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