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