know, Unfortunately the
world is a terrible place for a lot of children. Uh.
(22:26):
This this early trauma can influence an individual, removing the
fundamental pieces of the engine that makes someone a human
in a society. However, more and more evidence indicates, and
this is fairly controversial, that there may be a genetic
basis to psychopathy. And we'll get morning that after we
(22:48):
take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors.
So talk about some statistics here and and before we
dive into these statistics, I want to ask you guys, know, Matt,
(23:10):
when when you first hear like the words psychopath, what
do you think of any anything is fine? Anything is
fine For me, it's films and television. I just finished
season five of Dexter, Passenger and stuff. Sure, yeah, that's
what that's within my head currently, at least at this moment.
(23:30):
I know him behind the times with Dexter. Also, you
know iconic films Psycho Alfred Hitchcock, that American Psycho. Oh yeah, absolutely,
Christian Bale, Like I have a picture of Christian Bale
in my head. What what about you know? I'm a
big fan of American Psycho as well, because it's kind
of like it almost pokes fun at the model of
psychopathy a little bit, and the way it at gels
(23:54):
so well with corporate attitudes and you know, we've actually
don an episode of that passed on Is My Boss
a Psychopath? Uh? And I think American psycho is a
really good kind of synthesis of of a lot of
those concerns. Feels like an American version sure of psycho.
So what's interesting is that in our video episode this
(24:15):
week we look at the chances that you may have
met a psychopath. It is possible. The numbers are the
numbers are important because they're dubious. It's difficult to really
know if these are people who are skilled at manipulation,
if they are also practicing for most of their lives too,
(24:42):
you know, hiding their true nature. Then of course these
aren't self reporting people. It's not like a a measure
of statistics of people who have blue or green or
hazel eyes. Right, those are some of the rarest eye colors,
but they're readily apparent. You don't have to sign on
a government document anywhere or that you're a psychopath, like
(25:02):
you don't admit to it. Not not yet. Maybe big
data can track someone's social media activity or Internet usage,
and oh gosh, there is there's some stuff coming out
with looking at tweets really and tracking if someone is
displaying psychopathic Well, you know, we often say between the
three of us on this show that if the n
(25:23):
Essay is tracking us or paying attention, I mean they're
all they have their weird illuminati I on everybody. But
if there, if there's an actual person tracking our show,
it's probably an intern. I like to think his name
is Steve, And I feel so bad for Steve for
having to listen to this. So Steve, if you are,
if you are tracking our social media activity, please let
(25:48):
Nolan I know of mat is a psychopath. Well, here's
the thing. They wouldn't be tracking our show. They would
be tracking us individually. Have you guys heard of the
anime called Psycho pass Um. It's about like sort of
like a futuristic society where tracking technology has gotten so
(26:08):
good that law enforcement have these guns called the Dominator Dominators.
The idea is that each weapon is matched with its owner,
and the weapon scans a subject, does psychological tests, matches
it with database records, and determines whether or not to
use lethal force or not. Oh yeah, smart weapons. That's
(26:28):
something we should get into also in more in depth.
We could do an entire episode on that and that
that may indeed be a plausible future, you know, and
is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
For the gun owners in the audience? Uh, do you
do you believe that you should have a gun that
(26:52):
can only be fired by you right or programmed for you?
Do you have? Do you believe that you should have
a weapon that evaluates your mental state at the time
before it allows you to use it? So, for many, many, many,
many people, psychopaths are those those creatures of fiction. You know,
(27:15):
they're chasing folks with chainsaws, they're dressing up and drag
and stabbing some blond lady in a motel somewhere out
in the American heartland. But in real life, the only
defining feature is that there may be a profound selfishness,
a lack of emotion, little to no conscience. And let's
(27:37):
talk about numbers. So you'll hear widely varying estimates. And
you'll find some people that say, oh, you have probably
met a psychopath because one in a hundred people are psychopaths.
And then you'll find another number that says, nope, one
percent of the global population will be psychopathic. And you know,
(28:00):
there's another question here, whether this is a yes, no
red green kind of red green light kind of thing
like psychopath not psychopath, or whether it's a spectrum, right,
and some people have these traits. If we take the
position that one per cent of the US population or
(28:20):
one percent of the global population rather is uh, you know,
as a psychopathic, then we would say we're recording this
in September. There are seven point four billion ish people
on the planet, and several people just got born. As
I said the last sentence, there's seven point four billion.
(28:41):
One percent of the population is composed of psychopaths. Then
the world has seventy four million psychopaths right now, and
some of you are probably listening. I hope you're having
a good day. Uh, Your chances a meeting one then
seemed pretty remote, right, That's that's when a dark lottery. However,
(29:05):
although these these estimates may slip back and forth, the
question is what are your odds of running into a psychopath?
So for perspective here, the nation of Thailand has roughly
sixty million people in it living there, and if all
(29:28):
of the psychopaths estimated in the world gathered in one place,
they would be a country larger than Thailand. That would
be a fun place to visit man. Can you imagine
just going to any store, driving on the street. I
think everybody would be charming on this would be great. So,
(29:50):
Ben Matt, what are the odds that me, Noel Brown,
walking around town would meet a psychopath after accused myself?
I'm kidding. Here's where it gets crazy. Your odds of
running into a psychopath, while they may seem remote, are
(30:14):
probably going to be higher depending upon the industries in
which you work. So, these are people who are disguising themselves.
Do you remember the theme the Transformers robots in disguise?
This is more like monsters in disguise, the human mask,
(30:36):
the human mask. Yes, just so, as you said, so,
there is a larger percentage of psychopaths in in several fields,
in politics and sales in high level corporate entities. There's
also a problem with the methodology here, because if there
(30:57):
are people who are professionally passionately disguising themselves, then you know,
going back to our earlier example about eye color, it
won't be a parent No, Matt, listeners, if you are
a psychopath, if you actually have this inability two participate
(31:20):
in the human enterprise of empathy, then you are so
dedicated to hiding this. You know, you, I can see
these people in a group, right, someone makes a joke
and this person laughs the loudest. A second after they
(31:42):
see that everybody else is laughing, and they go, oh,
it's time to laugh. And this this means that. And
this means that, given your profession, your situation, you will
have a much higher chance of running into one of
these individuals. This will not be a one percent dark
(32:04):
lottery for you. It may very well be a reality
of your daily life. For people who have been incarcerated
in the past, or someone who knows has been incarcerating
the past, you will be interested to hear about the
research by a fellow named Robert Hare. Robert Hare, who
we cite in our video series, wrote a book called
(32:25):
Without Conscience, The Disturbing World of Psychopaths among Us, And
he is the one who developed a checklist, like you
said earlier, of various behaviors adding up aggregating into a
certain uh, you know, a certain threshold psychopathic behavior. And
he found that well maybe one percent of the global
(32:49):
population on average will suffer from this disorder, in excess
of twenty of the inmate population. SATIS fies his definition
of a psychopath. So that means that your chances of
running into someone in prison who feels no empathy, no
(33:10):
remorse is about one in five, which is which is
a startling statistic and it is and it is debatable.
