Oct 16 2009
Are Psychopaths Fearless?
One of my favorite current series is Dexter – a show that dares to have a psychopathic serial killer as a protagonist. Dexter regularly feeds his “dark passenger” by ritually killing people, but he lives by a code drilled into him by his adoptive police officer father – only kill people who deserve it. So the audience gets to watch brutal ritual murders, but the horror is tempered by our sense of justice and need for revenge.
What I find even more interesting is the running voice over – hearing Dexter’s thoughts as he goes through his day, trying to fit in with the world of “normal” people. Dexter has no clue about typical human emotions or behavior, and so in a way he provides an outsider’s view of humanity.
Although Dexter retains enough of a shadow of humanity to be likable as a protagonist, the writers have given him the typical personality profile of a psychopath, including being relatively fearless. Recently, however, psychologist Joseph Newman has questioned whether psychopaths are truly fearless, or perhaps they have some other deficit that explains their apparently fearlessness.
Newman did an interesting experiment, using a number of convicted criminals who fit the psychopathic personality type and normal controls. He made them perform a task where they would push a button to indicate if words appearing on a screen were red or green. Simultaneously they would occasionally get a shock after the red words, but never the green. Newman used strong blinking as a marker for anticipating the shock, and found that the psychopathic subjects flinched just as much as the controls.
He then repeated the experiment but had the subjects press a button to indicate if the words were in capitals or lower case. This time the controls flinched just as much when they saw the red words, but the psychopathic subjects did not. Taken at face value, this outcome could indicate that psychopathic subjects display just as much fear as controls, but that they are more easily distractable from that fear.
Of course, we cannot make firm conclusions from any one such psychological experiment. It is important to remember that when examining cortical function, whether as part of a neurological exam of a patient or a psychological experiment, we cannot peer into the brain and see directly what the different parts are doing. Rather, we look at tasks and then infer from those tasks which brain functions are working and which ones are impaired.
No task perfectly isolates one definable brain function, and so even for the most straightforward assessments we have to give patients or subjects various tasks to perform and then triangulate to the common element that is malfunctioning.
This also highlights the complexity of neuroscience research. We are still figuring out what all the different brain “modules” are – identifiable parts or networks within the brain that subsume a definable function. Some classic modules would include the primary language cortex, which can be further broken down into Wernicke’s area which translates words into ideas and ideas into words, and Broca’s area, which provides the exquisite motor control necessary to speak. There are also brain areas for visual processing, calculations, spacial processing, learned motor tasks, recognizing faces, and many other localized functions. These are the “classic” cortical functions, the ones a neurologist would use to localize a stroke, for example.
But neuroscience has been advancing tremendously in recent years, especially with the development of functional MRI imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Neuroscientists are finding brain areas that have more abstract functions, like giving us a sense of ownership over our limbs, imparting emotional context to recognized objects, or making us feel as if we are inside our bodies.
One thing is for sure – the brain is damn complex. Human behavior results from many specific tendencies and abilities working together to create a final outcome. Researchers mainly look at those final outcomes, and then have to backtrack to all the various processes that contributed to them. Each individual person is a unique assortment of neurological abilities and tendencies out of the countless permutations that might exist.
For this reason researchers have to look at many individuals for statistical tendencies. And then they have to consider all the possible contributors within a complex interaction of many brain functions.
Newman’s research is just one example – apparent fearlessness may partly be due to being easily distracted. We’ll see – such questions have to be researched from many angles (triangulating) before we can be confident in any one interpretation.
Neuroscience researchers don’t have access to a Dexter-like running monologue of what people are really thinking – and what people are consciously thinking represents only a small part of total brain processing in any case. But slowly, researchers are grinding forward our understanding of brain function. The human brain is perhaps the most complex and fascinating subject of scientific study – in fact it is the process of the human brain trying to understand itself.
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28 Responses to “Are Psychopaths Fearless?”
I love Dexter too. But I always thought that people with antisocial personality disorder had plenty of self related emotions but just didn’t have other related emotions. Basically they lived in their own emotional island. Others were just things or means to an end. The DSM-IV seems to agree with this.
