Saturday, October 12, 2013

Successful sociopaths

There has been some interesting research on successful sociopaths by, among others, Dr Stephanie Mullins-Sweatt, who gets interviewed by the BBC here. Here findings are summarized and referenced here:
Unfortunately, very little is known about successful psychopaths. This is because most of the psychological research conducted on psychopathic tendencies has been done on psychopaths who are incarcerated. For instance, Kent Kiehl has done some interesting research using fMRIs to examine the brains of incarcerated psychopaths. His research shows that such individuals suffer from significant impairments that affect their ability to detect emotions in others and to feel emotions themselves.

But what makes a successful psychopath different than an unsuccessful or "prototypic" psychopath? My colleague, Dr. Stephanie Mullins-Sweatt, recently examined this idea in an article just published in the Journal of Research in Personality. Dr. Mullins-Sweatt, along with her coauthors, asked experts in the areas of psychology and law to describe an individual they knew personally who matched the description I gave above regarding a successful psychopath. These experts were then asked to rate this individual on a variety of personality characteristics. From these responses, a clear, consistent description emerged that matched the typical characteristics of a prototypic psychopath in all ways but one: Conscientiousness.

In the personality literature, conscientiousness refers to the tendency to show self-discipline, the act dutifully, and to aim for achievement. People high in conscientiousness prefer planned, rather than spontaneous, behavior and are able to effectively control and regulate their impulses. Prototypic psychopaths are quite low in this trait, unable to put the brakes on their dangerous impulses and incapable of learning from their mistakes. Given this, it is no surprise that such individuals are often arrested and convicted for their heinous crimes. However, the personality ratings of the successful psychopaths depicted a dishonest, arrogant, exploitative person who nevertheless was able to keep their behavior in check by controlling their destructive impulses and preventing detection.
I take issue with the way "prototypic" psychopaths are described here. People have been aware of the existence of sociopaths for millenia, across many cultures. The common conception of the ne'er-do-well violent criminal sociopath has been around for only the past century or so. That sociopaths have survived (and thrived) this long suggests that the sociopaths who are capable of putting the brakes on their dangerous impulses and showing a certain level of self discipline are the prototypical sociopaths, not the ones rotting away in prison.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Sociopaths and children

A reader asked what I would do if I had a child. My response:
I think sociopaths tend to like children more than they like adults. I do. You can be relatively honest, even authentically nice to children. Children don't have the same expectations of you. Children aren't secretly judging you for being "off." You don't have to wear a mask around children. You can be yourself and, if anything, they will think that you are funnier and a better playmate than most adults. Although, speaking of playmates, children of a certain age sometimes have difficulty telling whether I am considered an adult or a child by society's standards because I don't fit the typical adult behavior patterns.

Even though I like kids generally, I find certain children to be completely intolerable. It can be very difficult dealing with these children because they behave so selfishly and unreasonably. If it were just up to me, no problem, I could just ignore or terrorize them to get them to stop. But a lot of the time other adults (typically their parents) will placate them in ways that tend to put you out. It's ridiculous to watch how easily these adults are manipulated. These parents are just feeding the behavior. Children, like sociopaths, need well established boundaries to feel safe. Parents are doing children a disservice through their exaggerated efforts to appease. But these type of parents don't really care about the kid's welfare, not enough anyway. They're just doing whatever it takes to get the kid to shut up and get off their backs.

Another tricky thing about children is that adults expect you to be nice around them, to not tell them crazy things, to behave in certain socially acceptable ways, i.e. to behave how they would behave with a child. That's fine and I understand there are certain things that are considered off-limits for children. For instance, I recently acquired this impulse to choke people, including children. They're crying, or they're hitting me with something, or screaming at me and I just want it to stop so I reach out with both hands at their throats with these crazy eyes full of intent, like the cartoon character Homer Simpson. It is completely impulsive. I did that with a little relative recently. It was hilarious looking up and seeing his mother's anxious (slightly horrified?) expression wondering whether she should intervene or whether I was going to stop myself (I'm very open with who I am around my family).

So overall, I like children, but I like them best when I am given significant leeway with which to interact with them, or otherwise don't have judgmental, interfering adults around to distort my very natural interactions with them. I would imagine that I would have that in spades with my own children, so there's that. On the other hand, I wouldn't have the patience to deal with the everyday bustle that comes along with children. I would need to hire full-time help. A really interesting question is, if I did have a child, would I want it to be a sociopath or not? I'll have to think about that one...

Another thing, almost everything I said here about sociopaths and children would seem to apply equally to aspies and children.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

The all in the family sociopath

A reader writes about his sociopathic family tree and what he believes led to his own sociopathic traits:

As a high functioning, truly, highly intelligent sociopath (well aren't we all) I.... "enjoyed" your book.

I figured out years ago I was a sociopath. I have a brother who is so the definition of "narcissistic personality disorder" his picture should be next to the definition in all books. I personally always classified him as a "psychopath" as opposed to my "sociopath". 

