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Charming, Fearless and Manipulative: When Psychopathic Traits Become Dangerous · Inside The Criminal Mind

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back. Well, folks, today we're looking at the psychopath
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  Speaker 1: at work. Hollywood has reinforced the association of a psychopath
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  Speaker 1: killing people or being a serial killer for decades. But psychologically,
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  Speaker 1: there's an important problem with that picture. Psychopathy and murder
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  Speaker 1: are not synonyms, or serial killers for that matter. Psychopathy
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  Speaker 1: generally refers to a constellation of interpersonal, emotional, and behavioral characteristics.
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  Speaker 1: Things we've talked about before, superficial charm, manipulativeness, very little empathy,
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  Speaker 1: shallow emotional experience. Having some of these traits does not
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  Speaker 1: automatically make someone violent. In fact, this raises one of
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  Speaker 1: the most interesting questions. What happens when someone possesses a
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  Speaker 1: significant amount of psychopathic traits but never becomes a conventional criminal?
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  Speaker 1: Consider fearlessness. In one context, unusually low fear might contribute
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  Speaker 1: to reckless or antisocial behavior. Imagine the same characteristic in
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  Speaker 1: a corporate executive making decisions involving millions of dollars, remaining
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  Speaker 1: calm while everyone else panics. Of course, the first name
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  Speaker 1: everybody thinks about is Bernie Madoff. Emotional detachment presents a
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  Speaker 1: similar paradox. A person who isn't strongly affected by another
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  Speaker 1: person's distress might behave cruelly. But emotional detachment can also
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  Speaker 1: allow someone to make difficult decisions without becoming overwhelmed. The
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  Speaker 1: trait alone doesn't tell us what the person will do
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  Speaker 1: with it. Manipulation provides a darker example. Someone skilled at
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  Speaker 1: reading what other people want may use that ability to
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  Speaker 1: see victims. In a legitimate environment, however, some of that
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  Speaker 1: same interpersonal ability might appear as extraordinary persuasion or negotiation, charisma,
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  Speaker 1: or salesmanship. This is where terminology becomes important. Calling every
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  Speaker 1: ruthless boss a manipulative romantic partner or psychopath isn't clinically useful.
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  Speaker 1: Psychopathy requires a broader assessment of personality and behavior. And
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  Speaker 1: psychopathy itself is not identical to antisocial personality. Imagine two
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  Speaker 1: people who are both unusually fearless, emotionally detached, persuasive, and
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  Speaker 1: willing to take risks. One becomes involved in fraud, the
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  Speaker 1: other an entrepreneur. Their underlying personality characteristics might overlap, yet
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  Speaker 1: their behavior and outcomes are dramatically different. Environment, intelligence, impulse control, upbringing,
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  Speaker 1: opportunity can all influence how the personality traits are expressed
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  Speaker 1: and whether or not they go one way or another.
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  Speaker 1: as we mentioned, from a fraudulent entrepreneur. Those things vary.
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  Speaker 1: Context matters. The important question is, if someone has these traits,
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  Speaker 1: it's about how the traits interact. That's what makes the
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  Speaker 1: biggest difference. Let me explain it to you a little
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  Speaker 1: bit more. So, Fearlessness combined with intelligence and self-control may
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  Speaker 1: produce something very different from fearlessness combined with impulsivity and aggression.
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  Speaker 1: And there's another misconception worth correcting as well. A person
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  Speaker 1: does not need to experience emotions exactly as others do
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  Speaker 1: in order to understand social rules. Someone may intellectually recognize
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  Speaker 1: that an action will harm another, even if the emotional
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  Speaker 1: response is diminished. That distinction between understanding another person's emotions
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  Speaker 1: and actually sharing them can become important when examining empathy. Ultimately,
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  Speaker 1: psychopathy becomes much more interesting when we stop treating it
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  Speaker 1: as another word for evil. It represents a complex pattern
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  Speaker 1: of traits. Sometimes those traits appear in prisons. Sometimes they
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  Speaker 1: appear in boardrooms. The most important question isn't whether someone
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  Speaker 1: seems charming, fearless, cold, or ambitious. It's what happens when
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  Speaker 1: those characteristics combine. And by the way, personality disorders in
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  Speaker 1: general in the world of psychology have the weakest validity
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  Speaker 1: and reliability in the world of psychology. Psychopathy as well
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  Speaker 1: We know what the traits are. We don't know what
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  Speaker 1: causes it. We don't know what leads to it. It's
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  Speaker 1: a very difficult diagnosis to say automatically what this person
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  Speaker 1: is and isn't like, why they're like this. However, we
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  Speaker 1: do know that they have certain characteristics or traits that
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  Speaker 1: we see over and over again. That's it for now.