So we were talking about how these people will be
identified or identify themselves or disguise themselves. And you know what, Nold,
this reminds me of a video that you and I
(33:33):
worked on when we were traveling New York. We spent
a spoiler alert ladies and gentlemen. We spent several days
while Matt was holding down the fort here at stuff
they don't want you to know, uh we Nolan, I
happen to get this opportunity to hunt down buildings that
did not want to be found in New York. These
(33:54):
were fake buildings that were designed to look like uh
Brown's zones, Yeah, like um, you know, townhouses, brown stones, um.
There was one of them that was pretty much an
entire city block and the bronx Um. The idea is
that they are intended to blend in with their surroundings
and deceive. What does that sound like, right exactly? That's
(34:17):
the that is what if if a person is a
building those buildings are psychopaths. Yeah, and and how do
they blend in? Right? How do the buildings blend in?
How do the humans blend in? We're going to learn
about that right after we hear from a word from
our sponsor and we're back. You know you, guys, I know,
(34:48):
I thought you did a really good ending. Indeed line
there there was very radio voice. Thank you, and you
can tell by the speech pattern that you are not
a psychopath. We are identifying psychopaths increasingly, we being the
human species experts, not necessarily the the three of us
(35:10):
and all of all of you listening here, who are
of course, uh, the most important part of this show.
Uh do you notice uh part of what I'm doing
here in uh my speech patterns. It's hard for me
to tell what it is, but it certainly sounds different.
It's given me the creeps and get the willies. Uh, yes,
(35:35):
the willies, the Alabama shakes. Sounded like a president trying
to give a speech where you're being very deliberate about
every word you said. So there is a pretty there's
a pretty convincing study. And we when we say this,
we want to disclaimer here. We don't want anybody to
(35:58):
diagnose someone as a psychopath, being that this is a
controversial definition. Oh and we should also point this out.
This is stuff they don't want you to know. The
they in this episode could be your boss, could be
your friend, could be your lover, could be your child,
could be a relative. Right, they would be the psychopaths
(36:20):
that you may have met. They might be you if
you were a psychopath and you were listening today. So
a fascinating study came out in September of two thousand
eleven and was called Hungry Like the Wolf, a word
pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths. And the reason
that I was playing around with speech a little bit
(36:42):
and that last thing where you guys noticed something was
what I guess Chuck Bryant would call hinky mm hmm.
Is the following psychopaths in in comparison to a control
group include more rational cause and effect descriptions. So because
(37:02):
of this, or since this focused on material needs like
I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm poor, or whatever, and there
are fewer references to social needs or you know, the
more spiritual stuff like family, religion, love, you know what
(37:23):
I mean. And psychopath speech Also this is key contained
a higher frequency of what are called disfluencies. And these
are the US, the ums. So I've seen a lot
of US. And also also I tend to say US
pretty often. Hopefully I am not a psychopath, try to
(37:46):
I try to edit those out when I can, I know,
but there's so many. You know, I was just saying
I was imagining myself. They're saying UM every moment, right.
That doesn't mean that we are necessarily madmen. M This
this indicates in this study, this indicates that describing a
(38:07):
quote unquote powerful emotional event to another person it was
relatively difficult because it's like you're it's similar to when
you're watching something streaming versus watching something that already exists
on your computer. There's some sort of transit tifering. Yeah,
(38:27):
there's buffering. That's the word exactly. So there's this buffering thing.
You know. This makes me think of the Replicant test
and Blade Runner, where they measure someone's dilation right of
the of the pupils. When they describe like there's a turtle, turtle,
it's on its back. It can't get up, you see it? Why? What? Right?
(38:51):
What a get? And so with this in mind, uh,
with this in mind, there starts to be an illuminating
and speech pattern, right, at least according to the study,
so psychopaths also their final note, psychopaths also used more
past tense and less present tense verbs in their narrative,
(39:14):
which the scientists took to mean there was a greater
psychological detachment from an incident. Right. However, there's there's one
difference in that in that final point, and that difference
is that the people they were interviewing were psychopathic homicide
(39:38):
offenders based on the checklist devised by Robert Hare. So
of if my question is are you more likely to
use past tense when you're in prison? I think you
may well be. Yeah. Their conclusion is that, I will
quote this, these language differences, presumably beyond conscious control, will
(40:00):
support the notion that psychopaths operate on a primitive but
rational level. The important part there is in the beginning
where they say presumably beyond conscious control. So the argument
is that with these people who are skilled manipulators and deceptive,
these living decepticons to do another Transformers reference, they are
(40:25):
unable to control these small patterns of speech, and this
means that there would be an underlying factor here, so
that is one of the giveaway signs. No, I certainly
hope that no one is going to go around thinking
that guy says uh a lot, like guy says um
(40:48):
quite a bit. Uh. Any any one of these things
on this checklist right, any of these descriptors. It makes
me nervous that people will just be looking for these
now in people they walk past, people, they love, people,
you know, they work, they worked with Um. Oh god,
(41:09):
I said, um, it's making me so paranoid. Now, one
thing before we before we moved too far beyond it.
When we did the episode that you mentioned nol about
is whether someone's boss is a psychopath. We found some
pretty fascinating, disturbing statistics. So if if psychopaths are one
(41:32):
percent of global population identified psychopaths, once you get to
about middle management level in corporate America, at least about
four of people are going to be psychopaths, which is
which is weird because it also I think it I
(41:57):
think it explains partially the action and corporate entities. Oh wow,
when the people that are controlling them towards the center
and top have these callous disregard for everybody else, certainly
a lack of empathy there and a you know, I
don't know if, if if anyone out there has ever
(42:17):
dealt with higher level corporate types, but there's a certain,
uh gotta keep saying a human maskiness about them, you know,
with the glad handing and all of the right. Yeah, exactly,
this idea of sort of trying to relate to people
on the ground, sort of that are beneath them quote
(42:39):
unquote in the corporate structure, and um, usually it's quite
obvious that that they don't actually care about anybody except
for the bottom line and their ability to uh kind
of steer people's actions toward whatever metric will make them
look best. Robert Hare had a very interesting quote about that.
(43:02):
Someone was asking him about his study with prisoners and
the reports of people meeting his threshold for psychopathy in
the corporate world, and he said, you know, I would
love to have interviewed some of those people, because I
think the number might even be higher. And of course,
(43:25):
corporate entities are are brutal, and we were reaching arguably
the age of the corporation rather than the age of
the state. Let sounds like a good podcast episode, you
know what, Maybe it would be. I don't know, maybe
we should do that. What do you think, Yes, yeah,
(43:45):
I think so, let us know what you think, listeners.