Our early lives we moved every few years. Dad was in the military. My brother and I came from an abusive household. I the black sheep, and he the "good" brother. I was physically, mentally and emotionally abused. Mom as well. Little brother got his fair share of the latter two as I recall. Dad never broke any bones. Never left bruises where people could see them. His intention, His terror, was part of his Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for us. I could see the overall methodicalness of it even as a young child. Keeping us off balance with random acts of kindness and random (or expected acts) of terror. Molding us into what he wanted us to be at the time. Clarity comes with hindsight, I know now that in many ways I had a good teacher. He was a highly intelligent, highly functional man who worked a Top Secret job for the government. He's gone now, not that he'd have spoken to me about it, but with what I now know, I'm certain he was in that APD spectrum somewhere.

Dad not only taught me the "ways and means" of dealing with the sociopathic tendencies, but the "ways of terror" as well. Mental, emotional, physical, all fair game in our household growing up. I always found the physical violence far to easy (I'm a big guy and can physically dominate most people easily enough) and prefer the mental and emotional manipulations more; more of a challenge. More "fun". Anyone can physically MAKE someone do something (say with a gun if nothing else), but manipulating them into WANTING to do it, far, far more satisfying.

I have really never had much of a chance to actually discuss the intimate details of our "disorder" with another sociopath. All us "APD" people have similarities. A few of the similar SMALL details however, of our (yours and my and perhaps others)"condition", "blew" me away. 

The fake accent. Mine is a non-specific southern accent, "blunted" by many years of living in the Midwest; or so it sounds. Seems to instantly set people at ease. "He's just a good ol' boy." Hearing the consonants roll off your tongue. Funny enough, I used to do the "non-specific European" accent and dropped it for the "non-specific southern" accent, as it was proving to be far more useful and continues to be. I wonder if this is due to our "chameleon" abilities or is there some other underlying mental process that makes us change our speech?

The "sharp tooth". Wow. Such a small detail, but on the mark. Likely due to our "sensation seeking". Had anyone bothered to ask, I could have told them 20+ years ago I was a dopamine junkie. I truly believe we do not produce enough dopamine, which causes us to live our lives constantly searching for some sort of stimulation, so for a brief moment we can have "peace". "Feel"......"Normal"?

There were a few other small details as well that I did not expect. Playing drums and living in bad neighborhoods being two of them. Makes me wonder how much of the "us" we have is really us, not just a response to our expressed genetic heritage. I'd be curious at how many others you've communicated with have similar "accents", "sharp teeth", are good at keeping a beat and live in bad neighborhoods.

I have delved into BDSM for quite a while now. Yes, surprise-surprise, I'm a Dom. Choking, pain, asphyxiation; all can certainly be "fun". Knives are "fun" as well. 

The sexual "deviancy" and attraction to the BDSM world is more common among APD people I've noticed. As well as MANY other mental disorders it seems. A fertile playground. Not without its downside. I've had two stalkers in the last 10 years who didn't take kindly to me just dropping them from my life. Of course what really happened was I decided it was over, and manipulated them into either leaving or stepping over the "line" and doing things there was no coming back from. That cost/benefit analysis can be a bitch sometimes. Mostly for others.

In this day and age of sarcasm and violence, I often just speak the truth now. Just like the person you quoted in your book. People think I'm joking. At worst, I have a slightly "off" or "dark" brand of humor. "What are you thinking?", she asks. "I'm wondering what kind of noises you'd make if I held you down and bit a chunk out of your shapely ass." She laughs. I was telling the truth.

I'm really not sure why I'm writing this email. Certainly curiosity. I have never shared this information with anyone. 

In some way perhaps its comforting to know I'm not alone in my "uniqueness".

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Loving to cheat

To be filed in the normal-people-are-more-like-sociopaths-than-they-would-like-to-think folder (but sociopaths are evil because they lie and cheat!), the NY Times reports recent research suggesting that despite popular wisdom that people feel guilty for doing bad things like cheating, people feel pretty good after they cheat.  "Cheating's Surprising Thrill"

In the study’s initial experiments, participants were asked to predict how they would feel if they cheated. Badly, they generally reported.

Another set of participants was given a baseline assessment of their moods. Then they took a word-unscrambling test. After finishing, they were handed an answer key, told to check their answers and asked to report the number of correct ones. For every right answer, they would earn $1.

Participants did not know that researchers could tell if they corrected wrong answers; 41 percent did so.

The follow-up assessment of their moods indeed showed that the cheaters, on average, felt an emotional boost that the honest participants didn’t.

“The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing, because there is emotional reinforcement of the behavior, meaning they could be more likely to do it again,” said Nicole E. Ruedy, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Washington’s Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking.

Then she and her colleagues removed the financial incentive. A new group would take a test on a computer. The results, they were told, would correlate with intelligence and a likelihood of future success.

But 77 participants were told that if they saw a pop-up message offering them the correct answer, they should ignore it and continue working.

