Are Psychopaths Dangerous Social Predators A Closer Look at the Evidence

[Music]

the serial killer ted bundy became a

global spectacle when he was prosecuted

for his gruesome crimes on live

television

as these live pictures unfolded many

people quickly realized that there was

something mysteriously different about

bundy

wendy generally came across as a

sensible and charming

kind person which are all qualities that

many of us seek out in partners and

friendships

but then there were moments where bundy

would arrogantly mock the court

proceedings while also showing a

chilling disregard for the victims and

their families

bunny even decided to serve as his own

attorney

discarding every legal advice he was

given

effectively self-sabotaging his chances

in court

he was later found guilty and sentenced

to death with the judge famously

describing bundias

extremely wicked shockingly evil and

vile

according to experts in forensic

psychology

ted bundy was absolutely no ordinary

offender

he exemplifies what they clinically

refer to as a psychopath

psychopaths has have been described as

social predators

who are completely lacking in conscious

and in feelings for others

psychopathic individuals may seem normal

as

did bundy but this outer appearance of

normality is just a carefully

constructed play act

it’s an imitation if you will it’s their

way of

masking an underlying predatory

personality profoundly deprived of a

moral compass

today the most relied upon method to

clinically assess

or identify psychopaths like ted bundy

is the so-called hair psychopathy

checklist revised

or in short the pclr this diagnostic

checklist consists of 20 personality and

behavioral items meant to describe a

stereotypical psychopath

for example the checklist describes

psychopathic personality as

grandiose remorseless shallow and

lacking empathy

and their behavior is described as

socially parasitic

impulsive and criminally versatile

in practice the checklist is used by

assessing to

what degree a patient matches these 20

traits

if there’s a substantial degree of

resemblance

such a person is then clinically

diagnosed as a psychopath

for comparison forensic psychologists

often describe

ted bundy as a near perfect match

many judiciary and correctional systems

across the world

including the us and canada acknowledge

the use of the pclr

and this is because psychopaths are

believed to be qualitatively different

from ordinary offenders

but how different are psychopath really

you might ask

and why are these alleged differences

relevant in the legal context

according to the developers of the pclr

psychopaths deviate from the average

offender in at least three

fundamental ways which in turn may or

may not influence their legal processes

first psychopaths are believed to be

extremely dangerous

so for example if if an offender is

clinically diagnosed as a psychopath

this may inform the decision on whether

the offender should be

admitted into a high-risk facility or

whether he should be granted parole

secondly it’s commonly believed that

psychopaths don’t change

that they are unresponsive to treatment

and rehabilitation efforts

the psychopaths may therefore be

excluded from inmate rehabilitation

programs

and in the us for instance this belief

about chronicity has been also been used

to argue that juvenile psychopathic

offenders should be transferred into

adult courtrooms the

third and final claim is that

psychopaths lack

conscience that they don’t feel remorse

and empathy and

are therefore unable to make proper

moral judgments

this may inform a judge or a jury about

the offender’s character

which can impact a variety of decisions

such as the sentencing deliberation

it is largely because of these three

claims and their potential forensic

implication

that the pclr has been repeatedly called

the single most important

psychological assessment in the criminal

justice system

so far all of this sounds very intuitive

perhaps

there is a basic demand in the legal

system to manage

extremely dangerous offenders and the

pclr simply helps us identify who they

are

however while this way of using and

implementing the pclr

might seem intuitive it doesn’t

necessarily follow that it’s also

unproblematic

so why is that well consider

first that it is estimated that on a

global scale

hundreds of thousands of individuals are

assessed every year

using the pclr and many of these people

are

as a consequence of this diagnosis being

treated differently

in the criminal justice system so that’s

all clear

but here is a potential problem

if we treat psychopaths differently

based on the claims made by forensic

psychologists

that they are extremely dangerous

untreatable

without conscience then it’s absolutely

essential

that this is also true so if we actually

went ahead and scrutinized these three

claims

we should find that those who are

clinically diagnosed as psychopaths

also fit this general description at

least to some

reasonable or substantial degree

on the other hand if it turns out that

those individuals we diagnose

are in fact no more dangers than

ordinary offenders

then the use of the pclr would be

unjustified

and therefore amount to plain legal

discrimination

since it would mean that these hundreds

of thousands of individuals are still

being managed as if they are extremely

dangerous

such as for instance being placed in

high risk institutions

or being done by parole and so forth

this short analysis demonstrates how

high the stakes really are

when it comes to implementing a tool

like the psychopathy checklist

either the assessment is justifiably

contributing to

making society safer or it’s a vessel

for discriminatory practices

in theory only one of these two stories

can be true

so which one is it

approximately one and a half year ago my

colleagues and i set ourselves the task

of

thoroughly answering this basic question

where the psychopaths truly are

extremely dangerous untreatable and

without conscience

to do so we systematically reviewed the

past

25 years of research scrutinizing and

aggregating the results of hundreds of

studies

involving thousands of imprisoned

psychopaths

our study was recently published in the

peer-reviewed journal

psychology public policy and law and in

terms of the study’s content

it’s one of the most comprehensive

reviews ever to be published in the

field of psychopathy studies

and here’s what we found

in terms of assessing levels of

dangerousness in

psychopath this is typically done by

tracking and comparing

