December 28, 2011 • 30 mins
What exactly is the psychopath test? Are there really gender differences in psychopathy? In this episode, Caroline and Cristen explore the process of diagnosing psychopaths -- and whether your gender affects your chances of passing the psychopath test.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today we're talking
(00:20):
about psychopaths, kiss Get Safe and UM. I got to
thinking about this topic because of a book that journalist
John Ronson wrote called The Psychopath Test, and it's released
earlier this year, and it looks into the quote unquote
madness industry. Um. He talked to a bunch of psychologists
and he even talked to some patients, including one who
(00:43):
said that he claimed to be a psychopath just to
get a lighter sentence handed down from the judge and
then he couldn't get out of the asylum or wherever
he was. But I just thought it was interesting. I
wanted to look at psychopaths, psychopathy. Sorry, it's a it's
a tricky word. I wanted to look psychopathy and gender.
Who are psychopaths? Where are you more likely to find them?
(01:05):
Because they're really not a huge chunk of the population.
The statistic is that about one percent of human beings
are psychopaths. But you know, where what segment of the
population that psychopaths might be more common is in the workplace. Interesting,
(01:25):
an estimated four percent of business leaders qualify as psychopaths.
And this is nothing. Let's Carolin, let's go ahead and uh,
but a disclaimer right now, this is non directed at
anyone that you nor I work with. Yeah, nobody get
upset there speaking in general. This is coming from a
Time magazine reported on this. I think it was springboarding
(01:48):
off of the psychopath test by John Ronson, and the
estimate was that one in five ceo s probably qualify
as psychopaths. Because psychopathy and ruthless capitalism go pretty well together. Yeah,
you might come across someone who is just a manipulative
(02:09):
jerk with no emotions but incredibly charming, but incredibly charming
and manipulative. And the thing is that's actually really good
in the business world. And there's a lot of talk
in studies out there and in Ronson's book about how
you know, you might be a jerk and you might
not have a lot of genuine close friends, but you're
really successful in business because to become a CEO or
(02:32):
some some type of high up leader, there has to
be a degree of of ruthlessness of willing to being
willing to climb your way to the top. And so
you know a lot of people are like I like
that guy. He doesn't seem to care. He just climbs
right up there and steps on people. So it can
help help you get ahead if you're a manipulative psychopathic jerk.
(02:53):
Right um. They're psychologist Paul babbiac So a two and
three American corporate professionals, and evaluated their psychopathic traits using
a checklist developed by psychopathy expert Robert Hare and hair Is.
Checklist is um the the go to rubric for determining
(03:14):
whether or not someone may or may not be a psychopath.
Now this does not mean, I think a lot of
times we conflate uh psychopaths with the psycho killers, right um.
And so it doesn't mean that a lot of ceo
s or you know, have a have a knife in
their desks. Not everybody's American psycho, right um. But it's
(03:35):
those it's those qualities that Caroline was talking about and
their natural tendency to be charming. It sounds like they
have that perfect balance of office politics charm. You know
that that provides the kind of social lubricant that you
need to get buy in the workplace with complete and
total ruthlessness and and never never a second. Also, you know,
(04:00):
if you think about the subprime mortgage fiasco. Uh, John
Ronson theorizes that, you know what, some of that could
have been propelled by some underlying psychopathy industry, just like,
let's just make all the money we can. Yeah, it
doesn't matter about these people that were hurting. Um. Yeah,
the survey suggested that psychopaths, despite being able to succeed
(04:25):
early on and quickly in the business world, are actually
really poor managerial performers. I mean, think about it. Psychopaths
cannot truly connect with people. They seem to lack emotion,
and so that while they're poor managerial performers there, they
are still adept at climbing the corporate ladder because they
can cover up weaknesses with all that charm that they
(04:45):
throw around. And UM. A similar study to UM when
we mentioned before, there's a British study of thirty nine
senior managers and chief executives and the study compared survey
results from these guys w patients at a hospital for
people convicted of series crimes. And it turns out that
on certain indicators of psychopathy, the boss's scores either matched
(05:08):
or exceeded. Those are the patients, even people who were
in this this prison hospital for psychopathic reasons. Yeah, and um,
one thing that that emerges in this literature is that
a lot of times males are diagnosed as UH psychopathic
(05:28):
far more often than females. And a lot of the
UH the Psychopathy Checklist developed by Robert Hare and other
UM models of psychopathy that we'll talk about are really
based almost completely on research just on male psychopaths. So
that's kind of where um the gender angle comes in.
We'll talk about a little bit later and why we
(05:50):
wanted to talk about it in the podcast, because yes,
female psychopaths exists, they just might exist in different kind
of ways. But before we get into that one, we
go over the Psychopathy Checklist Screening version right. It is
an abbreviated and highly correlated version of Robert Hare's Psychopathy
(06:10):
Checklist revised, and like you were talking about, as far
as gender, it's designed without consideration for gender, psychiatric status,
or criminal history. So that is what a lot of
these tests are based on, and it's what John Ronson
was talking about in his book and it is. It's
just it's kind of a checklist for being a psycho.
And UM, it's interesting because you know, men have pretty
(06:33):
high it's pcl s V, which is psych Psychopathy Checklist
Screening Version, there's pcl R, which is Psychopathy Checklist Revise,
and men have pretty high scores on the pc L R,
whereas men are women I'm sorry, UM, while they do
have signs of psychopathy, tend to score lower. So it's
(06:54):
like they're not exhibiting the same degree, but they're exhibiting
slightly different facets of it. So UM to to determine
what those facets are, we have UM from the pc
L s V two starting factors, which would be aggressive
narcissism and a socially deviant lifestyle. And then from there
(07:17):
you have four facets UM interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and anti
social And that antisocial facet is really huge and comes
up a lot in psychopathy. UM that all builds into
these kind of character traits. And when I first read antisocial,
I immediately thought of how I sometimes feel at party.
