Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today we have Kent
Speaker 1: Keel on the show, who is executive Science Officer of
Speaker 1: the nonprofit Mind Research Network and a professor of psychology, neurosciences,
Speaker 1: and law at the University of New Mexico and author
Speaker 1: of the recent book The psychopath Whisperer, The Science of
Speaker 1: Those Without Conscience. WHOA, that is some heavy, heavy stuff.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on the podcast. Ken Well, thanks
Speaker 1: Scott for having me. There are lots of things that
Speaker 1: we can talk about that I know will be of
Speaker 1: immense interest to our listeners. I want to begin by
Speaker 1: asking why did you title the book The psychopath whisper
Speaker 1: So the was a fun trying to find a something
Speaker 1: that would appeal to a large audience, but also some
Speaker 1: form of keeping the science together. But the psychopath Whisperer
Speaker 1: kind of helped to convey you know, a number of
Speaker 1: different features of the book, which was, you know, using
Speaker 1: neuroscience to understand them, some new treatment programs that are
Speaker 1: helping to reshape their behavior, and so called whisper with
Speaker 1: them or I listened to the So it's kind of
Speaker 1: an integration of different things. But there certainly was an
Speaker 1: interest by the editor and having something that would be
Speaker 1: catchy and would sell to the you know, public markets,
Speaker 1: and it has been selling well, right, Yeah, it's done okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think my publisher would like to have
Speaker 1: five more printings by now, but it's it's doing okay.
Speaker 1: It's actually also sold in Turkey, Japan, China, the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: the UK, and I'm trying to remember all the different ones,
Speaker 1: but I keep getting contracts every week from my publisher,
Speaker 1: so it's apparently doing well in international as well. Well. Congratulations, thanks,
Speaker 1: it's actually very exciting. It's very fun. That is exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So why are you you know, I think everyone's interested
Speaker 1: some level understanding psychopaths. Why do you think there is
Speaker 1: such an interest in understanding psychopaths? And then I would
Speaker 1: obviously like to know why are you personally interested in
Speaker 1: how do you get interest in this topic? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I share the general person's interest in
Speaker 1: understanding psychopathy or psychopaths, and I certainly I think the
Speaker 1: only difference is that I got so interested in and
Speaker 1: I made a career out of it, versus most people
Speaker 1: have a passing interest in some you know. But I
Speaker 1: think that the the real thing is that they're just
Speaker 1: so different from the rest of us, and their behavior
Speaker 1: is so odd, if you will, or clinically different from
Speaker 1: what most of us do and act and think and
Speaker 1: feel that most people, I think are just fascinated by that.
Speaker 1: And some of them might be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a morbid curiosity or wondering if your worst, darkest thought
Speaker 1: is actually something that makes you psychopathic. But generally I
Speaker 1: think that there's just a very strong and they're uniquely different.
Speaker 1: Of course, you have to they often do very, very
Speaker 1: very bad things, and so it's sometimes quite difficult to,
Speaker 1: you know, interview and work with them when you know
Speaker 1: about the things that they've done. But anyway, it's they
Speaker 1: are just clinically fascinating you. Why how long have you
Speaker 1: been have you at all? Have they always been a
Speaker 1: fascination of yours? Well, it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: growing up in Tacoma Washington. Ted Bundy actually grew up
Speaker 1: down the street and my father was a writer for
Speaker 1: the local newspaper, and he wrote these stories about this
Speaker 1: prolific serial killer from the Northwest when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: and so we would just be sitting there and I
Speaker 1: remember distinctly at the dinner table just asking my parents,
Speaker 1: will how do somebody like that or how could they
Speaker 1: come and behave like that from our little, sleepy, you know,
Speaker 1: neighborhood that we grew up in, And so that kind
Speaker 1: of manifests as something to be I got really interested
Speaker 1: when I was in undergraduate at UC Davis, and I
Speaker 1: had a great, admirable psych professor and another couple of
Speaker 1: great professors who you know, basically got me along in
Speaker 1: academic trajectory. And then I just decided to try to
Speaker 1: make a career where that was the main focus and
Speaker 1: I and it just has been, you know, a ride
Speaker 1: ever since. Yeah. I mean, you've you've definitely been a
Speaker 1: pioneer in this field. And I almost wonder if a
Speaker 1: lot of people get selected out of studying psychopaths because
Speaker 1: they can't tolerate be the mind games of you know, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, especially clinicians who have to writ don't they
Speaker 1: get I mean, they can't all cut it right. It's true.
Speaker 1: I mean the working with them necessitates a certain frame frame,
Speaker 1: frame of the mind. And also it's not that different
Speaker 1: from my thinking how a lot of law enforcement individuals
Speaker 1: have to deal with working with the front lines with
Speaker 1: individuals like this and seeing the totality of the bad
Speaker 1: things that they do and then having to you know,
Speaker 1: maintain a professional distance or an emotional distance so they
Speaker 1: can continue to do their job. And working with you know,
Speaker 1: in maximum security prisons, with you know, psychopaths and non
Speaker 1: psychopaths and all different other types of individuals that end
Speaker 1: up in those types of facilities, you do have to
Speaker 1: be able to have a slightly different frameset. So we've
Speaker 1: had you know, lots of research assistants who they write
Speaker 1: me and they say all they want to do is
Speaker 1: go work in maximum security prison and study them. And
Speaker 1: you know, one of my famous cases was a research
Speaker 1: assistant who I was giving a tour around one of
Speaker 1: the maximum security facilities. He'd been, you know, excited to
Speaker 1: move to the New Mexico and work with them, and
Speaker 1: one of my favorite inmates famously yelled out the tier hey, hey,
Speaker 1: doctor Keel, thanks for bringing us a new lollipop. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I heard that. You heard that, and I turned and
Speaker 1: was going to joke, like, what flavor do you think
Speaker 1: he is? You know, and his response was to be petrified.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately he you know, he left a lot about
Speaker 1: a week later that he realized that he just wasn't
Speaker 1: comfortable in that kind of environment. So I guess I've
Speaker 1: just naturally always felt like I can handle myself in
Speaker 1: those types of situations and and and work with them
Speaker 1: and try to study them and understand them, and it's
Speaker 1: never really bothered me. But it's not something for everyone
Speaker 1: for sure. Sure. Oh, I mean it almost seems like
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with psychopaths at some level. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: are you a psychopath? Yeah? In prison, in prison, in
Speaker 1: a controlled environment, it's great working with them. I'm very
Speaker 1: sensitive to all the stories and everything, So like, if
Speaker 1: I meet someone at a bar who I think might
Speaker 1: be a little bit off or a little bit different,
Speaker 1: then I'm like the last person now that's going to
Speaker 1: get in any sense in an altercation with them, because
Speaker 1: of all the stories of you know, the guy getting
Speaker 1: mad and the hitting in the bottle in the back
Speaker 1: of the head and you fall and kill yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: or die, you know, in those types of situations. So
Speaker 1: I'm very sensitive to know those types of situations now
Speaker 1: versus when I was younger, you know. And so you
Speaker 1: definitely learn a lot from from working with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you certainly sent a lot of research in the book,
Speaker 1: a lot of really fascinating insight into both the nature
Speaker 1: and nurture of psychopaths. But I want to you You've mentioned,
Speaker 1: You've mentioned so many nuggets of gold so far, and like,
Speaker 1: I'm like already overwhelmed. Which thread should I pick up first?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm trying to prioritize. But you said something
Speaker 1: very interesting going back a little bit. You said that
Speaker 1: people wonder, you know, are these dark thoughts that I have?
Speaker 1: Does that mean I'm a psychopath? And yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that'd be really cool. Let's talk really interesting to talk
Speaker 1: about the difference between like the dark triad, you know,
Speaker 1: non clinical version of psychopathy and like clinical psychopathy. Could
Speaker 1: you please talk about the difference and maybe to relax
Speaker 1: a lot of my listeners who might have lots of
Speaker 1: dark thoughts. Well, sure, I think the most important thing
Speaker 1: to remember when you're assessing psychopathic traits is that it
Speaker 1: is a trait, and so that is you have to
Speaker 1: have evidence of something like a lack of empathy at home,
Speaker 1: at work, at school, with family and friends, and something
Speaker 1: that's pervasive in all forms of your life. And then
Speaker 1: also that trait has to be associated with some form
Speaker 1: of impairment. So you have in order to be a
Speaker 1: personality disorder in order to constitute a really pathological level
Speaker 1: of the trait. And in that context, you know, to
Speaker 1: have an inability to appreciate empathy, for example, so that
Speaker 1: it leads to nothing but short term relationships, very poor
Speaker 1: relationships with family, no connections with your parents anymore, or
Speaker 1: with siblings. It leads to very short term you know,
Speaker 1: business acquaintances, and you can't keep and hold the job
Speaker 1: down because you don't develop those types of feelings forwards
Speaker 1: others and trying to work in a team for example.