Ok, I’m definitely confused about the study. What difference does it make whether the subjects were working with colors or capitalization? Seems like the difference between the two experiments would indicate that psychopaths are more emotional about colors than other details. I’m most certainly a layman here am I just missing some common knowledge?
The shocks were linked to the color. When the subjects were asked to pay attention to the color, both groups flinched as much when a red word indicated a shock may be coming.
When the groups were instead told to focus on the case (upper vs lower) there was still the same risk of a shock following the red words. Psychopaths stopped flinching – they were focusing on case and not noticing color, therefore not reacting. Controls continued to flinch, so even though they were focusing on case, they still noticed the color enough to flinch in anticipation of a shock.
Psychopaths (or sociopaths) are not deterred by the usual prospects of long term consequences for certain of their behaviors, both in planning and acting on those plans, and this is for a variety of reasons which differ according to the individual and the history or apparent cause of this disorder (and whether this is a violent psychopath as opposed to the con-artist variety, etc.). But they are in general as afraid of short term consequences as the rest of us. They don’t walk into traffic or fail to duck thrown objects – all of this obviously a requirement for living one day at a time.
Dexter is a great show, but as psychopaths ordinarily go, especially the successful variety, he would represent one in a million of such.
Which is of course one reason for our fascination with that show. (Not to mention the excellent writing, cast, location, etc.)
There was an interesting paper on what the authors called “blocking”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1936581
Monkeys that had been reared in social isolation had what the authors called a “deficit” in blocking. That is monkeys were conditioned to be startled when a tone sounded, then a light was paired with the tone. Monkeys that had been socially raised exhibited “blocking”, in that they did not become conditioned to startle with the redundant light signal. The socially isolated monkeys did condition to the redundant light signal and would startle to just the light. They exhibited what the authors called a “deficit” in the blocking that the “normal” monkeys exhibited. This was called a “deficit” even though it shows greater awareness and response to the environment.
I suspect that the non-observation of the color of the letters represents a similar effect, an ignoring of non-essential environmental information. Socialized monkeys need to be highly observant of social communication and cues. That hyper-social-awareness compared to the reduced social awareness of non-socialized monkeys comes at a cost in terms of what other environmental information can be processed.
I find it curious that the article suggests that these psychopaths were termed “emotionally shallow” and had reduced emotional awareness when another article says they are able to “manipulate their way out of jail”.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126925.600-cunning-psychopaths-manipulate-their-way-out-of-jail.html
Being able to manipulate the jailers suggests superior emotional awareness and a superior ability to detect and manipulate the emotional state of the jailers. I suspect that the psychopaths in this study are more like “hyper-socialized” monkeys rather than like non-emotional monkeys.
I suspect that the “reduced” emotional awareness of the psychopaths is analogous to the “deficit” in blocking exhibited by the non-socialized monkeys; a description that may say more about the experimenters than about their subjects. Perhaps because the psychopaths are not relating to the experimenters or jailers as normal reciprocating human beings but instead are treating them as objects to manipulate and the experimenters experience the lack of reciprocity as emotional shallowness not a deliberate projection.
daedalus2u, you make a good point when it comes to the varieties of psychopath that end up in the criminal justice correctional environment. The strategies they used to get a competitive edge in life, which were successful in the short term, but in the longer term got them jailed, were also the most successful in the short term for getting them released. Except in the long term, they more often than not were back in jail working on improving the strategies that kept putting them there.
As stated before, I frequent Neurologica because med-skeptical is an area of weakness for me and because I appreciate Dr. Novella’s skeptical writings in terms of clarity, accuracy, and professional tone. I don’t often post because when I’ve something to contribute someone else has usually already addressed it.
But now, as a psychologist who’s worked over twenty years at the intersect of substance abuse, mental illness, and the criminal justice system, I find the subject of the day is right up my alley. I’ve had the dubious honor of evaluating two serial killers along the way – one after he was incarcerated, the other while he was active but before he became a suspect (and how chilling it was to learn this afterwards).
I feel like the cymbalist in a symphony who sits and listens interminably, stands and clangs his cymbals on a single beat, and then returns to his seat not to be heard from for another ten or twenty minutes, if at all. Heh.