There's one thing other thing we should follow up on here,
and that is the argument that there is a genetic
a genetic um factor. It psych propathy. Have you ever
heard of something called the warrior gene? Sounds familiar, but
(44:06):
I couldn't tell you what it was. So this is
this is tremendously controversial because so much of the history
of modern science is dictated by institutionalized racism. Essentially, we
have phrenology, right, you could tell by the bump on
an irishman's head that he was made velocity and insolence,
(44:30):
eugenics and eugenics as well, uh eugenics being eugenics being like, well,
it's it's a crime not to sterilize the Welsh. Wow,
you know, quick and dirty reader's digest. But but the this,
this idea that is very close to the Christian concept
(44:52):
of original sin, is that there are inborn things that
determine the course of a person's life. Research is indicating
that there may be an inborn gene, a genetic aspect
(45:13):
of fundamental part of someone's DNA that makes them more
likely to be a psychopath. The idea of a criminal
gene is nonsense. But the roots of what becomes the Dahmer,
what becomes the ted Bundy may indeed be something that
is there from the moment that person is formed. So
(45:35):
people know that genes play a why like an important
role in behavior. Stuff you should know has an excellent
episode about epigenetics, which is that the behaviors of our
ancestors or our our parents or grandparents will affect the
way our genes manifest Possibly is debatable, However, there there's
(46:02):
studies that say that show this has worked in certain
situations related to physical things. Yeah, likelihood of diabetes for instance. However,
what what we're finding is that, you know, the study
of behavioral genetics is very, very, very very what's the
(46:25):
new safe word? Problematic? Is that really the new safe word?
And ben, Yeah, it's problematic. So there's a there's a
low expression variant of M A O A and it's
known as M A O A L and it's been
(46:46):
linked in various studies with an increased risk of violent
and aggressive behavior. So, if we want to get into
the inside baseball of it, studies essentially showed this the
gene M A O A encodes mono and today's A
and that's an enzyme that degrades UH neurotransmitters like dopamine, nora, adrenaline, serotonin.
(47:09):
So this disorder, if there's a rare genetic disorder caused
by a mutation in this gene having M A O
A L instead of M A O A UH, this
deficiency can cause an excess of these transmitters, which will
lead to an excessively impulsive behavior, hyper sexuality, sleep disorder,
(47:33):
extreme mood swings, a tendency toward violence, also known as
Brunner syndrome. And people disagree over the science, but they
also furthermore disagree about the implications of this. And here's
the other thing. This variant M A O A L
(47:54):
is common. It occurs to approximately of the population. So
if one per cent of the population is exhibiting psychopathic behavior,
then it can't be just nature. There has to be
some nurture involved as well, or lack of nurture maybe,
or lack of nurture as well. So this is where
(48:18):
we reach towards our conclusion. And we don't want anyone
to feel that they are listening to this show and
maybe on a road trip and looking over at the
person with them in the car and thinking, you know,
how much? How well do I know Derek from HR? Sure?
(48:39):
He says uh a lot. He might be a monster,
He might be wearing a mask of human skin. Now,
we don't want you to think that, and we also
don't want you to think that we take this lightly
in any way, because this is a mental illness that
we've been speaking about this entire time that affects real
people in real ways. And it doesn't mean just because
(49:03):
someone displays traits of this, it doesn't mean they're going
to be violent. It does not mean that just means
that they may be a little deceptive. Well. It also
it also means that we are as a species in
an age where we are still learning about ourselves. We
(49:28):
are the original pieces of technology that we still don't
completely understand, and we were able to build amazing things.
We are not at this point able to build a person.
We're reaching towards genetic modification. We also have to ask
ourselves every time that a gene exists or propagates. The
(49:52):
population is hell of a number, and we always have
to ask ourselves why a certain gene became successful, Why
did it propagate. Does the world need psychopaths? In some ways?
Are psychopaths more likely to be good soldiers, good politicians?
(50:17):
Our psychopaths lacking empathy or fear more likely to be
someone there in a clutch to save a life, to
do a job because they don't suffer from the the
identification like, could they be better surgeons because they don't
feel a discomfort when they see someone bleeding out. It's
(50:39):
almost more of an adaptation instead of a you know, disorder.
Perhaps interesting to think about. Yeah, And of course, as
Matt said at the top, we are not trained psychologists.
We do not endorse self diagnosis or diagnosing someone else.
If you do have concerns about yourself. I loved when
(51:03):
someone you know seek professional medical advice. And if they're
a surgeon and they might operate on us later, please
feel free to not tell them about our speculation regarding
surgeons and psychopaths. That would be great. And with that said,
(51:25):
we are off to do a little bit more. We've
got some We've got some interesting stuff coming up on
the way, so please tune in, but more importantly, let
us know what you think. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
I don't know why I said the last one like
a curse word. Hey, find us on Google Plus. Everybody
(51:45):
uses that. Right, We've got my Space, We've got a
live journal, we've got um friendster friends, SoundCloud. Right, we're
actually on SoundCloud. Find us on all of those inner
and at spaces that digital cloud. Also, Uh, if you
have time and if you if you appreciate this show
(52:08):
or if you want your friends to know about it.
H you feeling geritable, generous, philanthropic, your way of giving
back could be leaving us a review. Yeah, especially on iTunes,
on what Stitcher. They're all kinds of places you can
leave a review. Doesn't have to be positive. That would
be great if it was, but it doesn't have to be. No,
(52:29):
it really should be positive. Please that you are clearly
the least psychopathic person amongst the three of us. Have
such empathy, man, just you know, I want people to
just give us the straight truth. Let us know that's
what we seek here. How very agent molder of you.
So also also so you know, we've been getting a
(52:50):
lot of email recently and we appreciate it and we
read every single one. You've got so much now that
pretty soon I think we should do a listener episode.
I think maybe we should do that very soon. All right, well,
if you want to be part of that, you can
write to us and tell us the stuff that you
think your fellow listeners should hear. You can contact us directly.
(53:12):
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Nolan. They called me Ben, and you will
hopefully having yourself. It may not be the name that
you reveal to people, because names have power, and as
we will see in this episode, many people are not
looking people to be I feel like we were extra
dead pan in this opening today. Am I wrong? It
(00:45):
was somewhat unemotional. Wasn't a little detached, perhaps perhaps lacking
a fundamental empathy, cold and calculating. I have to say
it's it's just because I noticed in the past couple
of intros, I was all like, hey, I'm Matt, and
then we talked about something. That's because you are the
animated one. Okay, you know he's literally a cartoon. You're
(01:08):
not supposed to remember, we're talking about hidden things power,
you're not supposed to We contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said,
And you know, if you're familiar with the idea of
code switching, wherein someone will adapt a certain a certain
type of language depending upon the people they're speaking with
(01:30):
at a given time. If you're familiar with people who
will have you know, the the old Clark Kent, Superman,
Bruce Wayne Batman dichotomy, and they're a very very different
person at work. For instance, Listeners Matt Nolan I hang
(01:50):
out and are actually friends in the in the real world.