Speaker 1: And so it has to be associated with the high
Speaker 1: level of different types of impairment. And then you're dealing
Speaker 1: with the trait. Whereas I think normal variation and personality,
Speaker 1: you know that you mentioned which might be you know,
Speaker 1: someone with very low psychopathic traits, but nevertheless is different
Speaker 1: from somebody else they might just have problems maintain any relationships,
Speaker 1: for example, but they otherwise have adapted and found a
Speaker 1: way to work at you know, with other people at
Speaker 1: work or in the job that they've chosen, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and they don't necessarily leads to dysfunction or failure to
Speaker 1: achieve normal occupation, educational or other types of things. But
Speaker 1: so it's I think it was famously spoken by a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine who who said, can you know
Speaker 1: you talk about those that score over thirty on the
Speaker 1: on the psychopathy checklist, that's like the top fifteen percentile.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to date somebody who scores a ten,
Speaker 1: you know, out of thirty. That would be someone who
Speaker 1: would be a very problem. So I think that there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of utility in understanding that there's both
Speaker 1: a very powerful dimensional aspect to the condition, that is,
Speaker 1: some people are more or less, but also that there's
Speaker 1: only a certain point in which the traits become really
Speaker 1: problematic from a clinical perspective, and that's that's that's the
Speaker 1: ones that we work with mostly. Now this under ten?
Speaker 1: Is it because they'd be too boring? Is that the idea, well,
Speaker 1: they would be fun to party with. It depends on
Speaker 1: where you want to endu the next morning, but you know,
Speaker 1: it is it is the case that you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of them are fun and engaging, and they're fun conversationalists,
Speaker 1: but most of their relationships don't end well, you know,
Speaker 1: they end with somebody either owing them money, or the
Speaker 1: somebody who they've stolen things from, or somebody who they've
Speaker 1: you know, they've left, or children they're not you know,
Speaker 1: taken care of, or all these other types of situations.
Speaker 1: It really is a amazing, if not fantastic, just carnage
Speaker 1: that they leave behind them. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that's fascinating is that it just doesn't They don't assume
Speaker 1: that it's a problem for anybody else because it doesn't
Speaker 1: bother them, and so they really kind of black insight
Speaker 1: into how their behavior impacts others. That's one of the
Speaker 1: central characteristics. But yeah, but your friends says something like
Speaker 1: they wouldn't want to be someone on the other extreme
Speaker 1: either like under ten. Well oh no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: she was saying that she wouldn't even want to date
Speaker 1: somebody who scored a ten at a portable. Oh I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I misunderstood. I thought that. I thought the joke there
Speaker 1: was like, you know, at both extremes, they wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to date someone like that. No, no, no, no, no, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: No she is. She would the woman that I'm referring to,
Speaker 1: she would happily date someone who scored you know, one
Speaker 1: or two or a three. It's going to be a nice,
Speaker 1: stable individual, good emotional intelligence. And yeah. So no, that's sorry.
Speaker 1: You could see you can see why my interpretation that
Speaker 1: was like, oh, because they're TV too boring, you know, No,
Speaker 1: I think that you know, the average North American male
Speaker 1: will score about four. Okay, well this is good information.
Speaker 1: I did not know this. So then to be says
Speaker 1: thirty and above you start hitting psychopath range, is that right? Yes?
Speaker 1: And then your card carrying psychopath what like thirty seven thirty? Right,
Speaker 1: So the scores range from zero to forty. The average
Speaker 1: male scores about four. The average inmate will score about twenty.
Speaker 1: The psychopath is usually defined clinically and for research purposes
Speaker 1: as thirty or above. Okay, and then we typically for
Speaker 1: research purposes, if we were studying and we have somewhere
Speaker 1: over thirty four is going to be the people that
Speaker 1: we really believe fit the classic definition of psychopathy, so
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, well above the normal cutoff in
Speaker 1: terms of the criterion, and you've you've, you've, You're quoted
Speaker 1: somewhere saying that when you meet someone like at thirty
Speaker 1: seven above, like they're qual there's almost like a qualitarally
Speaker 1: different species like you, really you really see something different
Speaker 1: at the really extreme end. Could you maybe explain a
Speaker 1: little bit what does that like being with someone at
Speaker 1: such the extreme end. So, the way they typically present
Speaker 1: is they're very forward, they're very socially disinhibited. They might
Speaker 1: be the first name to start calling you by your
Speaker 1: first name versus someone else who maintains a large level
Speaker 1: dose of respect or something. And oh, no, I called
Speaker 1: you kent, I interduced. Of course, we've known each other
Speaker 1: for probably twenty years already, so but it just becomes
Speaker 1: And the real palpable clinical sense is just that you
Speaker 1: can immediately recognize that their affect is different. Their eyes
Speaker 1: have a subtle kind of disconnection with the rest of
Speaker 1: their their body features a little bit better than yeah,
Speaker 1: but they look at you with more of a of
Speaker 1: a flat kind of perspective. Yes, does it give you,
Speaker 1: like ever give you the chills. No, I think I
Speaker 1: when I see someone who has those types of traits again,
Speaker 1: I just think that it's clinically, you know, fascinating and interesting.
Speaker 1: And when I meet someone who I know, like before,
Speaker 1: when I read their file, who's going to score high, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really you know, fascinating to see that fully manifest.
Speaker 1: Like I just interviewed someone who had spent the last
Speaker 1: ten years in solitary confinement and I expected them to
Speaker 1: you know, be very closed and difficulty talking and everything else,
Speaker 1: and they were the most glib, entertaining, just like it
Speaker 1: was like as if they you know, they were on
Speaker 1: vacation and they were talking to you, and it was
Speaker 1: that's pretty common. It's just the sense, the voluble sense
Speaker 1: of chatting and talking and nothing really bothers them. They
Speaker 1: don't have any problems being alone, they feel, you know,
Speaker 1: it was pretty amazing. It's just pretty amazing. So it's
Speaker 1: the affect though, that I think really strikes you clinically.
Speaker 1: And then you know, just a frank a willingness to
Speaker 1: talk about just about anything, and it's completely uninhibited. I mean,
Speaker 1: they'll talk to you about pretty much anything. Whereasus somebody
Speaker 1: who scores low on the traits might be inhibited about
Speaker 1: talking about their crime or get sad about it, or
Speaker 1: get you know, and just feel like they don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about it because they you know, it's just distressing.
Speaker 1: They made a big mistake and they don't feel like
Speaker 1: they want to talk about it. And so it's just
Speaker 1: a very different clinical presentation. So it's just you're incredible.
Speaker 1: It's like you're immune to the psychopath charm. It's almost
Speaker 1: like there's some character set of characteristics in you that
Speaker 1: allows you to to maybe mindful. It's like your good
Speaker 1: at mindfulness or something. Do you do any mindfulness meditation.
Speaker 1: It's like you're able to distance that from you. For
Speaker 1: the most part, I think I'm able to keep a
Speaker 1: good professional distance. But I typically in my clinical style
Speaker 1: is that's that I try to engage them and talk
Speaker 1: to them and get them to talk about everything because
Speaker 1: I need that information to unders stand all the ways
Speaker 1: in which they're different and how they got that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I think I've done I've enjoyed that part
Speaker 1: of the science that we do is doing the interviews.
Speaker 1: In fact, if anything, that's that's what most of my
Speaker 1: staff enjoy too, is the true interactions and working with
Speaker 1: them and talking with them, and that that's because they're
Speaker 1: they just it just it just like pops out like
Speaker 1: a book, like right out of the text. You know
Speaker 1: that this is an individual with these traits. They're just
Speaker 1: very different. It's it's it's it's very similar to other
Speaker 1: types of illnesses that you know, you just the first
Speaker 1: time you ever meet one or see someone, they're just
Speaker 1: so different and you just like, how could that happen?
Speaker 1: And you want to understand it. Well, this is interesting
Speaker 1: because psychopathy is not considered a mental illness, and in
Speaker 1: the sense that schizophrenia is. They were called suffering souls, right,
Speaker 1: So mental illness is a good question. How you define
Speaker 1: mental illness. I define it as anything that leads to
Speaker 1: you know, pervasive problems at home, at work, at school,
Speaker 1: of family and friends. A schizophrenia definitely fits, which is
Speaker 1: the hearing voices, hallucinations, et cetera. But I also consider
Speaker 1: psychopathy to be a mental illness if if I consider
Speaker 1: personality disorders like borderline and et cetera, to have, you know,
Speaker 1: cause a lot of distress and dysfunction in the individual,
Speaker 1: and so to me, I consider them to be mental
Speaker 1: illnesses as well. So if you take a broad definition
Speaker 1: of mental illness, then that's typically most people will define
Speaker 1: it as such. But I don't really try to limit
Speaker 1: it to just the clinical access one, so to speak,
Speaker 1: you know, conditions. Okay, well that's interesting. Yeah, because Robert Hare,
Speaker 1: who was one of your mentors, is that right? Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: he was. Would he would he say that it's not
Speaker 1: a mental illness? I don't think so. I mean I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, I still work quite closely with him.
