September 12, 2017 • 47 mins
There are people who walk among us who seem normal, maybe even more charming or intelligent than average, yet they hide disturbing and at times dangerous personalities behind what one researcher called a 'mask of sanity.'
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Josh Clark,
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry, and we're here
to manipulate you into learning something new. You're trying to
(00:23):
use your least psychopath voice that you have. Yeah, but
it's having the opposite effect I'm trying for, isn't it.
You're not full like anyone. Well, you just made a
powerful enemy. Oh how you doing. I'm good, I'm feeling
quite quite good. I like this one. This is this
(00:45):
one's gonna have it all, you know what I mean? Psychology,
disputed psychology, prison murder, Yeah, a little serial killer action. Yeah.
We can't not mention at least Hollywood, the d S,
m uh, contradictions in terms all sorts of stuff, the Bible,
China yeah, wait, how does Oh yeah, okay, I forgot
(01:09):
about those parts. So we're talking psychopathy, yeah, which I
mean people say, well, what's the difference between a psychopath
and a sociopath. We'll get to that. By psychopath, don't
you mean psychotic? We'll get to that too. Keep his
pants on, psychopath, just buckle in. Yeah, And if you
(01:31):
think you know everything there is to know about psychopaths, Well,
you may be surprised. There's a lot, la, la lot
of misconceptions out there about psychopaths about exactly what constitutes
a psychopath, or what they act like, or how easy
they are to recognize um. And it turns out this
article actually points out that a lot of the people
(01:54):
who tend to lead other people sometimes have psychopath ethic qualities, like,
for example, obviously you would call Hitler a psychopath. I
think just about everybody would write, but I guess from
studying them posthumous Lee and remotely UM guys like Teddy
Roosevelt JFK. But I'm sure basically every president that's ever
(02:18):
been president of the United States exhibits some psychopathic qualities, right,
and some because some actually can be considered useful in
the right context, right, like immunity distress or fearlessness, or
the ability to influence others. These are pretty handy things
to have if you're a politician. But just because you are,
(02:40):
you your your reaction to stress is far lower than
the average person, or you know you have an ability
to charm other people thanto doing it you want. It
doesn't automatically make you a psychopath. And the reason why
it doesn't automatically make your psychopatha is because there is
a spectrum of psychopathy and there's a threshold where below
(03:00):
the threshold you may have some of these qualities or
traits of psychopathy, but you're not a psychopath. At that
thresholder above, though, you would be considered a psychopath. And
if that is the case, if you are a full
blown psychopath, you have a very specific set of characteristics
that very much separate you from the average person in
(03:24):
some extraordinarily scary ways. Yeah, potentially, yes, if psychopaths um
exist in this form at all. There's a lot of
debate about that as well. Yeah. So uh, if you
think if you have a hundred friends, uh, science estimates
that one of those people is a psychopath. Yeah, I
(03:47):
saw that figure. So one percent of the general population,
So as many as three million psychopaths United States States
in about seventy million worldwide, and only I think, what
is it about of those are in the prison population?
So okay, people, people, Uh, the majority of prisoners aren't psychopaths,
(04:10):
and the majority of psychopaths aren't in prison, which means
they're all walking among us. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily
mean that they aren't in prison because they haven't been
caught yet. There's a lot of what are known as
high functioning psychopaths that are full, full on psychopaths, but
they just don't exhibit the kind of traits that would
(04:31):
get you locked up in prison. Instead, they exhibit, um,
what we would call white collar crimes, which aren't prosecuted
in the United head fund managers basically, Well, it is
funny because I mean I do make that joke, but
they said that they think as many as perhaps of
like people in the finance industry could be psychopaths. Yeah,
(04:52):
there was a study that found that. Sure. Yeah, and
and but that makes a pretty good point, like there's
some in the right contact. Yeah, being a psychopath can
actually be useful to you. All right, Well, let's go
back to Aristotle. Like most things, he's the he's the
the tissue that binds this with the cricket farming episode. Correct. Interestingly, so,
(05:15):
I know in cricket Farm when we talked about his
pillow talk and great back in those days when he
was pillow talking, he had a student name Theophrastus, and
Theophrastus was a four century BC philosopher, and they they
talked about psychopaths. They called them unscrupulous at the time,
(05:37):
but what they were talking about was what we would
now refer to psychopaths. And everything from uh the Chinese,
to biblical stories to mythology and Greece and Rome the Shakespeare. Like,
it's just rife through history, literary history of people writing
about what we would now call a psychopath. And it's
(06:00):
not just the West either. I mean, like we call
them psychopaths here, apparently the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria call
them ironicon, the yuk of Eskimos call them kun langhetta um.
They they seem to be around, like you said, one
(06:21):
percent of the global population, So they're not like culturally bound.
It's not a culturally bound condition, but it does seem
contextual in that psychopaths are contrary to society. They don't
follow the social norms that keep everybody else in line.
That typically arise out of things like empathy and feeling
(06:46):
bad for other people and seeing other people as their
own sentient um selves. Yeah, and not not just bags
of meat to be manipulated, yeah, to your own ends.
So psychopaths make appearances throughout history throughout literature. Um, you
mentioned the Bible, So um Kine is widely referred to
(07:08):
as an early psychopath, the first psychopath, maybe so, at
least in the in the Judaeo Christian tradition. Right. But
if we if we fast forward to eighteenth century France,
like the beginnings the modern beginnings of our Western at
least conception of psychopaths were found in the hands of
(07:30):
a French physician named Philippe Pine. Yeah. He was one
of the first professional medical professionals to talk about this,
and he referred to them as uh maniac songs, delile
nice insanity without delirium. Um. They've gone by other names
since then, uh, and descriptions from moral derangement, moral insanity,
(07:55):
rational madness, right, and that actually describes like a type
of insane entity where you're like morally and even maybe
behaviorally deranged, but you're not cognitively impaired, and your your
sense of your touch with reality is your grip on
reality is totally normal as well. Yeah. Like kind of
the whole point is they are walking among us and
(08:18):
by all accounts are usually very a charming kind of
quote normal unquote seeming individuals. Predatory. Yeah, and then finally
those a German psychiatrist named J. L. A. Cox and
he said, I have the term. It is psycho pastiche
(08:40):
I mean suffering soul. And that's where the actual word
finally psychopathy was born, right, and then I think into
the thirties or beginning in the thirties, sociopathy took over
a place psychopathy for a couple of reasons. One um,
from about the thirties to the seventies, there's a site
idea that psychopaths should be called sociopaths because it was
(09:04):
um nurture rather than nature that accounted for their anti
social behavior. Um that it was say a bad mother,
cold father, or absent father, something like that. That that
that was the basis of sociopathic behavior. The other reason
(09:26):
that sociopathy became widely used was because people were getting
it confused with psychosis. Psychopathy and psychosis they're not at
all the same thing. Psychosis means it's an umbrella term
for um, a loss of a grip on reality, delusions
basically right, and psychosis can be brought on by any
number of things like from dementia UM to lack of
(09:50):
sleep to schizophrenia. So psychosis is a condition where your
grip on reality is tenuous at best. Psychopaths are full.
Their grip on reality is totally fine. It's just again
it goes back to this idea that it's a moral arrangement.
They have no morals, they have no scruples, they have
(10:10):
no conscience, is another way that it's usually put. But
they're they're they're not delusional at all. Their grip on
reality is totally fine. Yeah, Like in a psychopathic brain,
there is literally a physical abnormality in the brain, right right,
And that's a huge, huge new development like that, And
as a result, sociopathy is quickly losing favor as an
(10:34):
interchangeable term for psychopathy. Yeah, I mean the terms over
the years of we're mostly interchangeable. Uh. In n D
s M, which we've talked about a lot, the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual Mental disorders UM, I think they called it.
They said, no more sociopathy, let's call it anti social
personality disorder a sp D UM. And you know, the
(10:58):
terminology is important because you shouldn't just use two different
things interchangeably to mean the same thing, right, No, it's
true and with UM psychiatrists and psychologists who study psychopathy
in particular, especially guy named Robert Hare who was continuing
on the work of a guy named Hervey Cleckley who
(11:19):
did his work Chuck in Augusta, Georgia. UM said no, no, no, like,
you can't just say psychopaths are just part of an
antisocial personality disorder, which is what the d s M does, right, Um.
And the reason why is because they've what they've concluded
(11:40):
is that they're basically two aspects to two different facets,
is what they call them. To being a psychopath, there's
primary psychopathy and secondary psychopathy or factor one and factor
too psychopathy. Right, Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you.
So Hervey great name by the way, Herbie Click. He's
(12:01):
a guy from Augusta, and he's the one who wrote
a book called The Mask of Sanity, UM, which is
sort of the foundation of modern psychopathic research. But he
was the one that came up with factor one and
two and is that basically just what we now call
primary and secondary. He came up with these the first
descriptors that are still kind of in in use today,
(12:24):
where UM things like UM that they they lack social responsibility,
but they're usually highly intelligent. UM. They're very irresponsible. They
don't um. They they have a winner take all um attitude. UM.
