WE DISCUSS PSYCHOPATHY WITH DR. FRICK

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
From wherever you are around the world, around the world. Welcome to the
Circle of Insight, a show thatexplores the many facets of human behavior and
the wonders of the human mind.And now here's your host, doctor Carlos.

(00:26):
Welcome back everyone. We have anothergreat show today. We have doctor
Paul J. Frick. He's aRoyal Crumpler Memorial Chair at the Department of
Psychology at Louisiana State University LSU.You can find more information about him at
faculty dot l SU dot eed uslash p Frick Lab. That's f R
I c K Lab backslash. Buton more information and why you why do

(00:50):
you even find more information? Becausetoday we're gonna be talking about psychopaths and
psychopathy. Before we get started.If we want to support our show,
make sure to share and subscribe.Hit that like button. We would appreciate
it. Let's not waste any moretime. We're going to find out something
about specific traits that seem to beassociated with psychopathy. So we're gonna be
talking about callous and unemotional traits.Well, let's get started. Welcome doctor

(01:11):
Frick, Thank you, Doctor Carlos'sgood to be here. It's great to
be here too. You know,it's great to have you, not great
to be here, it's great tobe here as well. But anyway,
you know, this is a fascinatingtopic because everybody wants to know about psychopaths,
and America seems to be consumed bypsychopaths. But first things first,

(01:32):
can you define for us what callousand unemotional traits mean? Sure? And
I also want to place it intoit in a good context because we don't
talk about it as being psychopathy asmuch when we're talking about kids and adolessons,
Because these are traits that, yes, can put the child at risk

(01:53):
for later problems, potentially psychopathy,but early on they're so changeable that we
don't want to put a label likepsychopathy on it. And you know,
the way we got these traits,which I don't answer your question in a
second, was not just by lookingat the definition of psychopathy, but also

(02:13):
looking at what developmentalists we're calling prosocial emotions, things like empathy and guilt
and things that a lot of peoplewould call the conscience of a child and
how that develops. And so thatactually I borrowed a lot more from that
field, or at least as muchas I did from understanding psychopathy to try

(02:34):
to understand why some kids display behaviorproblems because of a lack of guilt and
empathy and things like that, andwhy some other kids develop behavior problems for
completely different reasons. And so backto your question. The callous and emotional
part is defined by four key traits. One is a lack of guilt,
so they don't feel bad when theydo something wrong. Another is a callous

(02:59):
lack of empathy. They don't carewho they hurt or if they hurt somebody.
They don't care how well they're doingthings. They don't put forth effort
in important things. They don't carehow they do in schoolwork or in sports
and really anything. They don't careabout doing things well, and they generally
show what's considered so either constricted orsuperficial affect with parents often will say is

(03:21):
you know, I just can't tellhow much how he's feeling. You know,
you know, it's just so hardhe doesn't express his emotions and I
never know how he's feeling. Solack of empathy, lack of lack of
sort of motivation for doing things well, and sort of how constricted orficial emotions

(03:44):
are. The four key features.Okay, you know, that made me
think about a lot of questions,and then the first one off to get
go is conduct disorder. Kind ofsounds like a lot of like that,
am I off here? Well,it's an important question because the goal with
callous and emotional traits is to determineone reason for why kids have conduct disorder.

(04:08):
So let's step back. Conduct disorderjust means a child has behavior problems.
They may be doing things that hurtothers, like aggression and bullying,
or they may be stealing or lyingor breaking the rules like running away from
home or skipping school. So thoseare all behavior problems. And so the

(04:28):
broad area of research that I dois to say, Okay, what are
some of the most common reasons thatkids show the behavior problems. And one
potential reason is that they're by whoit hurts where you know, they don't
feel bad if other people are upsetwith them, And that's the callous and

(04:50):
emotional part. But to be honestwith you, that's only a very small
percentage of kids with conduct disorder.There are many other reasons why kids can
have behavior problems. So, forexample, some can have conter disorder because
they act without they do things quicklywithout thinking of the consequences. They feel
bad afterwards and they wish they hadn'tdone it, but they acted impulsively,