(07:39):
It's just like retreating to a corner. But when we
talk about antisocial personality disorder, it doesn't mean that you
don't like interacting with people. It's that, um, you're The
way you interact with people is uh, you have really
no care to actually build up relationship with them. You're
only using them, If that makes sense. It's the opposite
(07:59):
of being normally social, right, yes, so antisocial and effective.
What you mentioned, um, is emotional. It's how you deal
with people emotionally. So with that in mind, let's talk
about who are the psychopaths. Well, here's something that I
found a little disturbing. More likely to be left handed people.
(08:22):
I'm left handed, so check that box. Uh, I know,
And uh, let's see what else I don't aunt, Krista.
I don't think you falling anything else on this list
left handed dog owners. I don't own a dog. Well, okay,
that's interesting. They say that psychopaths are more likely to
be dog lovers than cat lovers because dogs offer that, um,
(08:44):
unconditional love, which is pretty much the only kind of
love that psychopaths can handle. And you know what, you know,
get off of me. Well, I like dogs, okay, and
I do like that. You're you know, who wants a
pet that's gonna look at you and be like, I'm
not gonna bother me. Hey, you know that's a that's
a pet. You don't have to walk multiple times a day.
(09:04):
That's true, which is why I don't have a dog.
I love dogs, but I don't want to walk it
all the time. To you also, hold outside, it's pretty
narcissistic of you, Caroline, But isn't it genuine and generous
and good hearted? If you and I don't have one,
you don't want to build a relationship with a dog,
that's okay. According to the Handbook of Psychology, psychopaths are arrogant, superficial, deceitful,
(09:30):
and manipulative. And I don't think you and I are
all of those things all the time, so I think
we're safe. Um Effectively, their emotions are shallow and easily altered,
and they're unable to form strong bonds with others. So
that goes back to what we talked about earlier about
their bad bosses are bad managers. You know, they can
tell you what to do and yell at you and stuff,
but they're not going to really be able to connect
(09:50):
with you on any level. Well, and there was also
one study that I saw. I think this was among
psychopathic um criminals or people who have been arrested for
for something. And they noticed that psychopaths have a harder
time reading one's affect on their face. I guess someone's
really sad or upset, they just can't really discern that
(10:14):
too well. And whatever, you're weak, but they're easily tipped
off if you're angry. Interesting, Yeah, they psychopaths are typically
completely lacking an empathy, anxiety, and guilt. So you won't
see a psychopath really worried about anything or worried what
other people think of him or her. And that's why
(10:34):
you might have someone like Ted Bundy, for instance, a
serial killer who might just continue murdering women with no
remorse whatsoever. Right, but not all. That's one of the
myths that has talked about um in the two thousand
seven Scientific American article that all psychopaths are violent. They
are not, and not all violent people are psychopaths. Yeah,
(10:58):
they made a good distinction between someone like Ted Bundy
and someone like David Berkowitz, who was the son of
Sam who believed that speaking of dogs, that his neighbor's
dog was sending him messages to go out and kill people. Berkowitz,
although like Ted Bunny, might have been killing a bunch
(11:19):
of folks. He would not be considered a psychopath because
he was clearly completely delusional and out of touch with reality,
whereas psychopaths um, whether they're violent or not, often have
a very a far more pragmatic kind of contact with
with reality. Correct. Yeah, yes, And there's also the myth
(11:42):
that psychopathy is untreatable. While some of the you know,
more entrenched aspects of it might not be treatable, that
the criminal, the criminal aspect of it can be treatable
in therapy. So it's not like you can't send a
psychopath to see a therapist. They can talk to a
professional and maybe try to avoid doing crazy things. But
(12:03):
it's interesting because there is a question about when this
stuff emerges. Um, there's there's a question of, um, are
you born a psychopath? And you just get worse and worse.
But it's interesting because, um, the way you're raised can
really make a difference. Oh, absolutely if you are. Some
of these researchers are saying that if you are quote
(12:25):
unquote born a psychopath and you're raised in a violent, abusive,
unsupportive home, that you are likely going to end up
going to jail. But if you are a born psychopath
who is raised and loving, supportive family. You get a
good education, you do all this stuff, you might end
up in the business world. You could be one of
those You're gonna go to a nice, you know, upscale school,
(12:45):
get a good education, and go be a CEO somewhere. Well,
that nature nurtured debate is also where UM we come
up against the difference between psychopathy versus sociopathy UM, or
a psychopath versus a sociopath, because a lot of times
psychopath and sociopath are used interchangeably. UM. But it seems
(13:07):
like the most basic difference, uh, that that we can
lay down is that UM, sociopaths are people who are
more UM driven to those kind of deviant behaviors because
of that that environmental impact, whereas it seems like psychopaths
(13:28):
UM are it's a little more nature driven. They're sort
of born that way. UM. And uh one one quick
as side. A couple of hallmarks of possible sociopathy in
childhood is um recurrent bedwedding, which I didn't really understand
and UM and also cruelty to animals. Yeah, that's something
(13:51):
I feel like that's something that everybody kind of latches onto,
like Oh, if the kid hurts animals, he's going to
be a serial killer. But yeah, so that's interesting. But
at the same time, though, a lot of experts will
argue that since your personality doesn't really crystallize until you mature,
it's not um a good idea to try and diagnose
children or even adolescence as um as psychopaths. One thing
(14:15):
I read is that in rare cases where they've been
able to sort of pinpoint um conduct issues in children,
it seems like kids with early onset conduct issues seemed
to be boys, and and those conduct issues translate into
later uh psychopathy or later you know, just playing issues,
(14:36):
whereas females don't tend to have that early onset of
like being a little kid and people being like, oh,
she's gonna be crazy. Um, it's more adolescent onset for
for girls that they've noticed translates into later uh psychopathic behavior.
