Psychopathy: some experts now say it doesn’t exist – here’s why we may be looking at it all wrong
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https://theconversation.com/psychopathy-some-experts-now-say-it-doesnt-exist-heres-why-we-may-be-looking-at-it-all-wrong-279791
https://theconversation.com/psychopathy-some-experts-now-say-it-doesnt-exist-heres-why-we-may-be-looking-at-it-all-wrong-279791
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As an expert on personality disorders, people often ask me about psychopathy. It seems everybody has had an ex, a boss, a neighbour or a relative who they suspect has traits of it. People are curious about how to recognise psychopathy, and whether it can explain certain harmful behaviour. It’s easy to see why. Psychopathic people are everywhere – from books and movies to newspaper articles and academic papers.
But while such questions are usually asked with confidence, the answers are far less straightforward. In fact, a growing number of academic papers have failed to find evidence that psychopathy exists at all. Could the disorder be something we’ve just invented because it’s convenient, doing away with old concepts of good and evil? Some experts believe so. But I am not so sure.
Psychopathy is normally identified by a few specific traits. These include a lack of empathy and remorse, callousness, impulsiveness, shallow emotions, arrogance and manipulation.
We’ve all come across people who have a combination of these traits. Perhaps they are emotionally detached, cruel, untruthful or even violent. There is no denying that such characteristics exist. What is difficult to prove is that people with psychopathy actually have those traits. Why? I believe it’s down to a mismatch between what we expect psychopathy to look like and how personality actually unfolds in the real world. And this gap is where much of the confusion begins.
The empathy paradox
A recent systematic review of empathy research, which included 66 studies and 5,711 people assessed with a common tool called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), found that 89% of all tests failed to show that those with psychopathic traits were less empathetic than others. If psychopathy is defined by a lack of empathy, why is it so difficult to demonstrate? At first glance, this seems like a serious challenge to the concept itself.
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A similar lack of clear evidence has been found for other traits often linked to psychopathy. Research examining shallow emotions, in particular a lack of fear, using measures such as skin conductance (which can estimate sweating), startle reflexes and autonomic arousal (increased heart rate) has often produced mixed findings. Claims that people with psychopathy have extreme impairments in moral reasoning have likewise been challenged.
In fact, recent reviews have questioned whether any single deficit in a specific trait can be consistently linked to psychopathy. So what’s going on?
As we shall see, the issue may not be that empathy, immoral reasoning or a lack of fear is absent in those with psychopathy, but that these traits are being measured in overly narrow ways.
A zombie idea?
Some researchers have taken these inconsistencies a step further. In a recent essay in Aeon, one of the authors behind this body of work argues that psychopathy may be what researchers call a “zombie idea”. This refers to a concept that continues to be widely accepted despite weak or inconsistent evidence, like the old idea that the Earth was at the centre of the universe.
The idea is that psychopathy persists because it is intuitively appealing. Like outdated scientific beliefs that lingered long after being challenged, it offers a compelling explanation for behaviour that is otherwise difficult to understand.
It’s an interesting thought. Psychopathy is culturally familiar and has long been associated with extreme and disturbing behaviour. This makes it an attractive concept for explaining antisocial acts – it offers a seemingly objective framework for behaviour that can feel deeply unsettling. It provides a sense of certainty in situations that are complex and uncomfortable.
Ted Bundy in court.<br>wikipedia, CC BY-SA
Take the rapist and serial killer Ted Bundy. Even when he faced justice for his heinous crimes, Bundy didn’t show remorse – always sporting a movie star smile. This is impossible for most people to comprehend, and Bundy has been branded as psychopathic countless times. This has in turn helped to shape public and scientific ideas about what the label means.
But this is precisely where the problem lies. Human behaviour is rarely so clear-cut. Bundy himself had a range of different problems that may have contributed,...