(05:11):
or they get mad so easily thattheir emotions just shoot off and they could
seriously hurt people when they're mad.But when they calm down, they feel
bad and they say, oh,man, I wish I hadn't done that,
you know, I wish I hadn'tgotten so mad. You see,
that's a very different thing than somebodywho just doesn't care about the consequences of
their behavior. So the way tothink about callous and emotional traits is it

(05:32):
is, you know, defining onepotential pathway that kids develop behavior problems.
It's interesting beause a lot of thingspumped up again in my head, and
I'm thinking of adolescent limited from doctorBoffett. Those kind of the children use
who are thinking they're becoming these kindof emotionally reactive but don't have the callous
and unemotional traits where they fit moreinto adolescent or might being too simplistic,

(05:55):
Actually you're designating a completely different thirdgroup. So the ones I was talking
about where they got angry easily aremore impulsive those all tend to fall more
into the childhood on set, thegroup that starts showing behaviors before adolescens.
The adolescent onset group actually is acompletely different group where they show an exaggeration

(06:18):
sort of the normal rebelliousness of adolescents. They're acting out because they want to
prove that nobody can tell them whatto do, and you know that they're
their own person, and you knowthey want to you know, do things
and make sure they don't have tolisten to authorities or parents. And they're
rebelling and they take that rebellion toan extreme, and we'll get into trouble

(06:41):
because of their rebelliousness. So yousee, and again I think that's an
important point. So you see howall of the people were talking about fall
under conduct disorder. But those areall very different reasons for why kids are
acting out. That's great, greatstuff. I like the clarity, fascinating
stuff. I'm gonna skip this nextquestion for now. I'll come back to

(07:03):
it later. I want to takeus back if we can in time the
pre natal period. Are we seeinganything here that can be a risk factor
for developing the callous and unemotional traitsat the moment, not prenatally, and
again I'm gonna be honest with you, it hasn't been studied a lot.

(07:26):
I right now have a study goingon with a colleague of mind, doctor
Mark Dads at the University of Sydney, where we're following a group of kids
from birth and we do ask somequestions of the parents in terms of prenatal
factors. But at the moment,I can't say that I know of any
research linking prenatal factors. However,we do know that some early precursors of

(07:49):
callous and emotional traits crop up prettyearly in development. So, for example,
there was a study done in Englandwhere they showed that children's preference for
human faces. That's sort of youknow, very early on, at six
weeks of age, if you showkids different stimuli, they show a preference.

(08:09):
Their gaze goes to human faces.It's sort of an instinctual thing that
enhances attachment well at that early age. Lower face preference predicts callous and emotional
traits at age three, and sowe're seeing some early signs that these kids
may have problems reacting to social stimuliand forming attachments. That interesting is that

(08:37):
I had a lot of interviews inthe last three or four weeks, and
I've talked to individuals from over inItaly who are doing research on the plus
sensa and endocren disruptors and things ofthat nature. So kind of made think
about it. But now you pushme and shoved me over to the world
of Alan Shore. I don't knowif you're familiar with doctor Shore's work on
right brain development and attachment. SoI'm looking at this a lot and seeing

(09:00):
maybe some potential connection there. Dowe see anything there? Now you were
saying around three years of age,Do we see anything or do you believe
it has to do with the impedimentof the development of the prefinal cortex at
all? It Actually, when whenthey've they have done brain imaging studies related
to callous and emotional traits, thefocus has been a little bit more on

(09:22):
the amygdala. You know, theamygdala is is a part of the brain
that is very important in terms ofemotional processing. So, for example,
and over active amigda amgdala has beenassociated with fear and anxiety. What they
have shown with the more consistent findingsrelated to callous and emotional traits is that
kids with callous and emotional traits showan underactive, particularly a right amygdala activation.