post-release recidivism so for example

if

psychopaths are faster than

non-psychopathic offenders to commit

new crimes after being released from

prison

this is then interpreted as higher

levels of risk or

dangerousness we found that there was

some

evidence that psychopaths compared to

average offenders

are statistically more likely to engaged

in

post-release criminal activities however

to our surprise

the data only suggested a weak to

moderately higher probability

to illustrate what this data actually

tells us

picture a hypothetical group of

offenders who

criminally recidivate at some point in

time after being released from prison

in this group some individuals will do

so after only a few weeks

where others will take much longer

perhaps even years

a normal distribution of this data may

look something like this

where the right side represents those

who recidivate

relatively quicker and to the left those

who are relatively longer to recidivate

if we compare this to the average data

on psychopathic offenders

the picture generally looks something

like this

obviously this is a simplified way of

representing the data

but as we can see these two groups have

far more in common than what

differentiates them

and i assume we can all agree that this

difference can hardly justify calling

the one group

ordinary offenders and calling the other

group extremely dangerous predators

now in terms of the second claim about

untreatability or chronicity

the way this is typically studied is to

compare whether

psychopaths make therapeutic progress or

whether

treatment programs have any positive

effects on criminal behavior

we found no evidence that psychopaths

are unresponsive to treatment and

rehabilitation efforts

actually there were positive results

across intervention methods that

mirrored progress in other offenders

this included positive gains from

cognitive and behavioral therapy

for example such as learning to better

control aggressive impulses

in short contrary to the common beliefs

that

psychopaths are chronic psychopaths

can actually be rehabilitated in similar

ways as other offenders

in terms of the third claim that

psychopaths are

morally incapacitated we were

particularly interested in studies that

analyze psychopaths conscience

empathy and moral judgments and here

we were quite frankly amazed by our

findings

and again not in a good way first

we were unable to find a single

empirical study

measuring conscience and psychopaths

this was especially surprising

since the most read and cited book about

psychopath

is entitled without conscience

how can scientists claim to know that

psychopaths lack conscience

if they have never attempted to measure

it

we then reviewed the research on

psychopaths capacity to empathize

for example a typical empathy study

measures whether psychopaths can

correctly

identify the emotion in facial

expressions

say the difference between sadness and

fearfulness

however not a single study showed the

psychopath had

any clear differences let alone severe

impairments of empathic capacities

finally we analyzed dozens of studies on

how psychopaths make

moral judgments this included research

on whether psychopaths perceive

moral situations differently as well as

studies testing responses to ethically

complex questions

for instance consider the question is it

morally permissible to steal medicine to

save a sick person’s life

well you might think that this is a

complex

question studies actually show that

there’s a remarkable similarity in how

most people answer such questions so if

psychopaths

really do lack a moral compass then it’s

at least reasonable to

expect that their answers could be

different

however across multiple studies

psychopaths did not show any

difficulties in making moral judgments

instead their performances merely

reflected those of

ordinary people

our study is the first ever to take a

systematic and

integrative look into the three common

descriptions of psychopath

and there’s really no way we can

sugarcoat the results

we found that all three claims were

either largely or

entirely unjustified

what this actually means is that the

individuals we assess or

identify as psychopath in the criminal

justice system

for instance by using the pclr do not

actually

fit the common description of

psychopaths in other words

the narrative we tell about psychopaths

is simply not angered in reality

it’s nothing but fiction

now there’s an almost unimaginable

number of ways that this

fiction about psychopath can create

problems in the legal context

as mentioned it may contribute to parole

applications being denied or

affect sentencing recommendations but

consider

also that some studies in the us have

found

that describing a person as a psychopath

predicts juror support for capital

punishment

it’s likely that using the checklist in

some cases

could be a matter of life and death

obviously these type of decisions

or any other forensic decisions for that

matter

should not be based on fiction and when

we mistakenly do so

this ought then to be rectified in one

way or the other

right if this is the case

if this is our viewpoint then it’s quite

possible that we have in front of us

a problem which could have overwhelming

legal

professional and ethical consequences

because what do we do with cases where

the pclr has played a defining role

should denied parole applications be

re-evaluated

must we allow guilty individuals to

request a new trial on the ground of

prejudicial

evidence what about psychopathic

juveniles who were transferred to adult

courts

should they be transferred back if so

what if they are no longer in the

adolescence

and how will all of this impact the

credibility of our profession

now some of you might be asking yourself

here towards the end

is he really telling me that the ted

bundies of our communities are no more

dangerous than other

criminals of course not obviously there

are people out there

that are more dangerous than others and

nothing could be more evident when faced

with serial killers like ted bundy

but while we can easily call these

people psychopaths

it is an entirely different task to

develop instruments that can identify

them with scientific precision

something that the pclr aims to be doing

but nevertheless fails at

yet the assessment still has the legally

compromising effects on a presumably

vast number of people

therefore i believe you must immediately

halt and seriously reconsider the

current

widespread use of the hair psychopathy

checklist revised

thank you