But that is an exception to a rule because often
when you work with someone, which we will explore later,
when you work with someone, you're working with a version
of that person. You're not working with the person who
(02:14):
you know. Derek from h R may secretly be the
world's best fly fisher. Derek is a monster wearing human
skin and I don't know how he gets it on
every morning. But the but the point is, like you
could you could know the world's best fly fisher, you
could know a monster. You could know, uh, this amazing person.
(02:37):
But all they may be to you is another Derek
from h R and listeners who are named Derek. On
the off chance one of you does work in human resources,
I promise you we made this example up. Any resemblances
are purely coincidental. Today we are talking about one of
the most notorious and one of the most miss under
(03:00):
stood mental illnesses in human civilization, and that is psychopathy.
I like saying it like that. It's fun psychopathy. Yes,
you're absolutely right. Psychopathy. When we say it that way,
it sounds like a pursuit of medicine, doesn't it. Yeah,
are some kind of like like a pterodactyl. Uh specific
(03:22):
kind of pterodactyl. Alright, so uh, the first first things first,
widely misunderstood. Right, So let's let's start with our definitions.
What is a psychopath? It is a It is summed
up by Uncle Sam's favorite Federal Bureau of Investigation with
(03:45):
the following quotation, a personality disorder that includes a cluster
of interpersonal, effective, lifestyle, and antisocial traits and behaviors. These
involved deception when it relation, irresponsibility, impulsivity, stimulation, seeking, poor
behavior controls, shallow affect, lack of empathy, guilt or remorse,
(04:10):
sexual promiscuity, callous disregard for the rights of others, and
unethical and antisocial behaviors. Now, if you're saying to yourself
a couple of those like they do, a couple of those,
you know, uh, you're probably not alone. Um, doesn't necessarily
make you a psychopath. This is a very broad definition. Um,
(04:33):
sort of a checklist if you will. But you know,
I think many of us are prone to impulsivity from
time to time. We all seek stimulation, you know, and um,
you know, occasionally we behave poorly. That's that's one of
the that's one of the key points here, because doing
some of this stuff every so often doesn't make you
(04:58):
a villainous person, you know what I mean. Good people exist,
and good people can do horrible things, especially when they
are in a society that normalizes it. Right. Uh, this
is an unfortunate reality. However, this definition is controversial. For
(05:18):
a long time, people believed that psychopaths were largely a
construction of the media. And these misconceptions about psychopaths can
be dangerous. Oh yeah, there's so many. There can be
problems when you're having an investigation. Let's say for law enforcement. Um,
(05:40):
let's say you're just having an interview with someone that
you perhaps believe is a psychopath. Oh my gosh, can
we do a fake interview? Now? Okay, we can illustrate
it if you want. Who who? Okay, so you guys
will be interviewing me for to hire me for a job. Okay,
at Circuit City, At Circuit City, can it be Blockbuster?
(06:02):
Can it be a combination Circuit City and Blockbuster? Yes? Yes, okay, yeah,
because this is going to bring in lots of interesting
cross sections. And now now when we do this, bring
up questions that would address the things in the personality
of a psychopathic disorder, right, okay, all right and five
(06:25):
four three two one. Thank you for coming in. Ben,
It's nice to meet you. And you know, we hope
this goes along smoothly and we'll get you started as
soon as possible. Okay, we just got it written videos
and uh, selling hard drives. That's where it's an absolute pleasure,
you know what. I want to thank you guys so
(06:47):
much for the hard work that you do. Brian Nigel,
this is the start of something big. Uh, this is
this is beyond Circuit City. I've always loved, sir, it
gets I've always loved videos, I've loved renting things, and
I am enamored of this. I cannot wait here. Let
(07:10):
me let me shake your hands. I uh, I got
you guys, eat a present. Here you go, you go. Yeah,
that's a little that's a little forward. Ben you're you know,
we really appreciate what you're saying here. These are great things.
We we just uh, we need to get into this,
really into the meat of the responsibilities required to properly
(07:30):
um man a Circuit City Blockbuster location. Right, Oh, thank
you so much, Nigel. Let's jump in a big part
of the job. We'll be dealing with people. How do
you feel about people that they let me finish? Can
I finish? Please? Do me finish? How do you feel
about people? Feel? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I I feel things.
(07:53):
I've felt things. I've been a person with emotions. People
have those that's great for them, mean us, I mean,
you know. So let's do a little role playing here.
Let's do a little scenario, um where you are faced
with a customer who has a complaint about their videotape
(08:15):
that they have rented and they also, as it turns out,
have a faulty USB stick and they're coming to you
to rectify this situation. Why because it's your job? Why
should help him? Though? Because it's your job? Well, they
trust you, You're you're an employee here at Circuit City Blockbuster.
(08:36):
Well that's their fault. Interesting and sing just like an
example of very very slap dash, and for the psychopaths
in the audience, we are not we are not mocking you.
We are hoping to exhibit that emotional disconnect. So when
Noel playing Nigel, when Matt Plaine Brian, we're interviewing this
(08:58):
guy at the at the Circuit City slash Blockbuster. Uh,
there was the question where they said, how do you
you know? Feel what? What are your feelings? What? What
would you do if someone had a problem, And we're
hoping to exhibit that fundamental disconnect. So psychopaths are represented
(09:20):
in all races, all cultures, all socio economic backgrounds, every
continent except for Antarctica of course, every uh, every income level,
every creed. You know. However, and this may interest fans
of our fellow podcasters, Uh stuff, Mom, never told you.
(09:42):
It turns out that statistically speaking, more men are psychopaths
rather than women. And you know, fake dichotomy of gender aside.
There there's some interesting methodology there because it they may
well be the case, like we talked about with serial killers,
that just more men are caught, perhaps there are more
(10:06):
uh that perhaps there are more women who are just
better at hiding psychopathy. So some are intelligent others will
be you know, not so much, not as much as
you would expect. Hannibal lecters. They're not all you know,
And this goes into um, this goes into some of
(10:29):
the media stuff, all right. So psychopaths do understand right
from wrong. So the example we did earlier when I
was doing some character who didn't didn't get you know,
why it would be bad to steal a laptop. The
thing is they know they are subject to society's rules,
(10:51):
but they will disregard them to pursue their own interests.
