Psychopaths Have A Hidden Talent In Which They Naturally Excel (M)

Fascinating research uncovers the hidden power of psychopaths.

Fascinating research uncovers the hidden power of psychopaths.


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How Parents Turn Their Children Into Psychopaths

Psychopathy affects around 1 percent of the population.

Psychopathy affects around 1 percent of the population.

Care givers who are unresponsive to a child’s distress help turn them into psychopaths, research finds.

The study found that children placed in orphanages — where they generally received less sensitive care — were more likely to grow up with with callous-unemotional traits.

Being cruel and disregarding other people’s feelings, along with lack of guilt or empathy are all markers of psychopathy.

The study compared these institutionalised children with those brought up in foster care.

Foster carers were much more empathic to the child’s distress and, in turn, those children grew up more sensitive and empathic with others.

Dr Kathryn Humphreys, the study’s first author, said:

“If we can intervene early to help kids in their development, it not only helps them but also the broader society.

The best way to do that is making sure children are placed in homes with responsive caregivers and helping caregivers learn to be more responsive to their child’s needs.”

The study was published in the journal  Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Humphreys et al., 2015).

This Is What Psychopaths Want — At Any Cost

Brain scans of psychopaths reveal what they desire more than anything.

Brain scans of psychopaths reveal what they desire more than anything.

The psychopathic brain is wired to go after rewards, whatever the cost, a neuroscience study finds.

The brains of psychopaths release four times as much dopamine in response to rewards as normal people.

Imagine how much more pleasure they get from taking whatever they want.

Dr Joshua Buckholtz, the study’s lead author, said:

“Psychopaths are often thought of as cold-blooded criminals who take what they want without thinking about consequences.

We found that a hyper-reactive dopamine reward system may be the foundation for some of the most problematic behaviors associated with psychopathy, such as violent crime, recidivism and substance abuse.”

Psychopaths are also known to have a lack of fear and empathy.

But this study emphasised their strong focus on reward.

Dr David Zald, study co-author, said:

“There has been a long tradition of research on psychopathy that has focused on the lack of sensitivity to punishment and a lack of fear, but those traits are not particularly good predictors of violence or criminal behavior.

Our data is suggesting that something might be happening on the other side of things.

These individuals appear to have such a strong draw to reward — to the carrot — that it overwhelms the sense of risk or concern about the stick.”

The results come from a study in which people — some psychopaths — were given a dose of amphetamine (speed), then had their brains scanned.

The aim was to see how people’s brains reacted to the stimulant.

Dr Buckholtz explained:

“Our hypothesis was that psychopathic traits are also linked to dysfunction in dopamine reward circuitry.

Consistent with what we thought, we found people with high levels of psychopathic traits had almost four times the amount of dopamine released in response to amphetamine.”

In the second part of the study, participants had their brains scanned while getting a monetary reward for doing a task.

Again, the psychopaths showed much higher levels of brain activity in anticipation of getting the reward.

Dr Buckholtz said:

“It may be that because of these exaggerated dopamine responses, once they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths are unable to alter their attention until they get what they’re after.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience (Buckholtz et al., 2010).

Psychopaths Use These Words Twice As Often

Psychopaths use these words twice as often as non-psychopaths.

Psychopaths use these words twice as often as non-psychopaths.

Psychopaths use words related to food, sex and money twice as often as non-psychopaths, a study finds.

Psychopaths are also less likely to use words related to family, religion and social needs.

The trends in word use reflect how psychopaths display excessive selfishness, detachment and emotional flatness.

The results come from an analysis of stories told by 14 psychopathic murderers in Canadian prisons.

They were compared with 38 convicted murderers who were not psychopaths.

Each criminal talked about their crime in detail and then the words they used were analysed.

Along with words related to money, sex and food, psychopaths were also more likely to explain their crimes using explanatory words like ‘because’, ‘since’ and ‘so that’.

Professor Jeff Hancock, the study’s first author, said:

“Previous work has looked at how psychopaths use language.

Our paper is the first to show that you can use automated tools to detect the distinct speech patterns of psychopaths.”

Psychopaths were found to be less fluent in their speech, perhaps to frame their story in the most positive way possible.

The study was published in the journal Legal and Criminological Psychology (Hancock et al., 2011).

