SL: I don't know. That's an interesting question. I don't know the answer to that. I would ...I suspect the answer is yes to a point. I'm not sure that a person who is psychopathic can literally change other people's personality traits, but I don't at all doubt that if you have a persuasive psychopathic leader who intends to do bad things, that that person can persuade people who are weak or vulnerable to follow in his or her footsteps. So if you look at the literature on gang leaders, for example, certainly we know that many gang leaders -- less so the gang members -- but the gang leaders oftentimes have psychopathic traits. And oftentimes they have a way of preying on people who they know are weaker, who are more vulnerable, who are going to be the followers...and they can often influence those people who may not necessarily always be extremely psychopathic themselves, but may be vulnerable, may be insecure, may be easily intimidated to follow in their footsteps and do bad things. So I would surmise that at a broader cultural level, sometimes that can happen. Again, I'm not sure it's a contagion of psychopathy per say, I'm not sure the person is making other people more psychopathic, but I think he or she can certainly make other people do bad things who would not ordinarily do bad things.
Rob: Okay. Last question, and I really appreciate your hanging in here with me....
SL: Oh it's been fun.
Rob: What are the misunderstandings and misconceptions about psychopaths? What are the most common ones?
SL: Yeah, so we've actually written a paper on that. That's a big topic that we've written about. So there are a lot of misconceptions about psychopathy. I think in our experience the most common ones are the following: a lot of people think that psychopathy is the same thing as psychosis, which I think we've already debunked that one here. We know that most psychopaths are not psychotic -- most psychopaths are aware of the difference between right and wrong in contrast to many or most people who are psychotic...they just don't care. They don't usually appreciate the moral gravity of what they've done but they know if they've robbed a bank that robbing a bank is technically wrong...it's against the law. They rarely believe they've been led to rob the bank by some external force like someone from Mars or putting things in their head or someone putting voices in their head; they rarely believe that -- they're usually quite legally sane by at least most modern...
Rob: They can use the insanity defense is basically...
SL: Well, that's right. And there have been attempts to invoke things like psychopathy as an insanity defense and they have failed for that very reason because psychopaths are almost always aware of the difference between right and wrong, aware of what they've done. Now there are a few legal scholars who think psychopathy should qualify for an insanity defense because their argument is that psychopaths don't grasp the moral gravity of what they're doing but I worry about...that that is a slippery slope because I think that there are lots of people who commit crimes who in very specific domains don't appreciate the moral gravity of what they've done. I think of this guy who shot a bunch of people in Kansas City, this anti-Semitic fellow, who shot some people at Jewish centers. Well, and I suppose if someone were a defense attorney, one could say in that one domain, he doesn't understand the moral gravity of what he's done because he' so consumed by hatred and therefore he shouldn't be guilty so I'm very afraid of a slippery slope there where we're going to end up finding almost no one guilty for what they've done because everyone has specific domains where they have sort of gaps in their morality. But by and large, most legal scholars don't buy into that view. So that's number one, that psychopathy is not the same thing as psychosis. So that...there's a common misconception that it is.
Another common misconception is that psychopathy is always or almost always associated with violence, which it is not. So we know that psychopathy is associated with a heightened risk of violence. There certainly is a increased risk of both physical aggression as well as interpersonal aggression. With psychopathy there are higher risk of rape. There are higher risk of recidivism, that is once they're let out of prison they often have a higher rate of recurrence. But in fact, the risk is moderate so it's not a perfect predictor by any means and many, many people with psychopathy are not physically dangerous or physically violent. That's not to say that they can't wreak havoc in many, many other domains. So those are two of the most common misconceptions, although there's certainly many others as well.
Rob: Yeah, there are. I put together...I think one of the other ones that is really important that you have emphasized is that it's not treatable.
SL: Well yeah, and that's a controversial one so there are...our view maybe is a minority view on that one. And in fairness, I don't think the research is definitive but you're right in that there seems to be a clinical lore out there that we know for sure that psychopaths can't be effectively treated. And it is possible that psychopathy is a bit harder to treat than other conditions, certainly...they're certainly more of a handful because they're often resistant to treatment...oppositional to treatment, no question about that. Is it true though, although clinical lore says that psychopaths can't benefit at all from treatment, that it's not even worth trying to treat them, I would argue the research is increasingly pointing against that conclusion -- that although psychopaths can be certainly more challenging to treat and more resistant, I would argue that more evidence suggests that very intensive behavior therapy that reinforces reward psychopaths for doing good behaviors and gives them coping skills for dealing with stressors -- both inside and outside of prison, inside and outside the hospital -- gives them coping skills for dealing with their anger, for example, that those kinds of treatments can actually be somewhat effective with psychopathic individuals. Again, I'm not sure one is changing their deep-seated personality traits, but I'm not sure that should be the goal. I'm not sure one's going to ever get people with these traits to suddenly become very guilt-prone or very empathic, I'm not sure we can do that yet and that may not be realistic. The key thing is to make sure they don't wreak havoc for other people and hurt other people physically and emotionally...so. And I think that there's at least some promising reason to think that some treatment may be moving in that direction.
Rob: And there's a longer list, but the one other one that is intriguing to me is a lot of people think that psychopaths are genetic, that they're born not made. And apparently there's a lot of controversy there too.
SL: Well, right. And, like all...essentially every psychological, sort of, ever study there is a combination of nature and nurture intermingling in ways that we don't understand. So there's definitely genetic disposition toward psychopathy, no doubt that. But there's also no question that there are still poorly understood environmental reasons that people become psychopathic and we don't really know what those are yet. Are they due to parenting? I'm not so sure actually. Some people think it's...parenting is an important environmental influence. I think that may be over-sold, over-played. I think that peer influence is probably where I'd put more my money I think. I think if you look at the literature on what is actually most influential in adolescents, for example, it's more horizontal than vertical. Adolescents are often much more influenced by their peers -- people that are their own age -- and I think there's growing evidence that those kinds of influences can be quite formative and they may -- we don't know yet -- but they may play a big role in psychopathy as well.
Rob: Okay. This has been a great interview. I could go on and on. I'm going to cut it here though. Thank you.
SL: I've enjoyed it Rob.
Rob: And I hope we'll be in touch again...
SL: That'd be great.
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