If we were turned back to that fbi H quote
the definition, I think to me, the most telling points
are the ones that really ring true the most at
the very end, callous disregard for the rights of others
and unethical and antisocial behavior um. And in addition to that,
(11:13):
the ones at the beginning deception, manipulation, irresponsibility. Because the
character that you played Ben starts off by trying to
put on that human mask. You know, it's a big,
big thing to try to overcompensate almost for a lack
of empathy, by attempting to display this overt you know,
(11:35):
almost cartoonish, as you like to say, Ben um display
of fake empathy. Uh to you know, the interviewers even
it did not sit right right. You know, we're sort
of looking at each other like, what's the deal of
this guy, you know, Blockbuster circuit city job. It's not
(11:56):
exactly you know, bringing about world peace. This guy is
way to overly enthusiastic. But to me, the idea of
a disregard for the rights of others, that is a
big part of psychopathy, where an individual wants to control
others and seize them as objects rather than um individuals
(12:19):
that have feelings and that have you know, a life.
It's more like pieces on a chessboard that they can
manipulate and control to their own ends. But people are
just objects in space. If you have a god complex,
that could be you know, the way you look at it.
So uh so that that's an excellent point, is that
(12:41):
lack of empathy. You know. The thing is that, according
to current research, although it's most often manageable, psychopathy is
not a curable a curable condition. And now it's now
we should discuss while we were stabbed definitions, we should
(13:01):
we should correct one of the the biggest misconceptions about
being a psychopath, which is the debatable difference between a
psychopath and a sociopath and what what do we what
do we know about this difference. To find the difference
between these two disorders, we look to the Diagnostic and
(13:23):
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or the d s M
Addition five, fifth edition. What a sexy name, you know.
I'm just quick sidebar here. My wife is a psychologist.
A lot of people know that on the show already,
and as they make changes to the d s M,
it is really strange to see how vastly different disorders
(13:44):
become and how they get categorized and defined. Because homosexuality,
for a long time in the early days of the
d S and when it was listening, included a disorder, right, yeah, absolutely,
and then you know, look at the autism spectrum now
and all these other things. Anyway, let's get back into
right here. So the fifth edition, which is the latest one,
(14:04):
is when it came out. It shows that there are
common behavioral traits that are shared between both of these
and yes, sociopaths and psychopaths, but there are many differences.
What they share is the disregard for laws and social morays,
disregard for rights of others, a failure to feel remorse
or guilt, a tendency to display violent behavior. And in
(14:27):
addition to these commonalities, they have all of these differences.
So maybe could you describe just the average sociopath and
and broad strokes and sociopaths and the audience, of course,
are are offended, I imagine by being described as average
in any way. Sorry, Okay, so sociopaths tend to be
(14:52):
easily agitated, a little nervous. Maybe they can be volatile,
prone to emotional outbursts, fits of ray. You take that back, Yeah,
it's it's possible. Um. Sociopaths are likely to be uneducated,
at least somewhat, live on the fringes of society, unable
to hold down a steady job or even really stay
(15:13):
in any particular place for a very long time. Because
you have to to stay in a job or stay
in a place, you have to be able to work
in some way with groups of other people. Yes, hold
down holding down a job can be tremendously difficult for
both of these groups. Um. Many sociopaths are able to
form some kind of attachment to like one person, an individual, perhaps, sure,
(15:39):
maybe one group of people that they're able to really
blend in with um, but really overall, they seem to
have no regard for society in general, It's rules, its laws,
things that make it go on. I would imagine who
those attachments could border on the obsessive and are not
necessarily healthy in any way. Well, you know, like none
(16:00):
of us are a psychologists, but yes, I can imagine
that that is absolutely true. So any crimes, at least
the FBI. The FBI contends that any crimes committed by
a sociopath will tend to be impulsive, spontaneous, haphazard. I
don't know why I emphasized it that way, but that
does some pretty cool haphazard. So Noel, on the other hand,
(16:24):
what would you what would you say a psychopath would
be Like? Psychopaths, on the other hand, are completely unable
to form emotional attachments of any kind or feel empathy
with anyone. So while a sociopath might have, you know,
an obsession with a person, maybe someone at work, that
(16:44):
they sort of hold up as this the you know,
kind of like an object of their affection, you know
perhaps or yeah, are a close family member, maybe you
know a mother or father or a sibling. Perhaps, Um,
this psychopath would be completely isolated from any kinds of
(17:06):
relationships like that. UM go to great length in fact,
to isolate themselves. Psychopaths are much more manipulative and good
at it. Psychopaths are able to successfully mimic emotion, and
as as we mentioned at the top of the show
with our little scene, kind of give off this false
(17:28):
sense that they have empathy or that they can relate
to somebody. They are ultimately just trying to twist to
their own ends and appear to be completely normal to
unsuspecting people. UM Psychopaths are often very well educated, whether
within a system of education, higher learning, or just their
(17:51):
own job experience or job experience sure, or even just
you know, home home learning. They are obsessed with details,
and they will go to lengths to you know, find
out as much information as they can about what they're
interested in. Uh. Some are so good at manipulation and
mimicry that they have families. As you often hear about
(18:11):
the guy next door family long term relationships. They had
no idea, We had no idea. He was so nice,
he always was outside mowing his lawn. He would give
us the paper. All of these acts, though, figure into
that greater charade of trying to put on that human mask,
you know, and be seen as a productive member of society.
(18:33):
That's an interesting thing because one of the key differences
is that when committing crimes right or what society regards
his crimes, psychopaths will carefully plan out every detail in
advance and have an escape plan, plan B, a contingency.
So whereas a sociopath will commit something impulsively, a psychopath
(18:59):
will be cool. It's calm and thorough, and these crimes
might not be violent, you know, it might just be
stealing a laptop from Circuit City, Slash Blockbuster It or
a VHS copy of Captain Ron, you know, which a
lot of people that's really hot right now in the
black market should have gone with Cabin Boy. Yeah, you
(19:22):
sank a lot of money into the VHS bootleg trade,
Cabin Boy. I want to talk about a few examples though,
of this kind of calculated this. And I say he
didn't didn't have to be a violent crime, which is true,
But of a good example of this kind of calculated
this can be seen in serial killers that are caught. So,
for example, Jeffrey Dahmer, you know, he was looking for
(19:44):
a very specific type of person that he wanted to
abduct that would fulfill his you know, fetish or his
sexual fantasy. He ultimately wanted to turn these people into zombies,
sex and dead sex slaves. So he had a very
very spe scific plan laid out for how to earn
these people's trust at these clubs where he would uh
(20:06):
you know, seek somebody out, and once he had injected
himself into a situation with the his mark more or less,
he would uh have them you know, kind of apply
them with drinks and then ultimately drug them and take
them home and do what he wanted to do with them, which,
like we said, it was some pretty grizzly stuff that
involved you know, drilling holes in their craniums and causing
(20:31):
them to be completely brain dead and pliable for whatever
he wanted to do. But the point is he had
a plan, He had a very specific plan outline for
how to accomplish his goals, and as he continued to
do it, over time, he refined that plan. So it's
all just very calculated, you know, um callous behavior that
(20:54):
is refined over time. Whereas, like you say, ban as
sociopath would be much more impulsive and might you know,
do something in the heat of the moment, but there's
not that level of fastidious study that goes into the process. Yeah,
that's a great point. Another example would be Ted Bundy,
for instance, who Ted Bundy, notorious serial killer and rapists
(21:19):
who was active during the nineteen seventies, also a necrophile. Uh.