He spelled out like sixteen character traits um. And he
(12:45):
was basically the father of psychopathy. It was Hair who
came up with the two factors, or more to the point,
they emerged from his psychopathy checklist that he developed back
and I think the late seventies early eighties. So with
fact their one chuck that relates to like interpersonal behavior,
so the idea that psychopaths are very charming, um, but
(13:09):
that they also lack remorse. This is all this, this
is all considered factor one or primary psychopathy. And they
actually think that this is where um, you know, psychopathy
is rooted. It's a it's the the seeing other people
as means to an end and were using people in
(13:31):
that sense without any regard for the other person's feelings
or the consequences that has on their life and then
genuinely lacking remorse. These are classic traits of psychopathy, right,
But that's just one facet of it. There's another facet,
factor two, which is the the behavioral aspect of psychopathy.
(13:54):
And factor two relates to things like impulsivity, uh, sexual promiscuity,
parasitic lifestyle. And so if psychopathy is a spectrum that
we all potentially could be on the psychopath spectrum, but
we would most of us fall below that threshold, then
the factor one in factor two are like a spectrum
(14:15):
within a spectrum to where on one side you have
high functioning psychopaths like CEO, say, and then on the
other side you have very low functioning factor two psychopaths
like a truck stop serial killer, right who's getting sloppy um.
And then in between you would have, you know, a mixture.
(14:35):
But you can kind of lean more towards the factor
one psychopathy, you could lean more towards the factor to psychopathy.
But the factor too psychopathy relates almost exclusively to the
d s M s Antisocial personality disorder criteria, and so
therefore the d s M is ignoring factor one psychopathy.
(14:56):
And so therefore really the only way you can be
diagnosed as a psycho path is through the hair psychopath checklist. Um.
So there's almost like this competing field that's going up
against the d s M as far as the study
of psychopaths is concerned. You you take the rest of
the episode, all right, Well, let's take a break so
(15:20):
I can memorize all this stuff, and uh, we'll come
back and talk a little bit about demographics and that
hair test right after this. Alright, so we're back with
(15:54):
talks about demographics. Um, Studying psychopathy and psychopaths is tricky
to say the least, because, uh, this is there is
no Um, you can't well we'll talk a little bit
about the brain, but there is no you know, you
can't hook someone up to a machine that will spit
out a diagnosis of psychopath So you're gonna have to
(16:14):
get someone who self reports this stuff, which you're not
going to see a lot because no one usually likes
to think of themselves that way. Um, but most of
the data they have right now is gathered from psychiatric
examinations of criminals. Yeah, so there's really like a as
a sheltered view of psychopaths. We have just a limited
(16:37):
snapshot of the of the full spectrum of psychopathy. Because yeah,
if you're a psychopath, you're not going to go in
to look for help. You think you're better than everybody else.
So the very traits that make you a psychopath would
make you feel like you need the opposite of psychiatric help. Yeah,
like what are you saying, I'm I'm winning in life exactly.
(16:58):
Uh So as far as age goes, when they analyzed, um,
some of the results of some of these examinations prisoners,
they did show that it seems like psychopathic traits might
decrease some as you get older. They don't know why, um,
but it is. There's a lot of um controversy about
whether or not you can diagnose a kid as a psychopath. Uh.
(17:22):
Sometimes you might see some traits that a child expresses
that you might associate with psychopathy. But legally, technically you
can't diagnose a child as a psychopath. And just because
you might have some psychopathic tendencies as a kid, doesn't
mean you're going to grow up to be that way
as well. No, but they do have as part of
that anti social personality disorder spectrum. Um, they have diagnosed
(17:47):
these four kids like oppositional defiant disorder. Yeah, which seems
to be basically like as a factor to psychopath diagnosis
for children. Um. But yeah, I thinks they just don't
like to use that word for kids. No. No, And
and like you should be very careful with labeling clinically,
labeling somebody a psychopath just because of the them the
(18:11):
stigma associated with it. Yeah, Like can you imagine seeing
parents down and saying, well, um, Francis is a psychopath,
Like you're six year old is a psychopath? Not good? No,
they there's probably a company who specializes in that because
nobody else wants to do like up in the air
(18:33):
with people paid to come in and fire people, right exactly, Yeah,
I would if it was George Clooney to be a
different deal. Right, your child's a psychopath. Here's some literature
on that, and George and some fine tequila, right is
it fine? Yeah, it's good. But man, he sold that
thing for a billion dollars. You believe that? No? No,
(18:54):
like George Clooney rolling in dough yeah, rolling in handsome
billion dollar tequila, I mean charm and he sold his
tequila company for a billion bucks. He's a psychopath. I
feel like we talked about that before, have we? Is
that possible? No? We talked about him being smug. Oh
you did, sir, not me? Right, Well, you said, oh
(19:17):
I know he's so smug. No, I didn't because I
want to date him. Uh So when it comes to race, um,
it gets even more controversial because there have been analyzes
that tried to link higher rates of the disorder to
Native American communities African American people, and most psychiatrists have
(19:39):
come out and say, you know what, this is really
not taking into account socio economic factors and it's pretty racist. Yeah.
There was this guy named Richard Lynn who wrote back
in the early two thousands a journal article about that
and tried to basically say that the order of UM psychopathy,
(19:59):
as far as prevalence is concerned, is highest in Blacks
and Native Americans, and then followed by Hispanics and then
whites and then East Asians. And he said that it
had everything to do with evolution, and he totally left
out the fact that Hispanics are actually just five hundred
years or so removed from Caucasian Spanish people. Uh, and
(20:22):
that UM East Asians are the UM are tied genetically
to Native Americans over the last like ten thousand years
or so. So people just had fun kind of trashing
this guy's ideas, and he was like, you might also
want to read my manifesto on eugenics, right exactly. Uh.
One thing is clear though, when it comes to gender, UM,
(20:45):
they're definitely more psychopathic men than women. This dude. Yeah, yeah,
all of the numbers bear it out, like this guy
is the guy who The people who say no, it
has to do with races seemed to be total crackpots. Um.
But the people who say that there is a difference
in gender, they're backed up by numbers for sure. Um.
(21:08):
Studies show that that women definitely have lower occurrences as psychopathy.
But it has been pointed out that perhaps what women
psychopaths their behavior, that their behavior manifests itself differently than
male psychopaths, and that the psychopathy criteria is geared more
(21:31):
towards males and is missing female psychopaths. So for example, like, um,
you know you think of a psychopath, you think of
like a high functioning one, say like a CEO or
a Patrick Bateman type or something. Right, that's like a
classic psychopath. But what if what if there are just
as many women's psychopaths, but they're like um, Joan Crawford
(21:53):
and mommy dearist or something like that, you know, like
they just they're they're the way that they behave as
a psychopath manifests itself differently than how men do. That's
it's a theory. It's not necessarily true, but that's what
some people say. Well in the waters are so muddy
with how men and women think of each other in
their roles in society that it's bound to play a
(22:16):
part here and how that gets all mixed up, you know. Yeah,
that's uh well, and then you know there are like
the Eileen Warnses of the world as well like that.
I know there aren't many female serial killers, but ah,
there have been some, for sure, but there's definitely not.
I mean, when you look at the list of serial
killers you here, you see way more Ted Bundy's and
(22:39):
and who is the guy b t K Yeah, Dennis Rader. Yeah,
there are more of those dudes out there than Eileen
Warns is for sure. That's I mean, that's as far
as the numbers suggest. Yes, that's true. But I think
it's extremely interesting that, like we're we've got the blinders
on and are just looking at one set of behaviors
(23:02):
for psychopaths and are totally missing an entire population out
there that are women's psychopaths. That's just fascinating to me.
So should we talk about the psychopathy checklist? Yeah, we
kind of have to. Yeah, I mean we mentioned a
little bit of it. Um, through herby Herbie Cleckley. That's
gotta be money hotel name, um, Herbie Cleckley's work. And
(23:24):
then hair is the man who is responsible for the
modern um, the modern checklists and tests that people still
give other people. Yeah, and it's pretty simple. Um, well
it's it's not simple. Well, it's extensive for sure. Yeah. Simple,
and that there are twenty characteristics and when you take
(23:45):
the test, you either give yourself a two if you
have one of these characteristics or a one if you
may or may not. And then at the end you
do a little math. And is it thirty and above
out of forty you qualify as a psychopath? Yeah, I saw.
It depends on what country you're in. Um. But seriously,
(24:06):
but um, somewhere like between twenty six and thirty over
that you are probably you're probably a psychopath, or you
are you you qualify as a psychopath. Yes, So here
are those twenty characteristics. Uh. And you can either just
listen to these or you can have fun thinking about
your own self and doing a little math along the way.