So the clinical definition of psychopathy goes back to nineteen
(14:56):
forty one um in a medical college of Georgia's psychiatrists
named Hervey M. Checkley, who wrote The Mask of Sanity,
which was one of the first pieces of literature to
really describe um this pathology, right and he made the
point that psychopaths make a good and first impression, which
we've talked about and can strike strangers is completely normal. Yeah, Unfortunately,
(15:18):
they're self centered, dishonest, and undependable. Right, And there was
UM and it reminds me of another study because they're
there's really been a lot of studies on on psychopaths
in romantic relationships, and it's always heterosexual males UM and
female quote unquote victims of these psychopathic tendencies who are
(15:39):
incredibly charming and they are total pathological liars and um
completely emotionally and sometimes will physically abuse these women. And
uh but yeah, they at first that the women have
no no idea that they are dealing with a psychopath. Yeah,
which is frightening. And you know, I even that they
(16:00):
might not even know for twenty years. Sure you might
just think, well, he's got a forceful personality. But um,
you know, we're talking about the Scientific American Art article
and the writers Scott, Lillianfield and hell Arkowitz argue with
traditional UM research that says that psychopathy is synonymous with
UM anti social personality disorder and other like sociopathy. UM.
(16:26):
They say that it's not that research indicates that the
these disorders only overlap moderately. Well, and there was a
big controversy too because um in the Carol and correct
me if I'm wrong, But in the newest edition of
the D s M Manual, they don't include psychopathy as
its own disorder. It's all, um, umbrella under antisocial personality disorder. Correct,
(16:50):
and the diagnostic criteria criteria are not all the same.
But um, the writers of this latest edition of the
manual just says that, yeah, psychopathy calls under antisocial, dissocial
and sociopathic personality disorders. But so here's the question that
we've been meaning to get to as we've laid this
(17:11):
foundation of what psychopathy is. Uh, And the question is
why are men so more commonly diagnosed certainly characterized as psychopaths? Right? Well,
it seems like, you know, I mentioned that men score
higher on the pcl R test and and women have
(17:31):
slightly lower scores. But psychopathy and female um samples quote
unquote samples is associated with personality measures selected to reflect
the glib, grandiose, callous, and unempathetic characterizations. So we're just
maybe being characterized slightly different in our expressions of psychopathy.
Than men are, so in studies of incarcerated women, they
(17:55):
tend to demonstrate lower rates of that antisocial personality disorder,
which is one of the hallmarks of psychopathy in men,
but they have higher rates of borderline personality disorder and
histrionic personality disorder. So to me, it makes sense that
UM that that there isn't a perfect corey or correspondence
(18:17):
between male and female manifestations of psychopathy, since historically all
of that clinical literature on psychopaths is based on observations
from male patients. Right and several researchers have called for
perhaps more specific tests for for not only for gender,
but also for age, because there have been a lot
(18:38):
of studies on adolescent inmates, young men, and young women
who are incarcerated UM and speaking of being incarcerated after
they get out of the joint, men and women show
comparable rates of violence, but there are differences according to gender.
Women tend to be violent in the home and towards
family members. They inflict less serious injury and are less
(18:59):
often arrested for their violent behavior. UM. Women diagnosed with
antisocial personality disorder, we're more likely than men with a
disorder to be irresponsible as parents to engage in prostitution
and to have been physically violent against sex partners and children.
And as far as prostitution goes, risk taking, really risky
behavior is part of psychopathy. So women are more likely
(19:22):
to be like, whoo, I'm just gonna go be a
frost dope seven men are so not that we should
say whoo, no, not at all, Okay, Um, Yeah, but
the interpersonal context and the family become the major focus
of women's health problems. So there's been the suggestion that
certain disorders that are diagnosed more commonly in women, like
you mentioned borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder may represent
(19:47):
our particular expression. So we're just doing it differently. Yeah,
it seems like, um, male psychopaths probably uh get the higher,
more public profile because um they're more word with their
expressions of it, whereas psychopathy and females might be a
little more insidious and it's focused very tightly on their
(20:08):
closest social networks, which can also make it even more
damaging to those people, whether they are partners or children
or close friends and family. Um, who might be the
victims of that kind of uh psychopathic behavior, Right, The
Handbook of Psychopathy, I mean has a really excellent view
(20:31):
on all this stuff. I mean, it really makes it
all makes sense. I mean, it is a Handbook of psychopathy,
so I would have the word. But um, you know,
they call for the the whole body of research that
we have done, that we have available to us on socialization,
sex roles, biological developmental differences between genders, all of the
stuff that we've studied about you know, men and women,
mars and venus we should apply to studying mental disorders
(20:55):
and psychopathy because you know, it's studies have shown that
overall the pcl R and the pc L s V
are are pretty good indicators for both men and women.
But you know, since women score slightly differently, maybe we
should have more specific ways to look at them. Yeah,
and um, just speaking about the gender differences too, isn't
(21:17):
another uh more biological hallmark of psychopathies higher levels of testosterone.
There are questions too, as to whether or not you
can use MRI scans to uh to pinpoint psychopathy in
the brain and how individual brains work. So it seems
like even though we've been looking at psychopathy since n one,
(21:37):
with the publication of the mask of sanity. The study
is still kind of in its infancy in a way
because we haven't figured out why these gender differences exist,
and it's still kind of limited to these, uh, these
these checklists. Maybe we should have something better than asking
the psychopath if you the psychopath right, since they tend
(21:59):
to lie constantly manipulate that. The researchers are like, oh gosh,
he was so well ab but know that was one
of the things a lot of times, UM, psychopathic inmates
are better than non psychopathic inmates and getting out of
jail or getting their sentences reduced because they're like, look,
how well behaved nine exactly, because they can wear the
mask of sanity and talk their way out of it.