How To Spot Two Types Of Psychopath: Primary & Secondary

There are two types of psychopath, primary and secondary — and some can be cooperative, helpful and friendly.

There are two types of psychopath, primary and secondary — and some can be cooperative, helpful and friendly.

The two key traits of all psychopaths are being callous and unemotional.

Being callous means having a cruel disregard for others.

On top of this, psychopaths typically have difficulty responding to the emotions of others in a normal way — they also appear unemotional themselves.

However, not all psychopaths are the same.

There are two types of psychopaths — primary and secondary — according to research.

Primary psychopaths

Primary psychopaths can be cooperative, helpful and friendly.

Secondary psychopaths, though, are usually destructive, unhelpful and perform badly at work.

Ms Nora Schütte, the study’s first author, said that primary psychopaths are marked out by the trait of ‘fearless dominance’:

“People with this character trait want to get their way, have no fear of the consequences of their actions, and can withstand stress very well.”

The concept of a primary psychopath is related to the idea of a high functioning psychopath.

A high functioning psychopath is able to mask the negative aspects of their personalities in order to get what they want partly due to high IQ.

Secondary psychopaths

In comparison, secondary psychopaths have high self-centred impulsivity, she said:

“Persons with high values here lack an inner brake.

Their self-control is thus weak, and they therefore do not have any consideration for others.

They are referred to as secondary psychopaths”.

The research included 161 people asked questions about their personalities and how they interacted at work.

The results showed that of the two types of psychopath, primary psychopaths — those displaying fearless dominance — were nonetheless often seen as cooperative and helpful.

Ms Schütte said:

“But that was true only when these primary psychopaths also had marked social skills.

Above all that included skills that are generally important at work – such as the gift of making others feel well”.

Secondary psychopaths, though, really are trouble no matter how good their social skills were, Ms Schütte said:

“These persons with high values in secondary psychopathy thus really do have the postulated negative effects upon their work environment.

And to a much greater degree than when we examine both groups together.”

Professor Gerhard Blickle, the study’s co-author, said that not all psychopaths were evil — in fact many are quite the reverse:

“Even persons with marked psychopathic traits do not necessarily exhibit antisocial behavior.

Persons with a high degree of fearless dominance can even be selfless heroes in everyday life, such as life-savers, emergency physicians, or firefighters.”

Types of psychopath signs

Around one in 200 people is a psychopath.

However, many more people than that share some traits with psychopaths.

Common signs of psychopaths include:

The study was published in the Journal of Management (Schütte & Blickle, 2016).

Psychopathy: One Of The Most Obvious Signs

Psychopaths share this quality with people who have frontal brain damage.

Psychopaths share this quality with people who have frontal brain damage.

A lack of empathy is one of the most obvious signs of a psychopath, research finds.

People diagnosed with psychopathy tend to behave in an extremely anti-social way, with a total lack of compassion for others.

Psychopaths can appear immune to negative feelings, along with being aggressive and, sometimes, dangerous.

While psychopaths lack empathy, they are able to understand other people’s minds.

In other words, they can guess what people are thinking, but cannot guess, do not feel, or totally disregard, other people’s emotions.

This is why psychopaths are so good at manipulating people and causing harm.

One study has compared 17 people diagnosed as psychopathic with 25 others who had suffered brain damage.

They were given tests of empathy and cognitive ability.

Dr Simone Shamay-Tsoory, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Our findings show that people who have psychopathic symptoms behave as though they are suffering frontal brain damage.”

Both people with damage to the frontal areas of their brains and psychopaths had difficulty showing empathy.

However, psychopaths scored the same as normal people on tests of what other people are thinking.

So, psychopaths are able to ‘read other people’s minds’ in the normal way that we can all guess what other people are thinking to a certain extent.

However, they are not constrained by what other people are feeling.

Dr Shamay-Tsoory said:

“Seeing as psychopathic behavior is similar to that of a person with brain damage, it could be that it could benefit from similar forms of treatment.”

There is evidence, though, that there are two types of psychopaths: primary and secondary.

Primary psychopaths can be cooperative, helpful and friendly.

Secondary psychopaths, though, are usually destructive, unhelpful and perform badly at work.

So, not all psychopaths are evil — in fact many are quite the reverse.

