Psychopathy, sociopathy & all that

[Jackpine Radical]

Everybody keeps tossing these terms around, so I offer this as a brief attempt to clarify what these terms mean.

Let me first dispose of the term "sociopath." While often used to mean something like Antisocial Personality or Psychopath, this term does not have a precise clinical definition (or, rather, it has lots of precise definitions, depending on which resource you consult). I use the term myself in colloquial discussion, and that is fine as long as we remember that it is a rather imprecise term.

The situation with psychopathy is not a whole lot clearer, actually. First, the term is not defined in either the current DSM nor the ICD system. Although psychopathy may underlie diagnosable conditions such as Antisocial Personality Disorder, it is not identical with APD, and in fact (using Hare data, to be discussed below), it is estimated that about 60-75% of prison inmates meet diagnostic criteria for APD, but most APDs do not meet Hare's criteria for the label of psychopath.

The precise nature of psychopathy is a point of contention among experts in the field. Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy Checklist (including revisions), finds that that instrument identifies 2 major factors, each of which is divided into 2 facets.

Heer's the Hare schema:

Factor 1

Facet 1: Interpersonal

Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative

Facet 2: Affective

Lack of remorse or guilt
Emotionally shallow
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Factor 2

Facet 3: Lifestyle

Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Parasitic lifestyle
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity
Irresponsibility

Facet 4: Antisocial

Poor behavioral controls
Early behavioral problems
Juvenile delinquency
Revocation of conditional release
Criminal versatility

On the other hand Scott Lilienfeld's work with the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (also now in a revised form) suggests that psychopathy is composed of 3 factors, each composed of 1 to 4 subscales:

Psychopathic Personality Inventory: Factors and Subscales

PPI–1: Fearless dominance
Social influence
Fearlessness
Stress immunity

PPI–2: Impulsive Antisociality

Machiavellian egocentricity
Rebellious nonconformity
Blame externalization
Carefree nonplanfulness

PPI-3: Coldheartedness

The major difference between the 2 is that the Hare was developed mostly on prison inmates (mostly Canadian) and weights the examinee's street crime history heavily in the scoring, while Lilienfeld is more focused on the personality traits that comprise psychopathy.

Although I have used both (often on the same examinee), I much prefer the PPI-R.

First, the Hare is hard to score, typically requiring half a day of interviews, record reviews, etc. for each examinee; second, the Hare is not reliable in real-world adversarial situations (e.g. in death penalty cases), with opposing experts giving wildly different scores, while the PPI-R is much faster, easily computer scored, and produces very reliable results.

Second, because of its focus on street crime, juvenile delinquency, etc., the PCL-R is saturated with social class bias. It picks up only what I think of as "low-functioning" psychopaths, i.e. those who have impulse control problems, who commit impulsive street crimes, and who are dumb enough to get caught frequently.

In other words, a rich little shits don't get those juvenile records and stay out of prison despite emitting behaviors at least as bad as those of the street criminals. (Remember the Affluenza defense?) They score lower on the Hare just because of their social advantages.

And then there are the Cheneys, the Ken Lays, the Koch Brothers, and their ilk. Although thoroughly psychopathic in my book, they would also score low on the Hare, both because of their social class advantages and because they are very clever and able to defer gratification, so their evil schemes tend to work and they get away with their antisocial behavior.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. It reminds me of the montage of photo's of the top CEO's

They all had that Patriarchal, Trusting, but yet boyish quality .

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. Sociopathology is the (pseudo)scientific adjunct of the neoliberal prison industrial complex

There is no sociopathology as a real medical condition. It is completely ideological. It is a politically concocted category that serves specific political functions.

Or rather, there may be some exceedingly rare cases that have some resemblance to the popular idea of the sociopath, but it is so rare that to build policy around it is utterly ideological.

What has been the history of the "sociopath?" Sociopathology as a popular category is almost completely co-emergent with neoliberal economics and the shift away from rehabilitation as social policy. It serves as the (false) scientific crutch for the most brutal sentencing regime and prison policy. Now, if casual reading of even a liberal site is to be believed, nearly every everyone who commits a violent criminal act is a "sociopath." A fifteen year old kid robs a 7-11 and beats the counter employee with a pipe? "SOCIOPATH!" it is declared, and, immediately after "Throw away the key...trash like this CAN'T be rehabilitated...SCIENCE tells me so." hell, people who are "mean" to us at work are now sociopaths, too. The whole thing has become a massive joke.