Speaker 1: If he was to h he would he would take
Speaker 1: the same tact that I have. That is, it's not
Speaker 1: an access one condition, it's an access to conditions personal disorder.
Speaker 1: But I consider personality disorders to be associated with impairment,
Speaker 1: and to me, that constitutes a mental illness. Okay, So
Speaker 1: in terms of let's get and dive into the knee
Speaker 1: nurture controversy a bit, I think we both can agree
Speaker 1: and start from the point that it's always this interaction,
Speaker 1: this complex interaction of nature nurture throughout the course of development.
Speaker 1: You can't neatly separate these components. You've studied these components
Speaker 1: separately as well as how they interact. And I thought
Speaker 1: we could start with the difference between the psychopath and
Speaker 1: the sociopath. Sure, sure, well, the psychopath, you know, term
Speaker 1: was coined in the early eighteen hundreds, you know, to
Speaker 1: describe individuals who suffered from various pathological states, and it became,
Speaker 1: you know, ever more focused on the interpersonal and affective
Speaker 1: traits throughout history. The term sociopath was coined in the
Speaker 1: behaviorist era, you know, Skinner and others, when they felt
Speaker 1: that you were a blank slate when you were born,
Speaker 1: and social forces sociopathics, so social forces would mold you
Speaker 1: to be whatever you were. And so that term is
Speaker 1: not used in you know, academic parlance anymore, but it
Speaker 1: was very common in that behavior as era of psychology,
Speaker 1: and some people still refer, you know, and the popular
Speaker 1: you know writings to the sociopath who was like made
Speaker 1: to be that way, like a Dexter type of character
Speaker 1: or something like that. By the way, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's very fictionalized. There's sometimes nuggets of truth in there,
Speaker 1: but it's it's very much a fictionalized, you know character.
Speaker 1: Dexter is not like the stereotypical psychopath. Utah, Actually, actually
Speaker 1: I don't think Dexter is a psychopath. What do you
Speaker 1: think is so what's interesting about Dexter is is that's
Speaker 1: difficult because people recognize is that although he does all
Speaker 1: of those bad crimes, he he's more like a military
Speaker 1: like person who is charged with ridding the world of
Speaker 1: evil in this regard. But when Dexter can keep a
Speaker 1: relationship and he you know, he see all the emotional
Speaker 1: payings associated with children, and he can keep a job
Speaker 1: for a long period of time, and you know he
Speaker 1: has you know, good relationships with his sister, and so
Speaker 1: those types of things you wouldn't see in individual's psychopathy
Speaker 1: would be very They'd be having four or five different wives.
Speaker 1: He'd be moving from job to job and switching all
Speaker 1: around and getting laid off or fired for being you know,
Speaker 1: latsadaisical or doing cheating or not showing up for work,
Speaker 1: et cetera, drinking on the job, et cetera. And so
Speaker 1: those would have to be relevant to score him high
Speaker 1: on a trait related behavior. We actually score Dexter in
Speaker 1: one of my classes for fun to illustrate you know,
Speaker 1: television characters and how they might score, and people become
Speaker 1: surprised that he scores just a little bit above the
Speaker 1: average inmate despite the very bad things that he's done,
Speaker 1: And so it becomes a bit of an exercise and
Speaker 1: understanding how traits are assessed in this condition. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, you make the point in your book that
Speaker 1: violence doesn't necessarily equal psychopathy. I thought that was a
Speaker 1: really interesting point. Sure. I mean, a single bad event
Speaker 1: doesn't define a person's personality. And so if you you know,
Speaker 1: have a lot of stressors that occur and all sorts
Speaker 1: of things go bad in your life, and the person
Speaker 1: that's responsible for all those stressors and you get in
Speaker 1: a heated argument and you hit them and they file
Speaker 1: and die. But you've otherwise, you know, had a stable
Speaker 1: relationship with your wife, and you have two kids who
Speaker 1: love you and you've taken great care of them, and
Speaker 1: you have your parents are in nursing homes because you've
Speaker 1: placed them there to take great care of them, and
Speaker 1: they're aging, and you have all those great interpersonal relationships.
Speaker 1: And then you've completed school without cheating, and you've done
Speaker 1: you know, achieved your academic success, and you have friends
Speaker 1: that stand by you and say, I can't believe this
Speaker 1: person would act like this, or whatever something like happened
Speaker 1: to us have been an accident. Well, those are evidence
Speaker 1: that the trait it's not really a trait like you know, behavior,
Speaker 1: and so it basically it's bad. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: it's not excusing it, but it's not necessarily a psychopathic
Speaker 1: so versus you know, somebody straight. Maybe you're like a
Speaker 1: temporary Can you be a temporary psychopath? That's a good question.
Speaker 1: The term psychopath is supposed to be a trait related disorder,
Speaker 1: but we might have to come up with a state,
Speaker 1: a state psychopath might do the studies we could try
Speaker 1: to induce the date of psychopathy. Well, that that might
Speaker 1: be psychopathic by some, that might be considered very psychopathic.
Speaker 1: But the actual motivation to do it and everything else
Speaker 1: is supposed to have some sort of higher moral ground
Speaker 1: that leads you to be able to do such a thing.
Speaker 1: And so certainly some people are more able to do
Speaker 1: those types of things than others, and many most of
Speaker 1: us couldn't do those types of things. And so, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily mean we're psychopathic. It just means that
Speaker 1: we're being trained and educated in a difference, you know,
Speaker 1: set of circumstances. You know what I mean. It's not
Speaker 1: a trait versus versus you know, you have somebody who
Speaker 1: you know, kills somebody, and then they uncovered that they've
Speaker 1: got four wives in different states, you know, and they
Speaker 1: have all in need of help and assistance. And they
Speaker 1: have another house that they're living in where they keep
Speaker 1: all of their money and resources, and they have parties there,
Speaker 1: and they you know, they have convictions for a wide
Speaker 1: variety of differ in types of crimes, and they've you know,
Speaker 1: they've planned bankqusty in all these different states, and they
Speaker 1: are never willing. They're still willing to go engage in
Speaker 1: solicit more money from other people, you know, and then
Speaker 1: you're realized, well, then that homicide might likely be more
Speaker 1: reflection of their personality rather than a reflection of some
Speaker 1: trait or state related problem that they had that led
Speaker 1: to that type of an incident. So so that's what
Speaker 1: I try to bring across in the book is that
Speaker 1: you can't define psychopathy by any one bad deed, and
Speaker 1: in fact, we actually one of the main ways we
Speaker 1: score there to eliminate that one bad deed from creating
Speaker 1: a halo effect. You're often asked to score the individual
Speaker 1: ignoring that index offense. So score them as if they
Speaker 1: didn't commit that homicide of the you know, and usually
Speaker 1: get the same score. So that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: difficulties that you run into when someone has done one
Speaker 1: really bad thing or has sent some sort of sexual crime,
Speaker 1: that some people have a lot of problems clinically assessing
Speaker 1: and making sure that they're not allowing that one bad
Speaker 1: thing to influence all the items, because it really can
Speaker 1: only count towards a few of them. And so that's
Speaker 1: part of the training that we do and provide to
Speaker 1: clinicians around the world to make sure that they're scoring
Speaker 1: the traits correctly, because when you score these traits really correctly.
Speaker 1: The reason why people talk about this condition still is
Speaker 1: because it predicts things. You know, what other checklist of
Speaker 1: symptoms could you fill out for somebody to know with
Speaker 1: an eighty percent chance where they're going to be in
Speaker 1: ten years. Oh wow, these predictions that good. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you're a violent offender, and I want to know
Speaker 1: if you're going to reoffend, if you score high on
Speaker 1: psychopathy within twenty years, you're going to there's an eighty
Speaker 1: ninety five percent chance we're going to be convicted of
Speaker 1: a new violent crime, versus if you score low, we
Speaker 1: know that you're going to be only about a forty
Speaker 1: fifty percent chance you're going to commit a new crime.
Speaker 1: So there's a rough doubling of risks. You something, Is
Speaker 1: there a different flavor of the kind of crime psychopaths
Speaker 1: commit versus non psychopaths. We're in jail for violent crimes.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. There has been some analyses of
Speaker 1: different types of crimes and who's more likely to commit
Speaker 1: those types of crime, and so the psychopath appears to
Speaker 1: be somebody the best way that you know, we described
Speaker 1: as a psychobaston was an equal opportunist. They'll commit just
Speaker 1: about any type of crime, whereas the non psychopathic individual
Speaker 1: who's in jail for just drug abuse or doing burglary
Speaker 1: something that usually sticks to the same type of pattern.
Speaker 1: So it's actually an item on the psychopathy checklist, which
Speaker 1: is criminal versatility, And it's not meant to convey that
Speaker 1: they're good at criminal activity. It's meant to say that
Speaker 1: they're willing to engage in a wide variety of activities. Correct. Yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we've we've published a thing on criminal success and we ask,
Speaker 1: you know, from a treatment perspective, from a punishment perspective,
Speaker 1: you know, does our psychopaths basically you know, negatively reinforced
Speaker 1: for you know, a significant proportion of their crimes. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that psychopaths often commit probably anywhere from
Speaker 1: fifty to a thousand times as many crimes as they
Speaker 1: actually get caught for. Oh wow, Right, So then you're like, well,
Speaker 1: if you never punish them for all of those different crimes,
Speaker 1: then they really never learned from, you know, just the
Speaker 1: single one or two times in which they were caught,
Speaker 1: And so it raises a whole bunch of interesting questions
Speaker 1: about how to manage them and how to work with them.
