Ah, yes, sample bias.
This and all of this!
I believe that the sociopath inhabits, is informed by and informs the power structure, where as, the psychopath is an outsider by product that is essentially a parasite that is enabled by a power structure that feeds it.
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How is that sample bias? We are talking about whether or not harmless psychopaths exist at all, not as a proportion or percentage.
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You may access to the paper using “sci-hub”.
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The core defining factor of psychopaths is their extreme difficulty empathising with other people and showing remorse for anti-social behaviour. It’s not exactly surprising that they’d be drawn to right-wing authoritarianism – as well as Identitarianism and Objectivism/Libertarianism – as ideologies that suit them but that are seen people who are empathetic as unhealthy and destructive. Of greater concern and interest, though, are the reasons that draw the far larger number of non-psychopaths to these toxic ideologies (including those apologists who try to pretend they aren’t attractive to psychopaths).
Psychopaths can be occasionally productive for certain definitions of the term. A disproportionate number of CEOs and surgeons have been found to have sociopathic or psychopathic characteristics, for example. I recall reading an article by a psychiatrist and academic who identified herself as a psychopath but also did some of the work you mention to mitigate the harm she was prone to do.
For the most part, though, psychopaths seem to either lack that self-awareness or don’t care to change their behaviours. Anyone who’s worked with one (ETA: or has one as a family member) knows how destructive they are on balance.
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Because, as with any personality disorder, you only come into contact with The Professionals if whatever it is becomes a problem to yourself or others. And in order for that to continue you have to be able to hide whatever it is. So, yes, sample bias. Absolutely.
Yes, I read that same article. I remember it well, and it’s why I brought all of this up. The thing about surgeons is a good example of people who end up helping others for selfish reasons (probably the social status and fat paycheck).
I have long been a fan (if not quite a proponent) of “self-interested altruism,” the philosophical idea that humans are basically after their own interests (which can be expanded to include the interests of their families, friends and “clans”), but can and do act altruistically if they understand that altruistic actions are ultimately for their own good, whether in the form of adulation from others, rewards (including rewards in the afterlife) or just feeling good about themselves. The idea is that empathy is not a necessary component for moral behavior (though it certainly helps).
I agree that psychopaths are, more often than not, absolutely horrible people with no redeeming qualities (I can certainly say that about the one person I have met who I am fairly sure is a psychopath). But if the behavior can be mitigated, then it is surely worth mitigating, even if the therapy is court-ordered.
I’m sorry; I thought that you were disagreeing with my comment, but I now see what you meant. Thank you for the context.
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No problem. Happy Holidays!
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With surgeons one also has to consider that a lack of empathy and inhibition can make cutting people open and re-arranging their organs easier than it is for more empathetic people.
Those are secondary rewards compared to the God Complex you see a lot of surgeons exhibiting.
I believe this was it:
She’s a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. And she identifies as a sociopath rather than a psychopath. Still germane, though.
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It kind of makes you wonder about people who work in slaughterhouses or who perform testing on animals, where there isn’t much in the way of social status or paycheck. Sadly, I think that empathy can be unlearned. People can get used to seeing and doing terrible things and become desensitized; soldiers at war pretty much have to.
There are also many people who are capable of empathy, but who choose to empathize only with certain types of people (based on race or religion or ethnicity) and dehumanize the “other” so that they can ignore any pangs of conscious that they might feel. And that is where right-wing authoritarianism succeeds with the masses.
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I am reminded of this
Personally I am not an egoist, it is an interesting philosophical tool but it is unworkable as a political system in the real world (psychopaths can easily take advantage of it for their own goals, and then you are back at authoritarianism).
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For the most part, slaughterhouse work is just the kind or poorly paid “dirty job” done by undocumented immigrants because no-one else wants to. I’m not going to attribute psychopathy to most of those workers. I can see animal testing attracting a disproportionate amount of psychopaths, though, given that the childhood torture of animals is a big indicator of the disorder.
I agree. Basic infantry training in most militaries is essentially an intentional un-learning process in that sense.
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Yes, of course, it should not be used as a normative theory. It is merely an attempt to explain how people may behave in certain circumstances. I want to draw a distinction between Egoism, which says that people should act in their own interests, with self-interested altruism, which says that people do in fact act that way.
Yes, that was a bad example on my part. I think for surgeons as well, desensitization probably plays a bigger part than psychopathic tendencies. But it would be interesting to see what other jobs psychopaths are drawn to.
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Wrong!!! Do not generalize, be more specific. The so called “animal protein industry” is highly specialized, very competitive, going trough a process of incorporation in the last 30 years, where residual gains is a mantra(mainly because of cheap meat). And yes in some places the work is done by immigrants, but invited ones, see Ireland. It is not like Upton Sinclair’s book “the Jungle” anymore. But I do concede that the Batistas of JBS have a trait of psychopathy.
Politicians, social theorists.
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Psychopaths favor right-wing authoritarianism, finds study
Next up, writing grant proposal to study this here:
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@Jesse13927 was clearly talking about kill-floor and cutting workers. He conceded that it was a bad example of a job with a disproportionate presence of psychopaths (as opposed to followers of right-wing authoritarian or Libertarian ideology).
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Of course, the trick here is that all psychology is a spectrum. It’s very difficult to say someone “is a psychopath” or “is not a psychopath”. We all engage in psychopathic behavior from time to time, it’s just a question of degrees. I think it’s misleading to have any conversation like this without keeping that in the forefront, because the topic always drifts to “what should we do about all these horrible people”.
Trying to bucket people by psychological traits is verrrry problematic. Everyone loved that “psychopath test” that went around a while back, but don’t give too much credence to stuff like that. Psychological traits are not a clear immutable thing we can identify in people. All such attempts thus far pretty much land squarely in pseudoscience as soon as they blink.
Deciding where to draw the line and say “this person has so many of these behaviors for so much of their life that we shall label them A Psychopath” is far from settled science. The truth about all of us is probably a lot scarier than that, if you know what I mean.
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That is a good point, and one that also applies to schizophrenia, OCD, the autism spectrum and other psychiatric and personality disorders that are not very well understood by the general public.
However, there is usually a clear difference between people who are “on the spectrum” and people who are not. A person can suffer from mild or severe schizophrenia, but I do not think that you could extend that to “everyone suffers from schizophrenia to some degree.” And I think that it is the same with psychopathy.
I also believe that traits are not what defines the psychological disorder, but merely its symptoms. (And, just as a cold and a flu share some symptoms, there is also overlap between disorders). Psychologists use traits to narrow down and hone in on possible diagnoses, but it would be terribly irresponsible of a psychologist to diagnose psychopathy based solely on a list of traits and without spending time with the patient. The field of psychology is still working these things out and the diagnostic process is far from perfect, but there are clearly people who have disorders (and each disorder invariably will have several subtypes).
That said, you are right that what separates you and I from a properly diagnosed psychopath may be less of a significant difference than we would like to think.
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