About “psychopathy”. The term isn’t of much use clinically. It isn’t a diagnosis and you won’t find it in the DSM. It is not synonymlus with Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7 B Cluster, DSM-IV). The term ‘psychopath’ is typically used in two ways:
Culturally – it is generally used to describe a person who engages in criminal behavior motivated primarily by mental illness, as opposed to motives such as greed, jealous, or anger (though those motives may be present secondarily). Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver is a psychopath, obviously, and would likely satisfy diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder, but also appeared to have delusions of a sort not associated with APD. Hey, it’s a movie.
Clinically – “psychopathy” simply means a pattern of unhealthy behaviors due to mental illness, but may involve any number of diagnoses other than APD. Schizophrenia, Borderline PD, Bipolar DO, etc., all may cause psychopathic behaviors. It’s an umbrella term. Psychopathy is to antisocial as neuropathy is to ataxia (assuming I haven’t mangled the med).
Are psychopaths fearless?
Well, depends on the definition in use. It is clear from the entry that Dr. N refers to the antisocial personality disordered person, and the answer is an unequivocal no. (As per my above clarifications, I’m sure there are instances when, say, a totally decompensated schizophrenic would act in a way that appears fearless, such as standing in front of an onrushing train, but it’s not truly fearlessness if he’s experiencing the delusion that the train is actually a very large and tasty marshmallow. He sees nothing to fear.)
“Newman did an interesting experiment, using a number of convicted criminals who fit the psychopathic personality type..”
This indicates the test subjects apparently met the critieria for antisocial personality disorder. Unfortunately, psych diagnostics is pretty squishy business – it doesn’t take much to satisfy the criteria for APD. So, it’s unclear if Newman’s convicts were “psychopaths” in the cultural, Travis Bickle, criminally insane sense of the term.
I’m sure it is interesting to a neurologist that a division among the reactions of the psychopaths was found between the color cue vs. the upper/lower case cue, and what that might suggest about neural pathways and processes, but it’s of little interest to a behavioralist. The first thing that popped into my head as I read Dr. N’s description was, “I wonder if Newman realizes that the instant an antisocial personality disorder person infers the purpose of the test, he will do his flat level best to sabotage it.” Details on control measures weren’t germaine to Dr. N’s theme, but it is inherently difficult to control for the diagnostic feature of all antisocials to impulsively sabotage, lie, deceive, etc., no matter what the task at hand. Antisocials lie as a matter of course, often where the truth would serve them better. In Antisocialville, Priority #1 is Fool The Man, where ‘The Man’ represents anyone or anything the antisocial perceives as an authority.
Antisocials feel emotions – they just don’t translate them into the same followup behaviors as do ‘normal’ people. Antisocials proceed on logic (of a sort, and within their abilities at it). An antisocial will not risk himself to save a child from an oncoming bus. If he can do it safely, he’ll do in a heartbeat, but only as part of a plan to hopefully scam something out of witnesses, grateful parents, the media, etc. It’s a calculation, not an act of bravery or of social responsibility. Everything is a self-serving calculation (though some calculate better than others). But, put a gun to an antisocial’s head, and if he’s convinced you might actually shoot him, he’ll piss his pants like the best of us.
As for Dexter, I loved the book (Darkly Dreaming Dexter – Jeff Lindsay) and remember thinking it would make an excellent movie. Great series. I ripped through the whole series via Netflix.
Clinically speaking, Dexter couldn’t exist. Where serial killers are bifurcated between organized and disorganized, Dexter is uber-organized, to an impossible degree. There is also no motivational component offered in the series, beyond witnessing his mother’s bloody murder when he was a child. Of course, children witness such things all too frequently – and much worse – without becoming serial killers, and often without apparent pathology at all.
At least 95% of the highly organized serial killers are powered by sexual-sadism motivations (Ted Bundy is the best model). Dexter has the sadism aspect, but no apparent sexual component. Plotwise, he was counseled by his cop father to keep from getting caught by controlling his impulses, inflicting them only on those who deserve killing, and schooled on the forensics necessary to get away with it. Dexter, of course, takes it further by becoming a forensics professional, a blood spatter expert. The sum of these aspects are not possible and illogical – in essense, Dexter controls his uncontrollable impulse to kill by, um, controlling it, using an external, learned code given him by his father. This is all necessary in a theatrical treatment, of course, and the Dexter series is excellent at making it easy to suspend one’s disbelief, a difficult requirement among many critical thinkers.