(22:21):
Her VM check le see better things are coming out
of Augusta than just the Master's tournament. Um, speaking of
inmates again, because you know it's yeah, I'm good with
some you know gold mine. A Swedish study of offenders
found gender differences in anti social behavior, with female psychopaths
displaying significantly more lying, deceitfulness, and lack of control, and
(22:45):
male psychopaths in general were more antisocial. Though, and I
want to just talk about briefly, um, antisocial personality disorder,
because like you said, it's not sitting in a corner
and with your arms crossed and not wanting to join
the party. Um, it's it's very closely tied in with psychopathy.
So it's I can understand why the d s M
has psychopathy sort of under that umbrella. UM, But it's
(23:07):
a mental health condition in which a person has a
long term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights
of others, and the behavior is often criminal. And it's interesting, uh,
the symptoms of psychopathy and UM antisocial personality disorder. In
a study in the European journal Personality in two thousand
nine found that those disorders were negatively associated with conscientiousness
(23:30):
and agreeableness in addition to warmth this is a great person,
And they're positively associated with scores on anger and hostility,
impulsiveness and excitement seeking. Yet a lot of times they
can be that that that combination, which when you read
it like that, growing sounds like quite a repulsive character,
(23:51):
not someone that we would be uh too fond of,
and yet a lot of times um. One of the
evolutionary explanations for this psychopathic behavior is that that parasitic
kind of pathology is almost a survival tool for these people. Yeah,
(24:12):
they just kind of have that that whole empathy chip
completely missing and tossing out. One more study to demonstrate
how these gender differences not only exists in the adult population,
but also um in adolescents. This is a two thousand
nine study from the University of Cologne that examined adolescent
female and male detainees and highlighted those different psychopathic dimensions
(24:38):
between the The younger male and female delinquents. Right, males
tended to show higher scores for externalizing behavior and psychopathic dimensions.
There's no association really found between psychopathic behavior and suicidal behavior,
and there is a negative relationship, and I mentioned this
earlierbout anxiety. There's a negative relation to the psychop but
(25:00):
the total score regarding ancient anxious depressive behavior, they're they're
not really worried, They're they're they're fine, um. Whereas delinquent
females showed higher internalizing problem scores and had a positive
relationship between suicidal behavior and their total score, as well
as their effective and antisocial dimensions. So it seems like
(25:22):
women or these young women that they studied were more
likely to internalize their problems, you know, their mental issues,
how they feel about the world, and we're more likely
to consider suicide. So we've talked a lot about about
science and all of these these clinical terms UM and
and really we're, like I said, we we still haven't
figured out why exactly these gender differences exist, whether it
(25:46):
has to do with socialization, what part biology plays, um
and how exactly to sets out all of those all
of those variations between male and female psychopaths. But in
the mean time, I did find um man, I said,
one more study. But here's a final one and it's
related to lying. Oh no, I'm left um but but
(26:11):
but this is a this is about psychopaths, female psychopaths
in fiction. So in case uh any listeners out there
want to get a sense of of what a female
psychopath looks like, here are a few characters that you could, uh,
you could look at, such as Lady macbeth um the
(26:32):
stepmother and stepsisters in Grimm's Cinderella also called out Vita
Pierce from Mildred Pierce, which was recently made into a
mini series and Evan rachel Wood played Vita. I'd like
to see that. Actually it was an HPO mini series. Um.
Also for fans of his dark materials, Marissa Culter would
(26:55):
also constitute a psychopath and Phyllis nerd nerd Linger in
a double indemnity for any silver screen fans out there,
Barbara Stanwick's character who yeah, total psychopath? Um? So, yeah,
have you encountered any psychopaths? Listeners? Are you a psychopath?
You probably won't tell us if you are, because you're
(27:18):
probably like, I am so charming, but I don't know
what they're talking about. It did, but what I what
I was saying that earlier about the psychopaths and romantic
relationships does seem to be a common theme if you
if you will google women psychopaths, a lot of what
comes up is not about women who are psychopaths, but
women who have dated psychopaths. Yeah, so why doesn't call
(27:41):
that doesn't necessarily mean he's a psychopath? Right? But you know,
if if there's some other if any of this sounds
familiar to you, maybe you're dating a psychopath. Perhaps. Yeah.
The Peter Stars guards uh character in an Education seems
to be pretty prototypical kind of male intersexual psychopath. Yeah,
so we hope that you have enjoyed this and um, Now,
(28:03):
there was one thing that uh that John Ronson, who
wrote The Psychopath, told Time magazine, and that's once you
become aware of the hallmarks of psychopathy, it starts to
seem like you are surrounded by psychopaths. Yeah, which you know,
maybe you are, I don't know where you are, but
but incredibly common in the workplace. And I bet there
(28:24):
are a lot of listeners out there nodding and thinking
I've worked for one of those. Uh. And I really
wish that our outro could be a little bit of
talking heads too bad. Instead, we will read a couple
of emails written to our address, mom stuff at how
steph works dot com. Okay, this is an email from
(28:47):
David about our sex Ed podcast. He said, I want
to fill you in on some of my sex said
in Canada. First introduction came from the talk with my
dad and the usual conversations with friends. In grade seven
and eight, the education was pretty lacking except for one thing.
Open theater. This was a group composed of grade eight
through ten students who came to the school to perform
a variety of skits about sex. It was very funny.
