I'm not a psychopath, I just don't care...

Interesting article in the New Yorker on psychopaths.

Psychopaths are scary but the article does raise the interesting point that at least part of the reason it's difficult to come up with a solid definition of psychopathy is that pretty much everyone is capable of displaying psychopathic traits at one time or another. Who among us has never shaded the truth to get their way? Who among us can honestly say they always take full account of others? Indeed, the author has the following exchange with the researcher he is interviewing:

As I sped along Wolf Road, a traffic light ahead turned yellow. I momentarily thought about flooring it, and probably would have, if not for my passenger; instead, I slowed down and stopped. But the car on my left went flying by, through what was now a red light.
“Wow, look at that,” Hare said. “Now, that man might be a psychopath. That was psychopathic behavior, certainly—to put others in the intersection in danger in order to realize your own goals.”

The difference is one of degree: your extreme psychopath never cares and is capable of going to lengths that the normal person never would. (fn1)



This quote on the first page put in me in mind of the difficulties in teasing out genetic vs. environmental factors in human development:

"Considerable evidence, including several large-scale studies of twins, points toward a genetic component. Yet psychopaths are more likely to come from neglectful families than from loving, nurturing ones."

Of course, this is just what we might expect to see even if psychopathy was entirely genetic: psychopaths would have psychopathic children. Because psychopaths lack normal emotional responses, the homes they create in which to raise those children would likely be neglectful. They would be very unlikely to be "loving" since psychopaths are largely incapable of love.

This difficulty is why twin studies are the gold-standard for genetic vs. environment determinations. Of course, twins being somewhat rare, assembling large groups of them to participate in whatever nature vs. nurture study you've concocted can be difficult (read: expensive), thus the debate rages on. The rapid advance in genetics may soon (fn2) start to end the nature vs. nurture debate in a variety of fields but then again it may not.

(fn1) Note that I don't think running a yellow is beyond the pale, but then I've not spent years analyzing psychopaths. That's got to do bad things to your sense of proportion and normalcy. One of the dangers sited by a researcher is being sucked in by a psychopathic research subject's charisma and heading towards the psychopathic side yourself. I'd say that this researcher is displaying the opposite tendency: he's so attuned to and disturbed by psychopathy that he overcompensates and rates ordinary behavior as far more anti-social than it actually is.

(fn2) Where "soon" is defined as within the next couple of decades.