Sunday, September 16, 2012

Sociopath quote: the lie as romance

A lie is an allurement, a fabrication that can be embellished into a fantasy. It can be clothed in the raiment of a mystic conception. Truth is cold, sober fact, not so comfortable to absorb. A lie is more palatable. The most detested person in the world is the one who always tells the truth, who never romances… I found it far more interesting and profitable to romance than to tell the truth.

-- Joseph Weil, aka ‘The Yellow Kid’

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Moral judgment without emotions

A recent experiment about the impact of emotions in decisionmaking with some lofty aspirations:

The study's answer will inform a classic philosophical debate on whether humans make moral judgments based on norms and societal rules, or based on their emotions.

The test basically required people to perform different versions of the trolley problem, asking them to hurt/kill one person in order to save multiple people. Most people have trouble pulling the trigger. The people with damage to a part of the frontal lobe that makes them less emotional "make a less personal calculation." "The logical choice, they say, is to sacrifice one life to save many." Most people are torn between the two choices, but the emotionless people "seem to lack that conflict." Instead, they behave perfectly rationally:


"What is absolutely astonishing about our results is how selective the deficit is," he said. "Damage to the frontal lobe leaves intact a suite of moral problem solving abilities, but damages judgments in which an aversive action is put into direct conflict with a strong utilitarian outcome."

It is the feeling of aversion that normally blocks humans from harming each other. Damasio described it as "a combination of rejection of the act, but combined with the social emotion of compassion for that particular person."


Surprise! This time the sociopaths is not the bad guy.

The study holds another implication for philosophy.By showing that humans are neurologically unfit for strict utilitarian thinking, the study suggests that neuroscience may be able to test different philosophies for compatibility with human nature.

It turns out that utilitarian judgments are sometimes valuable and important and that it's the normal people who have the deficit in making them and the sociopaths who excel.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Take the Test

From TNP, describing the test:


It essentially breaks down all known psychopathic behavior into individual clusters that branch off of a base psychopathic tree. It's an evaluation, which a person can take themselves, to see just where they fall, and what characteristics and predominant in their personality. It takes away the arbitrary binary designation Yes/No to psychopathy, and instead focuses on the type of psychopathic features a person displays.

My academic sources are rooted in the works of Hare, Millon, and the DSM, though I do avoid complete redundancy, and nixed a few aspects that seemed obsolete, or unrelated to psychopathy.



The test itself:


Psychopathic Trait Tendency Assessment (PTTA)

This evaluation measures an individual's potentially psychopathic personality traits. It measures four different clusters of acknowledged psychopathic traits, and has a scoring system to measure if an individual meets enough of the criteria to acknowledge how much their personality is affected by each cluster of psychopathy. The evaluation also makes the distinction between each cluster being a primary personality tendency or a secondary one if indeed an individual displays enough traits for a cluster on a consistent basis.

This test does not evaluate whether an individual is a psychopath or not. It simply measure how their personality measures up to researched psychopathic features. The criteria, thresholds, and clusters are derived from the works and research of Hare, Millon, and the DSM IV.


Scoring System

Each trait has a max score of 4. There is no "3" in the scoring system, due to the severity of difference of a pathological trait, and a learned and utilized trait due to environmental adaptation necessities.*

0 - manifests rarely if at all
1 - manifests occasionally
2 - manifests frequently
4 - is an ever-present pathological manifestation in the personality of the person and is rarely if ever not utilized
  
*Examples of this would be when a person lives in a life-situation where classically psychopathic traits are needed to survive and thrive. This usually applies to hostile or high-stress work-environments for the likes of soldiers, career criminals, police, emergency responders, doctors/nurses, et cetera.


PTTA Evaluation

Assign a score to each trait based on the scoring system above. Add up the total for each cluster.

Core Base Psychopathic Personality Traits

-Superficial usage of charm
-Drastically lower levels of fear and anxiety
-Lack of empathy
-Lack of remorse
-Underdeveloped emotions
-Lack of respect or understanding of social norms and morals
-Impersonal relationships with family, friends and lovers
-Shallow to nonexistent affect
-High levels of cunning, deception and manipulation


Primary Psychopath threshold 28+/36
Secondary Psychopath threshold 20-27/36


Core Antisocial Personality Traits

-High levels of apathy and lack of life goals
-Disregard and violation of the boundaries of others
-Recidivist criminality
-Low levels of impulse control
-Low tolerance for frustration
-Prone to violent outbursts
-Prone to parasitic relationships with friends, family, and lovers
-Prone to indulgence of narcotics, alcohol, and other habit forming chemicals
-Sexual promiscuity