(29:08):
I seem to remember one about Luke Skywalker playing with
his quote unquote lightsaber. Funny stuff and probably one of
the best ways to teach kids about sex. Cover everything
and just be honest. And thanks to everyone to who
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great collection over there if you want to go check
that out and add your own. We'd love to hear
(29:30):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen. Today we're talking
(00:20):
about psychopaths, kiss Get Safe and UM. I got to
thinking about this topic because of a book that journalist
John Ronson wrote called The Psychopath Test, and it's released
earlier this year, and it looks into the quote unquote
madness industry. Um. He talked to a bunch of psychologists
and he even talked to some patients, including one who
(00:43):
said that he claimed to be a psychopath just to
get a lighter sentence handed down from the judge and
then he couldn't get out of the asylum or wherever
he was. But I just thought it was interesting. I
wanted to look at psychopaths, psychopathy. Sorry, it's a it's
a tricky word. I wanted to look psychopathy and gender.
Who are psychopaths? Where are you more likely to find them?
(01:05):
Because they're really not a huge chunk of the population.
The statistic is that about one percent of human beings
are psychopaths. But you know, where what segment of the
population that psychopaths might be more common is in the workplace. Interesting,
(01:25):
an estimated four percent of business leaders qualify as psychopaths.
And this is nothing. Let's Carolin, let's go ahead and uh,
but a disclaimer right now, this is non directed at
anyone that you nor I work with. Yeah, nobody get
upset there speaking in general. This is coming from a
Time magazine reported on this. I think it was springboarding
(01:48):
off of the psychopath test by John Ronson, and the
estimate was that one in five ceo s probably qualify
as psychopaths. Because psychopathy and ruthless capitalism go pretty well together. Yeah,
you might come across someone who is just a manipulative
(02:09):
jerk with no emotions but incredibly charming, but incredibly charming
and manipulative. And the thing is that's actually really good
in the business world. And there's a lot of talk
in studies out there and in Ronson's book about how
you know, you might be a jerk and you might
not have a lot of genuine close friends, but you're
really successful in business because to become a CEO or
(02:32):
some some type of high up leader, there has to
be a degree of of ruthlessness of willing to being
willing to climb your way to the top. And so
you know a lot of people are like I like
that guy. He doesn't seem to care. He just climbs
right up there and steps on people. So it can
help help you get ahead if you're a manipulative psychopathic jerk.
(02:53):
Right um. They're psychologist Paul babbiac So a two and
three American corporate professionals, and evaluated their psychopathic traits using
a checklist developed by psychopathy expert Robert Hare and hair Is.
Checklist is um the the go to rubric for determining
(03:14):
whether or not someone may or may not be a psychopath.
Now this does not mean, I think a lot of
times we conflate uh psychopaths with the psycho killers, right um.
And so it doesn't mean that a lot of ceo
s or you know, have a have a knife in
their desks. Not everybody's American psycho, right um. But it's
(03:35):
those it's those qualities that Caroline was talking about and
their natural tendency to be charming. It sounds like they
have that perfect balance of office politics charm. You know
that that provides the kind of social lubricant that you
need to get buy in the workplace with complete and
total ruthlessness and and never never a second. Also, you know,
(04:00):
if you think about the subprime mortgage fiasco. Uh, John
Ronson theorizes that, you know what, some of that could
have been propelled by some underlying psychopathy industry, just like,
let's just make all the money we can. Yeah, it
doesn't matter about these people that were hurting. Um. Yeah,
the survey suggested that psychopaths, despite being able to succeed
(04:25):
early on and quickly in the business world, are actually
really poor managerial performers. I mean, think about it. Psychopaths
cannot truly connect with people. They seem to lack emotion,
and so that while they're poor managerial performers there, they
are still adept at climbing the corporate ladder because they
can cover up weaknesses with all that charm that they
(04:45):
throw around. And UM. A similar study to UM when
we mentioned before, there's a British study of thirty nine
senior managers and chief executives and the study compared survey
results from these guys w patients at a hospital for
people convicted of series crimes. And it turns out that
on certain indicators of psychopathy, the boss's scores either matched
(05:08):
or exceeded. Those are the patients, even people who were
in this this prison hospital for psychopathic reasons. Yeah, and um,
one thing that that emerges in this literature is that
a lot of times males are diagnosed as UH psychopathic
(05:28):
far more often than females. And a lot of the
UH the Psychopathy Checklist developed by Robert Hare and other
UM models of psychopathy that we'll talk about are really
based almost completely on research just on male psychopaths. So
that's kind of where um the gender angle comes in.
We'll talk about a little bit later and why we
(05:50):
wanted to talk about it in the podcast, because yes,
female psychopaths exists, they just might exist in different kind
of ways. But before we get into that one, we
go over the Psychopathy Checklist Screening version right. It is
an abbreviated and highly correlated version of Robert Hare's Psychopathy
(06:10):
Checklist revised, and like you were talking about, as far
as gender, it's designed without consideration for gender, psychiatric status,
or criminal history. So that is what a lot of
these tests are based on, and it's what John Ronson
was talking about in his book and it is. It's
just it's kind of a checklist for being a psycho.
And UM, it's interesting because you know, men have pretty
(06:33):
high it's pcl s V, which is psych Psychopathy Checklist
Screening Version, there's pcl R, which is Psychopathy Checklist Revise,
and men have pretty high scores on the pc L R,
whereas men are women I'm sorry, UM, while they do
have signs of psychopathy, tend to score lower. So it's
(06:54):
like they're not exhibiting the same degree, but they're exhibiting
slightly different facets of it. So UM to to determine
what those facets are, we have UM from the pc
L s V two starting factors, which would be aggressive
narcissism and a socially deviant lifestyle. And then from there
(07:17):
you have four facets UM interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and anti
social And that antisocial facet is really huge and comes
up a lot in psychopathy. UM that all builds into
these kind of character traits. And when I first read antisocial,
I immediately thought of how I sometimes feel at party.