That is the pure ideological function of the "sociopath" category in neoliberal societies. It is the supposedly scientific category (it is no better than phrenology) that allows the mass incarceration of minority populations, and the complete retreat from modern rehabilitation.

And that's on a liberal board! Imagine how this nonsense travels in conservative and moderate circles.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Sociopathology?

Sociopathy, maybe?

Again, you're picking up on one of the definitions of sociopathy floating around. I have seen others use it to mean what used to be called "secondary psychopathy" or "pseudo-psychopathy" (i.e. anti sociality combined with high anxiety/arousal levels), and so on. People use the term rather idiosyncratically, and sociologists (in particular) keep inventing their own definitions, as above.

[phil89]

4. You're

scientifically illiterate with respect to what sociopathy is and how it is theorized. Please educate yourself on the topic.

[Trillo]

5. Vacuous invalidation

Your post was primarily invalidation of another poster's thoughts, but vacuous as to any knowledge you could offer, while implying you know enough to make such a judgment.

[Vattel]

6. I agree with most of what you say, but not so much the last paragraph.

It would be almost impossible for a true psychopath to become a CEO or vice-president. True psychopathy is incompatible with the kind of long-term planning, persistence, aversion to punishment, and self-control necessary to become a CEO. Many CEOs have psychopathic traits but they would not get a high enough score on the "psychopathy scale" to be diagnosed as a psychopath. Of course, you might argue that this is only because things like being highly impulsive and not taking future consequences into account are built into the definition of psychopathy, and that merely reveals a class bias in the definition. I am not sure, but I doubt that that is entirely correct. The included traits seem to cluster together in a way that suggests a common neurological source. As for people like Cheney and Madoff, I doubt very much that they are much like psychopaths at all, except for their lack of empathy with strangers. This is not to say, of course, that they are not deeply morally flawed. I don't even blame psychopaths for what they do because their brains don't have the necessary stuff to enable them to behave decently. On the other hand, I do blame Cheney and Madoff for their crimes because they could and should have done better.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. If you want to discuss brain data,

I pretty much suspect that classic psychopathy--essentially the lack of capacity for empathy, the tendency to treat other people as if they were objects to be manipulated--has its origins in functional deficits in the right orbitofrontal cortex, the area of the brain just behind the right eyeball. See Allan Schore Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development (1999) for a review of the literature up to that point.

Impulsivity, on the other hand, seems more related to deficits in other frontal & prefrontal areas. See Adrian Raine, who has written extensively about his work looking at the brain scans of murderers, on this issue.

[Vattel]

9. Interesting. Can you explain why the two (lack of empathy and impulsivity) so often coincide?

Or would you reject the presupposition of the question that they do tend to coincide? I suppose one could hypothesize that impulsivity has been grouped with a lack of empathy (and other classical constituents of psychopathy) because so much of the study of psychopathy has been done in prisons which tend to be full of people that, because they are impulsive and don't think enough about future consequences, end up in prison. I will defer to your expertise here, but I would think that proponents of the contemporary understanding of psychopathy would be sophisticated enough to have taken into account the fact that their sample population, if it is a prison population, is hardly a random one and is likely to be biased in favor of impulsivity.

[Jackpine Radical]

11. The involved brain areas are not far apart, for one thing.

Therefore in some cases, damage in one area overlaps into other areas. However, there are several factors at work.

One is the general developmental pattern of myelination across the cortex. (Myelin is the "insulator" around the neural "wires," the axons & dendrites. The analogy is far from perfect because neural transmissions are electrochemical events involving sodium-potassium shifts across cell membranes etc.) Anyway, we are born with certain areas myelinated--the primary sensorimotor strip, primary parts of the visual cortex, etc. An anatomical researcher named Conel laid out the sequence across a bunch of publications between the 30's and 50's or so, based on post-mortem microanatomical examination of the brains of children who had died at various ages.