(24:28):
I did math on mine earlier, and I'm like, all right,
I'm not a psychopath. And you can also if it
doesn't apply. Uh that you score a zero on any
of the questions. Correct. Uh. So we start with a
glibness and superficiality, and I think these aren't things like
you know, everybody can be a little superficial every now
and then. I think these are personality traits that you own, right,
(24:51):
wouldn't you say? Alright? So glibness and superficialities one grandiosity,
need for stimulation, pathological lying uh, cunning and manipulativeness, lack
of remorse or guilt uh, an emotional shallowness. I want
to take the rest. YEP, callousness and lack of empathy.
(25:11):
Big one. Parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioral controls, sure sexual promisecurity,
early behavior problems, lack of realistic long term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility,
you take the rest, failure to accept that responsibility, multiple
marriages that just seemed unfair, um, juvenile delinquency and revocation
(25:37):
of conditional release, which is like a recentivism or violating
your parole. Yeah, and committing a variety of crimes. Yeah.
So some of those you are like, oh, I can
be callous and I don't I can be impulsive and
don't have realistic long term goals. Like, don't sweat it,
just do the math. Like a thirty out of forty
(25:57):
is a pretty that means you're scoring on on a
lot of these, right. But so this, these are the
twenty characteristics that the checklist is getting at. The checklist
is actually hundreds of questions long and takes between two
and five hours to administer and can only be administered
by a highly trained psychologist, right, who's trained in administering
(26:20):
the tests for a cheap website. So right, So it's
not like the psychologist is like, did you have early
behavior problems? Uh, maybe that's a one. There's like the
dozens of questions for each of those things, right, And
so when you when you put the score together for
all of them, if you score over a thirty, um,
(26:40):
you're a psychopath as far as psychology the field of
psychology is concerned. Yeah, and you you know, hopefully you
are a functioning psychopath who um is getting along in
the world. But it can also manage best itself. As
Ted Bundy. So let's say you are a psychopath and
you're not getting along in the world. Um. One of
(27:00):
the one of the characteristics of psychopaths is something called externalization,
where you blame others or everything else but yourself for
your own problems. Um. But if you are a psychopath,
and you're more so if you're not getting along very
well in the world, you're probably more like a factor
(27:22):
to psychopath. If you are getting along well in the world,
you got a nice job or whatever, a family, all
that you've got, your mask of sanity is cletly put it. Um,
you you'd be more like a factor one psychopath. Um,
you're probably an intelligent human being. Yeah, and even if
you're incarcerated, if you there's probably a pretty good chance
(27:45):
that you're above average intelligence, especially compared to the general
prison population. Right. I was reading this article about um
by a psychologist who is basically telling other psychologists, if
you go interview a psychopath, here's what to expect. And
one of the things he said it is you can
bet they've probably done more research on you than you
have on them. Hannibal lector Hannibal lector great example. Right,
(28:07):
he knew everything about Starling everything. But like just with say,
internet privileges, if a if a psychopath knows that he's
coming to be interviewed by you, the psychiatrist, he's probably
going to read papers you've written, he's going to read
about what um about your education background, and all of
this is to figure out how to best tell you
(28:29):
what you want to hear so you can be more
easily manipulated to that person's ends. It is pretty fascinating,
but it's also kind of scary, and you kind of
reach the point now where it's like, uh, okay, this
is um kind of dangerous actually to interact with people
like this. And there's a lot of people out there
who suggests just staying away from psychopaths. Just if you
(28:53):
encounter a psychopath in your normal life, say at work
or something like that, Um, you want to keep your
distance is kind of the prescribed um treatment. Well, at
least how to deal with them, like, because if you're
being manipulated by a psychopath, that's that's part of their game.
(29:13):
So if you engage, like Jodie Foster had no choice,
Clarice Starling had to engage in Hannibal Lecter and play
that little psychological cat and mouse game so she could
get the information that he had on Buffalo Bill. I
know she didn't want to do it, but she did
it anyway, and she saved the day. Yeah, So that
(29:34):
is the advice is to not give them what they want, uh,
which I imagine would would make a psychopath angry. I
don't know. I think depending on stay like their tendency
for a parasitic lifestyle, Um, they may just move on
to find somebody else who's more easily manipulated. Yeah. Sure,
(29:57):
like it's possible that they you might really cat to
their attention, in which case you're you're not gonna be
very happy with having to to shed that person. But
chuck something that really struck me. And this is gonna
sound really weird to say it, but I can't help
but think fifty years from now, we're gonna look back
at a lot of the writing and a lot of
(30:18):
the suggestions on how to deal with the psychopath, which
is get rid of them, leave, get them a get
away from them, their predators and awful people that they're
They're gonna there's going to be a historically it's not
gonna hold up very well that Yeah, I think we're
gonna come to find that, um, psychopaths have no way
(30:40):
of helping themselves, that they are their brain is physically
different from the average persons, and that they can't help
their behavior anymore than the average person can change their
own behavior. Right, Um, probably even less actually, and then
we're gonna look at you know, back fifty years from now.
I was like, man, that's how they treated psychopaths back then.
How awful. You know, Like how we used to treat
(31:01):
them mentally impaired or they cognitively impaired, and they were
you know, classified as moron's idiots or imbeciles, depending on
how how extreme the impairment was, and you know, it
was just lock them up, keep them away from society.
I can't help but wonder if once we know how
to treat psychopathy, that we will view them much differently
(31:24):
and maybe even with sympathy. Well, I mean, they have
something physically wrong with their brain, it seems like it.
But that's a new thought. And we'll let's take a
break and we'll talk about that after this. All right,
(32:01):
we're back. Uh So we promised a little bit of
talk about the brain, and um, you know, there's a
couple of things that work here and at play there.
There's the physical aspect of the brain is actually uh
uh well I would say damage, but um, just not
right in some ways. Uh, they tends to be regions
(32:25):
of the brain. They're really trying to zero in on
which which one it is underdeveloped? Underdeveloped. Yeah, it's either smaller,
has less volume, or it's less active than it is
in control groups. Right, So there's that going on. And
then they're also and this is what we talked about
with factors one and two. Um, there's also social uh
(32:46):
factors that play in and they supposedly supposedly well, I
mean that seems to be losing favor pretty quickly. Do
you think brain damage that's supposedly what I'm seeing is
that that's the And it could just be the people
who are like really bullish on m R. Eyes are
really you know, getting more pressed or whatever and getting
(33:07):
their message out there more. But it seems like over
time favor has swung from you know, insanity to um
to nurture too, and then back again to you know,
physical brain structure, possibly even genetics. Well yeah, genetics. They
have done studies on twins, identical twins, and they think
(33:28):
it could be fifty to six genetically determined. But it
gets a little muddy because you can say, well, um,
you might have gotten your psycho orpy not psychotic. We
should point out that is a very different thing. Actually, um,
oh yeah we did at the beginning, right, Um, you
could say that your your dad was, um a psychopath,
(33:51):
so that means that you got that from him. But
the fact that your dad was a psychopath, it could
also be a very strong, um social factor in why
you became a psychopath. Right yeah, yeah, exactly your absent
father did that make your psychopath? Or was he absent
because he was a psychopath himself and passes genes onto you. Right,
(34:11):
So it definitely gets muddy. It is very muddy. And
the way that that will be sussed out ultimately is
if they can show definitively no, dude, like in case
after case after case. This this region of the brain
is underdeveloped, and this region of the brain has to
do with, say, processing emotions, like for example, one of
(34:31):
the one of the places they zero in on is
the amygdala, right yeah. The amygdala helps you, It helps
regulate emotions, it helps helps you experience emotions, and in psychopaths,
at least in some studies using mr eyes, they show
(34:51):
that if your amygdala is less active as it is
in people who score high on the psychopathy checklist, Um,
they're amigdala does not react normally in in certain tests. Right.
And this this actually makes a lot of sense because
when you're being socialized by your parents, one of the
(35:14):
ways that they socialize you're probably the most important way
they socialize you, is by punishing you when you're bad
and you feel bad. You feel bad for letting your
parents down. You might feel angry because you can't leave
your room or have dessert, um, whatever it is. You're
experiencing some pretty pronounced negative emotions right then, and so
over time, you start to associate those negatives of emotions
(35:39):
with the bad behavior that your parents are trying to curb.
And eventually you're gonna stop doing that bad behavior because
it feels bad to do it because you keep getting punished.
And then maybe your your own brain takes over and
you feel negative emotions when you do that stuff. Right,
If you're amygdala is not functioning properly, then that's not
going to happen. That process isn't gonna work, yeah, because
(36:01):
you're not going to experience those negative emotions. You're just
gonna be like, Oh, I wish I could leave my room.
I think I'll just climb out the window over here.
Not oh I feel so bad for letting my parents down.
You're not going to experience that because you're amygdala is
not functioning. So they've really zeroed in on the amygdala.