OK. The cymbalist sits back down. Talk to you in six months.
Although I’d agree that the Dexter portrayed in the series couldn’t exist, it’s also possible to reach that conclusion simply because the portrayal is incomplete. Dexter tells himself that he is following his father’s code, but we’re beginning to learn that he is self-delusional in the bargain. And his impulse to kill is incessant in its need to be satisfied, but the means of that satisfaction ARE (so far at least) controllable.
What we shouldn’t forget that the world is full of quasi-successful psychopaths, many of which have found ways to satisfy sadistic and murderous tendencies by finding employment that not only sanctions but encourages such behaviors.
We have organized crime enforcers here who are protected by their organizations who “do the Dexter” on command, some later protected by the justice system itself while writing books about their profession. We have drug cartels all over the world with their similar coterie of enforcers. Where do these people come from, if not from the ranks of the ambitious psychopaths among us.
Did I forget to mention the “war-lovers” employed by the growing use of mercenaries to help us fight our wars, and especially those in the covert operations? (Ask me sometime about the Phoenix program.)
You are describing people operating out of greed, out of cultural norm, and out of political motivations, but I don’t think you can just assume they satisfy any particular, specific psychiatric diagnosis, nor i that they do not, of course. Or, from a different perspective, you have expanded or added to the definition of cultural psychopath.
But, it is not at all necessary to suffer a mental illness to kill. They aren’t psychopaths within their respective worlds. Murder is culturally normalized within organized crime. Note that none of those you describe operate alone, as do truly psychopathic killers (with the occasional equally psychopathic partner in crime), but instead work within a larger ’society’ of sorts, where their killing behaviors are normalized: mobs, drug cartels, wars, armies, etc.
Some of the covert operatives I’m familiar with DO operate alone. And in the case of Dexter, although he ostensibly operates alone, he also takes advantage of the protection of his position in law enforcement and, in his mind at least, what he does is in a significant way an extension of his official duties.
But yes, I’m probably expanding the definition of cultural psychopath, because it doesn’t deal with the sanctions that allow a lot of people with exactly the same deviant behavior characteristics to operate relatively undeterred. And to the extent that these permissive sanctions are acceptable, we find ourselves in the process of legitimatizing a certain other proportion of the population as acceptable for victimization by these types of personalities.
DA, that is quite interesting. I have never seen that tv show, but it is inconceivable to me that tv could accurately portray anything as complicated as an actual psychopathology (particularly one that is not well understood).
There is a very interesting paper which posits that the opposite end of the autism spectrum is actually psychosis or schizophrenia.
http://www.matthewckeller.com/Crespi.Badcock_BBS_2008.pdf
I like this idea and it meshes somewhat with my thinking in that a “too strong” theory of mind could result in perceiving communication that isn’t there and that is the opposite of people with autism who can’t perceive communication that is there.
It would be interesting if the neuroanatomy of the psychopaths looked at in the study Dr Novella referred to have the “opposite” neuroanatomy of people with autism (compared to NTs). Typically people with autism have larger brains with more white matter,
I think this fits better with the idea of the psychopaths talked about in this blog thread as being the opposite of people with autism, who have better sensory discrimination that people without. I think the socially isolated animals can be a fair animal model of some aspects of autism, and in multiple species they do exhibit superior cognitive abilities (but severely reduced social abilities). I think this is one animal model that does reproduce so called “savant” abilities sometimes observed in autism.
I have often attempted to convince myself that there are evolutionary benefits to disgust for murder; a sort of disgust for wounding, blood and violence – all correlated with distress and danger, thus commonly associated with murder – has obvious evolutionary benefits, and a rejection of murder of those close to you (who would once have been of the same gene pool) likewise.
Any rejection of (or disgust for, perhaps) the non-violent ending of an unrelated arbitrary life might seem more correlated with societal norms than genetic dispositions. That no such ‘clinical’ murder would have been possible ’till relatively recently perhaps offers an explanation.
Those with a prospensity for murder might themselves have a higher than average probabilistic likelihood for being murdered, too.