To cut it short, he found a pretty much invariant sequence of myelination from birth until about age 14 or 15, when the process was typically complete. The last areas to be myelinated and thus able to function fully, were the frontal & prefrontal areas.

We know that "classic" ADD/ADHD is accompanied by excess theta activation in the frontal & prefrontal areas. Theta is a slow brainwave pattern, between about 4 and 8 Hz. A properly functioning frontal lobe should have a lot more low-beta activity (13-maybe 22 Hz). A lot of kids whose brain development is a little slower age out of ADD as their frontal areas mature.

Too much theta tends to result in boredom, which leads kids to engage in hyperactivity, thrill-seeking, or whatever it takes to get a little activation in those frontal areas.

Remember the acronym ISIS (no, not THAT one). The frontal areas regulate the Initiation, Sustaining, Inhibition, and Switching of activity. Deficits in those areas pretty much define ADD.

Now, here's where it gets a little dicey.

I think, and I have convinced a lot of other clinicians in the field, that there is another reason for frontal de-activation; namely, avoidance learning.

Think about it--Suppose you live in a totally chaotic home, maybe with abusive, neglectful and drug-addicted parents. There is no point in thinking about the future, because all it offers is the same shit. There is no point in planning because the world around you is so unpredictable that your plans never work. Your primary experiences of the world revolve around pain, psychic misery, shame, and feelings of helplessness.

What can you do? You escape. You dissociate or "space out." You go for anything that relieves the misery. Drugs, thrill-seeking, whatever. These activities either help shut off your brain (opiates) or provide you with a form of activation that doesn't permit you to think about your crappy life (cocaine, cliff-jumping). Just try to think about your unhappy life while the ground is rushing up at you.

Now, the fact is, most street criminals have terrible childhood histories of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. And the sexual abuse includes the males. When I was doing the psych for a "boot camp" style prison where the inmates were young adults, I kept getting referrals that turned out to be PTSD cases. They were almost invariably in prison for drug-related crimes. And a lot of the PTSD revolved around sexual abuse in childhood.

The program at this prison included a lot of intensive drug treatment. The professional staff were amazingly good. Once they started picking up on what I was doing, they became sensitized to the possibility of various forms of abuse. One of them later told me that he thought 60% of the inmates he dealt with had histories of sexual abuse.

So, in summary, I think a lot of the ADD apparent in street criminals arises as the primitive coping responses of originally normal brains in kids exposed to terrible childhoods.

Now, about those Cheney-Lay types:

I suspect that they, too, come into the world with normal brains, but by various vectors (and here I get really speculative) they, too develop abnormal patterns of empathy, foresight, etc. due to their upbringing.

Again we have the Affluenza defense. Why learn caution in your behavior if nothing you have ever done has led to serious consequences due to parental protection? What you learn instead of self-regulation is that you are in a special class of people, and rules are only for the lesser beings who were placed on Earth for the entertainment and amusement of people in your class.

You have probably noted that, to the extent that rich fucks (who are an obnoxious and dangerous subset of rich people in general, so back off, Brooklynite) show any capacity for empathy, it is either for people just like them (Nixon was disgraced enough by the resignation; no need to rub salt in the wound with a prosecution), for people who suffered from conditions they themselves have experienced, or for their own children. The empathy does not generalize to the more general run of suffering humanity--you know, the welfare cheats, the rebellious blacks, the old people on Medicare, desperate immigrants…carry on with your own list of non-persons. This "stenosis of empathy" seems to be quite widespread; many anecdotes in George Romney's life illustrate the deficiency quite well. And this pattern of giving and withholding concern is quite consistent with the theory I just outlined.

[Vattel]

16. Wow, super interesting. Thanks.

What you say about the Cheney-Lay types is certainly plausible enough to be worth investigating.

Returning to the main topic, though, my own reading about psychopathy suggests that its roots go deeper than childhood experiences. (Again, I am open to being schooled on this--I am not an expert on this stuff.) For one thing twin studies show that psychopathy is roughly 75% inheritable. That doesn't mean, of course, that environmental factors play no role in its development, but there appears to be a large genetic influence as well.

On a personal note, my cousin was a psychopath and he had awesome parents. It seemed as if some part of his brain necessary to being morally decent never developed.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. I don't doubt that there is a genetic component,

maybe best expressed as a predisposition rather than as a locked-in trait--a genotype versus phenotype issue.

