>>New Scientist has a more in depth article on this subject for those
>>interested at
>>
>>http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324615.200
>>
>>Snakes in suits
>>New Scientist vol 183 issue 2461 - 21 August 2004, page 40
>>by Laura Spinney
>>if anyone would like, i could post a copy assuming it gets past the size
>>limits.
>>
>>R
>
>Can you break it in two parts and post?
>
>John
sure, john. here's part one:
Snakes in suits New Scientist vol 183 issue 2461 - 21 August 2004, page 40
Could one in a hundred of us be a psychopath? Look out, says Laura Spinney, you might be sharing your office with one
HE WAS a natural leader, creative, energetic and ambitious. "Mike" had appeared to be the ideal recruit for a fast-growing electronics company. It was only after he got the job that certain less favourable aspects of his behaviour came to light. He couldn't get along with his secretary, he "forgot" to take on less interesting projects, he bullied colleagues and walked out of meetings. But since he'd already complained about his boss to senior management, his boss's concerns were never taken seriously, and the company even singled Mike out as a "high-potential employee".
Perhaps you know someone like Mike. Someone charming, yet aggressive; a manipulative boss who can't be bothered with paperwork; one who constantly switches allegiance as different people become useful. Mike embellished the truth on his application form, failed to document his expense claims and turned out, in the end, to be setting up his own business on company time and resources. He is what some psychologists describe as an industrial or corporate psychopath.
The psychologists do not use the term lightly. They believe that Mike shares exactly the same constellation of personality traits as the violent and sadistic killers we more commonly call psychopaths. New research suggests that people like Mike vastly outnumber the psychopaths who commit crimes and end up in prison. Psychopathy, say the researchers, is a spectrum of character traits, milder forms of which could even be useful and adaptive. What's more, studies reveal that Mike's genes contribute to his psychopathic personality. Had you known what to look for, the traits would probably have revealed themselves at a very tender age.
The researchers are going to have a battle on their hands changing the deeply ingrained popular image of psychopaths as criminals - the likes of Charles Manson or Jack the Ripper. There is a good reason for this image, says Paul Babiak, the New York-based industrial organisational psychologist who studied Mike. Psychopaths make themselves known by their crimes, so those who don't commit crimes, or who successfully cover their tracks, tend to remain invisible. So what makes Babiak so sure that the label is appropriate?
It is only recently that psychopathy has been defined by criminal or antisocial acts. In the 1940s, the definition relied chiefly on personality traits - narcissism, lack of remorse, lack of empathy, ability to manipulate others and inability to accept responsibility. These traits, if they persist over time, are still what distinguish psychopathic antisocial behaviour from "normal" aggression or teenage rebelliousness. Thinking is now reverting to these older descriptions, with researchers beginning to concur that there are degrees of psychopathic personality, rather than its being an all-or-none character flaw. It means that a larger subset of society is included.
As far back as 1977, Cathy Spatz Widom, then at Harvard University, suggested a means of luring what she called "non-institutionalised psychopaths" out into the open. She put an ad in a non-mainstream Boston paper: "Wanted: charming, aggressive, carefree people who are impulsively irresponsible but are good at handling people and looking after number one." Of the 73 people who responded, she interviewed 29. All of them met the criteria for psychopathy as defined by personality traits and antisocial behaviour, and two-thirds had a history of arrest. But of those who had been arrested, only 18 per cent had been convicted. On the whole, they had managed to stay out of prison. The main difference she noted between her respondents and convicted criminals who were typically studied at that time was that they were better educated. She showed that if you went looking for psychopathic traits in the non-criminal population, you would find them.
For a decade or so, people have been asking what makes a psychopath. Is it the result of biology or upbringing? So far studies have produced conflicting results. For instance, in 1995, Widom, now at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark, concluded that psychopathy was more prevalent in adults who had been abused as children. But four years later in a study of Scottish convicts, Lisa Marshall and David Cooke of Glasgow Caledonian University in the UK found that psychopaths could come from either a caring or an abusive family, which suggests a strong biological effect.
Since then, other researchers have talked about a biological component. Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, suggested that psychopathy tends to be associated with abnormalities of the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain responsible for regulating behaviour, that could arise from birth complications. He started a controversy when he argued that people with a biological predisposition to violence should be spared the death penalty, and that their brain scans should be submitted in court as mitigating evidence (New Scientist, 13 May 2000, p 43).
But until now studies have provided information only about psychopaths who were identified and who are, generally speaking, criminals. What has been lacking, says the psychiatrist and renowned psychopath expert, Robert Hare of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, are studies looking for the origins of psychopathic tendencies that start with children and follow them as they grow up. These controversial studies are now getting under way, and the hope is that they may eventually tell us why some people turn to crime, while others escape, and whether there is any way to intervene to keep people like Mike on the right side of the law.
Hare devised a scale called the Psychopathy Checklist, which uses a structured interview and information such as the criminal record to give an overall numerical score for psychopathy. The latest version, the PCL-R, is the most widely used tool of its kind in adults. In 2001, Hare teamed up with developmental psychologist Paul Frick of the University of New Orleans in Louisiana to produce a modified version of the PCL-R for children.
Rather than measuring callous, remorseless use of others and a chronically unstable and antisocial lifestyle, as the adult test does, the children's test included items such as "does not feel bad or guilty", "does not plan ahead" and "acts without thinking". They called it the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD). Frick says they wanted to move away from the idea that they were studying psychopathy in youth. It was important not to brand children with a label that implied their future was fixed, he says. "Instead we have tried to show that there is a subgroup of antisocial youth who seem to lack conscience, some of whom may eventually meet the adult criteria for psychopathy, and some of whom may not."
continued in part 2