To my detriment I haven’t researched the matter at all. Some amongst you might have, or could offer alternative hypotheses.
daedalus2u,
Sorry, but I think we have to part company on this one. There is, unfortunately a common aspect to the problem of autism and that of psychopaths, which is a problem with empathy and the functional mechanism through which it operates. But of course in other aspects the differences in the behaviors and their various causes are extreme.
Also if the causative spectrum for autism is mainly biological, this isn’t necessarily true for psychopaths, who in my judgement are more often made than born. Childhood abuse for example is a very common denominator for such behaviors.
OK, I’ll bite. What’s the Phoenix program? Is it something from the Bourne Conspiracy?
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program
“The Phoenix Program is sometimes seen as an “assassination campaign,” and has been criticized as an example of human-rights atrocities alleged to have been committed by the CIA or other allied organizations, including U.S. Military Intelligence. There was eventually a series of U.S. Congressional hearings. Consequently, the military command in Vietnam issued a directive that reiterated that it had based the anti-VCI campaign on South Vietnamese law, that the program was in compliance with the laws of land warfare, and that U.S. personnel had the responsibility to report breaches of the law. Supporters argue that the primary intent was to capture, not to kill, in order to gain further information. However, decentralized operations in an uncertain, ambiguous environment did lead to abuses.[2] In many instances, rival Vietnamese would report their enemies as “VC” in order to get U.S. troops to kill them (Myra MacPherson, Long Time Passing, New York: Signet, 1984, p. 625.) In many cases, Phung Hoang chiefs were incompetent bureaucrats who used their positions to enrich themselves. Phoenix tried to address this problem by establishing monthly neutralization quotas, but these often led to fabrications or, worse, false arrests. In some cases, district officials accepted bribes from the NLF to release certain suspects.[1]“
A question should be raised about the study as to whether psychopaths habituate to the pain faster than normals. The psychopaths in the study could be looking forward to another higher level shock or buzz. They may find this stimulating or sexually pleasurable. The normals are still focused on the pain and avoidance. Don’t assume that the psychopaths were not abused or exposed to ritualistic pain as children, teens, or adults. They may have quickly learned to accept pain as gratifying. Perhaps they regard pain as social reciprocity.
‘They’ won’t react lockstep, all of a type. There would be variations in their reactions.
Once the antisocial determines the meat of the test – that shocks come after certain cues – he will alter his response, either by overreacting or delaying reaction or lip-biting to present no reaction at all, but he will try to sabotage the test.
When administrating an MMPI test (personality profile, several hundred multiple choice), you usually don’t have to score the test to help identify sociopaths. Just look at the answer sheets for the people who made designs and patterns with their answers.
“Some of the covert operatives I’m familiar with DO operate alone.”
Do they receive orders from someone? Do they pursue some plan, some agenda? Does that agenda originate outside themselves? Do they report to anyone during or after an operation? Did they train and brief themselves?
They do not operate alone.
DevilsAdvocate, I think we have somewhat of a non sequitur here, as serial killers, plus serial rapists, and criminal psychopaths in general, and by definition, work alone. But in the context of sanctioned psychopathic behavior, those who work singly instead of in a group situation will of course still be under the protection and some type of direction by the sanctioning body.
Yet there are some of these that for all intents and purposes virtually “work alone” and are left to their own devices as to how the tasked mission is carried out. In effect they are sent out to maim, torture and kill without getting caught in the process, and without accounting in any detail for their actions except as necessary to maintain their sanctioned status.
And what criminal psychopaths have in common with the sanctioned variety is that the criminals also pursue plans and agendas to achieve the same purpose in the end, which is to satisfy whatever “blood lust” motivates them to take up either the sanctioned or unsanctioned occupations.
As to training themselves, if you are implying that this sadistic and murderous behavior was instilled in these operatives or in groups of such operatives by that training, you are simply wrong.
Remember the mythical dirty dozen of cinematic fame? Even though this was a group operation, this was not entirely a fictional depiction of how such groups were recruited and trained.
And then we had, as a most prime example, the Waffen SS (not to be confused with the Wehrmacht), formed largely as a volunteer group of criminal psychopaths operating under the sanction of the Nazi party.