(09:50):
So when they view faces of youknow, sad are fearful, fear
kids showing fear or other signs ofdistress, their right amigdala does not activate
as much as other kids. Andthis is what's fascinating and why it's important
for us to understand the relationship ofconduct disorder. Kids with conduct disorder actually

(10:11):
show the opposite amigdala response. Soif a kid has conduct disorder and doesn't
show callous emotional tricks, they actuallyshow a hyperactive amygdala arousal and so you
see they're emotionally over aroused. Soagain we talked about this before, their
behavior problems can be looked at sometimesas you know, they have trouble controlling
these very strong emotions. Now thinkabout that. If you're looking at saying

(10:35):
I want to tie brain imaging toconduct disorder, and you lump the callous
and emotional kids with the other kidstogether, you're not going to find any
relationship with the amigdala. Because somekids show an underactive, some kids show
an overactive, you're going to getnothing. So that's why this is so
important for research and causal theories isbecause these kids can have very different emotional

(10:58):
and neurocognitive carlets to their behavior problems, depending on whether or not they show
elevated callous and emotional traits. Fascinating, I guess, so we're seeing hyperactivity
now. I know with child's abuse, a lot of times physical or sexual
abuse that could lead to hyperactivity inthe amigala, but sometimes actually hypoactive as

(11:18):
well as you seeing anything there atall, Yeah, there has been there
has been a link to callous andemotional traits and being exposed to more abuse.
Now, I do think you hitit right on the head when you
talk about abuse. One common reactionis a child can become so hyper vigilant
a threat that everything sets them off, and that's the hyperactive amigdala. But

(11:43):
then other kids can become immune todistress in others and that's more of the
underactive amigdala. The thing we alsohave to be careful about is there's such
a thing called gene environment correlations.Kids with callous and emotional traits are more
likely than others to have parents withcallous and emotional traits who may be more

(12:07):
susceptible to abuse, so they maybe, you know, because of their
family background, be more likely toexperience abuse because of that as well.
Oh wow, that complicates. Dowe have an heritability coefficient at all on
that or no? There was.There was actually a very good recent meta
analysis and the erybility coefficient ranges fromabout forty to sixty five percent. Okay,

(12:33):
callous emotion rates. So again,don't want to overstate it. That's
about what you find for other personalityfactors. So it is as heritable as
other personality factors. That's fascinating,fascinating. So now you say it strikes
as early as three. We've talkeda little bit about as we're going through
that child, and again the doctorShorsborg keeps popping up because you said the

(12:54):
right side of the amygdala and howthat the right side of the brain develops
first, they get out a lotnow in the first year or two,
and then later on the left brainstarts catching up. So it's kind of
fascinating that way. But then there'sthe malleability factor you had mentioned earlier,
and that leads me to doctor Steinberg'swork in regards to the malleability. What

(13:16):
can you tell us about that?Absolutely you know. One of the things,
and this was sort of back tomy very first statement of why we
don't call it psychopathy in kids isbecause when you think about a psychopath,
you think about, you know,something that is stable and untreatable. For
kids. In adolescents, they canshow reductions both naturally and with treatment or

(13:39):
reduction they're callous emotional traits. Anumber of kids show reduction callous emotional traits
over time, and that's important.You know, it's really interesting. You
know, when you look at thepattern over time. It's rare for kids
to become really callous later in development, but it is not uncommon for kids

(14:01):
to become less callous over time.So these things are changeable. And the
other thing I want to when wego back to early childhood is when we
talk about these sort of early thingsthat maybe even present first year of life,
these things themselves are not immutable.And let me give you to me
one of the best examples of astudy done by a colleague of mind,

(14:22):
Luke Hyde at the University of Michigan. He did a study following about five
hundred kids who had been adopted awayat birth, and what he found was
that callous and emotional traits at agethree was related to any social behavior in
their biological parents, despite the factthe biological parents had no contact with them.