He eventually confessed at thirty homicides in seven states during
the latter half of the nineteen seventies, but no one
knows how many women he actually killed. And he would
exploit these people when their trust. He actually defended himself
(21:43):
in court and then charmed the judge who said, you, sir,
would have been a fantastic attorney. Uh. Despite his psychopathic charm,
his case fell apart when he was identified as his
dental records matched bite marks on the bodies. That's tough
(22:05):
to walk away from, even if you are a slick
talking Ted Bundy psychopath. So one of the biggest differences,
which we'll get into in a bit, is that sociopaths
can learn this behavior childhood trauma. You know, Unfortunately the
world is a terrible place for a lot of children. Uh.
(22:26):
This this early trauma can influence an individual, removing the
fundamental pieces of the engine that makes someone a human
in a society. However, more and more evidence indicates, and
this is fairly controversial, that there may be a genetic
basis to psychopathy. And we'll get morning that after we
(22:48):
take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors.
So talk about some statistics here and and before we
dive into these statistics, I want to ask you guys, know, Matt,
(23:10):
when when you first hear like the words psychopath, what
do you think of any anything is fine? Anything is
fine For me, it's films and television. I just finished
season five of Dexter, Passenger and stuff. Sure, yeah, that's
what that's within my head currently, at least at this moment.
(23:30):
I know him behind the times with Dexter. Also, you
know iconic films Psycho Alfred Hitchcock, that American Psycho. Oh yeah, absolutely,
Christian Bale, Like I have a picture of Christian Bale
in my head. What what about you know? I'm a
big fan of American Psycho as well, because it's kind
of like it almost pokes fun at the model of
psychopathy a little bit, and the way it at gels
(23:54):
so well with corporate attitudes and you know, we've actually
don an episode of that passed on Is My Boss
a Psychopath? Uh? And I think American psycho is a
really good kind of synthesis of of a lot of
those concerns. Feels like an American version sure of psycho.
So what's interesting is that in our video episode this
(24:15):
week we look at the chances that you may have
met a psychopath. It is possible. The numbers are the
numbers are important because they're dubious. It's difficult to really
know if these are people who are skilled at manipulation,
if they are also practicing for most of their lives too,
(24:42):
you know, hiding their true nature. Then of course these
aren't self reporting people. It's not like a a measure
of statistics of people who have blue or green or
hazel eyes. Right, those are some of the rarest eye colors,
but they're readily apparent. You don't have to sign on
a government document anywhere or that you're a psychopath, like
(25:02):
you don't admit to it. Not not yet. Maybe big
data can track someone's social media activity or Internet usage,
and oh gosh, there is there's some stuff coming out
with looking at tweets really and tracking if someone is
displaying psychopathic Well, you know, we often say between the
three of us on this show that if the n
(25:23):
Essay is tracking us or paying attention, I mean they're
all they have their weird illuminati I on everybody. But
if there, if there's an actual person tracking our show,
it's probably an intern. I like to think his name
is Steve, And I feel so bad for Steve for
having to listen to this. So Steve, if you are,
if you are tracking our social media activity, please let
(25:48):
Nolan I know of mat is a psychopath. Well, here's
the thing. They wouldn't be tracking our show. They would
be tracking us individually. Have you guys heard of the
anime called Psycho pass Um. It's about like sort of
like a futuristic society where tracking technology has gotten so
(26:08):
good that law enforcement have these guns called the Dominator Dominators.
The idea is that each weapon is matched with its owner,
and the weapon scans a subject, does psychological tests, matches
it with database records, and determines whether or not to
use lethal force or not. Oh yeah, smart weapons. That's
(26:28):
something we should get into also in more in depth.
We could do an entire episode on that and that
that may indeed be a plausible future, you know, and
is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
For the gun owners in the audience? Uh, do you
do you believe that you should have a gun that
(26:52):
can only be fired by you right or programmed for you?
Do you have? Do you believe that you should have
a weapon that evaluates your mental state at the time
before it allows you to use it? So, for many, many, many,
many people, psychopaths are those those creatures of fiction. You know,
(27:15):
they're chasing folks with chainsaws, they're dressing up and drag
and stabbing some blond lady in a motel somewhere out
in the American heartland. But in real life, the only
defining feature is that there may be a profound selfishness,
a lack of emotion, little to no conscience. And let's
(27:37):
talk about numbers. So you'll hear widely varying estimates. And
you'll find some people that say, oh, you have probably
met a psychopath because one in a hundred people are psychopaths.
And then you'll find another number that says, nope, one
percent of the global population will be psychopathic. And you know,
(28:00):
there's another question here, whether this is a yes, no
red green kind of red green light kind of thing
like psychopath not psychopath, or whether it's a spectrum, right,
and some people have these traits. If we take the
position that one per cent of the US population or
(28:20):
one percent of the global population rather is uh, you know,
as a psychopathic, then we would say we're recording this
in September. There are seven point four billion ish people
on the planet, and several people just got born. As
I said the last sentence, there's seven point four billion.
(28:41):
One percent of the population is composed of psychopaths. Then
the world has seventy four million psychopaths right now, and
some of you are probably listening. I hope you're having
a good day. Uh, Your chances a meeting one then
seemed pretty remote, right, That's that's when a dark lottery. However,
(29:05):
although these these estimates may slip back and forth, the
question is what are your odds of running into a psychopath?
So for perspective here, the nation of Thailand has roughly
sixty million people in it living there, and if all
(29:28):
of the psychopaths estimated in the world gathered in one place,
they would be a country larger than Thailand. That would
be a fun place to visit man. Can you imagine
just going to any store, driving on the street. I
think everybody would be charming on this would be great. So,
(29:50):
Ben Matt, what are the odds that me, Noel Brown,
walking around town would meet a psychopath after accused myself?
I'm kidding. Here's where it gets crazy. Your odds of
running into a psychopath, while they may seem remote, are
(30:14):
probably going to be higher depending upon the industries in
which you work. So, these are people who are disguising themselves.
Do you remember the theme the Transformers robots in disguise?