But apparently the big toast of the town these days
is the paralympics system. Yeah, that's when uh in you know,
(36:24):
the in the wonder machine, the fm R a machine
it lights up and shows you what parts of the
brain are being used into what extent. I know, we've
talked about that a lot, but in case you didn't know, uh,
And the paralymic system is underdeveloped in psychopaths, or it
seems so at least, and that that region controls emotional memories, inhibition,
(36:46):
and moral reasoning. So that seems pretty obvious if you
have an underdeveloped paralympic system, that that's kind of big
on the checklist of psychopathy. Yeah. And there's a whole
group of people who are UM kind of leading the
current research and psychopathy studying UM the prisoners, Because if
you're a prisoner, chances are you're going to be forced
(37:07):
to take the UM psychopathy checklist. UM. And that's that's again,
that's where most of our psychopath study population resides is
in prison. UM. So if they volunteer for a follow
up study, if they score high on the psychopathy checklist, UM,
they'll probably be put into an m r I and
(37:30):
given different tests. And these are the people who the
results are starting to be to be cold from basically
using the m r I, and they seem to it
does seem to be pointing to the paralympic system. Very interesting,
It is extremely interesting. But again it makes you feel like, well, man,
if it's not these people's fault, like, what can we do.
(37:51):
And part of the problem, Chuck, is that there's like zero, none,
a million percent to the negative cure. Yeah, you're not
gonna cure UM. If you have an underdeveloped paralympic system
or amygdala. There's nothing you can do about that, you know. Um.
What you can do is hope to improve UM with therapy. Obviously, UM,
(38:16):
catching it earlier in life is obviously gonna help more.
And what they found there's one, uh sort of treatment.
They found that a lot of the typical treatments you
might use don't work. UM. Everything from group therapy to
electro shock hugs. Group therapy in particular was found not
to work because it gave psychopaths a chance to hone
(38:38):
their manipulative behavior, which is just a bad idea out
of the game. Yeah, it made things worse. So UM.
Recently they started work with kids that they seem to
have made some gain some ground on called decompression treatment,
the basis of which is basically, UH rewarding and this
is through hours long session hours lungs, hours long sessions
(39:02):
UM of psychologists increasing reward for good behavior. So instead
of talking about the bad behavior and punishing bad behavior,
it's rewarding good behavior and kind of feeding that desire
of the psychopath to feel like they're winning. UM. I
don't know, it's it seems to work. It seems a
little dangerous to me too, like you're feeding the thing
(39:25):
that they require. But maybe maybe that makes sense. I
write a really really interesting um Cora post called what
it feels Like to be a Psychopath um, and it's
exactly that is. The person wrote it anonymously. They seem
to they seem to be legit that that they're just
(39:45):
making it up as they go along. UM. And they
they talk about basically being trained that there they're a psychopath.
They're going to be a psychopath for the rest of
their life, and they're just trying to learn and how
to be good in society while being a psychopath. Um,
(40:06):
so they can go along and get along. It's really interesting.
But but that's supposedly the best you can hope for. Again,
there's no cure. There is treatment, but if you unless
somebody is saying, like son, there's something really really wrong
with you, and I'm really worried about you, and I'm
(40:28):
gonna cut you out of my will unless you go
see a shrink. The psychopath is typically not going to
say I really need some help with my moral reasoning,
so I'm gonna go go get you know, some treatment.
It's just not going to happen. So there's a there's
a really big catch twenty two in there with psycho
psychopathy to begin with. But then Chuck, there's also a
(40:51):
question of you know what is psychopathy? Like? Are we
sure we know exactly what a psychopath is? And in
psychiatry and psychology as such, a long history of just
so much over confidence and self assuredness when they when
they're really getting it wrong. Yeah, that that you can
be forgiven for stopping and saying, whoa you guys are
(41:13):
are the arbiters of what's normal in society. Um, and
this is a really serious thing to label somebody. So
are we sure we know what we're talking about? And
not everybody says yeah, yeah, we know what psychopathy is.
I mean, we were using interchangeable terms that don't even
describe the same thing still, like sociopath and psychopath. It's
(41:33):
just there's a lot of confusion and it just seems
kind of dangerous too to label people with that stigma.
At the same time, if psychopaths do exist in the
form that psychiatry and psychology says it does, it's dangerous
to have those people out and about too. Yeah. I
think I agree with you now that this just smacks
of fifty years later saying I can't believe we used
(41:55):
to do things and label people this way. Yeah, you know, Yeah,
it's hard to tell when you're in the middle of
that time. Yeah, for sure. But um, very interesting. Yeah,
there's Uh did you ever read the psychopath Test? I
have not read it. I know of it. I know
Ronson wrote it. Yeah, John Ronson, who uh a friend
of stuff you should know, and he's actually done a
(42:15):
uh one of our live shows at the Bellhouse with
us without shoes on. But did he not wear shoes.
He's just wearing socks. I don't think I knew that. Well,
he very strangely walked from the Upper West Side of
New York to but without shoes. Well maybe his feet
were just hurting from that wall. That's possible anyway, lovely guy.
(42:36):
And he wrote a great book called The Psychopath Test,
and he does a lot of extensive interviewing with with
hair and um and other professionals and psychopaths and CEO
s so uh investigative journalists. Just really terrific book. And
I hate to be pluggy, but it's a it seems
like an organic time to mention that I've got a
(42:58):
new solo podcast coming called movie Crush. I think the
tagline is your favorite people their favorite movie. Oh that's
a good tagline. You like that. Yeah, I came up
with that. Nice work. My buddy Scotty thought a movie
crush the title. But basically, I sit down once a
week and talked to some kind of notable person about
(43:21):
their favorite movie. It's a great idea, Chuck, thanks man,
very Gangbusters. But I want to have you on. Oh
I'd love to be on, which would be very strange.
I mean, it's a conversation, but just the thought of like,
quote unquote interviewing you would be weird. Well, anytime you
want me on, I'm happy to be on. But if
it is too weird, that's fine too. Oh no, it
won't be too weird. They'd be great. But anyway, long
(43:43):
story short, I had had Ronson on and um, his
favorite movie I'll go ahead and just set this up
as a teaser was his let the Right One in. Oh,
that's such a good movie, the Swedish vampire movie. Yeah. Man,
that was so good. And I don't know when it
we're gonna start released. See them. I gotta get a
bunch of them in the can because scheduling people is tough,
(44:04):
so I need a nice pad. But um, sometime in
the fall, look for a movie crush well, best of luck.
I'm sure it's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to
hear it. Yeah, and just talking to Ronson's great. I
love that guy. Yeah, he's such a good guy, really
good dude. Yeah. And just pro tip, if any of
you are ever around John Ronson, be careful not to
step on his feet. Correct. Uh, well, you got anything
(44:27):
more about psychopaths? I got nothing more about psychopaths. That's
pretty interesting because it seems like there's a lot, but
there's not. We said at all correct. If you want
to know more about psychopaths, again, there's nothing more to know.
But if you want to read this cool article on
how stuff works, you can type psychopathy into the search bar.
And since I said psychopathy, it's time for listener mail.
(44:51):
I'm gonna call this short and sweet, and it's basically
kind of set up to uh promote the stuff you
should Know Army. Um. I don't know who first coined
that phrase, but the stuff you should Know Army are.
It's a collection of our most ardent listeners and fans
who over the years have got their own little mini
(45:11):
community on Facebook. Even there's a stuff you Should Know
Army Facebook page. And they're just like the cream of
the crop and just good people who love to talk
about the episodes and help each other out in life,
uh with various things. Just they're they're not psychopaths in
any way, right, you know. Ironically they're not militant either. No,
(45:33):
they're not. So this is just a kind of a
short email about that from Tony. Hey, guys, been listening
to you for a little over two years now. And
even though I love learning about all the topics, my
absolute favorite thing ever see from your work is unintentionally
meeting real life stuff you should know Army personnel out
there at work and in social situations and going way
(45:55):
too far down the rabbit hole with them about our
favorite episodes. Even he says, s y s M instead
of sk stuff. You should anyway, thank you for the
work and all you've done. You three really brightened people's
lives forever. A devoted listener That is from Tony Latham Jr.
(46:15):
From Sacramento. Thanks a lot, Junior. We appreciate that thanks
to all this stuff you should know Army, like if
you were there here the core. Uh, that kind of
keeps this machine running. Yeah, And if if you're interested,
you want to connect to some really great people online
and in real life, just go to the stuff you
should know Army Facebook page is it um by invitation
(46:39):
is open to the public. I know think you have to.
I mean, you don't apply, but it's a it's a
member's only page, so you gotta click on something and
then you know one of our admins. I'm sure it goes.
They look all right, right, Let's let him in Yeah.
I think that they have a Twitter handle as well too.
