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Friday, April 9, 2021

Male = more murderous than psychopath

Who is more dangerous, males or psychopaths? 

Take a non-gendered, non sociopathic person. Are they more likely to be a murderer if we make them male or if we make them a psychopath? The answer is male.

First, homicide rates are 88.8% male in the U.S. You're 7 times more likely to be a murderer if you're male than female. Sources: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf 

I'm going to use 2013 FBI statistics because they seem to do a good job distinguishing between genders, but I'd love to see this actually studied and given the attention it deserves: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls


Male non-psychopathic murderers
Total in the U.S. in 2013 = 5058 male murderers
At one person's estimate, psychopaths are an estimated 25% of murderers: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201812/are-murderers-unfairly-labeled-psychopaths

5058*.75 =  3793.5 male American non-psychopath murderers.

Controlled for population size:
Total male U.S. population = 151.8 million

3793.5 male non-psychopath murderers /151.8M male americans =

0.002499011% likelihood you're a murderer if you're an American male non-psychopath


Non-male psychopath murderers
For non-male psychopath murders, let's first take the number of non-male murderers: 665 

665 non-male murders again at the rate of 25% of murderers are psychopaths = 
665*.25 = 166 non-male American psychopath murderers

Controlled for population size.
Total non male psychopath population in the U.S. is 176.M. Approximately four percent of those are psychopaths.

176.4M*4% = 7,056,000 non-male American psychopaths. 

166 non-male psychopath American murderers /7.056M non-male American psychopaths =

0.002352607% likelihood you're a murderer if you're a non-male American psychopath


***Being male makes you more likely to be a murderer than being a psychopath.**** 

Both are still highly unlikely, e.g. if you come across a random male or random non-male psychopath it's still very unlikely they are a murderer. 

Of course these numbers are just rough estimates, but I think this quick back of the envelope calculation suggests at the very least that common intuitions regarding the dangerousness of psychopaths need to be re-examined and further research is warranted. 

9 comments:

  1. hi i would like a little help after prompts i did a test on a site and i would like to ask how reliable can the test be? the site name is psychopathyis.org

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  2. I feel, instinctively, that you're not controlling for society's poor diagnosis rate for non-male antisocial personality disorder. What do the numbers look like when you divide it into four categories? (that is: male psychopath, non-male psychopath, male non-psychopath, non-male non-psychopath)

    Although, given that a lot of homicides (the majority, I believe?) are crimes of passion, it's definitely likely that they are more associated with poor impulse control and high levels of emotionality than they are with psychopathy itself. The Hollywood-ization of psychopathy is so appealing to many precisely because it others the idea that generally-emotional viewers could ever do awful things, despite the fact that most awful things are done in the pitches of emotion as opposed to a clinical coldness.

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  3. Do those proportions not match the wider populations. Men tending to be more violent than women. Also what of the broader case that of incitement to kill where accomplices are used. This would I belive show a higher proportions of female protagonists.

    In terms of the intent to do harm my surmise would be equal numbers across genders.

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  4. Supplemental, has the proportion of male to female psychopaths been factored in? The estimated frequency of about 1 percent of the population for males and 0.3–0.7 percent for females

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  5. you are an idiot how can you compare the number of male and number of psychopaths together if there were as many psychopaths as males do you think your stupid calculations will hold up you fool.

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  6. I laughed when I read the title. Males are inherently aggressive. I had a friend who dated a psychopathic girl. He even boasted about it in a joking way. Can't remember what happened but she did something and ended up with a black eye and he called the cops on her. Turns out he did aggression better than she did.

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  7. I have thought of murder and I’m neither male nor a sociopath. I could never go through with it because of that little thing called a conscience

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  8. Who would've known that being a Psychobitch doesn't make you invulnerable to being murdered? Killing you would save me some trouble. You really think you're special? While you're at it with sarcasm and weasling your way into me, I would simply break your skull open. Do you really think being special would save you fromm death?

    ReplyDelete

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