It’s too simplistic to think of psychopaths as being
murderers or law-breakers, says Oxford psychologist Kevin Dutton.
In his new book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths, Dutton examines what we can learn from those
who lack conscience but are also bold and highly resilient to stress.
What exactly is a psychopath?
No sooner is the word out of someone’s mouth
than images of [serial killers] like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer come to mind.
It doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a criminal or serial killer.
When psychologists talk about psychopaths, what we refer to are people with a
distinct set of personality characteristics including ruthlessness,
fearlessness, mental toughness, a charismatic personality and lack of
conscience and empathy.
You write that you think your father was a
psychopath…
It sounds like a crazy thing to say, but there’s no
doubt at all about it. He was a nailed down psychopath. He wasn’t
violent. He was a market trader [in the U.K., a person who sells things at an
open-air street market]. One of the central messages of the book is that
you don’t need to be violent to be a psychopath. My dad was ruthless,
fearless and also extremely charming. He could have sold shaving cream to the Taliban.
So what would be an example of his psychopathic
behavior?
When I was a kid, probably about 9 or 10 [years old],
we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner. Just as my dad was about to pay, he
suddenly tinked his spoon against his glass and stood up. The whole restaurant
went silent. My dad said, “I’d just like to thank you all for coming; some from
just round the corner, some from much further afield. You’re all most welcome to
join us for a little drinks reception across the road.’
And so an entire restaurant of strangers who had never
seen us before were all applauding wildly because they didn’t want to be
seen as gatecrashers. We just took off. He [told me] we’re not going to the pub
really and [explained that his] old friend Malcolm had [just opened a new pub
across the street].
If you think about the front you need to do that: it’s
a whole different kind of personality. On a personal level, I guess I
wrote the book to figure out my old man.
Were you afraid you might have gotten some of
those genes?
I have some psychopathic characteristics. I’m
not so ruthless. I’m pretty fearless. Not much phases me. I’ve got mental
toughness; people say I’m quite persistent. But what lets me down in the
psychopath stakes is that I do have a heck of a conscience and am rather
empathetic. I’m high on some characteristics and low on others.
Psychopaths don’t have the caring part of
empathy, but they are better than average at the “mind reading” part where they
can predict other people’s behavior in order to manipulate it.
It’s a real paradox. Some years ago, I interviewed a
psychopath — and I can’t work out for the life of me whether he being
manipulative or telling the truth — it was probably a bit of both, but he said,
‘If you had a deaf guy standing watching a building burn down and had a child
in the building screaming in pain and the deaf guy didn’t go in, you wouldn’t
hold him to blame. Imagine if you’re emotionally deaf. You can hear the sound,
but it doesn’t do anything for you. You don’t feel that emotional kick in the
backside to go in and do something.’
That means psychopaths must miss out on some of
life’s greatest pleasures, too. If the happiest moments of our lives tend
to involve sharing joy with others—falling in love, having fun with people we
care about— they don’t have any of that.
In a sense, they never had that so they’re not going
to miss it. We think, because we have empathy, ‘Gosh how terrible it must be to
not have it.’ But if you never had it to start with, you don’t miss
it. I agree as an empathetic person, I find it horrendous to
imagine [living a life] where you couldn’t take pleasure from others and didn’t
feel love and compassion.
What do you think makes one psychopath a serial
killer while the other winds up on Wall Street?
Let’s say you are a psychopath and you get a poor
start in life. You’re low in intelligence and also dispositionally
violent. Just due to natural biology, some people are more aggressive than
others from the word go. Your prospects, to be perfectly honest, are not great.
You’re going to end up as a low level thug or enforcer in a criminal gang and
either way, you will wind up in prison.
Now, remove violence from the equation. You are a
psychopath who is nonviolent but you don’t get a good start. Your prospects are
a little better, you end up as a small time con artist or drug dealer. You’re
also going to wind up in prison very quickly.
Then [consider] a psychopath who is not
dispositionally violent. You get a good start in life and are
intelligent. Now, it’s a different story. Now, you’re more likely to kill
in the market than anywhere else. If you’re an intelligent psychopath and
violent [and get a good start], there are any number of exciting occupations,
anything from special forces operative to head of a criminal syndicate.
What other factors are important?
One difference tends to emerge between functional and
criminal psychopaths. The successful functioning ones are able to delay
gratification a bit more. They are less impulsive than the criminal ones.
Recently, a study looked at the difference between criminal psychopaths in a
maximum security prison and business executives.
There was a range of psychopathic traits that were
more common among business executives. The charming personality, fearlessness
and lack of empathy and conscience were more common in executives. The
difference was when it came to more overtly antisocial behavior. Here, the
criminals were higher— on criminal behavior and physical aggression and lower
on discipline and self control.
What makes the difference between functioning
successfully [or not] isn’t just the level of traits, it’s how they interact
with [tendencies towards] violence and intelligence and also with other
characteristics like sexual stuff that may be going on. You may get a kick out
of inflicting pain on women if you’ve been humiliated by a woman early
on. There’s a myriad of different triggers that can tip the balance one
way or another.
Child abuse must surely be one of them…
Here we come onto how genes and environment interact.
There’s a very famous case involving a guy called Bradley Waldroup in Utah. He
committed a terrible murder in which he shot and beat to death one of his
wife’s best friends whom he suspected of having an affair with her.
[At that time, researchers] had uncovered what the
media described as a ‘warrior gene.’ If you got the short version of the gene
you are very likely to become a violent criminal or killer— but only if you are
abused as a child. That’s the trigger that sets off that gene. If you get the
long version of the gene and are abused or have a violent childhood, you will
not stand that much risk of become violent criminal
When Waldroup was brought to trial, his defense
attorney got on [an expert on] the stand and asked whether [the defendant] had
the short variant, the warrior gene and it turned out that he did. The next
question was, ‘Was he abused as a child?’ and the answer was yes, he was.
Basically, the attorney made the case that could we
not argue that Waldroup’s free will was in some way compromised? Maybe,
if our behavior is a byproduct of the interplay between genetics and the
environment and we are not free to choose either, to what extent are we free to
choose at all?
Bradley Waldrop’s sentence was commuted from death to
life in prison. My feeling is that this is the start of a raft of similar
cases.
But should psychopaths get longer or shorter sentences when we aren’t
talking about death vs. life in prison? You could argue they should be in
prison longer because they are clearly dangerous— or you could make the reverse
argument for shorter sentences because it’s not really their fault?
If they are wired differently, then maybe we should
rethink it: it’s not their fault that they are wired like that. But we cannot
allow people to murder and rape so there is an argument for locking them up for
longer.
Would you agree that without psychopathic
traits, we might lose a lot of leaders and heroes?
There’s always been a need for risk-takers in society
and a need for ruthlessness, charm, charisma and a need for mental toughness
and emotional detachment.
All of these traits are on a spectrum, just as there
exists no official division between someone who plays the piano well and
a concert pianist. One individual might be ruthless and fearless, but not have
a lack of conscience.
If you’ve got loads of these traits all turned up to
max, you’re going to overload the circuits [and be a dangerous psychopath].
But you wouldn’t be anywhere near dangerous if some
were high and some low. Depending on context, you’re talking different
proportions that might be quite functionally adapted to whatever professional
field of endeavor you might be working in. [At extremely high levels], you
might have problems but if turn those down, you might find people who are
better than normal in certain aspects.
SOURCE:
Interview with the Psychologist Kevin Dutton
Magazine: TIME: Health and Family
http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/19/learning-from-psychopaths-qa-with-psychologist-kevin-dutton/
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