(07:39):
It's just like retreating to a corner. But when we
talk about antisocial personality disorder, it doesn't mean that you
don't like interacting with people. It's that, um, you're The
way you interact with people is uh, you have really
no care to actually build up relationship with them. You're
only using them, If that makes sense. It's the opposite
(07:59):
of being normally social, right, yes, so antisocial and effective.
What you mentioned, um, is emotional. It's how you deal
with people emotionally. So with that in mind, let's talk
about who are the psychopaths. Well, here's something that I
found a little disturbing. More likely to be left handed people.
(08:22):
I'm left handed, so check that box. Uh, I know,
And uh, let's see what else I don't aunt, Krista.
I don't think you falling anything else on this list
left handed dog owners. I don't own a dog. Well, okay,
that's interesting. They say that psychopaths are more likely to
be dog lovers than cat lovers because dogs offer that, um,
(08:44):
unconditional love, which is pretty much the only kind of
love that psychopaths can handle. And you know what, you know,
get off of me. Well, I like dogs, okay, and
I do like that. You're you know, who wants a
pet that's gonna look at you and be like, I'm
not gonna bother me. Hey, you know that's a that's
a pet. You don't have to walk multiple times a day.
(09:04):
That's true, which is why I don't have a dog.
I love dogs, but I don't want to walk it
all the time. To you also, hold outside, it's pretty
narcissistic of you, Caroline, But isn't it genuine and generous
and good hearted? If you and I don't have one,
you don't want to build a relationship with a dog,
that's okay. According to the Handbook of Psychology, psychopaths are arrogant, superficial, deceitful,
(09:30):
and manipulative. And I don't think you and I are
all of those things all the time, so I think
we're safe. Um Effectively, their emotions are shallow and easily altered,
and they're unable to form strong bonds with others. So
that goes back to what we talked about earlier about
their bad bosses are bad managers. You know, they can
tell you what to do and yell at you and stuff,
but they're not going to really be able to connect
(09:50):
with you on any level. Well, and there was also
one study that I saw. I think this was among
psychopathic um criminals or people who have been arrested for
for something. And they noticed that psychopaths have a harder
time reading one's affect on their face. I guess someone's
really sad or upset, they just can't really discern that
(10:14):
too well. And whatever, you're weak, but they're easily tipped
off if you're angry. Interesting, Yeah, they psychopaths are typically
completely lacking an empathy, anxiety, and guilt. So you won't
see a psychopath really worried about anything or worried what
other people think of him or her. And that's why
(10:34):
you might have someone like Ted Bundy, for instance, a
serial killer who might just continue murdering women with no
remorse whatsoever. Right, but not all. That's one of the
myths that has talked about um in the two thousand
seven Scientific American article that all psychopaths are violent. They
are not, and not all violent people are psychopaths. Yeah,
(10:58):
they made a good distinction between someone like Ted Bundy
and someone like David Berkowitz, who was the son of
Sam who believed that speaking of dogs, that his neighbor's
dog was sending him messages to go out and kill people. Berkowitz,
although like Ted Bunny, might have been killing a bunch
(11:19):
of folks. He would not be considered a psychopath because
he was clearly completely delusional and out of touch with reality,
whereas psychopaths um, whether they're violent or not, often have
a very a far more pragmatic kind of contact with
with reality. Correct. Yeah, yes, And there's also the myth
(11:42):
that psychopathy is untreatable. While some of the you know,
more entrenched aspects of it might not be treatable, that
the criminal, the criminal aspect of it can be treatable
in therapy. So it's not like you can't send a
psychopath to see a therapist. They can talk to a
professional and maybe try to avoid doing crazy things. But
(12:03):
it's interesting because there is a question about when this
stuff emerges. Um, there's there's a question of, um, are
you born a psychopath? And you just get worse and worse.
But it's interesting because, um, the way you're raised can
really make a difference. Oh, absolutely if you are. Some
of these researchers are saying that if you are quote
(12:25):
unquote born a psychopath and you're raised in a violent, abusive,
unsupportive home, that you are likely going to end up
going to jail. But if you are a born psychopath
who is raised and loving, supportive family. You get a
good education, you do all this stuff, you might end
up in the business world. You could be one of
those You're gonna go to a nice, you know, upscale school,
(12:45):
get a good education, and go be a CEO somewhere. Well,
that nature nurtured debate is also where UM we come
up against the difference between psychopathy versus sociopathy UM, or
a psychopath versus a sociopath, because a lot of times
psychopath and sociopath are used interchangeably. UM. But it seems
(13:07):
like the most basic difference, uh, that that we can
lay down is that UM, sociopaths are people who are
more UM driven to those kind of deviant behaviors because
of that that environmental impact, whereas it seems like psychopaths
(13:28):
UM are it's a little more nature driven. They're sort
of born that way. UM. And uh one one quick
as side. A couple of hallmarks of possible sociopathy in
childhood is um recurrent bedwedding, which I didn't really understand
and UM and also cruelty to animals. Yeah, that's something
(13:51):
I feel like that's something that everybody kind of latches onto,
like Oh, if the kid hurts animals, he's going to
be a serial killer. But yeah, so that's interesting. But
at the same time, though, a lot of experts will
argue that since your personality doesn't really crystallize until you mature,
it's not um a good idea to try and diagnose
children or even adolescence as um as psychopaths. One thing
(14:15):
I read is that in rare cases where they've been
able to sort of pinpoint um conduct issues in children,
it seems like kids with early onset conduct issues seemed
to be boys, and and those conduct issues translate into
later uh psychopathy or later you know, just playing issues,
(14:36):
whereas females don't tend to have that early onset of
like being a little kid and people being like, oh,
she's gonna be crazy. Um, it's more adolescent onset for
for girls that they've noticed translates into later uh psychopathic behavior.