This is more like monsters in disguise, the human mask,
(30:36):
the human mask. Yes, just so, as you said, so,
there is a larger percentage of psychopaths in in several fields,
in politics and sales in high level corporate entities. There's
also a problem with the methodology here, because if there
(30:57):
are people who are professionally passionately disguising themselves, then you know,
going back to our earlier example about eye color, it
won't be a parent No, Matt, listeners, if you are
a psychopath, if you actually have this inability two participate
(31:20):
in the human enterprise of empathy, then you are so
dedicated to hiding this. You know, you, I can see
these people in a group, right, someone makes a joke
and this person laughs the loudest. A second after they
(31:42):
see that everybody else is laughing, and they go, oh,
it's time to laugh. And this this means that. And
this means that, given your profession, your situation, you will
have a much higher chance of running into one of
these individuals. This will not be a one percent dark
(32:04):
lottery for you. It may very well be a reality
of your daily life. For people who have been incarcerated
in the past, or someone who knows has been incarcerating
the past, you will be interested to hear about the
research by a fellow named Robert Hare. Robert Hare, who
we cite in our video series, wrote a book called
(32:25):
Without Conscience, The Disturbing World of Psychopaths among Us, And
he is the one who developed a checklist, like you
said earlier, of various behaviors adding up aggregating into a
certain uh, you know, a certain threshold psychopathic behavior. And
he found that well maybe one percent of the global
(32:49):
population on average will suffer from this disorder, in excess
of twenty of the inmate population. SATIS fies his definition
of a psychopath. So that means that your chances of
running into someone in prison who feels no empathy, no
(33:10):
remorse is about one in five, which is which is
a startling statistic and it is and it is debatable.
So we were talking about how these people will be
identified or identify themselves or disguise themselves. And you know what, Nold,
this reminds me of a video that you and I
(33:33):
worked on when we were traveling New York. We spent
a spoiler alert ladies and gentlemen. We spent several days
while Matt was holding down the fort here at stuff
they don't want you to know, uh we Nolan, I
happen to get this opportunity to hunt down buildings that
did not want to be found in New York. These
(33:54):
were fake buildings that were designed to look like uh
Brown's zones, Yeah, like um, you know, townhouses, brown stones, um.
There was one of them that was pretty much an
entire city block and the bronx Um. The idea is
that they are intended to blend in with their surroundings
and deceive. What does that sound like, right exactly? That's
(34:17):
the that is what if if a person is a
building those buildings are psychopaths. Yeah, and and how do
they blend in? Right? How do the buildings blend in?
How do the humans blend in? We're going to learn
about that right after we hear from a word from
our sponsor and we're back. You know you, guys, I know,
(34:48):
I thought you did a really good ending. Indeed line
there there was very radio voice. Thank you, and you
can tell by the speech pattern that you are not
a psychopath. We are identifying psychopaths increasingly, we being the
human species experts, not necessarily the the three of us
(35:10):
and all of all of you listening here, who are
of course, uh, the most important part of this show.
Uh do you notice uh part of what I'm doing
here in uh my speech patterns. It's hard for me
to tell what it is, but it certainly sounds different.
It's given me the creeps and get the willies. Uh, yes,
(35:35):
the willies, the Alabama shakes. Sounded like a president trying
to give a speech where you're being very deliberate about
every word you said. So there is a pretty there's
a pretty convincing study. And we when we say this,
we want to disclaimer here. We don't want anybody to
(35:58):
diagnose someone as a psychopath, being that this is a
controversial definition. Oh and we should also point this out.
This is stuff they don't want you to know. The
they in this episode could be your boss, could be
your friend, could be your lover, could be your child,
could be a relative. Right, they would be the psychopaths
(36:20):
that you may have met. They might be you if
you were a psychopath and you were listening today. So
a fascinating study came out in September of two thousand
eleven and was called Hungry Like the Wolf, a word
pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths. And the reason
that I was playing around with speech a little bit
(36:42):
and that last thing where you guys noticed something was
what I guess Chuck Bryant would call hinky mm hmm.
Is the following psychopaths in in comparison to a control
group include more rational cause and effect descriptions. So because
(37:02):
of this, or since this focused on material needs like
I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm poor, or whatever, and there
are fewer references to social needs or you know, the
more spiritual stuff like family, religion, love, you know what
(37:23):
I mean. And psychopath speech Also this is key contained
a higher frequency of what are called disfluencies. And these
are the US, the ums. So I've seen a lot
of US. And also also I tend to say US
pretty often. Hopefully I am not a psychopath, try to
(37:46):
I try to edit those out when I can, I know,
but there's so many. You know, I was just saying
I was imagining myself. They're saying UM every moment, right.
That doesn't mean that we are necessarily madmen. M This
this indicates in this study, this indicates that describing a
(38:07):
quote unquote powerful emotional event to another person it was
relatively difficult because it's like you're it's similar to when
you're watching something streaming versus watching something that already exists
on your computer. There's some sort of transit tifering. Yeah,
(38:27):
there's buffering. That's the word exactly. So there's this buffering thing.
You know. This makes me think of the Replicant test
and Blade Runner, where they measure someone's dilation right of
the of the pupils. When they describe like there's a turtle, turtle,
it's on its back. It can't get up, you see it? Why? What? Right?
(38:51):
What a get? And so with this in mind, uh,
with this in mind, there starts to be an illuminating
and speech pattern, right, at least according to the study,
so psychopaths also their final note, psychopaths also used more
past tense and less present tense verbs in their narrative,
(39:14):
which the scientists took to mean there was a greater
psychological detachment from an incident. Right. However, there's there's one
difference in that in that final point, and that difference
is that the people they were interviewing were psychopathic homicide
(39:38):
offenders based on the checklist devised by Robert Hare. So
of if my question is are you more likely to
use past tense when you're in prison? I think you
may well be. Yeah. Their conclusion is that, I will
quote this, these language differences, presumably beyond conscious control, will
(40:00):
support the notion that psychopaths operate on a primitive but
rational level. The important part there is in the beginning
where they say presumably beyond conscious control. So the argument
is that with these people who are skilled manipulators and deceptive,
these living decepticons to do another Transformers reference, they are
(40:25):
unable to control these small patterns of speech, and this
means that there would be an underlying factor here, so
that is one of the giveaway signs. No, I certainly
hope that no one is going to go around thinking
that guy says uh a lot, like guy says um
(40:48):
quite a bit. Uh. Any any one of these things
on this checklist right, any of these descriptors. It makes
me nervous that people will just be looking for these
now in people they walk past, people, they love, people,
you know, they work, they worked with Um. Oh god,
(41:09):
I said, um, it's making me so paranoid. Now, one
thing before we before we moved too far beyond it.
When we did the episode that you mentioned nol about
is whether someone's boss is a psychopath. We found some
pretty fascinating, disturbing statistics. So if if psychopaths are one
(41:32):
percent of global population identified psychopaths, once you get to
about middle management level in corporate America, at least about
four of people are going to be psychopaths, which is
which is weird because it also I think it I
(41:57):
think it explains partially the action and corporate entities. Oh wow,
when the people that are controlling them towards the center
and top have these callous disregard for everybody else, certainly
a lack of empathy there and a you know, I
don't know if, if if anyone out there has ever
(42:17):
dealt with higher level corporate types, but there's a certain,
uh gotta keep saying a human maskiness about them, you know,
with the glad handing and all of the right. Yeah, exactly,
this idea of sort of trying to relate to people
on the ground, sort of that are beneath them quote
(42:39):
unquote in the corporate structure, and um, usually it's quite
obvious that that they don't actually care about anybody except
for the bottom line and their ability to uh kind
of steer people's actions toward whatever metric will make them
look best. Robert Hare had a very interesting quote about that.