Speaker 1: You know, when they're willing to engage in such a
Speaker 1: wide variety and such a frequency that they never learned
Speaker 1: from the occasional punishment, it's kind of like it just
Speaker 1: doesn't reinforce, you know, the behavior to be good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is something a common thing with psychopaths, is
Speaker 1: that reinforcement learning seems to be impaired, correct, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've done research on that, Yeah, there's we have
Speaker 1: done a bit. The classic thing in psychopathy is that
Speaker 1: they don't appear to have any anticipatory concerns with punishment.
Speaker 1: So if I told you that you know, your finger
Speaker 1: on the keyboard is going to get shocked when I
Speaker 1: count down from ten to nine to eight, and when
Speaker 1: I get you a freak out at nine, yeah, you'll
Speaker 1: probably remove your hand away from the keyboard, right, And
Speaker 1: so you have ample dose of anticipatory fear for punishment,
Speaker 1: whereas there's been a number of is you know, replicated
Speaker 1: that he is showing the individual psychopathy. Don't get nervous
Speaker 1: or anxious and anticipation of punishment. Now, they do get
Speaker 1: the same response to the punishment stimuli. So when I
Speaker 1: punish you, they show the same response as you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they get skinning accents and heart rate changes, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But we think that there's a normal distribution in how
Speaker 1: people respond to punishment and so or fear of punishment,
Speaker 1: and that helps shape people's behavior. So if you're in
Speaker 1: the low end of the responsiveness to fear of punishment,
Speaker 1: then you're likely to necessarily learn from that in the
Speaker 1: same way the rest of us. We take it for granted,
Speaker 1: for example, that you know, if we do something bad,
Speaker 1: we're going to end up in prison and we don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. Or if we you know, speed
Speaker 1: on the way home from work, we're likely to get
Speaker 1: a ticket, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's just
Speaker 1: an ample dose of us being you know, anticipatory concerns.
Speaker 1: Whereas that anticipatory concern is what's really lacking in psychopathy.
Speaker 1: What percentage of prisoners are psychopaths? Well, the North American
Speaker 1: you know, scores generally if you use that cut off
Speaker 1: of you're looking at about fifteen to eighteen percent, we'll
Speaker 1: meet criterion for psychopathy. It's not, in fact, it's in
Speaker 1: some of the prisons we've worked at. For example, here
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, for whatever reason, the rate is about
Speaker 1: half that we find the problems here are most more
Speaker 1: likely related to substance abuse and other types of problems,
Speaker 1: social problems, poverty, et cetera. And whereas the rate of
Speaker 1: psychopathy is different versus some of the prisons we work
Speaker 1: at in other states, you know, and it might be
Speaker 1: because they're just much larger states. But we find the
Speaker 1: violent offenders have and the offenders we're working with of
Speaker 1: a normal rate of psychopathy or a higher rate. Is
Speaker 1: there a lower rate of psychopathy in Los Angeles because
Speaker 1: most of them are out there in the movie business
Speaker 1: instead and not in the jails. Well, unless they're getting caught.
Speaker 1: I can tell you an interesting story. We actually had
Speaker 1: a colleague at a big meeting. It was one of
Speaker 1: these small meetings where you isolate a group of scientists, know,
Speaker 1: one hundred scientists for about two weeks, and Scottish professor
Speaker 1: got up and talked about how the rate of psychopathy
Speaker 1: was only five percent in the Scottish prison population. And
Speaker 1: immediately to my right and English professor from England started
Speaker 1: typing on his computer and analyzing some data. And he
Speaker 1: proudly stood up and boldly interrupted in the middle of
Speaker 1: the guy's pocket, and he said, he said, David, David.
Speaker 1: He goes, I'd like to let you know that the
Speaker 1: rate of psychopathy of Scottish prisoners in my English prisons
Speaker 1: is fifty percent. And he goes, I'm afraid your town's boring,
Speaker 1: my friend. And they came to London where they got pinched,
Speaker 1: and so they're all doing time in my prison. And
Speaker 1: they actually did some analyses and found that there was
Speaker 1: a massive, you know, kind of migration of individuals with
Speaker 1: high psychopathic traits out of Scotland and into the London
Speaker 1: because that's what it's exciting. So psychopaths's really fascinating. Part
Speaker 1: of the behavior of the condition is that they're very nomadic.
Speaker 1: That is, they don't develop attachments to any person, place,
Speaker 1: or thing or education anything. So when bad things happen,
Speaker 1: there are no problems moving and starting up someplace new
Speaker 1: and their glibs so they're funny and they're entertaining, and
Speaker 1: they meet people quickly and then they asked, hey, can
Speaker 1: I stay with you? Sure? And then the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, you're you know, your wallets stolen and they've
Speaker 1: moved on someplace else. And so you know, this happens,
Speaker 1: you know, very you know, very very commonly, and so
Speaker 1: I think that they don't do well. And this is
Speaker 1: some of the evolutionary theories tap into this type of drive,
Speaker 1: that is, they're just they're really pushed or pressured to
Speaker 1: continue to move into seek new environments. So they're very
Speaker 1: socially disinhibited. I have two follow up questions to that
Speaker 1: one Sure one was Christopher Columbus a psychopath? I wish
Speaker 1: I had a better assessment of his personality. If you
Speaker 1: could give me some uh some you know, biographical details,
Speaker 1: I might be able to tell you, but certainly well
Speaker 1: you know, willing to command, and if you look at
Speaker 1: it as a military like conquest, then those are not
Speaker 1: necessarily again, good things to do, but they're not necessarily psychopathic. Objected. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: well again, if if Christopher Columbus came over and killed
Speaker 1: some people in order to claim his steak in the
Speaker 1: New Land, and then he actually took the money there
Speaker 1: are something that he earned, or the gold or the
Speaker 1: scents or whatever back to England and gave it to
Speaker 1: the king. You know, well, now if you took three
Speaker 1: quarters of it to Jamaica and he's got a special
Speaker 1: place there that he's got all of his friends hanging
Speaker 1: out with and partying and drinking, and he only takes
Speaker 1: five percent back to the king to pay for you know,
Speaker 1: never pays him back, but ask for ten more ships. Well,
Speaker 1: now you're talking one and more, one of my guys.
Speaker 1: You know, that's nice saying so I Christopher Columbus acted
Speaker 1: like that, then then we might be having to score
Speaker 1: them a little higher, you said, one of my guys.
Speaker 1: Are there sex differences in psychopathy? And if there are,
Speaker 1: is there a different flavors the female psychopath a different
Speaker 1: flavor than the male. Yes, for every one psych sorry,
Speaker 1: for every ten psychopaths, there's only one female. I think
Speaker 1: there's variety of reasons, but the most important is biological.
Speaker 1: That is, women have very different brain than men, and
Speaker 1: the areas of the brain that we find the void
Speaker 1: or deficit in psychopaths, the majority of those regions. Women
Speaker 1: actually have more gray matter than men do, and so
Speaker 1: it might be that there are neuroprotective factors associated being
Speaker 1: a female that leads to you to have lower psychopathic
Speaker 1: traits than males. I mean many, many, many studies around
Speaker 1: the world have shown consistently, including my undergraduate thesis you
Speaker 1: know twenty five years ago, showed that you know, women
Speaker 1: whore lower on psychopathic traits. Then do men and women
Speaker 1: have different brain regions, you know, brain structure and function
Speaker 1: in the same regions that we find deficits in psychopaths.
Speaker 1: But the female psychopaths, when they do exist or they
Speaker 1: pretty much the same kind of things. Yeah, they are there,
Speaker 1: and again they're very rare. I've only interviewed a handful
Speaker 1: in my career, and they are the behaviors are very similar,
Speaker 1: I mean the way they present, the affective problems they
Speaker 1: present with the behaviors and the things that they've done
Speaker 1: are very similar. You know, it's rare for them to
Speaker 1: be violent, you know, generally, but they will have stabbed
Speaker 1: somebody or they will not have any fears around you know,
Speaker 1: hitting somebody or other types of stuff. But they're not
Speaker 1: usually going to kill someone with a single blow like
Speaker 1: you find with a lot of psychopaths. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of psychopaths I've interviewed who get in a
Speaker 1: lot of bar fights and they keep kicking just that
Speaker 1: one extra time that puts the guy's skull through the
Speaker 1: side of his head and then they run off. And now, yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy died, they said, but he deserved he got
Speaker 1: what he deserved, whereas the female, just from a physical
Speaker 1: size perspective, is unlikely to have that same outcome. So
Speaker 1: the person might have been injured, but isn't necessarily a fatality. Well,
Speaker 1: so what is the prevalence rate of This is my
Speaker 1: second follow up question, ADHD and psychopathy and autism and psychopathy,
Speaker 1: what are the Yeah, So, I think ADHD is definitely
Speaker 1: commonly misdiagnosed in individuals with these characteristics. So you often
Speaker 1: find that children with these traits are being seen by
Speaker 1: psychiatrists center psychologists, and they're interpreted as saying that, well,
Speaker 1: they're just you know, they're not able to sit still.