(14:45):
So you're saying, wow, that'sgenetic effects right there. But what
he also showed was that positive parentingby the adoptive parent reduced that risk.
So you see how how nicely thatexplains this. The child can have a
predisposition from their biological parents that maybemakes it more difficult for them to develop

(15:07):
empathy in guilt, but there arestill things that parents can do that can
overcome that, you know, thatcan still teach them how to be empathetic
and guilt even if it doesn't comeas naturally to them as to some other
kids. That's great that a lotof people do believe it. It becomes
deterministic for these individuals, and infact it's not absolutely not, absolutely not,

(15:31):
and that's why it's so important.I had this conversation with doctor Breonna
Fox and doctor Baskin Somers. Wewere talking about when research is being done
at this early stage and people say, we say things like, you know,
they had this kind of a childhood, or they were suspected that they
had child abuse. This isn't itisn't dismissing or justifying their behavior. It's

(15:52):
the importance of understanding. So westop individuals becoming later on problematic, and
we can at the butt I guessyou could say preventative as Retardi. Absolutely,
And again it's also a difference betweenlooking back versus looking forward. So
a lot of kids, you know, most adults with that have have psychopathy,

(16:15):
have problematic childhoods. But when welook forward. One of the best
studies that we have looking from aboutage twelve into adulthood, when you look
at kids who are high on callousand emotional traits, only about one in
five actually met criteria for psychopathy inadulthood in the early twenties, only twenty
percent, So most that will growit right Yeah, now, but think

(16:40):
about this for a second. Thatdoesn't mean that the other four out of
five they may still be somewhat catallousand somewhat on emotional even if they don't
you know, meet the full criteriafor psychopathy. But more importantly, think
about one in twenty The base rateof psychopathy is under one one percent,
so that is still a much higherrisk. So to me, this is

(17:03):
the important way to think about it. We have a risk factor for later
problems in life that we want totake care of early. But we want
to be careful to not say,wow, all these kids are going to
be psychopaths as adults. That isnot true. Those were kids who are
untreated, so without treatment, onlyone in five became psychopathic as adults.

(17:23):
That's a great point because it reallydoes. It takes a very all the
way of framing it, but ittakes a very special cocktail to create those
psychopaths. Now, a lot ofpeople think, too, every single pedophile
has been abused sexually as a child, and that necessarily doesn't work out that
way either, or everybody who's beenabused sexually will become some kind of child
molester or pedophile or something of thatnature. And that's not true. Right

(17:45):
yep. Let me ask you this, Well, you get this question.
I get this question. I guessmaybe you do two. I don't know.
Is there ever a point of noreturn for somebody? Maybe it's not
even quantified, But I usually getthat question like, oh, he's sixteen,
they've been torturing animals, have beendoing this, they've been doing that.

(18:07):
Is this person done? Do youthink there is a point of no
return. Nope. I think thedata and again I want to be careful,
don't. I don't do a lotof treatment of adults, But what
I know of the research there isthat even with the right treatment, adults
with psychopathy can improve and respond tothe right types of treatment. I guess

(18:29):
I was referred to adolescent stage,but you go back, and I do
think what we can say is theearlier we catch it in development, you
bet, the more effective our treatmentsare. But there is no point of
no return. That's good news,that's very good news. So in regards
to callous an emotional we talked alittle bit about psychopathy. What is it?

(18:52):
What's the relation between that and antisocialpersonality disorder? And I'm not sure
if you folks have even looked intosociopathy at all or even look at a
Yeah, those are so remember howwe talked about the relationship between cond of
disorder being the sort of behavioral problemsand callous and emotional traits being one of
the pathways that kids can develop behaviorproblems. That's the way to think about

(19:18):
psychopathy and an social personality disorder aswell. Any social personality disorder are sort
of the criminal and anti social behaviorallifestyle that can come about through a number
of different reasons, one of whichis because of psychopathy, but there can
be others. So again, ifyou look at any social personality disorder,
only about a quarter to a thirdwill show psychopathic traits, So about two

(19:44):
thirds develop their anti social behavior forother reasons other than psychopathy. Sociopathy is
sort of a outdated term because peoplewanted to make a distinction between people who
show these callous emotional traits due tobiological reasons and those who developed it through
social reasons. And hopefully you seefrom what I described and how this develops