So the clinical definition of psychopathy goes back to nineteen
(14:56):
forty one um in a medical college of Georgia's psychiatrists
named Hervey M. Checkley, who wrote The Mask of Sanity,
which was one of the first pieces of literature to
really describe um this pathology, right and he made the
point that psychopaths make a good and first impression, which
we've talked about and can strike strangers is completely normal. Yeah, Unfortunately,
(15:18):
they're self centered, dishonest, and undependable. Right, And there was
UM and it reminds me of another study because they're
there's really been a lot of studies on on psychopaths
in romantic relationships, and it's always heterosexual males UM and
female quote unquote victims of these psychopathic tendencies who are
(15:39):
incredibly charming and they are total pathological liars and um
completely emotionally and sometimes will physically abuse these women. And
uh but yeah, they at first that the women have
no no idea that they are dealing with a psychopath. Yeah,
which is frightening. And you know, I even that they
(16:00):
might not even know for twenty years. Sure you might
just think, well, he's got a forceful personality. But um,
you know, we're talking about the Scientific American Art article
and the writers Scott, Lillianfield and hell Arkowitz argue with
traditional UM research that says that psychopathy is synonymous with
UM anti social personality disorder and other like sociopathy. UM.
(16:26):
They say that it's not that research indicates that the
these disorders only overlap moderately. Well, and there was a
big controversy too because um in the Carol and correct
me if I'm wrong, But in the newest edition of
the D s M Manual, they don't include psychopathy as
its own disorder. It's all, um, umbrella under antisocial personality disorder. Correct,
(16:50):
and the diagnostic criteria criteria are not all the same.
But um, the writers of this latest edition of the
manual just says that, yeah, psychopathy calls under antisocial, dissocial
and sociopathic personality disorders. But so here's the question that
we've been meaning to get to as we've laid this
(17:11):
foundation of what psychopathy is. Uh, And the question is
why are men so more commonly diagnosed certainly characterized as psychopaths? Right? Well,
it seems like, you know, I mentioned that men score
higher on the pcl R test and and women have
(17:31):
slightly lower scores. But psychopathy and female um samples quote
unquote samples is associated with personality measures selected to reflect
the glib, grandiose, callous, and unempathetic characterizations. So we're just
maybe being characterized slightly different in our expressions of psychopathy.
Than men are, so in studies of incarcerated women, they
(17:55):
tend to demonstrate lower rates of that antisocial personality disorder,
which is one of the hallmarks of psychopathy in men,
but they have higher rates of borderline personality disorder and
histrionic personality disorder. So to me, it makes sense that
UM that that there isn't a perfect corey or correspondence
(18:17):
between male and female manifestations of psychopathy, since historically all
of that clinical literature on psychopaths is based on observations
from male patients. Right and several researchers have called for
perhaps more specific tests for for not only for gender,
but also for age, because there have been a lot
(18:38):
of studies on adolescent inmates, young men, and young women
who are incarcerated UM and speaking of being incarcerated after
they get out of the joint, men and women show
comparable rates of violence, but there are differences according to gender.
Women tend to be violent in the home and towards
family members. They inflict less serious injury and are less
(18:59):
often arrested for their violent behavior. UM. Women diagnosed with
antisocial personality disorder, we're more likely than men with a
disorder to be irresponsible as parents to engage in prostitution
and to have been physically violent against sex partners and children.
And as far as prostitution goes, risk taking, really risky
behavior is part of psychopathy. So women are more likely
(19:22):
to be like, whoo, I'm just gonna go be a
frost dope seven men are so not that we should
say whoo, no, not at all, Okay, Um, Yeah, but
the interpersonal context and the family become the major focus
of women's health problems. So there's been the suggestion that
certain disorders that are diagnosed more commonly in women, like
you mentioned borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder may represent
(19:47):
our particular expression. So we're just doing it differently. Yeah,
it seems like, um, male psychopaths probably uh get the higher,
more public profile because um they're more word with their
expressions of it, whereas psychopathy and females might be a
little more insidious and it's focused very tightly on their
(20:08):
closest social networks, which can also make it even more
damaging to those people, whether they are partners or children
or close friends and family. Um, who might be the
victims of that kind of uh psychopathic behavior, Right, The
Handbook of Psychopathy, I mean has a really excellent view
(20:31):
on all this stuff. I mean, it really makes it
all makes sense. I mean, it is a Handbook of psychopathy,
so I would have the word. But um, you know,
they call for the the whole body of research that
we have done, that we have available to us on socialization,
sex roles, biological developmental differences between genders, all of the
stuff that we've studied about you know, men and women,
mars and venus we should apply to studying mental disorders
(20:55):
and psychopathy because you know, it's studies have shown that
overall the pcl R and the pc L s V
are are pretty good indicators for both men and women.
But you know, since women score slightly differently, maybe we
should have more specific ways to look at them. Yeah,
and um, just speaking about the gender differences too, isn't
(21:17):
another uh more biological hallmark of psychopathies higher levels of testosterone.
There are questions too, as to whether or not you
can use MRI scans to uh to pinpoint psychopathy in
the brain and how individual brains work. So it seems
like even though we've been looking at psychopathy since n one,
(21:37):
with the publication of the mask of sanity. The study
is still kind of in its infancy in a way
because we haven't figured out why these gender differences exist,
and it's still kind of limited to these, uh, these
these checklists. Maybe we should have something better than asking
the psychopath if you the psychopath right, since they tend
(21:59):
to lie constantly manipulate that. The researchers are like, oh gosh,
he was so well ab but know that was one
of the things a lot of times, UM, psychopathic inmates
are better than non psychopathic inmates and getting out of
jail or getting their sentences reduced because they're like, look,
how well behaved nine exactly, because they can wear the
mask of sanity and talk their way out of it.