Speaker 1: They don't do it, you know, they don't sit around.
Speaker 1: But those traits can often be misconstrued as being related
Speaker 1: with psychopathic or psychopathic like traits, and children are what
Speaker 1: we refer to as callous and emotional traits, and kids
Speaker 1: and the impulsivity that we see in kids can usually
Speaker 1: be or as commonly just attributed first to ADHD, and
Speaker 1: the frontline medication is given to try to see if
Speaker 1: that helps, and in many cases I think it does.
Speaker 1: But in other cases, the ones that I usually hear
Speaker 1: about are the parents who said their child was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with ADHD and then they gave him riddle and it
Speaker 1: made him worse. It got even you know, and started
Speaker 1: or hurting other animals or doing other things that are
Speaker 1: even greater level. We don't know how to deal with this.
Speaker 1: He's very violent and aggressive. And then they say they
Speaker 1: diagnose them with bipolar disorder, and they gave him medicine
Speaker 1: that made him, you know, draw weird things on the
Speaker 1: side of the you know, and then it progresses towards
Speaker 1: you know, they realize that their child has the difficulties
Speaker 1: with empathy and theory of mind and other types of problems,
Speaker 1: and then you end up, you know where someone saying like,
Speaker 1: how do I treat these types of problems? And so
Speaker 1: I think ADHD and psychopaed the traits probably are correlated.
Speaker 1: So if you the instruments, but it's probably a predictor
Speaker 1: criterion overlap. That is, there's not a good assessment procedures
Speaker 1: that differentiate them fully. So they are a little bit correlated.
Speaker 1: But the traits that do differentiate ADHD from psychopathy are
Speaker 1: those callous and emotional traits, the lack of empathy, guilty
Speaker 1: of memoirs, the glidness, the superficiality that lying the manipulative
Speaker 1: behaviors that not planning well in social environments and stuff.
Speaker 1: That's those are traits that you don't see in kids
Speaker 1: with ADHD. But the impulsivity overlaps. Yeah, Autism is a
Speaker 1: very different Simone wrote a book on this zero empathy
Speaker 1: and trying to talk about the difference between autism and psychopathy.
Speaker 1: I don't love to hear your take. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: think they're related at all. I think I think autism
Speaker 1: is more of a theory of mind problem than the Secondarily,
Speaker 1: then you have problems with empathy because you lack the
Speaker 1: ability to understand other people. That's not a lack of empathy,
Speaker 1: that's the theory of mind deficit in my opinion, Whereas
Speaker 1: psychopathy individuals with these traits as adels have excellent theory
Speaker 1: of mind. They're very capable of understanding what they're doing
Speaker 1: to other people. They just really just don't care. They
Speaker 1: lack the empathic ability to appreciate what they're doing. So
Speaker 1: I think psychopaths have excellent theory of mind, and especially
Speaker 1: when you sit down and talk to them, they can say, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that I was in pain, or of course
Speaker 1: that person is going to act like this. Psychopaths do, although,
Speaker 1: actually have low emotional intelligence. So we've published some studies
Speaker 1: on this saying that they have difficulty working and understanding
Speaker 1: how groups work. They don't know how to cooperate very well.
Speaker 1: We've published on social cooperation like studies and social exchange studies,
Speaker 1: and psychopaths don't do well on those types of things.
Speaker 1: So I really think that their emotional regulation, their emotional behavior,
Speaker 1: their emotional understanding of others is what's really truly impaired.
Speaker 1: And when you combine that with somebody who's impulsive and
Speaker 1: doesn't plan well and has done this from a very
Speaker 1: early age, then you get somebody who's who's quite dangerous.
Speaker 1: Do you have you ever seen a psychopathic pix his nails,
Speaker 1: cleans his nails, pix his nails out of a nervous
Speaker 1: I mean, are there any nervous psychics? Are there? Are
Speaker 1: there like a certain read of like covert you know,
Speaker 1: narcissist and covert psychopaths like what is well, so there
Speaker 1: is a there is a you know literature, you know, writings,
Speaker 1: books and stuff. They talk about the primary psychopath from
Speaker 1: the secondary See you've talked about primary secondaries something published research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the primary the primary psychopath is is somebody
Speaker 1: who is you know, parents were otherwise taking care of
Speaker 1: kids normally. This child was just always different. We don't
Speaker 1: understand why. We thought they had a great environment growing up,
Speaker 1: so there were no social forces that they believe really
Speaker 1: crafted somebody to end up with these types of traits
Speaker 1: as an adult. And it's and those can be particularly
Speaker 1: mystifying to people versus those that have, you know, terrible
Speaker 1: environments and they've been abused and they thought all sorts
Speaker 1: of other problems and they've not had a good schooling
Speaker 1: or education, and then they they kind of manifest those
Speaker 1: things as you know, not caring for other people and
Speaker 1: being impulsive, etc. And sometimes it might be that those
Speaker 1: two paths might lead you to score high on these traits.
Speaker 1: And still an active area of research to prove these
Speaker 1: two pathways. But the belief is that those that score
Speaker 1: on the secondary pathway through those types of trauma histories
Speaker 1: and other types of processes, that they're more high anxious
Speaker 1: and they have more other anxiety related problems that go
Speaker 1: along with their psychopathic life problems. And people have been
Speaker 1: trying to study the two different things. In some studies
Speaker 1: suggest that the real affective deficits that we see in
Speaker 1: the laboratory tasks and imaging related stuff is more limited
Speaker 1: to those with the primary path than necessarily the secondary path,
Speaker 1: although I don't think definitive science has been done yet
Speaker 1: to prove that both don't have problems in the affective domain.
Speaker 1: I just think that anxiety and when you have a
Speaker 1: psychopath that has some anxiety related problems, then it can
Speaker 1: mask or can make it more third moderating variable, they
Speaker 1: can make it complicated to understand the primary or the
Speaker 1: underlying you know, affective problems. So freaking interesting. I want
Speaker 1: to like change research topics that I still well, I'm
Speaker 1: the guy if you want to come to prison, you're
Speaker 1: welcome to come rotated through the lab. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I have jokingly say that, but what I
Speaker 1: study is not terribly different from what you study. Just
Speaker 1: if you think about this a second, I study high
Speaker 1: achievement and creativity. And I suspect that we're an awful
Speaker 1: lot of psychopaths that we have put the label genius
Speaker 1: on who may have maybe have taken credit for other
Speaker 1: people's work, who have what they've done is they've they've ruthlessly,
Speaker 1: uh manipulated their way to the history books. So certainly
Speaker 1: it would be an interesting exercise to get credible background
Speaker 1: information and score some individuals to have historical prominence. I
Speaker 1: can tell you though, that some of the most individuals
Speaker 1: psychopathy you know, they can have they have very normal
Speaker 1: to I think even above normal IQ and some of
Speaker 1: the most impressive psychopaths, the highest scoring psychopaths that ever met,
Speaker 1: have had IQs of one forty or one sixty and
Speaker 1: unbelievably smart individuals, but have again very limited understanding of
Speaker 1: emotions and affects. So as you know IQ, as we
Speaker 1: typically assess, it does not include anything related to the
Speaker 1: affective domain. Very analytical, yeah, and so theysic are extremely
Speaker 1: high on those things, but it's the emotional side of
Speaker 1: things that they're just really devoid of. And so that's
Speaker 1: why I really like this construct of emotional intelligence, because
Speaker 1: it helps you really quantify or assess another enormous domain
Speaker 1: of life, which is interpersonal relationships and how you work
Speaker 1: with others in group and social cooperation. And so we've
Speaker 1: been continually to study these processes to find out how
Speaker 1: they're related to the problems we see in psychopathy. I
Speaker 1: love this, so I want to unpack some things here.
Speaker 1: We can actually talk shop here a bit there. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about two major large scope brain networks, the
Speaker 1: executive attention network and the default mode network. The default
Speaker 1: mode network has been laid a lot to social emotional functioning.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you found that psychopaths have a very fine
Speaker 1: executive functioning in the sense that they're there are very
Speaker 1: they can analytically abstract reasoning, They can process non social
Speaker 1: emotional information well. But is do you see altra default
Speaker 1: mode connectivity. Well, so to start the first one, yes,
Speaker 1: psychopaths pass all sorts of executive functioning tests, from working
Speaker 1: memory to you know, a wide variety of different attention
Speaker 1: based stuff. They they do show impairments in in some
Speaker 1: forms of cognitive control like tasks though, so especially if
Speaker 1: it engages limbic circuitry and and maybe that boost isn't
Speaker 1: necessary for performing it, you'll you'll see some some abnermalodies there.