Primary Antisocial threshold: 28+/36
Secondary Antisocial threshold: 20-27/36


Core Narcissistic Personality Traits

-Highly susceptible to criticism or praise
-Grandiose self-image
-Sense of entitlement
-Delusional and unrealistic goals
-Obsession with self
-Requires constant attention and prefers to be the center of it
-Easily and often jealous and angry
-Wants and feels they deserve "the best" of whatever they want or need
-Indulges in fantasy of wealth, power and fame

Primary Narcissist threshold: 28+/36
Secondary Narcissist threshold: 20-27/36


Core Sadistic Personality Traits

-Prone to use physical or psychological harm to achieve their goals
-Humiliates or demeans others
-Utilizes unusually harsh punishments and lessons
-Takes pleasure or is amused by viewing or participating in the harming of animals and or humans
-Usage of intimidation
-Restricts the autonomy of those closest to the person
-Highly interested weapons, violence and torture
-Views others as toys to be played with and discarded when bored
-Takes pleasure in terrorizing and inducing fear and panic in others

Primary Sadist threshold: 28+/36
Secondary Sadist threshold: 20-27/36


Each core personality type represents a cluster of traits typically associated with Psychopaths and their behavior. As these are personality clusters, some are usually represented more than others, but it is possible that an individual would score very high on all clusters, or possibly only high on one if they were somewhere in the psychopathic spectrum.

Each cluster has nine traits, and the thresholds are kept at levels that require a majority of points being pooled into each cluster.

Secondary represents that an individual not only represents most traits to a moderate degree, but has at least one that falls into the realm of pathological.

Primary represents that not only does an individual have most traits to a moderate degree, but that they have most to a pathological degree.

Thresholds are not meant to include or exclude the possibility that someone encompasses a personality cluster. For example, an individual with only three or four traits in a cluster to a pathological degree would probably be represented by the personality cluster, even if the other traits did not appear present or that noticeable. It is rare (but not impossible) than an individual would only have a few traits in a cluster at pathological levels, and not the rest, to at least achieve the Secondary status for that cluster.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

The ugly duckling

I liked this recent comment for how well it expressed the difference between self-knowledge and self-diagnosing:

A few months ago what seemed to be a perfect storm of stress moved through my life. As the storm began to dissipate, I noticed trends of how I have conducted myself in order to get to where I am in life. I haven’t been the nicest of people (to put it mildly). I have lied, cheated, stole, manipulated, and worse to some of the people who were supposed to be the closest to me; all without guilt or shame.

Now, if my whole life I wore Amish clothes, conducted myself like Amish, and though like an Amish but had never really known what an Amish was; you can image my surprise to wake up one day and see someone dressed as I do, acts as I do, and thinks along the lines I do. Does it mean I’m Amish? I don’t know.

I woke up and saw that I indeed have sociopathic tendencies, traits, and actions. I don’t know if I’m Amish… but here in my 40s I now KNOW what I do and how I do it, and how do or don’t feel. Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck… what is it? 

Of course how can we reconcile this with the recent post about wannabe sociopaths? Hard to say.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Guest post: The Next Generation

I've long been struck by the idea of childhood diagnosis of sociopaths--of exactly how early and easily we can be spotted.  I, myself, was pretty aware of my own differences at an early age.  Couldn't describe it back then, but I always saw the difference, that desire to compete fiercely, and even humiliate, break, and if possible, injure the competition in a way that never led back to me, all while playing adults like fiddles.  Because of this history, I recently recognized another small sociopath with absolute clarity.

Recently, my wife and I were on vacation visiting friends of ours from grad school. They have a five-year-old boy.  It was like looking at a little version of myself.  Seeing this kid take joy in first playing with his puppy, and slowly but surely escalating the play and contact to the level of inflicting intentional pain.  I recognized on his part that he knew precisely when he was crossing a line--looking up, causing the pain when he thought no adult was looking, and the false regret in his voice but clearly not his eyes when caught.  It was like looking back in time into a mirror.  He didn't reserve his violence and force for his pet, either, but also targeted both his parents and my wife and I.   When his parents tried to use the old parenting canard of "you're hurting mommy and daddy" which usually reduces kids to crying, mewling shame-balls, their son only grinned.

If seeing his joy at this weren't a recognition of my own childhood feelings when I caused physical or emotional pain, the cinch was seeing his uncanny understanding of social dynamics, and the privileged role that most kids occupy in society which saves them from adult wrath.  In other words, this child was manipulative beyond his years.  Again, something familiar to myself.

By looking at him, you wouldn't think he's growing up in a nurturing, progressive, yuppie household where both parents hold doctorate degrees (or on second thought, maybe you would).  His parents were oblivious to their little 'angel' and the intentionality of his aggression.  Or at least have developed a practiced obliviousness.

But what surprised me most was how quickly a weekend around a small version of myself stirred up territorial feelings.  Those feelings made me think of the practices of male lions direct towards a competitor's cubs.  Good thing I live half a country away.


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