Professor Gerhard Blickle, who has studied psychopaths in the workplace, says:

“Even persons with marked psychopathic traits do not necessarily exhibit antisocial behavior.

Persons with a high degree of fearless dominance can even be selfless heroes in everyday life, such as life-savers, emergency physicians, or firefighters.”

The study was published in the journal Cortex (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2010).

Signs Of A Psychopath: Meaning, Symptoms & Traits

Most people find the signs of a psychopath difficult to spot, but the symptoms are there if you know where to look.

Most people find the signs of a psychopath difficult to spot, but the symptoms are there if you know where to look.

The two key traits of a psychopath are being callous and unemotional.

Being callous means having a cruel disregard for others.

Callous people lack compassion, are cold-blooded and heartless.

On top of this, psychopaths typically have difficulty responding to the emotions of others in a normal way — they also appear unemotional themselves.

For example, psychopaths tend to show no feeling when they see others in pain.

Despite popular belief, being a psychopath does not automatically make someone a criminal — although it does help.

Common signs and symptoms of a psychopath

Around one in 200 people is a psychopath.

However, many more people than that share some traits with psychopaths.

Common signs of psychopaths include:

  1. Narcissism
  2. Superficial charm
  3. Being disagreeable and low in conscientiousness
  4. Manipulative
  5. Lack of empathy
  6. Fearless dominance and impulsivity
  7. Focusing on rewards and ignoring consequences
  8. Being great at lying

Causes of psychopathy

Psychopathy is probably a result of many different factors interacting.

Some of the main ones are:

It is striking that all criminal psychopaths have a history of grotesque physical and/or psychological abuse during childhood.

Treatment of psychopaths

There are few systematic treatments for all psychopaths, only for specific types, such as violent offenders.

Most psychopaths are not interested in changing themselves because they believe there is nothing wrong with them.

More subtle signs of a psychopath

Here are some other more subtle signs of psychopathy…

1. Profession with the most psychopaths

CEOs, lawyers and people in the media lead the list of professions with the most psychopaths.

None of this means that every CEO or lawyer is a psychopath, nor should the suggestion be that having psychopathic tendencies is helpful in any of these jobs (although it may be!).

Rather, there is an overlap between psychopathic personality traits and the types of people who go into those professions.

2. Signs of ‘bad’ psychopaths

Not all psychopaths are the same.

There are two types of psychopaths — primary and secondary — according to research.

Primary psychopaths can be cooperative, helpful and friendly.

Secondary psychopaths, though, are usually destructive, unhelpful and perform badly at work.

Ms Nora Schütte, the study’s first author, said that primary psychopaths are marked out by the trait of ‘fearless dominance’:

“People with this character trait want to get their way, have no fear of the consequences of their actions, and can withstand stress very well.”

3. Psychopaths are often late to bed

People who have a tendency to stay up late are more likely to exhibit anti-social personality traits, like narcissism and psychopathy.

Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy — menacingly called ‘the Dark Triad’ — were all linked with the preference for late bedtimes

Dr. Peter K. Jonason, explained:

“Those who scored highly on the Dark Triad traits are, like many other predators such as lions and scorpions, creatures of the night.

For people pursuing a fast life strategy like that embodied by the Dark Triad traits, it’s better to occupy and exploit a lowlight environment where others are sleeping and have diminished cognitive functioning.”

4. Psychopaths are less empathetic

Yawning after seeing someone else yawn is linked to empathy and bonding.

But psychopaths are selfish, manipulative, fearless, domineering and, critically, lack empathy.

The study found that people with psychopathic tendencies were less likely to yawn when they saw someone else yawning.

5. The criminal signs of a psychopath

Despite popular belief, being a psychopath does not automatically make someone a criminal — although it does help.

Many criminals have psychopathic traits, such as impulsive and antisocial behaviour.

However, a lack of self-control and a strong focus on rewards is strongly linked to criminal behaviour.

Brain scans have revealed this is the critical difference between an ordinary psychopath and a criminal psychopath.

6. Psychopaths like bitter foods

Having a preference for bitter tastes is linked to psychopathy, narcissism and everyday sadism, a study finds.

A predilection for tonic water or coffee, therefore, could indicated some psychopathic tendencies in a person’s personality.

In contrast, people who dislike bitter tastes tend to be more agreeable, the researchers discovered.