Speaker 1: The default mode network, which obviously includes singular posters, singulate
Speaker 1: and you know, bilateral temporal lobes. We do see and
Speaker 1: have published studies showing that there's you know, abnormal connectivity
Speaker 1: in those circuits and individuals with psychopathy. And so my
Speaker 1: general you know, theory that we've been testing is that
Speaker 1: that it is these limbic paralympic circuits that are basically
Speaker 1: not coordinating or functioning with an underlying gray matter or
Speaker 1: deficit actually as you know, as you would see in normals.
Speaker 1: And so the default mode is definitely the one that
Speaker 1: we found to be more impaired than than the APP,
Speaker 1: than the executive control system. So you know, there's the
Speaker 1: famous essay was it like to be a bat or
Speaker 1: something like that. What is it like to to be
Speaker 1: a psychopath? Do you think that it feels like if
Speaker 1: I woke up, you know, if we woke up tomorrow
Speaker 1: and we were suddenly we're psychopath for a day, would
Speaker 1: we suddenly not feel any emotions? Would we not feel emotions?
Speaker 1: Do they feel emotions at all? Oh? Yeah, no, they have.
Speaker 1: They have a hyper if you will, almost a hyper
Speaker 1: repetitive drive that is there. They're very much into, you know,
Speaker 1: finding something that's going to be exciting or novel or
Speaker 1: fun to do today. Often at the you know the
Speaker 1: cost of it's almost like they're just very short sighted.
Speaker 1: You know, they just there, they see something, and they
Speaker 1: want more of the immediate gratification and rather than the
Speaker 1: long term gratification associated with accomplishing and planning and doing anything.
Speaker 1: So so, a typical day in a psychopast life and
Speaker 1: the outside the world would be involved usually some form of,
Speaker 1: you know, something that's going to be enjoyable or fun
Speaker 1: or interesting or exciting to do, like maybe doing some
Speaker 1: drugs and then going to work and then slacking off
Speaker 1: and then you know, going out and having some drinks
Speaker 1: and and and I mean they're they're really you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's probably quite difficult to get them to achieve
Speaker 1: a normal day of work and effort, et cetera. Very
Speaker 1: rarely would they ever, unless they're completely you know, hungover,
Speaker 1: would they spend that time alone or ruminating or meditating.
Speaker 1: That's just not like them. They just don't ruminate at all.
Speaker 1: Do they have the capacity for love? They usually equate
Speaker 1: So this is what I was gonna mention earlier. They
Speaker 1: usually equate love with physical satisfaction, and so they'll often
Speaker 1: describe love in very concrete terms, in terms of the
Speaker 1: woman who was the most of a luptious or the
Speaker 1: three women they had in the one day, they love
Speaker 1: them all, et cetera. One point that I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: is something that we studied for a bit, which was
Speaker 1: abstract representations of stimuli, So are are are lost in psychopaths.
Speaker 1: They're very concrete, and so even proverbs, metaphors, you know,
Speaker 1: even abstract text like very justice, and then more emotional stuff, love, empathy,
Speaker 1: et cetera. They have a lot of difficulty responding and
Speaker 1: processing those words. So if you said justice, you said
Speaker 1: very the word very yes, really, yeah, So psychopaths actually
Speaker 1: have difficulty estimating time. So if you ask them, if
Speaker 1: you ask them, yeah, well there, it's a really interesting
Speaker 1: part of it. It turns out that I noticed those
Speaker 1: types of abstract problems very early in my career, interacting
Speaker 1: with them in prison, and I did a bunch of
Speaker 1: studies looking at abstract representations. Then we found this interesting
Speaker 1: effect at the right temporal lobe, and the temporal poll
Speaker 1: was showing you know, deficits associated abstract processing. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't until when I was at Yale where we met
Speaker 1: that I figured, I developed this theory based on cider
Speaker 1: archetectonics or types of numbers and layers of neurons, that
Speaker 1: the temple pole, this right temple pole is actually linked
Speaker 1: to medial temple level and make de lay Hippi campus
Speaker 1: or repart of cortex from a cider archetectonic perspective, and like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, now it just kind of clicked and
Speaker 1: made sense that this, uh, these behavioral deficits we were
Speaker 1: seeing are linked to an anatomical region that develops along
Speaker 1: you know, its own trajectory, and it's that development that
Speaker 1: we think is impaired in individual psychopathy or it is abnormal.
Speaker 1: I'm noticing an overlap here between lots of brain regions
Speaker 1: and appet appetitive drives and extraversion. Do you not have
Speaker 1: introverted psychopaths? No, because when I study extroverts, they have
Speaker 1: a heightened dopamine rewards system, and you probably see the
Speaker 1: same thing in psychopaths, right, So, well, psychopaths are It's
Speaker 1: a good question. We haven't seen any clinical studies of
Speaker 1: high scoring individual psychopathy looking at reward related stuff in
Speaker 1: great detail. But my clinical observation is with them is
Speaker 1: that they are well. It's interesting. So they're very likely
Speaker 1: to engage in reward seeking related behaviors, consuming a wide
Speaker 1: variety of different types of drugs, you know, engaging in
Speaker 1: a wide variety of pleasurable activities like sex, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They're very promiscuous, but it's almost more that they're interested
Speaker 1: in the frequency of it rather than in the cultivating
Speaker 1: of a more deeper, you know, understanding of it. That's
Speaker 1: what's interesting about their drug use is that they don't
Speaker 1: even really stick to any drugs, so we actually think
Speaker 1: their neurobiology is even protected from dependence on drugs, and
Speaker 1: published a series of studies on this. But it really
Speaker 1: is interesting how different their biology is from others and
Speaker 1: how they and how it's related to their behaviors that
Speaker 1: we report and score and assass Yeah. Yeah, so obviously.
Speaker 1: And I want to make clear I'm not suggesting that
Speaker 1: all extroverts are psychopaths. No, but but I I just
Speaker 1: want to get clear it before I get in trouble.
Speaker 1: But I, you know, just dawned on me, you know,
Speaker 1: because there's we know, we heightened heightened reward network brain
Speaker 1: areas and extroverts as well. Sure, no, I think that,
Speaker 1: yeah so. And classic assessments of personality, you know, the
Speaker 1: extraversion is you know, one of the most closely aligned
Speaker 1: with you know, psychopathic traits. It's that classic modial models
Speaker 1: of personality don't often assess or carefully assessed the interpersonal
Speaker 1: and affective staff. And that's what is what really differentiates
Speaker 1: psychopaths from extroverts is that they have both the extraversion
Speaker 1: impulsivity and outgoingness and social disinhibition, but they also have
Speaker 1: an inability to appreciate those emotional stimulate those emotional contents.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Hexico model, not the big FIB,
Speaker 1: but the his Coe model has an extra factor that
Speaker 1: seems to world very highly on psychopathy. And the so
Speaker 1: is that the calling is that Colin's model calling the Yeah, okay, no,
Speaker 1: he's he's one of my major collaborators. I know that
Speaker 1: you guys know each other, right, yes, yes, yes, well
Speaker 1: I was when last time he was here we were
Speaker 1: speaking about this and he was saying that there's some
Speaker 1: new personality models that you are coming out trying to
Speaker 1: assess psychopathic traits, calison and emotional traits more carefully because
Speaker 1: they work. Yeah. So his model is the bee Fast
Speaker 1: Big five aspects he has, but that's actually still part
Speaker 1: of the Big Five. But the hes Co model has
Speaker 1: this humility dimension that seems to be the opposite end
Speaker 1: of the humility poll dishonesty seems to correlate almost perfectly
Speaker 1: with the dark triad common variance. Okay, so yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: so maybe that's like a good model Mexico model. We're
Speaker 1: talking a lot of shop here, by the way, I
Speaker 1: bet we've lost a lot of people, by the way,
Speaker 1: not because they're low intelligence, but you know they're not.
Speaker 1: They don't have all this expertise. But I'll put some
Speaker 1: links in the show notes to things to further explain
Speaker 1: the kind of things we're talking about. Great, just a
Speaker 1: couple more minutes actually, because this is we're almost done.
Speaker 1: This was really great. I do want to end. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about about the environmental developmental path like
Speaker 1: what do psychobasket are like in child? What's myth and
Speaker 1: not myth about that? And yeah, let's start there, and
Speaker 1: then I have one last topic I want to cover. Okay,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind wrapping up a little bit about some
Speaker 1: of the treatments. That's that's well, yeah, that's why, that's
Speaker 1: why we think. Okay, So, so developmentally, the earlier you
Speaker 1: try to go and assessing these council and emotional traits,
Speaker 1: I think, the more complicated and difficult it is, and
Speaker 1: the more careful you have to be for many reasons,
Speaker 1: but also because you don't want to, you know, identify
Speaker 1: someone as being on this trajectory when there's a strong
Speaker 1: probability they're not, for example, so you don't a label
Speaker 1: or have other types of problems. But the children, you know,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that every adult psychopath I've interviewed
Speaker 1: had a very different childhood from pretty much any kid
Speaker 1: I've ever interacted with. And so I think that if
Speaker 1: we are careful about it, we can assess and understand
Speaker 1: kids who are on a high risk trajectory towards developing
Speaker 1: this disorder as an adult or scoring high. But you know,
Speaker 1: the things that we typically see are are some of
Speaker 1: them you hear about in the movies, and something that
Speaker 1: they've they've definitely done something with animals, or they've had
Speaker 1: some sort of a you know, they've had some aggression
Speaker 1: or violence towards animals. But aren't necessarily serial killers. Correct, correct?