(22:21):
Her VM check le see better things are coming out
of Augusta than just the Master's tournament. Um, speaking of
inmates again, because you know it's yeah, I'm good with
some you know gold mine. A Swedish study of offenders
found gender differences in anti social behavior, with female psychopaths
displaying significantly more lying, deceitfulness, and lack of control, and
(22:45):
male psychopaths in general were more antisocial. Though, and I
want to just talk about briefly, um, antisocial personality disorder,
because like you said, it's not sitting in a corner
and with your arms crossed and not wanting to join
the party. Um, it's it's very closely tied in with psychopathy.
So it's I can understand why the d s M
has psychopathy sort of under that umbrella. UM, But it's
(23:07):
a mental health condition in which a person has a
long term pattern of manipulating, exploiting, or violating the rights
of others, and the behavior is often criminal. And it's interesting, uh,
the symptoms of psychopathy and UM antisocial personality disorder. In
a study in the European journal Personality in two thousand
nine found that those disorders were negatively associated with conscientiousness
(23:30):
and agreeableness in addition to warmth this is a great person,
And they're positively associated with scores on anger and hostility,
impulsiveness and excitement seeking. Yet a lot of times they
can be that that that combination, which when you read
it like that, growing sounds like quite a repulsive character,
(23:51):
not someone that we would be uh too fond of,
and yet a lot of times um. One of the
evolutionary explanations for this psychopathic behavior is that that parasitic
kind of pathology is almost a survival tool for these people. Yeah,
(24:12):
they just kind of have that that whole empathy chip
completely missing and tossing out. One more study to demonstrate
how these gender differences not only exists in the adult population,
but also um in adolescents. This is a two thousand
nine study from the University of Cologne that examined adolescent
female and male detainees and highlighted those different psychopathic dimensions
(24:38):
between the The younger male and female delinquents. Right, males
tended to show higher scores for externalizing behavior and psychopathic dimensions.
There's no association really found between psychopathic behavior and suicidal behavior,
and there is a negative relationship, and I mentioned this
earlierbout anxiety. There's a negative relation to the psychop but
(25:00):
the total score regarding ancient anxious depressive behavior, they're they're
not really worried, They're they're they're fine, um. Whereas delinquent
females showed higher internalizing problem scores and had a positive
relationship between suicidal behavior and their total score, as well
as their effective and antisocial dimensions. So it seems like
(25:22):
women or these young women that they studied were more
likely to internalize their problems, you know, their mental issues,
how they feel about the world, and we're more likely
to consider suicide. So we've talked a lot about about
science and all of these these clinical terms UM and
and really we're, like I said, we we still haven't
figured out why exactly these gender differences exist, whether it
(25:46):
has to do with socialization, what part biology plays, um
and how exactly to sets out all of those all
of those variations between male and female psychopaths. But in
the mean time, I did find um man, I said,
one more study. But here's a final one and it's
related to lying. Oh no, I'm left um but but
(26:11):
but this is a this is about psychopaths, female psychopaths
in fiction. So in case uh any listeners out there
want to get a sense of of what a female
psychopath looks like, here are a few characters that you could, uh,
you could look at, such as Lady macbeth um the
(26:32):
stepmother and stepsisters in Grimm's Cinderella also called out Vita
Pierce from Mildred Pierce, which was recently made into a
mini series and Evan rachel Wood played Vita. I'd like
to see that. Actually it was an HPO mini series. Um.
Also for fans of his dark materials, Marissa Culter would
(26:55):
also constitute a psychopath and Phyllis nerd nerd Linger in
a double indemnity for any silver screen fans out there,
Barbara Stanwick's character who yeah, total psychopath? Um? So, yeah,
have you encountered any psychopaths? Listeners? Are you a psychopath?
You probably won't tell us if you are, because you're
(27:18):
probably like, I am so charming, but I don't know
what they're talking about. It did, but what I what
I was saying that earlier about the psychopaths and romantic
relationships does seem to be a common theme if you
if you will google women psychopaths, a lot of what
comes up is not about women who are psychopaths, but
women who have dated psychopaths. Yeah, so why doesn't call
(27:41):
that doesn't necessarily mean he's a psychopath? Right? But you know,
if if there's some other if any of this sounds
familiar to you, maybe you're dating a psychopath. Perhaps. Yeah.
The Peter Stars guards uh character in an Education seems
to be pretty prototypical kind of male intersexual psychopath. Yeah,
so we hope that you have enjoyed this and um, Now,
(28:03):
there was one thing that uh that John Ronson, who
wrote The Psychopath, told Time magazine, and that's once you
become aware of the hallmarks of psychopathy, it starts to
seem like you are surrounded by psychopaths. Yeah, which you know,
maybe you are, I don't know where you are, but
but incredibly common in the workplace. And I bet there
(28:24):
are a lot of listeners out there nodding and thinking
I've worked for one of those. Uh. And I really
wish that our outro could be a little bit of
talking heads too bad. Instead, we will read a couple
of emails written to our address, mom stuff at how
steph works dot com. Okay, this is an email from
(28:47):
David about our sex Ed podcast. He said, I want
to fill you in on some of my sex said
in Canada. First introduction came from the talk with my
dad and the usual conversations with friends. In grade seven
and eight, the education was pretty lacking except for one thing.
Open theater. This was a group composed of grade eight
through ten students who came to the school to perform
a variety of skits about sex. It was very funny.
(29:08):
I seem to remember one about Luke Skywalker playing with
his quote unquote lightsaber. Funny stuff and probably one of
the best ways to teach kids about sex. Cover everything
and just be honest. And thanks to everyone to who
has shared your sex ad stories on Facebook. There's a
great collection over there if you want to go check
that out and add your own. We'd love to hear
(29:30):
from you, and again, if you want to send us
an email, the addresses mom Stuff at how stuff Works
dot com and you can also follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff podcast, and of course you can read
the blog during the week. It's stuff Mom Never Told
You at how Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to
check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
(29:52):
Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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