(20:10):
is it's never one or the other, it's always both. And so the
idea of trying to pin it toeither biological or social reasons, it really
just does not fit with what weknow, not just about psychopathy, but
about really any type of developmental outcome. That's interesting. So what's your take
on the PCL Do you like touse that still or the Psychopathy Checklist right

(20:33):
now? And again that that ismostly used in adults. There is a
pc L YV that's used for adolescentsin forensic samples, and it's yeah,
it's one of the widely used measuresto diagnose psychopathy in adults. We've developed
more specific measures of callous and emotionaltraits because with calouson emotional traits, it's

(20:55):
really one aspect. So for example, in you know, it's it's four
items from the PCL, and youlike to measure things with a little bit
more than that. So we've developedmore comprehensive since we're since we're focusing in
on the callouson emotional dimension, we'vedeveloped things that focus just on that aspect
to provide a more comprehensive and reliableassessment of that. Got it? Got

(21:18):
it? Let me ask you thisbecause eventually we're going to get to the
solutions. And I know you kindof allude to some of those earlier.
How about newer transmitters anything there whenthey're young. Well, there there is
emerging research. I want to becareful because I do think if you look
at it, there are no conclusivestudies to show certain neurochemicals. But I

(21:41):
will say that oxytocin, which isyou know, a hormone that promotes bonding,
not just in humans but in animals, there has been some link between
reduced oxytocin related to callous emotional traitsand certain unormalities in the serotonergic system have

(22:02):
been linked. But I want tobe real careful, we don't have a
lot of We need a lot moreresearch on the neurochemical basis to relate it
to callous and emotional traits. Wehave a lot more information on sort of
the emotional and reactivity basis, asI said, the reactivity in the amygdala,

(22:23):
how somebody's sent autonomic nervous system reactsto certain things heart rate, skin
conductance. We use a task lookingat how people orient their attention toward emotional
things. So one of the thingsthat happens is if something is threatening,
your biological pre exposed to orient tothat pretty quickly because that's adaptive. And

(22:48):
so there are certain types of attentionalorienting tasks that you can look at to
see how people orient to not justthreat, but stress in others. And
we've shown that kids with callous andemotional traits do not orient to distress in
others as as quickly and as stronglyas other kids. Interesting, I'm not
sure if you're familiar with the PauliVagel theory, do you think that plays

(23:10):
a role here at all? Thevegas nerve. Again, I don't think
we've done enough in terms of thattype that you sort of I don't think
we know enough to tie it tothat that theory yet. Okay, that's
a fascinating theory. Let me askyou this, then, What are some
of the contributing factors you would sayto developing these callous run emotional traits to

(23:32):
a degree that causes a lot ofthose issues. What are some of the
causal factors you've found so far?Yeah, contributing factors, contributing factory.
Yeah, and again, I dothink having a temperament so where you don't
respond as strongly to a number ofnegative things most strongly. People don't respond

(23:53):
to distress cues in others, andit seems to start pretty early in life.
One of the first signs of empathyis when an infant hears another child
cry, they become distressed because thatcry is aversive to them. So even
before they can take the perspective ofanother infant, just the crying causes them
to become upset. It's called contagiouscrying. And so you know, if

(24:18):
kids don't respond as strongly to that, they don't have this contagious crying and
so that doesn't motivate them, justto learn to pay attention to others' emotions,
because what happens is if crying isupsetting to you, you're going to
want to pay attention to see whydoes that happen, so that I can
learn to avoid it or not causeit, so that emotion motivates you.