And twin studies can be deceiving when it comes to using them to try to sort out genetic versus environmental influences. For one thing, you can't just compare identical & fraternal twins on trait correspondences, as is often done, and read the results as a test of heritability. People tend to raise identical twins differently than they do fraternal twins--dressing them alike, giving them similar names, giving them the same experiences, etc., which they do not do so much with fraternal twins (especially of different sexes), so one cannot be sure if the differences between the 2 types of twins result from greater genetic or environmental similarities in the identicals.

One way around this is to track down pairs of identical and fraternal twins who have been separated very early, but even this approach has many problems. To begin with, there just aren't that many cases available for study. Second, adoption agencies tend to find very similar adoptive homes, selected for their ability to provide good for the children. What this means is that the range of possible variance from the environment is reduced by the relative homogeneity of the adoptive homes, leaving only the genetic component of the trait free to vary. That is, imagine that adoptive kids were placed at random into all sorts of homes. Some would end up in terribly dysfunctional, maybe criminal homes, others in nice middle-class homes, others in wealthy homes, some in homes where they are not welcome, etc. The environmental consequences of growing up in chaotic poverty are vastly different from growing up in a loving family; being placed in a Muslim home produces different results than being in a Unitarian home. However, and for very good reasons, the adoption procedure eliminates the obvious extremes, thereby reducing the importance of environmental factors in that specific population of separated twins, while the people to whom we might hope to generalize have not been through that homogenization of environments. This research method thus is almost certain to underestimate the role of environmental effects.

If you're familiar with the statistical method called Analysis of Variance, what I'm saying is fairly easy to understand. Since I don't know that to be the case, I hope my attempted explanation is not too opaque.

Anyway, 75% seems way too high. Even a reliably measurable trait like IQ is estimated to be only about 50% heritable.

[Vattel]

18. Thanks again. Your explanation is not opaque at all.

Obviously what needs to be done is to take a huge and random sample of identical twins at birth, randomly distribute them into homes all over the world (and maybe also putting some into a wolf pack for good measure), and then look at the results. Too bad those dang human subjects boards will complain about kidnapping and such.

[JonLP24]

22. This isn't to say it would be the case here

but when it comes to countless things both heredity & environment play a role but don't know if that's the case here. It seems to be less area or activity in the Pre-Frontal Cortex that makes a sociopath who one is as their brains seem to be hired different. Head injuries & those late teen years where the developmental process of the pre-frontal cortex is in play. Without digging, if I recall that's the part of your brain that asks yourself if this is a good idea, like a screening process before your actions. A lack of a fully functioning would mean more impulsive, a lot of other things. This is a key area of the brain when it comes to sociopaths.

On the other thing which you may be right yourself is I have heard genetics load the gun, environment pulls the trigger.

On edit -- on the pre-frontal cortex there was this guy who often scanned the brain of killers in prisons, scanned his own brain came up that he had a similar looking brain & he descended from a long line of killers but he had a caring & supportive family so the environment saved him if that was indeed the case.

I don't like the headline but I found the guy I was looking for

he Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath

“I got to the bottom of the stack, and saw this scan that was obviously pathological,” he says, noting that it showed low activity in certain areas of the frontal and temporal lobes linked to empathy, morality and self-control. Knowing that it belonged to a member of his family, Fallon checked his lab’s PET machine for an error (it was working perfectly fine) and then decided he simply had to break the blinding that prevented him from knowing whose brain was pictured. When he looked up the code, he was greeted by an unsettling revelation: the psychopathic brain pictured in the scan was his own.

Many of us would hide this discovery and never tell a soul, out of fear or embarrassment of being labeled a psychopath. Perhaps because boldness and disinhibition are noted psychopathic tendencies, Fallon has gone all in towards the opposite direction, telling the world about his finding in a TED Talk, an NPR interview and now a new book published last month, The Psychopath Inside. In it, Fallon seeks to reconcile how he—a happily married family man—could demonstrate the same anatomical patterns that marked the minds of serial killers.

“I’ve never killed anybody, or raped anyone,” he says. “So the first thing I thought was that maybe my hypothesis was wrong, and that these brain areas are not reflective of psychopathy or murderous behavior.”