(46:59):
Okay to check that out, and you can check us
out on Twitter too. I've got my own Twitter handle,
It's josh um Clark. Uh. There's also the official one
S Y s K podcast. Chuck is on Facebook at
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at Stuff you Should Know
as well, and you can send us all an email
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
(47:21):
as always, join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Josh Clark,
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry, and we're here
to manipulate you into learning something new. You're trying to
(00:23):
use your least psychopath voice that you have. Yeah, but
it's having the opposite effect I'm trying for, isn't it.
You're not full like anyone. Well, you just made a
powerful enemy. Oh how you doing. I'm good, I'm feeling
quite quite good. I like this one. This is this
(00:45):
one's gonna have it all, you know what I mean? Psychology,
disputed psychology, prison murder, Yeah, a little serial killer action. Yeah.
We can't not mention at least Hollywood, the d S,
m uh, contradictions in terms all sorts of stuff, the Bible,
China yeah, wait, how does Oh yeah, okay, I forgot
(01:09):
about those parts. So we're talking psychopathy, yeah, which I
mean people say, well, what's the difference between a psychopath
and a sociopath. We'll get to that. By psychopath, don't
you mean psychotic? We'll get to that too. Keep his
pants on, psychopath, just buckle in. Yeah, And if you
(01:31):
think you know everything there is to know about psychopaths, Well,
you may be surprised. There's a lot, la, la lot
of misconceptions out there about psychopaths about exactly what constitutes
a psychopath, or what they act like, or how easy
they are to recognize um. And it turns out this
article actually points out that a lot of the people
(01:54):
who tend to lead other people sometimes have psychopath ethic qualities, like,
for example, obviously you would call Hitler a psychopath. I
think just about everybody would write, but I guess from
studying them posthumous Lee and remotely UM guys like Teddy
Roosevelt JFK. But I'm sure basically every president that's ever
(02:18):
been president of the United States exhibits some psychopathic qualities, right,
and some because some actually can be considered useful in
the right context, right, like immunity distress or fearlessness, or
the ability to influence others. These are pretty handy things
to have if you're a politician. But just because you are,
(02:40):
you your your reaction to stress is far lower than
the average person, or you know you have an ability
to charm other people thanto doing it you want. It
doesn't automatically make you a psychopath. And the reason why
it doesn't automatically make your psychopatha is because there is
a spectrum of psychopathy and there's a threshold where below
(03:00):
the threshold you may have some of these qualities or
traits of psychopathy, but you're not a psychopath. At that
thresholder above, though, you would be considered a psychopath. And
if that is the case, if you are a full
blown psychopath, you have a very specific set of characteristics
that very much separate you from the average person in
(03:24):
some extraordinarily scary ways. Yeah, potentially, yes, if psychopaths um
exist in this form at all. There's a lot of
debate about that as well. Yeah. So uh, if you
think if you have a hundred friends, uh, science estimates
that one of those people is a psychopath. Yeah, I
(03:47):
saw that figure. So one percent of the general population,
So as many as three million psychopaths United States States
in about seventy million worldwide, and only I think, what
is it about of those are in the prison population?
So okay, people, people, Uh, the majority of prisoners aren't psychopaths,
(04:10):
and the majority of psychopaths aren't in prison, which means
they're all walking among us. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily
mean that they aren't in prison because they haven't been
caught yet. There's a lot of what are known as
high functioning psychopaths that are full, full on psychopaths, but
they just don't exhibit the kind of traits that would
(04:31):
get you locked up in prison. Instead, they exhibit, um,
what we would call white collar crimes, which aren't prosecuted
in the United head fund managers basically, Well, it is
funny because I mean I do make that joke, but
they said that they think as many as perhaps of
like people in the finance industry could be psychopaths. Yeah,
(04:52):
there was a study that found that. Sure. Yeah, and
and but that makes a pretty good point, like there's
some in the right contact. Yeah, being a psychopath can
actually be useful to you. All right, Well, let's go
back to Aristotle. Like most things, he's the he's the
the tissue that binds this with the cricket farming episode. Correct. Interestingly, so,
(05:15):
I know in cricket Farm when we talked about his
pillow talk and great back in those days when he
was pillow talking, he had a student name Theophrastus, and
Theophrastus was a four century BC philosopher, and they they
talked about psychopaths. They called them unscrupulous at the time,
(05:37):
but what they were talking about was what we would
now refer to psychopaths. And everything from uh the Chinese,
to biblical stories to mythology and Greece and Rome the Shakespeare. Like,
it's just rife through history, literary history of people writing
about what we would now call a psychopath. And it's
(06:00):
not just the West either. I mean, like we call
them psychopaths here, apparently the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria call
them ironicon, the yuk of Eskimos call them kun langhetta um.
They they seem to be around, like you said, one
(06:21):
percent of the global population, So they're not like culturally bound.
It's not a culturally bound condition, but it does seem
contextual in that psychopaths are contrary to society. They don't
follow the social norms that keep everybody else in line.
That typically arise out of things like empathy and feeling
(06:46):
bad for other people and seeing other people as their
own sentient um selves. Yeah, and not not just bags
of meat to be manipulated, yeah, to your own ends.
So psychopaths make appearances throughout history throughout literature. Um, you
mentioned the Bible, So um Kine is widely referred to
(07:08):
as an early psychopath, the first psychopath, maybe so, at
least in the in the Judaeo Christian tradition. Right. But
if we if we fast forward to eighteenth century France,
like the beginnings the modern beginnings of our Western at
least conception of psychopaths were found in the hands of
(07:30):
a French physician named Philippe Pine. Yeah. He was one
of the first professional medical professionals to talk about this,
and he referred to them as uh maniac songs, delile
nice insanity without delirium. Um. They've gone by other names
since then, uh, and descriptions from moral derangement, moral insanity,
(07:55):
rational madness, right, and that actually describes like a type
of insane entity where you're like morally and even maybe
behaviorally deranged, but you're not cognitively impaired, and your your
sense of your touch with reality is your grip on
reality is totally normal as well. Yeah. Like kind of
the whole point is they are walking among us and
(08:18):
by all accounts are usually very a charming kind of
quote normal unquote seeming individuals. Predatory. Yeah, and then finally
those a German psychiatrist named J. L. A. Cox and
he said, I have the term. It is psycho pastiche
(08:40):
I mean suffering soul. And that's where the actual word
finally psychopathy was born, right, and then I think into
the thirties or beginning in the thirties, sociopathy took over
a place psychopathy for a couple of reasons. One um,
from about the thirties to the seventies, there's a site
idea that psychopaths should be called sociopaths because it was
(09:04):
um nurture rather than nature that accounted for their anti
social behavior. Um that it was say a bad mother,
cold father, or absent father, something like that. That that
that was the basis of sociopathic behavior. The other reason
(09:26):
that sociopathy became widely used was because people were getting
it confused with psychosis. Psychopathy and psychosis they're not at
all the same thing. Psychosis means it's an umbrella term
for um, a loss of a grip on reality, delusions
basically right, and psychosis can be brought on by any
number of things like from dementia UM to lack of
(09:50):
sleep to schizophrenia. So psychosis is a condition where your
grip on reality is tenuous at best. Psychopaths are full.
Their grip on reality is totally fine. It's just again
it goes back to this idea that it's a moral arrangement.
They have no morals, they have no scruples, they have
(10:10):
no conscience, is another way that it's usually put. But
they're they're they're not delusional at all. Their grip on
reality is totally fine. Yeah, Like in a psychopathic brain,
there is literally a physical abnormality in the brain, right right,
And that's a huge, huge new development like that, And
as a result, sociopathy is quickly losing favor as an
(10:34):
interchangeable term for psychopathy. Yeah, I mean the terms over
the years of we're mostly interchangeable. Uh. In n D
s M, which we've talked about a lot, the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual Mental disorders UM, I think they called it.
They said, no more sociopathy, let's call it anti social
personality disorder a sp D UM. And you know, the
(10:58):
terminology is important because you shouldn't just use two different
things interchangeably to mean the same thing, right, No, it's
true and with UM psychiatrists and psychologists who study psychopathy
in particular, especially guy named Robert Hare who was continuing
on the work of a guy named Hervey Cleckley who
(11:19):
did his work Chuck in Augusta, Georgia. UM said no, no, no, like,
you can't just say psychopaths are just part of an
antisocial personality disorder, which is what the d s M does, right, Um.
And the reason why is because they've what they've concluded
(11:40):
is that they're basically two aspects to two different facets,
is what they call them. To being a psychopath, there's
primary psychopathy and secondary psychopathy or factor one and factor
too psychopathy. Right, Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you.
So Hervey great name by the way, Herbie Click. He's
(12:01):
a guy from Augusta, and he's the one who wrote
a book called The Mask of Sanity, UM, which is
sort of the foundation of modern psychopathic research. But he
was the one that came up with factor one and
two and is that basically just what we now call
primary and secondary. He came up with these the first
descriptors that are still kind of in in use today,
(12:24):
where UM things like UM that they they lack social responsibility,
but they're usually highly intelligent. UM. They're very irresponsible. They
don't um. They they have a winner take all um attitude. UM.