(24:41):
And if you don't have that emotionto motivate you to protect you from others,
then you know it will affect yourability to develop empathy and guilt.
Relatedly, is there seems to beabnormalities and how kids respond to punishment.
So one of the reasons that wedon't do things wrong is because we get
nervous about the prospect of getting introuble. That's you know, and again,

(25:06):
these kids do not seem to becomearoused to that possibility of punishment in
the same way as other kids.And then finally, you know you have
a low fear. They often justare not fearful of things. They tend
to be more thrill seekers and likedoing novel and dangerous things because they don't

(25:26):
aren't scared of getting hurt. Soyou can see all of these things sort
of revolve around a temperament that makesyou under aroused, that makes you less
reactive to certain things that you knowcan lead you to have difficulty becoming empathetic
and showing you know, guilt andconcern over your your misdeeds. Now,

(25:49):
as I mentioned, what then happenshere is, you know, you can
have parenting styles, particularly things likewarm and positive parenting that can then help
a child who maybe doesn't have thattemperament that it comes naturally to them,
that parenting style can still even thoughit doesn't come naturally. So you see,

(26:15):
what we're looking at is how thechild's temperament interacts with their parenting environment
to make put them at risk forthis excellent stuff. That's fascinating and I
guess one of my last questions wherewe gets the solutions is do we see
any correlations or any kind of relationshipsbetween parents who have substance to use disorder

(26:36):
parents who may have major depressive orbipolar Not as much with depressive and bipolar
simply because actually callous and emotional peopletend to be less anxious and depressed than
others. You know, if you'renot bothered by the effects of your behavior
on others, you know kind ofprotects you from being depressed and anxious about

(27:00):
how things are going. For this, now, we do know that Caliston
emotional traits are related to substance use, but substance use is sort of also
one of these outcomes that can havea lot of different reasons. And again,
if you're not worried about the consequencesof things on your to you like,

(27:22):
you know what, if you keepdrinking, you're going to get in
trouble, You're going to drop outof school. You know you're gonna be
in trouble with your family and beIf none of those consequences bother you,
you're going to be more likely touse substances. Interesting, So I guess,
now, I guess the last fewminutes. What are some of the
things that you've seen that can stopthis from getting worse as they get older?

(27:45):
Yeah, so I'll start big pictureand then narrow in. So they
have looked at the reviews of differenttypes of treatments that work for kids with
chronic disorder in general. So asan example, you have some of these
parent behavior management programs where you teachparents how to use very structured behavior management

(28:07):
principles with young kids. And thenyou have more comprehensive treatment approaches like functional
family therapy, a multi systemic therapywhere you look to motivate the child through
other ways, so you find outyou know what's motivating this problem behavior and
find other ways. What is prettyconsistent is that these evidence based programs also

(28:32):
work for kids with callous and emotionaltraits. In fact, so for example,
we did a study one of mystudents, doctor Stuart White, his
dissertation, did an evaluation of functionalfamily therapy for adolescents who were referred after
they were arrested to a community andmental health center. It actually showed that

(28:55):
callous and emotion or traits predicted agreater response to functional family therapy. But
here's the rug. But here's therug. They start treatment with more severe
behavior problems, they respond best totreatment, but even despite that, they
still leave treatment with more severe behaviorproblems. And I think that's a very

(29:17):
important thing and that we found thatwith young kids with parent management training too,
is they start treating with more severebehavior problems although they respond to treat
So what does that tell us.It means we need to start augmenting some
of these existing treatments to be moreeffective for kids with callouson emotional traits.

(29:40):
And I will give you one examplethat we've worked on recently. This was
with a student of mind, aformer student at the University of New Orleans,
Eva Kimonas. She's now a facultymember in Australia at the University of
New South Wales. She took astandard parent management program it was called Parent
Child Interaction Therapy and enhanced it ina couple ways based on what we know
about kids with callous and emotional traits. She helped parents to focus a little

(30:06):
bit more on being more warm andusing positive reinforcement to change a child's behavior
rather than punishment. She also addeda component where parents learned to teach these
young kids not just how to behave, but how to pay attention and to
coach them on learning pay attention andbe motivated to understand other kids' emotions.