But when he underwent a series of genetic tests, he got more bad news. “I had all these high-risk alleles for aggression, violence and low empathy,” he says, such as a variant of the MAO-A gene that has been linked with aggressive behavior. Eventually, based on further neurological and behavioral research into psychopathy, he decided he was indeed a psychopath—just a relatively good kind, what he and others call a “pro-social psychopath,” someone who has difficulty feeling true empathy for others but still keeps his behavior roughly within socially-acceptable bounds.

It wasn’t entirely a shock to Fallon, as he’d always been aware that he was someone especially motivated by power and manipulating others, he says. Additionally, his family line included seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden, infamously accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892.

But the fact that a person with the genes and brain of a psychopath could end up a non-violent, stable and successful scientist made Fallon reconsider the ambiguity of the term. Psychopathy, after all, doesn’t appear as a formal diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in part because it encompasses such a wide range of symptoms. Not all psychopaths kill; some, like Fallon, exhibit other sorts of psychopathic behavior.

“I’m obnoxiously competitive. I won’t let my grandchildren win games. I’m kind of an asshole, and I do jerky things that piss people off,” he says. “But while I’m aggressive, but my aggression is sublimated. I’d rather beat someone in an argument than beat them up.”

Why has Fallon been able to temper his behavior, while other people with similar genetics and brain turn violent and end up in prison? Fallon was once a self-proclaimed genetic determinist, but his views on the influence of genes on behavior have evolved. He now believes that his childhood helped prevent him from heading down a scarier path.

“I was loved, and that protected me,” he says. Partly as a result of a series of miscarriages that preceded his birth, he was given an especially heavy amount of attention from his parents, and he thinks that played a key role.

This corresponds to recent research: His particular allele for a serotonin transporter protein present in the brain, for example, is believed to put him at higher risk for psychopathic tendencies. But further analysis has shown that it can affect the development of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (the area with characteristically low activity in psychopaths) in complex ways: It can open up the region to be more significantly affected by environmental influences, and so a positive (or negative) childhood is especially pivotal in determining behavioral outcomes.

Of course, there’s also a third ingredient, in addition to genetics and environment: free will. “Since finding all this out and looking into it, I’ve made an effort to try to change my behavior,” Fallon says. “I’ve more consciously been doing things that are considered ‘the right thing to do,’ and thinking more about other people’s feelings.”

But he added, “At the same time, I’m not doing this because I’m suddenly nice, I’m doing it because of pride—because I want to show to everyone and myself that I can pull it off.”

image:
None
Previous Article
Artists Join Scientists on an Expedition to Collect Marine Debris
Tags
Body Books
4.9K 168 44 38 595 102 14.4K
4.9K 168 38 595 44 14.4K
About Joseph Stromberg

image:
Joseph Stromberg

Joseph Stromberg is a science reporter for Vox.com. He was previously a digital reporter for Smithsonian.
Read more from this author | Follow @JosephStromberg
We Recommend
Ask Smithsonian: Where Does Space Begin? (1:03)
Watch to get the answer that surprised the heck out of us

image:
Preview thumbnail for video'Ask Smithsonian: What Would Happen if a Solar Flare Hit the Earth?
Ask Smithsonian: What Would Happen if a Solar Flare Hit the Earth? (1:11)

image:
Preview thumbnail for video'A Pit Viper's Sixth Sense
A Pit Viper's Sixth Sense (2:03)

image:
Preview thumbnail for video'Ask Smithsonian: How Did King Tut Die?
Ask Smithsonian: How Did King Tut Die? (1:27)

image:
Preview thumbnail for video'Orphaned Baby Elephant Takes a Flight
Orphaned Baby Elephant Takes a Flight (4:43)
From Around the Web

image:
Restore Your Vision To 20/20 With This Nifty Trick
Restore Your Vision To 20/20 With This Nifty Trick
Health Review Mag

image:
Do This, Never Wear Glasses Again!
Do This, Never Wear Glasses Again!
Health Review Mag

image:
US Drivers Hit With A Big Surprise
US Drivers Hit With A Big Surprise
DailyInsight

image:
The Real Story Behind Robo-Advisors
The Real Story Behind Robo-Advisors
Future Advisor

image:
Your Cable Company Doesn't Want You To Know This

image:
Play Video
Your Cable Company Doesn't Want You To Know This
The Motley Fool

image:
These 9 Places Actually Exist And They Are Horrifying
These 9 Places Actually Exist And They Are Horrifying
Answers.com
Recommended by
Comment on this Story
Photo of the day

image:
I need nothing, I seek nothing, I desire nothing .. White tailed eagle alone but not lonely Solitary Photo of the Day»
Most Popular

