The Wisdom of Psychopaths (36 page)
Read The Wisdom of Psychopaths Online
Authors: Kevin Dutton
26
the Trier …
See Clemens Kirschbaum, Karl-Martin Pirke, and Dirk H. Hellhammer, “The Trier Social Stress Test—A Tool for Investigating Psychobiological Stress Responses in a Laboratory Setting,”
Neuropsychobiology
28, no. 1–2 (1993): 76–81.
27
Ray postulated an inverted-U-shaped function …
See John J. Ray and J.A.B. Ray, “Some Apparent Advantages of Subclinical Psychopathy,”
Journal of Social Psychology
117 (1982): 135–42.
28
“Both extremely high and extremely low levels of psychopathy …”
Ray and Ray, 1982.
29
Hare and Babiak have developed an instrument called the Business Scan …
For more on the B-Scan, see
www.b-scan.com/index.html
(accessed February 3, 2012). For an entertaining and accessible introduction to psychopathy in corporate settings, see Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare,
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work
(New York: HarperBusiness, 2006).
1
“And I read a report the other day that linked a significant rise in the number of all-female gangs …”
To get a flavor of what Hare is talking about, see Tom Geoghegan,
BBC News Magazine
. May 5, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7380400.stm
. For a more academic slant on things, see Susan Batchelor, “Girls, Gangs, and Violence: Assessing the Evidence,”
Probation Journal
56, no. 4 (2009): 399–414, doi:10.1177/0264550509346501.
2
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has recently flagged this …
See Steven Pinker,
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
(New York: Viking, 2011).
3
Trawling through the court records of a number of European countries.
. See Manuel Eisner, “Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime,”
Crime and Justice
30 (2003): 83–142.
4
Similar patterns have elsewhere been documented …
Michael Shermer, “The Decline of Violence,”
Scientific American
, October 7, 2011,
www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-decline-of-violence
.
5
The same goes for war …
Pinker,
The Better Angels of Our Nature
, 47–56: “Rates of Violence in State and Nonstate Societies.”
6
“Beginning in the eleventh or twelfth [century], and maturing in the seventeenth and eighteenth …”
Quote taken from Shermer, “The Decline of Violence,” 2011. Be skeptical of claims that we live in an ever more dangerous world.
7
“With infinitely more complex securities …”
Quote taken from Gary Strauss, “How Did Business Get So Darn Dirty?”
USA Today
(Money), June 12, 2002,
www.usatoday.com/money/covers/2002-06-12-dirty-business.htm
.
8
and in a recent issue of the
Journal of Business Ethics … See Clive R. Boddy, “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,”
Journal of Business Ethics
102, no. 2 (2011): 255–59, doi:10.1007/s10551-011-0810-4. (The moniker “corporate Attila” was first applied to Fred “the Shred” Goodwin, who, as CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland from 2001–2009, racked up a corporate loss of £24.1 billion, the highest in U.K. history.)
9
On the other hand, however, there’s society in general, proclaims Charles Elson …
See Strauss, “How Did Business Get So Darn Dirty?”
10
“Ms. Smart overcame it. Survived it. Triumphed over it …”
For coverage of this quote in the media, see Camille Mann, “Elizabeth Smart Was Not Severely Damaged by Kidnapping, Defense Lawyers Claim,”
CBS News
, May 19, 2011,
www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20064372-504083.html
.
11
In a recent study by the Crime and Justice Centre at King’s College, London …
For an in-depth analysis of youth crime in the U.K., including prevalence, motivation, and risk factors, see Debbie Wilson, Clare Sharp, and Alison Patterson, “Young People and Crime: Findings from the 2005 Offending, Crime and Justice Survey” (London: Home Office, 2005).
12
If the results of a recent study by Sara Konrath …
Sara Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis,”
Personality and Social Psychology Review
15, no. 2 (2011): 180–98, doi:10.1177/1088868310377395.
13
the Interpersonal Reactivity Index …
For the background to, and development of, the IRI, see Mark H. Davis, “A Multidimensional Approach to Individual Differences in Empathy,”
JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology
10, no. 85 (1980); and M. H. Davis, “Measuring Individual Differences in Empathy: Evidence for a Multidimensional Approach,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
44, no. 1 (1983): 113–26.