(43:02):
Someone was asking him about his study with prisoners and
the reports of people meeting his threshold for psychopathy in
the corporate world, and he said, you know, I would
love to have interviewed some of those people, because I
think the number might even be higher. And of course,
(43:25):
corporate entities are are brutal, and we were reaching arguably
the age of the corporation rather than the age of
the state. Let sounds like a good podcast episode, you
know what, Maybe it would be. I don't know, maybe
we should do that. What do you think, Yes, yeah,
(43:45):
I think so, let us know what you think, listeners.
There's one thing other thing we should follow up on here,
and that is the argument that there is a genetic
a genetic um factor. It psych propathy. Have you ever
heard of something called the warrior gene? Sounds familiar, but
(44:06):
I couldn't tell you what it was. So this is
this is tremendously controversial because so much of the history
of modern science is dictated by institutionalized racism. Essentially, we
have phrenology, right, you could tell by the bump on
an irishman's head that he was made velocity and insolence,
(44:30):
eugenics and eugenics as well, uh eugenics being eugenics being like, well,
it's it's a crime not to sterilize the Welsh. Wow,
you know, quick and dirty reader's digest. But but the this,
this idea that is very close to the Christian concept
(44:52):
of original sin, is that there are inborn things that
determine the course of a person's life. Research is indicating
that there may be an inborn gene, a genetic aspect
(45:13):
of fundamental part of someone's DNA that makes them more
likely to be a psychopath. The idea of a criminal
gene is nonsense. But the roots of what becomes the Dahmer,
what becomes the ted Bundy may indeed be something that
is there from the moment that person is formed. So
(45:35):
people know that genes play a why like an important
role in behavior. Stuff you should know has an excellent
episode about epigenetics, which is that the behaviors of our
ancestors or our our parents or grandparents will affect the
way our genes manifest Possibly is debatable, However, there there's
(46:02):
studies that say that show this has worked in certain
situations related to physical things. Yeah, likelihood of diabetes for instance. However,
what what we're finding is that, you know, the study
of behavioral genetics is very, very, very very what's the
(46:25):
new safe word? Problematic? Is that really the new safe word?
And ben, Yeah, it's problematic. So there's a there's a
low expression variant of M A O A and it's
known as M A O A L and it's been
(46:46):
linked in various studies with an increased risk of violent
and aggressive behavior. So, if we want to get into
the inside baseball of it, studies essentially showed this the
gene M A O A encodes mono and today's A
and that's an enzyme that degrades UH neurotransmitters like dopamine, nora, adrenaline, serotonin.
(47:09):
So this disorder, if there's a rare genetic disorder caused
by a mutation in this gene having M A O
A L instead of M A O A UH, this
deficiency can cause an excess of these transmitters, which will
lead to an excessively impulsive behavior, hyper sexuality, sleep disorder,
(47:33):
extreme mood swings, a tendency toward violence, also known as
Brunner syndrome. And people disagree over the science, but they
also furthermore disagree about the implications of this. And here's
the other thing. This variant M A O A L
(47:54):
is common. It occurs to approximately of the population. So
if one per cent of the population is exhibiting psychopathic behavior,
then it can't be just nature. There has to be
some nurture involved as well, or lack of nurture maybe,
or lack of nurture as well. So this is where
(48:18):
we reach towards our conclusion. And we don't want anyone
to feel that they are listening to this show and
maybe on a road trip and looking over at the
person with them in the car and thinking, you know,
how much? How well do I know Derek from HR? Sure?
(48:39):
He says uh a lot. He might be a monster,
He might be wearing a mask of human skin. Now,
we don't want you to think that, and we also
don't want you to think that we take this lightly
in any way, because this is a mental illness that
we've been speaking about this entire time that affects real
people in real ways. And it doesn't mean just because
(49:03):
someone displays traits of this, it doesn't mean they're going
to be violent. It does not mean that just means
that they may be a little deceptive. Well. It also
it also means that we are as a species in
an age where we are still learning about ourselves. We
(49:28):
are the original pieces of technology that we still don't
completely understand, and we were able to build amazing things.
We are not at this point able to build a person.
We're reaching towards genetic modification. We also have to ask
ourselves every time that a gene exists or propagates. The
(49:52):
population is hell of a number, and we always have
to ask ourselves why a certain gene became successful, Why
did it propagate. Does the world need psychopaths? In some ways?
Are psychopaths more likely to be good soldiers, good politicians?
(50:17):
Our psychopaths lacking empathy or fear more likely to be
someone there in a clutch to save a life, to
do a job because they don't suffer from the the
identification like, could they be better surgeons because they don't
feel a discomfort when they see someone bleeding out. It's
(50:39):
almost more of an adaptation instead of a you know, disorder.
Perhaps interesting to think about. Yeah, And of course, as
Matt said at the top, we are not trained psychologists.
We do not endorse self diagnosis or diagnosing someone else.
If you do have concerns about yourself. I loved when
(51:03):
someone you know seek professional medical advice. And if they're
a surgeon and they might operate on us later, please
feel free to not tell them about our speculation regarding
surgeons and psychopaths. That would be great. And with that said,
(51:25):
we are off to do a little bit more. We've
got some We've got some interesting stuff coming up on
the way, so please tune in, but more importantly, let
us know what you think. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
I don't know why I said the last one like
a curse word. Hey, find us on Google Plus. Everybody
(51:45):
uses that. Right, We've got my Space, We've got a
live journal, we've got um friendster friends, SoundCloud. Right, we're
actually on SoundCloud. Find us on all of those inner
and at spaces that digital cloud. Also, Uh, if you
have time and if you if you appreciate this show
(52:08):
or if you want your friends to know about it.
H you feeling geritable, generous, philanthropic, your way of giving
back could be leaving us a review. Yeah, especially on iTunes,
on what Stitcher. They're all kinds of places you can
leave a review. Doesn't have to be positive. That would
be great if it was, but it doesn't have to be. No,
(52:29):
it really should be positive. Please that you are clearly
the least psychopathic person amongst the three of us. Have
such empathy, man, just you know, I want people to
just give us the straight truth. Let us know that's
what we seek here. How very agent molder of you.
So also also so you know, we've been getting a
(52:50):
lot of email recently and we appreciate it and we
read every single one. You've got so much now that
pretty soon I think we should do a listener episode.
I think maybe we should do that very soon. All right, well,
if you want to be part of that, you can
write to us and tell us the stuff that you
think your fellow listeners should hear. You can contact us directly.
(53:12):
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com
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Noel Brown
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