Lake Michigan is So Clear Right Now its Shipwrecks Are Visible From the Air
Seven of the Most Unusual McDonald’s Around the World
When Republicans Were Blue and Democrats Were Red
The 20 Best Small Towns to Visit in 2015
The Huey Defined America's Presence in Vietnam, Even to the Bitter End
Climate Change Will Accelerate Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction
This Interactive Map Shows Nepal Before and After the Earthquake
Is the Croissant Really French?
Ask Smithsonian: Are Cats Domesticated?
14 Fun Facts about Marine Ribbon Worms
Step Inside the World's Most Dangerous Garden (If You Dare)
Creating Plastic From Greenhouse Gases
Henrietta Lacks’ ‘Immortal’ Cells
Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?
The Story Behind Banksy

image:

Smithsonian members could save even More with a special Geico #Memberdiscount on auto insurance.
Editor's Picks: New Releases

The Smithsonian Institution has entered affiliate agreements with the companies listed in our holiday shop, and earns a fee for every purchase made from following any link from these gift guide pages and making a purchase on the affiliate site. This fee helps fund Smithsonian’s activities.

image:
Preview thumbnail for video 'Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

image:
Preview thumbnail for video 'Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

image:
Preview thumbnail for video 'Experiencing America: A Smithsonian Tour through American History (Lecture Series)
Experiencing America: A Smithsonian Tour through American History (Lecture Series)
See More in Our Shop

image:

image:
Circulation Subscribe
Current Issue | May 2015

image:
May 2015 magazine cover

Filipino Cuisine Was Asian Fusion Before "Asian Fusion" Existed
Soon, Your Doctor Could Print a Human Organ on Demand
We're Not That Far From Being Able to Grow Human Bones in a Lab

View Table of Contents
Subscribe

Save 81% off the newsstand price!
First Name
Last Name
Address 1
Address 2
City
State
AL
Zip
Enter your email address

or Give a Gift
Newsletters

Get the best of Smithsonian.com by email. Keep up-to-date on:

History
Science & Innovation
Art
Travel
Special Offers

Sign-Up Now
Enter your email address

SmartNews History Science Innovation Arts & Culture Travel At the Smithsonian Photos Videos Games
About Contact Advertising Subscribe RSS Member Services Terms of Use Privacy Policy Ad Choices Geico Discount

image:
Smithsonian Institute

image:
Air & Space

image:
Smithsonian Store

image:
SmithsonianJourneys.org

image:
Smithsonian Channel

image:
Smithsonian Books

image: http://ib.adnxs.com/seg?member=827&add=1923895,1923950

image: http://d.xp1.ru4.com/activity?_o=59036204&_t=audinsghts

image: http://d.xp1.ru4.com/activity?_o=59036204&_t=scncntre

image: ?accesskey=1d10bc16-14374088980-b9e6bcd68d4fb511170ab3fcff55179d&v=1.28&isNewSession=1&type=pageview&isNewVisitor=1&sessionGUID=7668aeac-2707-94c3-e9ad-b887975a59b8&webSyncID=414e8ccd-897a-4cd6-9970-9446a20367cb&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smithsonianmag.com%2Fscience-nature%2Fthe-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814%2F%3Fno-ist&newSiteVisit=1&referringURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smithsonianmag.com%2Fist%2F%3Fnext%3D%2Fscience-nature%2Fthe-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814%2F&hostname=www.smithsonianmag.com&pathname=%2Fscience-nature%2Fthe-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814%2F&newPageVisit=1&eventKey=e15d7e21-1c9e-a069-88d3-a1ad47db00d6
Share with friends:
Powered by Po.st



Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/#0xj4KrYSuwfzmtPT.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/#0xj4KrYSuwfzmtPT.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

[Zorra]

8. My personal definition of sociopath is much simpler.

An adult human, or corporate entity that will repeatedly deliberately cause pain and/or harm to human beings or other living beings for some type of personal satisfaction, without provocation, and without any feelings of remorse.