He spelled out like sixteen character traits um. And he
(12:45):
was basically the father of psychopathy. It was Hair who
came up with the two factors, or more to the point,
they emerged from his psychopathy checklist that he developed back
and I think the late seventies early eighties. So with
fact their one chuck that relates to like interpersonal behavior,
so the idea that psychopaths are very charming, um, but
(13:09):
that they also lack remorse. This is all this, this
is all considered factor one or primary psychopathy. And they
actually think that this is where um, you know, psychopathy
is rooted. It's a it's the the seeing other people
as means to an end and were using people in
(13:31):
that sense without any regard for the other person's feelings
or the consequences that has on their life and then
genuinely lacking remorse. These are classic traits of psychopathy, right,
But that's just one facet of it. There's another facet,
factor two, which is the the behavioral aspect of psychopathy.
(13:54):
And factor two relates to things like impulsivity, uh, sexual promiscuity,
parasitic lifestyle. And so if psychopathy is a spectrum that
we all potentially could be on the psychopath spectrum, but
we would most of us fall below that threshold, then
the factor one in factor two are like a spectrum
(14:15):
within a spectrum to where on one side you have
high functioning psychopaths like CEO, say, and then on the
other side you have very low functioning factor two psychopaths
like a truck stop serial killer, right who's getting sloppy um.
And then in between you would have, you know, a mixture.
(14:35):
But you can kind of lean more towards the factor
one psychopathy, you could lean more towards the factor to psychopathy.
But the factor too psychopathy relates almost exclusively to the
d s M s Antisocial personality disorder criteria, and so
therefore the d s M is ignoring factor one psychopathy.
(14:56):
And so therefore really the only way you can be
diagnosed as a psycho path is through the hair psychopath checklist. Um.
So there's almost like this competing field that's going up
against the d s M as far as the study
of psychopaths is concerned. You you take the rest of
the episode, all right, Well, let's take a break so
(15:20):
I can memorize all this stuff, and uh, we'll come
back and talk a little bit about demographics and that
hair test right after this. Alright, so we're back with
(15:54):
talks about demographics. Um, Studying psychopathy and psychopaths is tricky
to say the least, because, uh, this is there is
no Um, you can't well we'll talk a little bit
about the brain, but there is no you know, you
can't hook someone up to a machine that will spit
out a diagnosis of psychopath So you're gonna have to
(16:14):
get someone who self reports this stuff, which you're not
going to see a lot because no one usually likes
to think of themselves that way. Um, but most of
the data they have right now is gathered from psychiatric
examinations of criminals. Yeah, so there's really like a as
a sheltered view of psychopaths. We have just a limited
(16:37):
snapshot of the of the full spectrum of psychopathy. Because yeah,
if you're a psychopath, you're not going to go in
to look for help. You think you're better than everybody else.
So the very traits that make you a psychopath would
make you feel like you need the opposite of psychiatric help. Yeah,
like what are you saying, I'm I'm winning in life exactly.
(16:58):
Uh So as far as age goes, when they analyzed, um,
some of the results of some of these examinations prisoners,
they did show that it seems like psychopathic traits might
decrease some as you get older. They don't know why, um,
but it is. There's a lot of um controversy about
whether or not you can diagnose a kid as a psychopath. Uh.
(17:22):
Sometimes you might see some traits that a child expresses
that you might associate with psychopathy. But legally, technically you
can't diagnose a child as a psychopath. And just because
you might have some psychopathic tendencies as a kid, doesn't
mean you're going to grow up to be that way
as well. No, but they do have as part of
that anti social personality disorder spectrum. Um, they have diagnosed
(17:47):
these four kids like oppositional defiant disorder. Yeah, which seems
to be basically like as a factor to psychopath diagnosis
for children. Um. But yeah, I thinks they just don't
like to use that word for kids. No. No, And
and like you should be very careful with labeling clinically,
labeling somebody a psychopath just because of the them the
(18:11):
stigma associated with it. Yeah, Like can you imagine seeing
parents down and saying, well, um, Francis is a psychopath,
Like you're six year old is a psychopath? Not good? No,
they there's probably a company who specializes in that because
nobody else wants to do like up in the air
(18:33):
with people paid to come in and fire people, right exactly, Yeah,
I would if it was George Clooney to be a
different deal. Right, your child's a psychopath. Here's some literature
on that, and George and some fine tequila, right is
it fine? Yeah, it's good. But man, he sold that
thing for a billion dollars. You believe that? No? No,
(18:54):
like George Clooney rolling in dough yeah, rolling in handsome
billion dollar tequila, I mean charm and he sold his
tequila company for a billion bucks. He's a psychopath. I
feel like we talked about that before, have we? Is
that possible? No? We talked about him being smug. Oh
you did, sir, not me? Right, Well, you said, oh
(19:17):
I know he's so smug. No, I didn't because I
want to date him. Uh So when it comes to race, um,
it gets even more controversial because there have been analyzes
that tried to link higher rates of the disorder to
Native American communities African American people, and most psychiatrists have
(19:39):
come out and say, you know what, this is really
not taking into account socio economic factors and it's pretty racist. Yeah.
There was this guy named Richard Lynn who wrote back
in the early two thousands a journal article about that
and tried to basically say that the order of UM psychopathy,
(19:59):
as far as prevalence is concerned, is highest in Blacks
and Native Americans, and then followed by Hispanics and then
whites and then East Asians. And he said that it
had everything to do with evolution, and he totally left
out the fact that Hispanics are actually just five hundred
years or so removed from Caucasian Spanish people. Uh, and
(20:22):
that UM East Asians are the UM are tied genetically
to Native Americans over the last like ten thousand years
or so. So people just had fun kind of trashing
this guy's ideas, and he was like, you might also
want to read my manifesto on eugenics, right exactly. Uh.
One thing is clear though, when it comes to gender, UM,
(20:45):
they're definitely more psychopathic men than women. This dude. Yeah, yeah,
all of the numbers bear it out, like this guy
is the guy who The people who say no, it
has to do with races seemed to be total crackpots. Um.
But the people who say that there is a difference
in gender, they're backed up by numbers for sure. Um.
(21:08):
Studies show that that women definitely have lower occurrences as psychopathy.
But it has been pointed out that perhaps what women
psychopaths their behavior, that their behavior manifests itself differently than
male psychopaths, and that the psychopathy criteria is geared more
(21:31):
towards males and is missing female psychopaths. So for example, like, um,
you know you think of a psychopath, you think of
like a high functioning one, say like a CEO or
a Patrick Bateman type or something. Right, that's like a
classic psychopath. But what if what if there are just
as many women's psychopaths, but they're like um, Joan Crawford
(21:53):
and mommy dearist or something like that, you know, like
they just they're they're the way that they behave as
a psychopath manifests itself differently than how men do. That's
it's a theory. It's not necessarily true, but that's what
some people say. Well in the waters are so muddy
with how men and women think of each other in
their roles in society that it's bound to play a
(22:16):
part here and how that gets all mixed up, you know. Yeah,
that's uh well, and then you know there are like
the Eileen Warnses of the world as well like that.
I know there aren't many female serial killers, but ah,
there have been some, for sure, but there's definitely not.
I mean, when you look at the list of serial
killers you here, you see way more Ted Bundy's and
(22:39):
and who is the guy b t K Yeah, Dennis Rader. Yeah,
there are more of those dudes out there than Eileen
Warns is for sure. That's I mean, that's as far
as the numbers suggest. Yes, that's true. But I think
it's extremely interesting that, like we're we've got the blinders
on and are just looking at one set of behaviors
(23:02):
for psychopaths and are totally missing an entire population out
there that are women's psychopaths. That's just fascinating to me.
So should we talk about the psychopathy checklist? Yeah, we
kind of have to. Yeah, I mean we mentioned a
little bit of it. Um, through herby Herbie Cleckley. That's
gotta be money hotel name, um, Herbie Cleckley's work. And
(23:24):
then hair is the man who is responsible for the
modern um, the modern checklists and tests that people still
give other people. Yeah, and it's pretty simple. Um, well
it's it's not simple. Well, it's extensive for sure. Yeah. Simple,
and that there are twenty characteristics and when you take
(23:45):
the test, you either give yourself a two if you
have one of these characteristics or a one if you
may or may not. And then at the end you
do a little math. And is it thirty and above
out of forty you qualify as a psychopath? Yeah, I saw.
It depends on what country you're in. Um. But seriously,
(24:06):
but um, somewhere like between twenty six and thirty over
that you are probably you're probably a psychopath, or you
are you you qualify as a psychopath. Yes, So here
are those twenty characteristics. Uh. And you can either just
listen to these or you can have fun thinking about
your own self and doing a little math along the way.
