Can Psychopaths Be Successful

psychopath is a word that typically

evokes images of cold-blooded murderers

serial killers

psychopathy is often misconceived as a

term to describe someone who’s not in

their right mind or who

invariably commits malicious acts of

violence

in actuality psychopathy is a

personality trait dimension that exists

along

a spectrum just like any other trait

dimension like agreeableness or

introversion

psychopathy is one of the greatest risk

factors for violent behavior

and yet one to two percent of the

general population

can be classified as a psychopath and

yet they are able to refrain from

engaging in overt acts of aggression or

criminal activity

and some even go on to lead productive

lives

these individuals are known as

successful psychopaths my colleagues and

i at virginia commonwealth university

decided to examine the development of

successful psychopathy over time

and to look at the potential underlying

neural and trait mechanisms of this

phenotype

and for this we thought about

conscientiousness which describes people

who are hardworking responsible

and who have pretty good impulse control

but then we also had to think about

what traits psychopaths have that may

contribute to their success

and for this we thought about their

manipulative tendencies would also apply

to people

from the general population that is

those with no known involvement in the

justice system

and so we looked at a large sample of

community members

across the age spectrum and we found

that those same callus and manipulative

traits

were associated with low

conscientiousness at

younger ages but as they increased

that association became weaker until

for people in their mid-30s and over

there was no association between those

two at all

palace and manipulative psychopathy

traits were associated with an increase

in

neural density in an area of the brain

called the ventrilateral prefrontal

cortex

this particular brain area is highly

involved

in self-regulation and the ability to

control one’s impulses

these are key traits of

conscientiousness

this neural increase was also increased

with

a lower likelihood of engaging in

physical violence

so although we don’t know what exactly

caused the increase in neural density

for these individuals

we could not overlook the fact that this

was not an objectively successful

population

so we wanted to find out if our results

would apply to people from the general

population as well that is

those who had no previous involvement

with the justice system

and so we looked at a large sample of

community members across the age

spectrum

we found that these same callus and

manipulative psychopathy traits

were associated with low

conscientiousness but only at

younger ages overall our research

demonstrates that there’s more to

psychopathy than deficiencies

and i hope above all else that this

research and similar research

will help to dispel some of the common

myths and misconceptions

surrounding psychopathy as it’s clear

that not all psychopaths are depraved

murderers or

destined to live a life of crime

moreover it can

actually help intervention and

rehabilitation efforts

to focus on channeling these potential

strengths of these individuals

in addition to supplementing their

deficiencies if we can implement changes

such as these maybe children who display

early signs of psychopathic traits

won’t grow up to be hannibal lecter or

live their lives frequenting the prison

system

but instead grow to be productive

members of society