I really don't care about any other definitions, if I recognize the characteristics I described in someone or something, I keep them out of my world to the greatest degree possible.

This definition works well for me.

[RobertEarl]

10. I'm in on that definition, Zorra

If I may add: Sometimes they don't realize what they are doing because they have the mindset like they are the only real thing and the rest of the world is beneath them and useless, except for what they can gain.

I see it in people who give not one care for the world environment, their only care is for their own little sphere.

[Jackpine Radical]

12. I certainly have no quarrel with your observations, or with Zorra's.

It's just that, over the years, my career led me into places where I had to dive into the muck a little further than most.

[hifiguy]

15. A great common-sense definition.

[PDittie]

13. I always kind of considered that

the difference between sociopaths and pyschopaths consisted of a sociopath not really caring whether his/her actions caused deaths, directly or indirectly, while a psychopath took some satisfaction in knowing he was responsible for someone's death.

In other words, the difference between Rick Perry and Dick Cheney (or Adolf Hitler).

But -- in the words of Republicans used in association with climate change -- "I'm not a scientist".

[Jackpine Radical]

14. When it matters, e.g. in criminal court, smart psychological experts never use the term "sociopath"

because it has no operational definition, whereas psychopathy can be defined in terms of measurement instruments.

[Emelina]

19. Psychologists don't use the term "sociopath" that much anymore.

As Hare points out the term "psychopath" can refer to a personality and that such people might never commit crimes in the traditional sense.

The term "sociopath" came in when Skinner said all our behavior was based on social conditioning, and genetics played little role.

So sociopath is indeed an ideological construct and merely describes psychopaths, but tries to lay blame at society's doorstep.

[PassingFair]

20. Someone once told me that a sociopath was...

a psychopath that gets caught.

Once in the criminal/prison system, they are referred to
as sociopaths.

This was many years ago.

[Jackpine Radical]

23. Yes, and there is an interesting point in there.

There is no operational definition for sociopathy. The term is not used in modern scientific psychology, except perhaps colloquially. Nobody in his right mind would use the term in court, for example, where one would be asked what criteria one used to establish the presence of sociopathy. With psychopathy, on the other hand, you can say, "He scored above 30 on the Hare," or "The PPI-R places him at the 98th %ile on Impulsive Antisociality, the 82nd %ile on Coldheartedness, etc. There are norms for both community and male offender samples.

"Dr. Jackpine, why did you indicate in your report that you believe Mr. X has a …"

Which would you rather defend, a label of "sociopathic personality" based on your clinical impressions, or a label of "psychopathic personality" based on the results of a test that passed Daubert & Frye standards?

[JonLP24]

21. OK -- I see somewhat of a difference

I was under the impression they meant the same thing even though I've seen efforts to try to explain a difference I study mostly just sociopathy or just focusing on sociopath. Factor 1 Factor 2 and all those facets is what I mean when I use the word but honestly I see an overlap here. I've been under the impression from those that met all those red flags I look for they tend to fearless dominate those at their level or taking down people on a constant basic. OK you address my concerns when I read the rest of it.

I have often considered Dick Cheney as like the top sociopath. Not just the things he backed as Vice President directing our country to war using lies to justify the case his Halliburton history is really awful. When you factor in the Gulf economies are backed off of foreign labor, we go to war Halliburton gets the contract they pocket the money & use slave labor to do all the work. All this talk of Muslims, a lot of the TCNs are Muslims that are poor & oppressed by the sociopaths profiting off of the exploitation & abuse. The earthquake that hit Nepal is so sad right now, considering many Nepalis were human trafficked by the Halliburtons & the KBR & is the status quo of our Southwest Asia allies. You began to see the real reasons. Not to mention Exxon Mobile has a contract at one of the Super Giant oil fields.

UCLA Law Review Study: Offshoring the Army
http://www.uclalawreview.org/offshoring-the-army-migrant-workers-and-the-u-s-military-2/