(24:28):
I did math on mine earlier, and I'm like, all right,
I'm not a psychopath. And you can also if it
doesn't apply. Uh that you score a zero on any
of the questions. Correct. Uh. So we start with a
glibness and superficiality, and I think these aren't things like
you know, everybody can be a little superficial every now
and then. I think these are personality traits that you own, right,
(24:51):
wouldn't you say? Alright? So glibness and superficialities one grandiosity,
need for stimulation, pathological lying uh, cunning and manipulativeness, lack
of remorse or guilt uh, an emotional shallowness. I want
to take the rest. YEP, callousness and lack of empathy.
(25:11):
Big one. Parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioral controls, sure sexual promisecurity,
early behavior problems, lack of realistic long term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility,
you take the rest, failure to accept that responsibility, multiple
marriages that just seemed unfair, um, juvenile delinquency and revocation
(25:37):
of conditional release, which is like a recentivism or violating
your parole. Yeah, and committing a variety of crimes. Yeah.
So some of those you are like, oh, I can
be callous and I don't I can be impulsive and
don't have realistic long term goals. Like, don't sweat it,
just do the math. Like a thirty out of forty
(25:57):
is a pretty that means you're scoring on on a
lot of these, right. But so this, these are the
twenty characteristics that the checklist is getting at. The checklist
is actually hundreds of questions long and takes between two
and five hours to administer and can only be administered
by a highly trained psychologist, right, who's trained in administering
(26:20):
the tests for a cheap website. So right, So it's
not like the psychologist is like, did you have early
behavior problems? Uh, maybe that's a one. There's like the
dozens of questions for each of those things, right, And
so when you when you put the score together for
all of them, if you score over a thirty, um,
(26:40):
you're a psychopath as far as psychology the field of
psychology is concerned. Yeah, and you you know, hopefully you
are a functioning psychopath who um is getting along in
the world. But it can also manage best itself. As
Ted Bundy. So let's say you are a psychopath and
you're not getting along in the world. Um. One of
(27:00):
the one of the characteristics of psychopaths is something called externalization,
where you blame others or everything else but yourself for
your own problems. Um. But if you are a psychopath,
and you're more so if you're not getting along very
well in the world, you're probably more like a factor
(27:22):
to psychopath. If you are getting along well in the world,
you got a nice job or whatever, a family, all
that you've got, your mask of sanity is cletly put it. Um,
you you'd be more like a factor one psychopath. Um,
you're probably an intelligent human being. Yeah, and even if
you're incarcerated, if you there's probably a pretty good chance
(27:45):
that you're above average intelligence, especially compared to the general
prison population. Right. I was reading this article about um
by a psychologist who is basically telling other psychologists, if
you go interview a psychopath, here's what to expect. And
one of the things he said it is you can
bet they've probably done more research on you than you
have on them. Hannibal lector Hannibal lector great example. Right,
(28:07):
he knew everything about Starling everything. But like just with say,
internet privileges, if a if a psychopath knows that he's
coming to be interviewed by you, the psychiatrist, he's probably
going to read papers you've written, he's going to read
about what um about your education background, and all of
this is to figure out how to best tell you
(28:29):
what you want to hear so you can be more
easily manipulated to that person's ends. It is pretty fascinating,
but it's also kind of scary, and you kind of
reach the point now where it's like, uh, okay, this
is um kind of dangerous actually to interact with people
like this. And there's a lot of people out there
who suggests just staying away from psychopaths. Just if you
(28:53):
encounter a psychopath in your normal life, say at work
or something like that, Um, you want to keep your
distance is kind of the prescribed um treatment. Well, at
least how to deal with them, like, because if you're
being manipulated by a psychopath, that's that's part of their game.
(29:13):
So if you engage, like Jodie Foster had no choice,
Clarice Starling had to engage in Hannibal Lecter and play
that little psychological cat and mouse game so she could
get the information that he had on Buffalo Bill. I
know she didn't want to do it, but she did
it anyway, and she saved the day. Yeah, So that
(29:34):
is the advice is to not give them what they want, uh,
which I imagine would would make a psychopath angry. I
don't know. I think depending on stay like their tendency
for a parasitic lifestyle, Um, they may just move on
to find somebody else who's more easily manipulated. Yeah. Sure,
(29:57):
like it's possible that they you might really cat to
their attention, in which case you're you're not gonna be
very happy with having to to shed that person. But
chuck something that really struck me. And this is gonna
sound really weird to say it, but I can't help
but think fifty years from now, we're gonna look back
at a lot of the writing and a lot of
(30:18):
the suggestions on how to deal with the psychopath, which
is get rid of them, leave, get them a get
away from them, their predators and awful people that they're
They're gonna there's going to be a historically it's not
gonna hold up very well that Yeah, I think we're
gonna come to find that, um, psychopaths have no way
(30:40):
of helping themselves, that they are their brain is physically
different from the average persons, and that they can't help
their behavior anymore than the average person can change their
own behavior. Right, Um, probably even less actually, and then
we're gonna look at you know, back fifty years from now.
I was like, man, that's how they treated psychopaths back then.
How awful. You know, Like how we used to treat
(31:01):
them mentally impaired or they cognitively impaired, and they were
you know, classified as moron's idiots or imbeciles, depending on
how how extreme the impairment was, and you know, it
was just lock them up, keep them away from society.
I can't help but wonder if once we know how
to treat psychopathy, that we will view them much differently
(31:24):
and maybe even with sympathy. Well, I mean, they have
something physically wrong with their brain, it seems like it.
But that's a new thought. And we'll let's take a
break and we'll talk about that after this. All right,
(32:01):
we're back. Uh So we promised a little bit of
talk about the brain, and um, you know, there's a
couple of things that work here and at play there.
There's the physical aspect of the brain is actually uh
uh well I would say damage, but um, just not
right in some ways. Uh, they tends to be regions
(32:25):
of the brain. They're really trying to zero in on
which which one it is underdeveloped? Underdeveloped. Yeah, it's either smaller,
has less volume, or it's less active than it is
in control groups. Right, So there's that going on. And
then they're also and this is what we talked about
with factors one and two. Um, there's also social uh
(32:46):
factors that play in and they supposedly supposedly well, I
mean that seems to be losing favor pretty quickly. Do
you think brain damage that's supposedly what I'm seeing is
that that's the And it could just be the people
who are like really bullish on m R. Eyes are
really you know, getting more pressed or whatever and getting
(33:07):
their message out there more. But it seems like over
time favor has swung from you know, insanity to um
to nurture too, and then back again to you know,
physical brain structure, possibly even genetics. Well yeah, genetics. They
have done studies on twins, identical twins, and they think
(33:28):
it could be fifty to six genetically determined. But it
gets a little muddy because you can say, well, um,
you might have gotten your psycho orpy not psychotic. We
should point out that is a very different thing. Actually, um,
oh yeah we did at the beginning, right, Um, you
could say that your your dad was, um a psychopath,
(33:51):
so that means that you got that from him. But
the fact that your dad was a psychopath, it could
also be a very strong, um social factor in why
you became a psychopath. Right yeah, yeah, exactly your absent
father did that make your psychopath? Or was he absent
because he was a psychopath himself and passes genes onto you. Right,
(34:11):
So it definitely gets muddy. It is very muddy. And
the way that that will be sussed out ultimately is
if they can show definitively no, dude, like in case
after case after case. This this region of the brain
is underdeveloped, and this region of the brain has to
do with, say, processing emotions, like for example, one of
(34:31):
the one of the places they zero in on is
the amygdala, right yeah. The amygdala helps you, It helps
regulate emotions, it helps helps you experience emotions, and in psychopaths,
at least in some studies using mr eyes, they show
(34:51):
that if your amygdala is less active as it is
in people who score high on the psychopathy checklist, Um,
they're amigdala does not react normally in in certain tests. Right.
And this this actually makes a lot of sense because
when you're being socialized by your parents, one of the
(35:14):
ways that they socialize you're probably the most important way
they socialize you, is by punishing you when you're bad
and you feel bad. You feel bad for letting your
parents down. You might feel angry because you can't leave
your room or have dessert, um, whatever it is. You're
experiencing some pretty pronounced negative emotions right then, and so
over time, you start to associate those negatives of emotions
(35:39):
with the bad behavior that your parents are trying to curb.
And eventually you're gonna stop doing that bad behavior because
it feels bad to do it because you keep getting punished.
And then maybe your your own brain takes over and
you feel negative emotions when you do that stuff. Right,
If you're amygdala is not functioning properly, then that's not
going to happen. That process isn't gonna work, yeah, because
(36:01):
you're not going to experience those negative emotions. You're just
gonna be like, Oh, I wish I could leave my room.
I think I'll just climb out the window over here.
Not oh I feel so bad for letting my parents down.
You're not going to experience that because you're amygdala is
not functioning. So they've really zeroed in on the amygdala.
