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