14
“College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy …”
See “Today’s College Students More Likely to Lack Empathy,”
U.S. News
(Health), May 28, 2010,
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/05/28/todays-college-students-more-likely-to-lack-empathy
.
15
More worrying still, according to Jean Twenge …
See Jean M. Twenge, Sara Konrath, Joshua D. Foster, W. Keith Campbell, and Brad J. Bushman, “Egos Inflating Over Time: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory,”
Journal of Personality
76, no. 4 (2008a): 875–901, doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00507.x; Twenge et al., “Further Evidence of an Increase in Narcissism Among College Students,”
Journal of Personality
76 (2008b): 919–27, doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00509.x.
16
Many people see the current group of college students …
See
U.S. News
, “Today’s College Students More Likely to Lack Empathy.”
17
“People haven’t had the same exposure to traditional values …”
See Thomas Harding, “Army Should Provide Moral Education for Troops to Stop Outrages,”
The Telegraph
, February 22, 2011,
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8341030/Army-should-provide-moral-education-for-troops-to-stop-outrages.html
.
18
But the beginnings of an even more fundamental answer may lie …
See Nicole K. Speer, Jeremy R. Reynolds, Khena M. Swallow, and Jeffrey M. Zacks, “Reading Stories Activates Neural Representations of Perceptual and Motor Experiences,”
Psychological Science
20, no, 8 (2009): 989–99.
19
Makes us, as Nicholas Carr puts it in his recent essay …
Nicholas Carr’s “The Dreams of Readers” appears in Mark Haddon (ed.),
Stop What You’re Doing and Read This!
(London: Vintage, 2011), a collection of essays about the transformative power of reading.
20
The quicksilver virtual world …
Christina Clark, Jane Woodley, and Fiona Lewis,
The Gift of Reading in 2011: Children and Young People’s Access to Books and Attitudes Towards Reading
—see
www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0001/1303/The_Gift_of_Reading_in_2011.pdf
.
21
… we’ve been talking about the emergence of neurolaw …
For an excellent introduction to the emerging subdiscipline of neurolaw, see David Eagleman, “The Brain on Trial,”
The Atlantic
., July/August 2011,
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/8520/
.
22
The watershed study was published in 2002 …
See Avshalom Caspi, Joseph McClay, Terrie E. Moffitt, Jonathan Mill, Judy Martin, Ian W. Craig, Alan Taylor, and Richie Poulton, “Role of Genotype in the Cycle of Violence in Maltreated Children,”
Science
297, no. 5582 (2002): 851–54, doi:10.1126/science.1072290.
23
The implications of the discovery have percolated into the courtroom …
For a nuanced discussion of the research, and controversy, surrounding the “warrior gene,” see Ed Yong, “Dangerous DNA: The Truth About the ‘Warrior Gene,’ ”
New Scientist
, April 12, 2010,
www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627557.300-dangerous-dna-the-truth-about-the-warrior-gene.html?page=1
.
24
In 2006, Bradley Waldroup’s defense attorney …
For more on the Waldroup case, see “What Makes Us Good or Evil?” BBC Horizon, September 7, 2011,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmAyxpAFS1s
. For more on the neural, genetic,
and psychological profiles of violent killers, listen to Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s excellent series
Inside the Criminal Brain
, NPR, June 29–July 1, 2010,
www.npr.org/series/128248068/inside-the-criminal-brain
.
25
The subject of neurolaw came up in the context of a wider discussion …
For more on the emerging field of cultural neuroscience, see Joan Y. Chiao and Nalini Ambady, “Cultural Neuroscience: Parsing Universality and Diversity across Levels of Analysis,” in Shinobu Kitayama and Dov Cohen, eds.,
Handbook of Cultural Psychology
(New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 237–54; and Joan Y. Chiao, ed.,
Cultural Neuroscience: Cultural Influences on Brain Function
, Progress in Brain Research (New York: Elsevier, 2009).
26
a hot new offshoot from the field of mainstream genetics …
For a clear and accessible introduction to the field of epigenetics, see Nessa Carey,
The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
27
Hare tells me about a study conducted in Sweden back in the 1980s …
See Gunnar Kaat, Lars O. Bygren, and Sören Edvinsson, “Cardiovascular and Diabetes Mortality Determined by Nutrition During Parents’ and Grandparents’ Slow Growth Period,”
European Journal of Human Genetics
10, no. 11 (2002): 682–88, doi:10.1038/sj.ejhg.5200859.