Perhaps you can call them culturally normalized murderers, but they were certainly a different sort of murderer that the German or Wehrmacht soldiers in general, who pretty much despised their SS brothers in arms. Whatever made them psychopaths to begin with, it wasn’t their military training.
Anyone who wants to know more about the nature of psychopathy might do well to read this paper – although I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion that psychopaths should be held to any lesser degree of responsibility because of their particular condition. The threat of punishment may not deter them, but lengthy incarceration should perhaps be even more of a requirement for that very reason.
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:5axyA8VNXdsJ:partialresponsibility.googlepages.com/FineKennettMentalImpairment.pdf+psychopathic+vengeance&hl=en&gl=us&sig=AFQjCNGmKVfgIiUled5-SSyj_a_TDzdQ5w
You seem invested in a particular view.
Your covert operators do not operate alone. They may be alone in the sense they are physically apart from others during aspects of their work, often for long periods, but they are not operating alone. They are operating as a sort of point of a spear at the behest of a larger entity from whence they received their orders, their directives, their marching orders, so to speak. They do not develop and implement all aspects of missions entirely on their own without input or direction from a larger entity. If they do, they are not ‘covert operators’, they are regular old killers for whom the descriptor ‘covert’ is a redundacy.
Also, serial killers, serial rapists, and criminal psychopaths in general, and by definition, do *not* necessarily work alone. Pairs are common. The Hillside Strangler was actually two men: Buono and Bianchi. Others abound: Bittaker & Norris. Coleman & Brown. Beck & Fernandez. Bernardo & Homolka. Lucas & O’Toole. Martin & Lewis.
You’re the one that made the point of there being a difference between criminal psychopaths and what I described as sanctioned by stressing the sanctioned didn’t work alone but instead were directed by others, etc. So now you’re reversing yourself a bit and saying that the criminal variety also don’t work alone because they may sometimes be in pairs.
Meaning what, that they direct each other? Wouldn’t that make the different performers here more alike than not? Otherwise, it seems you’ve strayed from the issue of whether criminal psychopaths are in any significant way comparable to the sanctioned miscreants, and from your apparent efforts earlier to demonstrate that they aren’t.
And your description of covert operators is perhaps consistent with the official picture of such actors. But as someone who has perhaps been involved with them a bit closer than you (hence my reference to the Phoenix Program) I can attest there’s a lot about black ops that doesn’t conform to the official version.
So quibble away if you must. I just don’t see the distinction there that proves the difference.
I believe psychologist Newman is wrong in assuming that blinking in his study should be equated with a fear response. Telling subjects to focus on lower or upper case letters is merely a distraction, similar to when your friendly neurologist pokes you with a needle an continues to talk with you, the patient. How strong does a needle feel or a shock when we are distracted and focused on something else. The pilot treatment program suggested by Hands and Newman will be ineffective. Arresting someone quickly and sending him to prison does not deter a psychopathic life style. Many of the forensic patients I worked with were recycled regularly. It didn’t deter any crimes at all.
I’ll invest in that particular view.
After all, Martin & Lewis (as cited by DA) did some of their best work while acting alone, and deterrence was not in their vocabulary.
My point is that catch and release doesn’t work. Sometimes you have to eat a few.
DevilsAdvocate-
You point-out that the anti-social will attempt to sabotage any test.
This is why they lie, and don’t do well at following directions, no?
I think this is why it is a mistake for governments or armies or any other organization to get involved with them.
I’m sure it happens, artfulD, but it is a mistake, not a policy.
sonic,
in some cases it’s a mistake, and in the case of black ops, it’s more likely not. It’s more of a “we don’t ask and you don’t tell” hiring policy where ultimate deniability is one of the goals. (At least in the US.)
For example, I’ve had a few beers with some former SS men who had joined the French Foreign Legion, no real questions asked. Except that everybody knew who they were, as did I. Many of the former SS died in the battle of Dien Bien Phu (before we got there). Many also did the dirty work for the Legion in Algeria.
It’s a mistake to call them anti-social. They can be quite the jovial companions. What they have in common is their lack of moral scruples or reservations.
A psychopath would be fearless in this study only if he had a visual agnosia especially with respect to color.
Steve,
Thanks for explaining it! I didn’t catch that the colors were still a factor in the second test.