Speaker 1: So I don't so, yes, that's absolutely correct. In fact,
Speaker 1: serial killers are extremely rare and usually have other problems
Speaker 1: in addition to psychopathy. But maybe could you include in
Speaker 1: your description of the early development path also talk about
Speaker 1: the factors that separate the developing serial killer from the
Speaker 1: developing psychopath. Well, that would be the next book that
Speaker 1: I'm working in writing. Yeah, but I think that if
Speaker 1: you start to see, you know, the kids, they don't
Speaker 1: develop strong attachments with their peers, they don't engage in
Speaker 1: any social sports, even though they're fully capable of doing so.
Speaker 1: They don't engage in team activities. They're never participating in
Speaker 1: the chess club, for example, or or something that I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, clubs that require you know, team cooperation and
Speaker 1: showing up and practicing and stuff like that. They're just
Speaker 1: not capable of sticking to that type of a regiment.
Speaker 1: And then you would often see that there's going to
Speaker 1: be high risk behaviors starting very early. So this might
Speaker 1: be burglaries by themselves before the age of twelve, not
Speaker 1: done with some older kid who got them in trouble.
Speaker 1: For example, it's going to be precocious sexual activity before
Speaker 1: the age of twelve or so. Not This is not
Speaker 1: the kids to find the Playboy and go read them
Speaker 1: in the corner and anything like that. This is some
Speaker 1: kid who's you know, broken into a house to watch
Speaker 1: you know, girls on dress or do something you know
Speaker 1: that is extremely you know, disinhibited. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: basically it's something that the parents are like, what what
Speaker 1: just happened? You know, And it's it's not just like
Speaker 1: the one event where you might see them getting in
Speaker 1: an argument or a fight or do a kicking or
Speaker 1: throwing blocks or doing something like that, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a repetitive you know, low frustration tolerance, willingness to engage
Speaker 1: in significant aggression, and then a real inability to learn
Speaker 1: from you know, the sanctions that are put in place,
Speaker 1: and so they keep doing those bad things. And so
Speaker 1: this is the type of thing that we're seeing and interpersonally,
Speaker 1: you know, being potentially manipulative, being lying, and not even
Speaker 1: necessarily for any reason, like we've all told our parents lives,
Speaker 1: like I didn't go out too late, or I and
Speaker 1: do this, But this is where they do it when
Speaker 1: there's really not even a reason why. And so it's
Speaker 1: it's modacity is how it's typically referred to, which is
Speaker 1: just just a little bit just like one stroke below,
Speaker 1: you know, confabulation. So they're they're making up stories to
Speaker 1: impress and play and create you know, a sense of
Speaker 1: excitement and that they're cool for whatever, positive for whatever reasons.
Speaker 1: But there's just readily checked and they're just like they're
Speaker 1: totally lying, you know. And so that's the very common
Speaker 1: thing that you see in these kids. And then if anything,
Speaker 1: it just continues to escalate an adolescence more severe and
Speaker 1: social behavior gravitation towards even riskier types of things from
Speaker 1: a you know, antisocial types of things, and then they
Speaker 1: end up you know, often in some sort of correctional environment.
Speaker 1: That's where we typically see them. But in terms of
Speaker 1: the nature interaction. You're sing about parents earlier, I think
Speaker 1: I cut you off. Oh well, there have been some reasons.
Speaker 1: So I is looking at assessing these traits and kids
Speaker 1: and the interaction with various parenting styles for example. And
Speaker 1: so if parents reach their you know, authoritative parents for example,
Speaker 1: who are very strict and rigorous, et cetera, that tends
Speaker 1: to interact with these kids and it becomes this back
Speaker 1: and forth that ends up both having even more severe
Speaker 1: behavioral problems. So there are certain parenting styles that appear
Speaker 1: to be you know, I think it's you know, you
Speaker 1: provide firm, concrete rules, but you reward the positive behaviors.
Speaker 1: You have small, graduated punishments. It's very much like a
Speaker 1: contingency management kind of approach that we use in adult
Speaker 1: contemporary psychotherapy. And you provide those really concrete rules for
Speaker 1: them about the bad things, and then escalate the rewards
Speaker 1: in such a way that it's likely to you know,
Speaker 1: change their behavior. So they learn that it's in their
Speaker 1: own best interests to act in a better way, in
Speaker 1: a different way, and then that eventually molds and changes
Speaker 1: them into learning that I get more things that I
Speaker 1: prefer with this behavior. Then the really bad things that
Speaker 1: can happen with the other behavior. I mean, there's this
Speaker 1: psychologist Fallon is that his name. He says he's a psychopath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not he's not a psychopath. Yeah, okay, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: you can talk a little bit. So his argument is like, well,
Speaker 1: I have the genes for psychopath, but I didn't become
Speaker 1: a psychopath because my parents were nice to me. Is
Speaker 1: there some truth to that statement, like can you have
Speaker 1: can you have the predisposition to be a psychopath but
Speaker 1: have good protective factors? Well? I think that that's one
Speaker 1: of the shapes in the models around you know, being,
Speaker 1: you know, with the parenting research and the other types
Speaker 1: of things that people are doing, is that there can
Speaker 1: certainly be a lot of social environments that can curb
Speaker 1: the full manifestation of these traits. That is, you can
Speaker 1: you know, you can take someone with most any disability
Speaker 1: and help to improve the outcomes with the right environment
Speaker 1: so that they can function and appear to work more normally.
Speaker 1: And certainly with children who have these traits, who have
Speaker 1: these problems or whatever it is genetic, biological, environmental vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: to these traits that can play a huge role in treatment.
Speaker 1: In and helping to manage those traits. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can tell you that, you know, doctor Follen's not a
Speaker 1: psychopath because he's the rest of his life is one
Speaker 1: hundred percent certainty, you know, doesn't score high in psychopathic traits.
Speaker 1: He's a little bit you know, I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1: I think he was just trying to sell a book.
Speaker 1: I would say, but I don't think that he's done
Speaker 1: any real science in this area, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that he really understands how to assess the traits and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. We've interacted a few times. I've often
Speaker 1: tried to, you know, help adjust or correct some of
Speaker 1: the things that he's written about. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's been a large proliferation of these books. That
Speaker 1: was one of the motivations that I wrote it, because
Speaker 1: there's so much misinformation. They just people continually jump on
Speaker 1: the bandwagon of writing about something that's interesting, but they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily do their homework to get it correct, and
Speaker 1: that's unfortunately. I just wish that I consider Jim's work
Speaker 1: to be like an interesting work of fiction that's kind
Speaker 1: of you know, interesting, but I don't consider it to
Speaker 1: be nonfiction. Sure, And then there's like this other person
Speaker 1: who said that I think I have somewhere myself like
Speaker 1: by not a non scientist. She's like a woman, and
Speaker 1: she says what it's like to be a psychopath, and
Speaker 1: you know, and all the professions of a psychofession. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we were. I've had a colleague who actually interacted in
Speaker 1: a television production or radio production, and I haven't read
Speaker 1: the book, but my interactions and listening to that interaction
Speaker 1: was that she's actually has different issues. Those are not
Speaker 1: psychopathic issues that she's describing. Okay, the question I'm asking
Speaker 1: is what kind of person would want to make pretend
Speaker 1: they're a psychopath when they or not really a psychopath.
Speaker 1: That seems to be an individual difference is variable in itself.
Speaker 1: You see, I'm saying, yeah, well, I only know one
Speaker 1: person who's tried to do that, or two. I guess
Speaker 1: that we're both trying to sell books. Are those the
Speaker 1: two people we just talked about, Yes, so I probably
Speaker 1: trying to do a healthy dose of these types of things.
Speaker 1: But the genes also that that doctor Fallon talked about,
Speaker 1: those those are not necessarily ever been related to psychopathy,
Speaker 1: And so we are actively doing that type of research,
Speaker 1: but the vast majority of studies that have been done
Speaker 1: today would suggest that those are not genes related psychopathy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the m AOA and the DoD and the other types
Speaker 1: of genes so that he is referring to. So again,
Speaker 1: definitive science hasn't been done yet, but certainly there's the
Speaker 1: only one paper published on MAO by psychopathy and didn't
Speaker 1: find this association. So yeah, I really want to be
Speaker 1: respective of your time, and let's talk about treatment sairement
Speaker 1: because this is obviously has so much important societal implications.