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Nasty People Lack This One Vital Quality — Which Leads To Misery

There are three ways to find meaning in life, all of which dark personalities deny themselves.

There are three ways to find meaning in life, all of which dark personalities deny themselves.

Patience is one vital trait lacking in psychopaths, narcissists and people with ‘dark personalities’, research finds.

Without patience, people with dark personalities find it hard to obtain satisfaction from their work and love lives.

Impatience means they move from one partner to another and do not commit fully to their work.

Without committing to work and other people, it is very difficult to find meaning in life.

Patience helps people get through difficult situations without being aggressive — something that dark personality types cannot often manage.

Psychopaths, in particular, are highly impulsive, often acting without thinking or controlling themselves.

The study’s authors explain:

“Psychopathy features impulsivity, antisocial behaviors, and lack of empathy; those who score high on psychopathy scales are prone to seeking thrills.”

Similarly, narcissists find criticism very difficult to deal with — they hold grudges and will lash out.

The study’s authors explain:

“Narcissism refers to a feeling of grandiose self-worth such
that those who score high on narcissism often appear dominant and egotistical.

Narcissists commonly experience feelings of superiority over others and can be quite aggressive when they sense that their self-esteem is under threat.”

The conclusions come from 434 people working for a Chinese company.

All were surveyed about their patience, how much meaning they experienced in life and any dark personality traits.

People with any of the so-called ‘dark triad’ of personality traits of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism had low levels of patience and experienced reduced meaning in life.

The authors write that there are three critical ways to find meaning in life:

“…the first is “creating a work or doing a deed”, which is supported by the finding that meaning is positively related with work engagement; the second is love, which is supported by the finding that meaning in life has a significant positive correlation with nourishing relationships; and the last is enduring unavoidable suffering…”

The Chinese study discussed the importance of patience within Buddhism.

Buddhism defines patience as involving three elements:

“The first is the patience to endure suffering, willingly, namely to accept both mental and physical suffering with gratitude.

The second is the patience to not retaliate against harm, namely to withstand harm caused by others, and respond with forgiveness and loving-kindness rather than anger or hatred.

Third, the patience to thoroughly scrutinize phenomena, namely to bear with uncertainty and insecurity, and to see things as they truly are…”

The study was published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life (Wang et al., 2018).

Workplace Psychopath: One Simple Sign Is A Giveaway

Primary psychopaths lack empathy and are cool-headed and fearless.

Workplace psychopaths lack empathy and are cool-headed and fearless.

Unlike everyone else in the workplace, psychopaths feel positive and engaged towards abusive bosses, research finds.

Bad bosses do things like invade privacy, gossip, break promises and display rudeness.

While normal people naturally find these behaviours in the workplace very stressful, psychopaths feel more positive and engaged with them.

What are known as ‘primary psychopaths’ benefit from bad bosses the most, the researchers found.

Dr Charlice Hurst, the study’s first author, explained the term:

“There are primary and secondary dimensions of psychopathy.

Both consist of high levels of antisocial behavior; however, people who score high in primary psychopathy lack empathy and are cool-headed and fearless.

They don’t react to things that cause other people to feel stressed, fearful or angry.

Secondary psychopaths are more hot-headed and impulsive.

“We found that primary psychopaths benefit under abusive supervisors.

Relative to their peers low in primary psychopathy, they felt less anger and more engagement and positive emotions under abusive supervisors.”

Workplace psychopath research

Two studies were conducted involving 419 people.

In the first, each was asked to react to profiles of different types of workplace bosses.

In the second, they reported on their real-life bosses.

In some ways, psychopaths who didn’t mind their bad bosses were enablers, Dr Hurst said:

“It may reward and retain exactly the kind of people who are likely to perpetuate abusive cultures.

Psychopaths thriving under abusive supervisors would be better positioned to get ahead of their peers.”

Dr Hurst continued:

“If they have a problem of endemic abuse, like Wells Fargo — where former employees have reported that managers used tactics designed to induce fear and shame in order to achieve unrealistic sales goals — and upper-level managers are either unaware of it or are not taking action, they might notice increasing levels of engagement due to turnover among employees low in primary psychopathy and retention of those high in primary psychopathy.

At the extreme, they could end up with a highly engaged workforce of psychopaths.”

The study was published in the Journal of Business Ethics (Hurst et al., 2017).