But apparently the big toast of the town these days
is the paralympics system. Yeah, that's when uh in you know,
(36:24):
the in the wonder machine, the fm R a machine
it lights up and shows you what parts of the
brain are being used into what extent. I know, we've
talked about that a lot, but in case you didn't know, uh,
And the paralymic system is underdeveloped in psychopaths, or it
seems so at least, and that that region controls emotional memories, inhibition,
(36:46):
and moral reasoning. So that seems pretty obvious if you
have an underdeveloped paralympic system, that that's kind of big
on the checklist of psychopathy. Yeah. And there's a whole
group of people who are UM kind of leading the
current research and psychopathy studying UM the prisoners, Because if
you're a prisoner, chances are you're going to be forced
(37:07):
to take the UM psychopathy checklist. UM. And that's that's again,
that's where most of our psychopath study population resides is
in prison. UM. So if they volunteer for a follow
up study, if they score high on the psychopathy checklist, UM,
they'll probably be put into an m r I and
(37:30):
given different tests. And these are the people who the
results are starting to be to be cold from basically
using the m r I, and they seem to it
does seem to be pointing to the paralympic system. Very interesting,
It is extremely interesting. But again it makes you feel like, well, man,
if it's not these people's fault, like, what can we do.
(37:51):
And part of the problem, Chuck, is that there's like zero, none,
a million percent to the negative cure. Yeah, you're not
gonna cure UM. If you have an underdeveloped paralympic system
or amygdala. There's nothing you can do about that, you know. Um.
What you can do is hope to improve UM with therapy. Obviously, UM,
(38:16):
catching it earlier in life is obviously gonna help more.
And what they found there's one, uh sort of treatment.
They found that a lot of the typical treatments you
might use don't work. UM. Everything from group therapy to
electro shock hugs. Group therapy in particular was found not
to work because it gave psychopaths a chance to hone
(38:38):
their manipulative behavior, which is just a bad idea out
of the game. Yeah, it made things worse. So UM.
Recently they started work with kids that they seem to
have made some gain some ground on called decompression treatment,
the basis of which is basically, UH rewarding and this
is through hours long session hours lungs, hours long sessions
(39:02):
UM of psychologists increasing reward for good behavior. So instead
of talking about the bad behavior and punishing bad behavior,
it's rewarding good behavior and kind of feeding that desire
of the psychopath to feel like they're winning. UM. I
don't know, it's it seems to work. It seems a
little dangerous to me too, like you're feeding the thing
(39:25):
that they require. But maybe maybe that makes sense. I
write a really really interesting um Cora post called what
it feels Like to be a Psychopath um, and it's
exactly that is. The person wrote it anonymously. They seem
to they seem to be legit that that they're just
(39:45):
making it up as they go along. UM. And they
they talk about basically being trained that there they're a psychopath.
They're going to be a psychopath for the rest of
their life, and they're just trying to learn and how
to be good in society while being a psychopath. Um,
(40:06):
so they can go along and get along. It's really interesting.
But but that's supposedly the best you can hope for. Again,
there's no cure. There is treatment, but if you unless
somebody is saying, like son, there's something really really wrong
with you, and I'm really worried about you, and I'm
(40:28):
gonna cut you out of my will unless you go
see a shrink. The psychopath is typically not going to
say I really need some help with my moral reasoning,
so I'm gonna go go get you know, some treatment.
It's just not going to happen. So there's a there's
a really big catch twenty two in there with psycho
psychopathy to begin with. But then Chuck, there's also a
(40:51):
question of you know what is psychopathy? Like? Are we
sure we know exactly what a psychopath is? And in
psychiatry and psychology as such, a long history of just
so much over confidence and self assuredness when they when
they're really getting it wrong. Yeah, that that you can
be forgiven for stopping and saying, whoa you guys are
(41:13):
are the arbiters of what's normal in society. Um, and
this is a really serious thing to label somebody. So
are we sure we know what we're talking about? And
not everybody says yeah, yeah, we know what psychopathy is.
I mean, we were using interchangeable terms that don't even
describe the same thing still, like sociopath and psychopath. It's
(41:33):
just there's a lot of confusion and it just seems
kind of dangerous too to label people with that stigma.
At the same time, if psychopaths do exist in the
form that psychiatry and psychology says it does, it's dangerous
to have those people out and about too. Yeah. I
think I agree with you now that this just smacks
of fifty years later saying I can't believe we used
(41:55):
to do things and label people this way. Yeah, you know, Yeah,
it's hard to tell when you're in the middle of
that time. Yeah, for sure. But um, very interesting. Yeah,
there's Uh did you ever read the psychopath Test? I
have not read it. I know of it. I know
Ronson wrote it. Yeah, John Ronson, who uh a friend
of stuff you should know, and he's actually done a
(42:15):
uh one of our live shows at the Bellhouse with
us without shoes on. But did he not wear shoes.
He's just wearing socks. I don't think I knew that. Well,
he very strangely walked from the Upper West Side of
New York to but without shoes. Well maybe his feet
were just hurting from that wall. That's possible anyway, lovely guy.
(42:36):
And he wrote a great book called The Psychopath Test,
and he does a lot of extensive interviewing with with
hair and um and other professionals and psychopaths and CEO
s so uh investigative journalists. Just really terrific book. And
I hate to be pluggy, but it's a it seems
like an organic time to mention that I've got a
(42:58):
new solo podcast coming called movie Crush. I think the
tagline is your favorite people their favorite movie. Oh that's
a good tagline. You like that. Yeah, I came up
with that. Nice work. My buddy Scotty thought a movie
crush the title. But basically, I sit down once a
week and talked to some kind of notable person about
(43:21):
their favorite movie. It's a great idea, Chuck, thanks man,
very Gangbusters. But I want to have you on. Oh
I'd love to be on, which would be very strange.
I mean, it's a conversation, but just the thought of like,
quote unquote interviewing you would be weird. Well, anytime you
want me on, I'm happy to be on. But if
it is too weird, that's fine too. Oh no, it
won't be too weird. They'd be great. But anyway, long
(43:43):
story short, I had had Ronson on and um, his
favorite movie I'll go ahead and just set this up
as a teaser was his let the Right One in. Oh,
that's such a good movie, the Swedish vampire movie. Yeah. Man,
that was so good. And I don't know when it
we're gonna start released. See them. I gotta get a
bunch of them in the can because scheduling people is tough,
(44:04):
so I need a nice pad. But um, sometime in
the fall, look for a movie crush well, best of luck.
I'm sure it's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to
hear it. Yeah, and just talking to Ronson's great. I
love that guy. Yeah, he's such a good guy, really
good dude. Yeah. And just pro tip, if any of
you are ever around John Ronson, be careful not to
step on his feet. Correct. Uh, well, you got anything
(44:27):
more about psychopaths? I got nothing more about psychopaths. That's
pretty interesting because it seems like there's a lot, but
there's not. We said at all correct. If you want
to know more about psychopaths, again, there's nothing more to know.
But if you want to read this cool article on
how stuff works, you can type psychopathy into the search bar.
And since I said psychopathy, it's time for listener mail.
(44:51):
I'm gonna call this short and sweet, and it's basically
kind of set up to uh promote the stuff you
should Know Army. Um. I don't know who first coined
that phrase, but the stuff you should Know Army are.
It's a collection of our most ardent listeners and fans
who over the years have got their own little mini
(45:11):
community on Facebook. Even there's a stuff you Should Know
Army Facebook page. And they're just like the cream of
the crop and just good people who love to talk
about the episodes and help each other out in life,
uh with various things. Just they're they're not psychopaths in
any way, right, you know. Ironically they're not militant either. No,
(45:33):
they're not. So this is just a kind of a
short email about that from Tony. Hey, guys, been listening
to you for a little over two years now. And
even though I love learning about all the topics, my
absolute favorite thing ever see from your work is unintentionally
meeting real life stuff you should know Army personnel out
there at work and in social situations and going way
(45:55):
too far down the rabbit hole with them about our
favorite episodes. Even he says, s y s M instead
of sk stuff. You should anyway, thank you for the
work and all you've done. You three really brightened people's
lives forever. A devoted listener That is from Tony Latham Jr.
(46:15):
From Sacramento. Thanks a lot, Junior. We appreciate that thanks
to all this stuff you should know Army, like if
you were there here the core. Uh, that kind of
keeps this machine running. Yeah, And if if you're interested,
you want to connect to some really great people online
and in real life, just go to the stuff you
should know Army Facebook page is it um by invitation
(46:39):
is open to the public. I know think you have to.
I mean, you don't apply, but it's a it's a
member's only page, so you gotta click on something and
then you know one of our admins. I'm sure it goes.
They look all right, right, Let's let him in Yeah.
I think that they have a Twitter handle as well too.
(46:59):
Okay to check that out, and you can check us
out on Twitter too. I've got my own Twitter handle,
It's josh um Clark. Uh. There's also the official one
S Y s K podcast. Chuck is on Facebook at
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at Stuff you Should Know
as well, and you can send us all an email
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and
(47:21):
as always, join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
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