28
“There was a writer back in the sixties,” Alan Harrington …
See: Alan Harrington,
Psychopaths
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972).
29
“Did I tell you about [this] paper which shows that people with high testosterone levels …”
See Robert A. Josephs, Michael J. Telch, J. Gregory Hixon, Jacqueline J. Evans, Hanjoo Lee, Valerie S. Knopik, John E. McGeary, Ahmad R. Hariri, and Christopher G. Beevers, “Genetic and Hormonal Sensitivity to Threat: Testing a Serotonin Transporter Genotype X Testosterone Interaction,” doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2011.09.006.
30
As an amusing backdrop, “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” by the Adverts is playing …
See “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes” / “Bored Teenagers” (August 19, 1977: Anchor Records ANC1043).
31
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (or TMS) was first developed by Dr. Anthony Barker …
For the inaugural study using TMS, see Anthony T. Barker, Reza Jalinous, and Ian L. Freeston, “Non-Invasive Magnetic Stimulation of Human Motor Cortex,”
Lancet
325, no. 8437 (1985): 1106–07, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(85)92413-4.
32
Indeed, Liane Young and her team at MIT …
See Liane Young, Joan Albert Camprodon, Marc Hauser, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Rebecca Saxe, “Disruption of the Right Temporoparietal Junction with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Reduces the Role of Beliefs in Moral Judgments,”
PNAS
107, no. 15 (2010): 6753–58, doi:10.1073/pnas.0914826107. Imagine you observe an employee at a chemical plant pouring some sugar into a work colleague’s cup of coffee. The sugar is stored in a container marked “toxic.” As you watch, a crack
in time suddenly opens up, and out of it, in a dodgy puff of smoke, an ethereal moral philosopher appears, in a hazard suit and goggles, and presents you with four scenarios. These scenarios incorporate two independent dimensions of possibility space, aligned orthogonally to one another. The first dimension relates to what the employee
believes
the contents of the container to be (sugar or toxic powder.) The second dimension maps onto what, in actuality, the container really
does
contain (sugar or toxic powder). So we have, in effect, the following mélange of quantum possibility, distilled from a cocktail of outcome and personal belief (see the
figure
below):
1. The employee thinks that the powder is sugar. And it is indeed sugar. The colleague drinks the coffee. And survives.
2. The employee thinks that the powder is sugar. But it is, in fact, toxic. The colleague drinks the coffee. And dies.
3. The employee thinks that the powder is toxic. But it’s sugar. The colleague drinks the coffee. And survives.
4. The employee thinks that the powder is toxic. And, you guessed it, it is indeed toxic. The colleague drinks the coffee. And dies.
Bearing in mind that, according to a basic tenet of criminal law, “the act does not make the person guilty unless the mind is also guilty,” how permissible, asks the philosopher, on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 = completely forbidden; 7 = completely okay), would you rate the actions of the employee to be in each of these four scenarios?
In 2010, Liane Young, at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her coworkers asked volunteers to make precisely these judgments, as part of an investigation into the neurobiology of moral decision making.
But there was a catch.
Prior to making their judgments, some of the participants in the study received transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to a region of the brain
known to be associated with moral processing (the right temporoparietal junction, or RTPJ). More specifically (which makes it different from the morality zapping that Ahmed Karim was up to in
chapter 4
), moral processing when evaluating the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions underlying the actions of a third party.
Would this artificial stimulation of participants’ RTPJ affect the way they viewed the different scenarios? Young and her coauthors wondered. Was morality, in other words, malleable?
The answer, it transpired, was yes.
When the moral judgments of the experimental group were compared to those of a corresponding group that received TMS at a control site (i.e., not at the RTPJ), Young detected a pattern. In Scenario 3 (where harm is intended, but the outcome turns out to be positive), those participants who received TMS in their RTPJ judged the action of the employee as more morally permissible than those who’d received it elsewhere.
Morality, it appears, really can be manipulated. Or rather, a component of it can be. The ability to accurately ascribe intentionality in judging the behavior of another may be ratcheted up or down.