About 68 percent of this group cheated at least once, clicking the button for the correct answer. In the follow-up assessment, this group also reported a rise in upbeat feelings.

Why did people feel so good about cheating? Was it relief at not being caught? That would imply that while cheating, they felt stress or distress. Or had they deceived themselves, rationalizing or minimizing the cheating to feel better?

Stripping away these possibilities, the researchers found that those who cheated experienced thrill, self-satisfaction, a sense of superiority.

The effect persisted even when subjects cheated indirectly. Next, they would solve math problems with someone who was just pretending to be a participant. The fake participant reported the results, elevating the scores, thus cheating for both. But no actual participant objected. And again, they felt just fine about it.

“We were a little appalled,” Dr. Ruedy said.

I thought these reactions were funny. "We were a little appalled"? "The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing"? Because this study is just a snapshot of reality. This is what people do everyday. If most people will cheat in situations like this, it just means that most people will cheat in situations like this. And that's a problem for governments seeking to maximize their tax revenue and insurance companies who do not get 100% accurate reports from their customers, but why do other people care? This is apparently just how people are. This experiment was not like the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, which put people in unusual circumstances to provoke unusual behavior. These were everyday people doing everyday things, and it turns out that people cheat about as often as they jaywalk or commit traffic violations. Where's the story?

The shock for me is not that the behavior is so common or that the participants were not wracked with guilt after committing such petty infractions, it's that anybody was "appalled" or found it "disturbing". Of course people are going to be happy about cheating because they are happy when they're winning. Our brain wants us to get ahead, our culture encourages us to get ahead. We are naturally competitive. You don't need to be an interspecies predator to get a rush from getting one up on someone, whether it is called "honestly earned" like a cunning stock trade based on another's ignorance or poor judgment, or is called "cheating" because it happens to exploit obvious loopholes in the system. It reminds me of the time my Swedish friend came to visit and I said the pleasure of capitalism over socialism is not that you get a particular thing, but that you get more than someone else. She didn't agree at all until we went to a theme park where we bought VIP passes that allowed us to go to the front of the line and she realized that a big part of her pleasure was not in going on more attractions, but in saving time as compared to other people.

Here's what I want in the follow-up study. Do the participants lie to themselves about the cheating? If they're not lying to themselves about the cheating, are we lying to ourselves about how frequently and guiltlessly people lie, cheat, despite having empathy, despite having consciences and the ability to feel guilt? Here's a crazy thought -- maybe we shouldn't want to discourage people from cheating more than we already do. Maybe there are upsides to "cheating" or the willingness to cheat. That would certainly explain why it is so prevalent.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

How sociopath target their "victims"

It turns out that sociopaths really do have an uncanny ability for spotting susceptible victims, as suggested in a study described by a Psychology Today writer:
In a study by Wheeler, Book and Costello of Brock University, individuals who self reported more traits associated with psychopathy were more apt to correctly identify individuals with a history of victimization. In the study, male student participants examined video tapes of twelve individuals walking from behind and rated the ease at which each could be mugged. The men also completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale: Version III (Paulhus, Hemphill, & Hare, in press) which measures interpersonal and affective traits associated with psychopathy as well as intra-personal instability and antisocial traits. Finally, they were asked to provide verbal rational for their ratings. Overall results confirmed a strong positive correlation between psychopathy scores and accuracy of victim identification. This means that individuals that score higher for psycopathy are better at selecting victims.
The study is also featured in this video clip from I, Psychopath.

I think sociopath do tend to go for a particular type of victim, or at least a certain susceptibility to their "charms." I wrote about this a little here. A typical target would be someone the sociopath feels like he can dominate, or where he can tell there is some wound, some "damage" that he can stick his finger in and play with. Being with damaged people is good for socios in two ways: (1) the playing, and (2) the damaged person expects other people to be damaged as well, so socios don't have to do as good a job of keeping up appearances, i.e. can be more of their unapologetic selves.

But that begs the question: how do sociopaths know who is damaged, or at least so quickly and accurately? As one of my readers said "I put up armor but most sociopaths can see right through it."

It reminds me of a trip I made to New Zealand. New Zealand has been an isolated island so long that it traditionally had no mammals, except for bats. Instead, it had a extremely diverse ecosystem of birds. These birds had perfected "defenses" against the other birds in their ecosystems and had survived for millions of years that way. I was told that one of the natural defenses of the birds was to remain perfectly still, which made them almost impossible to spot by the predator birds flying high overhead. Or course this tactic made them (almost literally) sitting ducks when man brought rats with them to the island.

Simply put, we all have "defenses" to disguise our weaknesses, whether wearing clothes, cosmetics, compensating with a flashy car, acquiring meaningless degrees and titles, etc. Most people construct their defenses with the average person in mind -- your boss, your spouse, your kids, your colleagues, your friends and family. A defense that may work swimmingly with most people may work not at all with a sociopath. Asking a sociopath how he is able to see through these devices is sort of like asking a rat how he is able to see through the facade of a bird remaining perfectly still.
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