(30:30):
Here's that coaching component. And againI don't want to overstate this. This
was a single study of kids threeto six years old twenty three families in
Australia, but she showed these wereall kids with elevated callous and emotional trades.
She's found very strong treatment effects greatso and it didn't. It didn't
just reduce the child's kind of problems, it reduced the callous and emotion of

(30:51):
traits itself too, in kids threeto six years old. So you see
what we're finding here is that youcan take some of the existing trees for
kids with behavior problems, augment themwith what we know about kids with callous
and emotional traits and their characteristics tomake them more effective for this group.
Well, it's fascinating stuff. Andreally I say that to the other professors

(31:15):
as well. You really are ina way kind of like law and not
law enforcement, but you're like,well, what do they call that?
In a way, what you're doingis actually providing safety and for our future.
The more you can help these individualsfrom getting into these kind of problematic
behaviors and less crime. So it'sreally fascinating, absolutely, and this you

(31:40):
hit on maybe one of the mostimportant public policy implications of this when you
think about trying to sell how importantdoing these types of mental health interventions early
on. So for example, we'vewe're right now my student of Acimuonas is
doing an intervention in the schools inAustralia. We're trying to do an intervention
here in clinics in Louisiana, andmost people say, look, why should

(32:05):
we spend money on stopping these kidsfrom getting into the fights that all kids
get into in school when we havethese kids out on the street doing these
awful things. Well, it's becausethat if you want to prevent those kids
later on from doing awful things onthe streets, you've got to get good
mental health treatment for them early.We are more effective early, and it's

(32:29):
cheaper early. Well, it's funnybecause they don't. I'm not who they
is, but we'll just say theargument is interesting because a lot of the
same people who argue that way andI get it, I understand you want
to save it today, But thesame people believe that it's bad parenting,
so they know. I'm not sayingbad parenting is one, but I'm saying
is they know and understand that ithas to do something with early childhood.

(32:52):
So you know this happened to me. It's funny because this should resonate because
they already know it's early childhood.So this is a great opportunity for them
to correct that and make it alot safer place for our children. YEP,
I guess. My last question thatmade it dawned on me a little
bit is sometimes culture can play arole. It seems like as certain cultures

(33:13):
might have certain behaviors that may lookless emotional than others. Does that have
a role. Well, it's veryinteresting. We have not, and I
want to be careful. I can'tsay that we have a lot of good
cross cultural research that has really lookedat differences in the level of these traits

(33:34):
across different cultures. But I willsay that just one of my rating scales,
the Inventory of callous and emotional traitsthat we develop, has been translated
into over twenty five languages, andso it's been used across the world,
and it has pretty consistent correlations withthings, you know, like correlations with

(33:57):
lack of emotional reactivity to others,distress, correlations with being aggressive, and
things like that. So it seemsto show the same corlics, the same
characteristics in different cultures. Oh good. So it does seem to be a
cross culturally important construct. Whether certaincultural factors can make it more or less

(34:24):
likely to occur, I don't thinkwe engage. It broke up a little
bits you said more or less,you don't know if if cultural factors were
influenced, I guess the strength ofit. Yeah, so yes, So
we do know that it is across culturally important construct that is callous and

(34:52):
emotional trades, predicts important things inmany different cultures. What we don't know
is whether their sectuses can make itmore or less prevalent within that culture.
Fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff, DoctorFrick, such a wonderful time talking,
really getting to get a better understandingof this world. Because we get so

(35:13):
this. One of the purposes ofthe show is to clarify a lot of
the misleading information, the myths andthings out there. You know, like
I said, everybody likes the storyof the psychopathy, like the movies and
Ted Bundy, for God's sakes,has been gone for decades, and yet
documentary came out the other day andit's really important for people to understand the
truth about it. Fascinating stuff.Thank you, So it was helpful.

(35:37):
It was good talking to you,absolutely, folks. You can find more
information at faculty dot LSU dot edubackslash p Frick fri c K Lab backslash
if you want more information to seewhat kind of studies he has, or
if you're an academia now graduate student, that might be the place. Hey,
if you're looking for a dissertation,I want to contact them. They

(35:58):
got plenty of stuff that we canresearch, especially in that prenatal period.
I think would be really fascinating tolook at. Again. Thank you so
much, doctor Frick. Thank youeveryone for joining us. Make sure to
share and subscribe. If that Ilike button, we like it.