Speaker 1: We can we treat psychopaths. I think there's a very
Speaker 1: exciting program in Wisconsin called it at the Mendota Juvenile
Speaker 1: Treatment Center, And this is a facility that treats the
Speaker 1: highest risk boys in the state of Wisconsin that you
Speaker 1: can't be managed by other correctional sites, and so they're
Speaker 1: sent there for behavioral maladjustment treatment to try to help
Speaker 1: develop a way to make them behave within the prison
Speaker 1: setting and then hopefully behave when they get out. And
Speaker 1: what this program has done is it's tapped into all
Speaker 1: of the science of psychopathy and behavioral treatment and it
Speaker 1: has created a state of the art intensive treatment program
Speaker 1: that really has shown that it makes a difference. And
Speaker 1: the main difference that it shows is it reduces institutional infractions.
Speaker 1: The kids don't get more fights and other types of things,
Speaker 1: which leads to less prison time. They get out on
Speaker 1: a more normal schedule. But also the kids develop a
Speaker 1: sense of self worth and a sense of cognitive control
Speaker 1: of themselves such that they don't act violently when they
Speaker 1: get out, or at least there they're fifty percent less
Speaker 1: likely to act violently if they went through this program
Speaker 1: then if they went through the system as normal. And
Speaker 1: so if you can show that's a huge, huge effect
Speaker 1: fifty percent reduction economically as well, right, it does. It
Speaker 1: does Chapter ten that's talked about in my book. So
Speaker 1: I knew that saying I know, I know, I'm just easy.
Speaker 1: So absolutely, I think that economically, when you can develop
Speaker 1: a program that helps to reduce the chances the kids
Speaker 1: come back to prison and it reduces violence as well,
Speaker 1: that that's going to be it's an economic windfall for
Speaker 1: the states to implement such programs. In fact, Georgia, the
Speaker 1: State of Georgia just adopted an identical program. So they're
Speaker 1: building a facility and setting up the same type of
Speaker 1: program in order to try to duplicate the successes that
Speaker 1: they've had in Wisconsin. What are some specifics about the program? Sure,
Speaker 1: it's intensive, it's one on one. It uses contingency management principles,
Speaker 1: so it uses reward and significant rewards, rewards that get
Speaker 1: the kids' attention all the way up for example, to
Speaker 1: like video games and their cells, candy bars if they're
Speaker 1: you know, other things that kids are intrinsically motivated to
Speaker 1: try to obtain, and it uses that to help shape
Speaker 1: their behavior so that they're not aggressive and violent towards
Speaker 1: their peers, and then they gradually gravitate towards interacting and
Speaker 1: working with peers. Young kids are working with peers then
Speaker 1: who are farther along in the program, and it slowly
Speaker 1: engages them in a lot of different skills training and
Speaker 1: education of course, but then eventually integrates them back with
Speaker 1: their family while they're at the facility so that they're
Speaker 1: everybody is prepared for when the child's going to be
Speaker 1: released and come back home. They've dealt with those issues,
Speaker 1: cured environment so that there's much less. So there's a
Speaker 1: whole variety of for principles, but the main ones is
Speaker 1: that they've addressed this poor decision making, poor planning, impulsivity component,
Speaker 1: and they've really helped to cultivate through positive reinforcement be
Speaker 1: shaping the behavior so they're more thoughtful in planning. And
Speaker 1: I mean, my favorite character that I've written about, you know,
Speaker 1: he's been crime free for now some ten years, and
Speaker 1: he was one of the highest risk kids at that facility.
Speaker 1: But he's been married a couple of times. This is
Speaker 1: his third wife that he's with right now. So it's
Speaker 1: not like they cured psychopathy or they cured his ability
Speaker 1: to work and manage all of his relationships, but he
Speaker 1: has certainly had a significant improvement. And in a field
Speaker 1: where the dogma is that they're untreatable, this type of
Speaker 1: program and the steps that it has made to make
Speaker 1: such positive change in the lives of the kids and
Speaker 1: in the lives of society, I think it is just
Speaker 1: one of the best things we should be talking about.
Speaker 1: I agree that that is wonderful. But you know, in
Speaker 1: the spirit of like positive psychology, the filled I work,
Speaker 1: and that's like getting them from like you know, negative
Speaker 1: twenty to zero. What do you think there's a there's
Speaker 1: a positive psychologist. Psychopaths possible. Are psychopaths ever capable of
Speaker 1: not only being rehabilitated or to reduce their crime, but
Speaker 1: to have them in compassion, to have them have love,
Speaker 1: have even self compassion? Could they have like, has anyone
Speaker 1: ever done self compassion meditation with them? And has anyone
Speaker 1: ever injected them with oxytocin my questions, So, to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: there's been no such clinical trials looking at those types
Speaker 1: of mindfulness types of techniques. We actually are in the
Speaker 1: middle of working on a potential grant. I don't even
Speaker 1: want to name the collaborators yet because we're still formulating them.
Speaker 1: But we are planning to work a very prominent person
Speaker 1: in mindfulness and trying to implement a multi site study
Speaker 1: of mindfulness by imaging to see if it can improve
Speaker 1: rich Yes, as far as it's Richie, it's a long
Speaker 1: time friend and so hopefully you won't see this before,
Speaker 1: he'd say out signs on the dotted line. But we're
Speaker 1: trying to No, that's fine, and and with other colleagues,
Speaker 1: Michinis and others in Wisconsin. So we would really like
Speaker 1: to try to do some sort of a large scale
Speaker 1: mindfulness program. And NIH's credit, they encouraged us to submit
Speaker 1: such a program. Beautiful. Oxytocin is another great question. I've
Speaker 1: actually worked with some people. We've done some initial studies
Speaker 1: that I would say that the results have not been great.
Speaker 1: And the reason is that there are also with some
Speaker 1: some issues in the sense that we were working with
Speaker 1: sex offenders in that study and there's some other issues
Speaker 1: going on besides just psychopathy. So, but we don't have
Speaker 1: any good evidence of oxytocin yet as well. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of science that could be done and more
Speaker 1: appreciation of the impact their behavior has another good less
Speaker 1: toxoin for them. Yes, you know, there's still main specific psychopathy,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's impact with extosin. Have you ever
Speaker 1: I want to leave with this question, have you ever
Speaker 1: been with a psychopath and you were you know, shaken,
Speaker 1: You're you're definitely shy with the cinkive example of just
Speaker 1: because I I want to romanticize psychopathy at all, and
Speaker 1: I would like to before we leave today, if you
Speaker 1: would give a concrete example of just what depths of
Speaker 1: evil some of them are are carrying with them. So
Speaker 1: there's been a few cases in my life where I've
Speaker 1: actually stopped the interview and have said I just don't
Speaker 1: need to know anything more about this person because that
Speaker 1: they did was so bad that that they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're just never going to let them out. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's happened only a few times. And you know,
Speaker 1: I actually I've written about a lot of the different
Speaker 1: individuals that I have worked with and some of the
Speaker 1: things that they've done, and hopefully the stories will come
Speaker 1: across as they're very fund and exciting and engaging. And
Speaker 1: then they tell you about how they raped and killed
Speaker 1: someone and disposed of the body, and you, you know,
Speaker 1: you realize, I think you get a poignant sense of
Speaker 1: just how bad they can be. And certainly it's when
Speaker 1: you know, I recently interviewed somebody who scored very high
Speaker 1: in psychopathy and I said, so, you don't have any
Speaker 1: problems with rape? I mean, you know, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: Their response was, I like, consensual sex too, Oh I
Speaker 1: really yeah, And they're like, but they just there was
Speaker 1: just absolutely no concerns whatsoever with rape. But it was
Speaker 1: a really truly amazing how just without any concerns whatsoever,
Speaker 1: just has no concerns with rape. And someone with four
Speaker 1: sisters and a daughter, you know, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: it was staggering. It actually it actually took me a
Speaker 1: few minutes to compose myself. I took a big drink
Speaker 1: of water and sat back. And I've never had anybody,
Speaker 1: you know, even convicted rapists, they know that they're doing
Speaker 1: is potentially wrong. But this one just said no vibe whatsoever,
Speaker 1: had no thread whatsoever that he thought that was a problem. Wow,
Speaker 1: so its a very dangerous person. Well he's never going
Speaker 1: to get out of prison, so that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: But it was just clinically fascinating to really study that
Speaker 1: there actually are people that are like that. Absolutely, Kent,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for the important work you're doing
Speaker 1: to advancing our understanding of these breed of humans. And
Speaker 1: do you think they're human? Oh? Sure, I mean I
Speaker 1: I do hold out a lot of help that they
Speaker 1: could be managed and treated and you can steer them
Speaker 1: away from doing those bad things. It just takes a
Speaker 1: lot of effort and hopefully it's some good science. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your time today. Well, thanks Scott
Speaker 1: for the invitation, appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you
Speaker 1: found this episode just as Foreman a falker. Listen I did.
Speaker 1: If you don't read the show notes for this episode
Speaker 1: your past episodes. If you go to the Psychology podcast
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