Psychopathy
A personality pattern combining shallow emotion, lack of empathy, guilt and remorse, with impulsivity, thrill-seeking and often charm and boldness. It exists on a continuum; most high scorers outside prison are not criminals.
What drives it
Rooted largely in a muted fear and distress response: other people's pain and the prospect of punishment do not register strongly, so the brakes most people have are weak. Useful because it explains behaviour that seems inexplicable if you assume the person feels what you feel.
How it shows
Work
Superficial charm and fluent talk, quick rise followed by trail of broken promises, lies that are easily disproved and not acknowledged when caught, risk-taking with others' money, no visible anxiety in situations that frighten everyone else, blame for failures always lands elsewhere. Babiak and Hare's 'snakes in suits' manage up brilliantly and are loathed by peers and juniors.
Relationships
Intense early charm, sexual promiscuity or parallel relationships, financial exploitation, a story of victimhood about every ex, no real remorse after hurting the partner, only regret at the consequences. Partners report feeling that 'nobody is home' behind the eyes.
Self
The person with high traits rarely recognises it: their inner tell is boredom, not guilt. If you notice that others' distress mostly feels like an inconvenience, and you learn from punishment more slowly than peers, the traits may be present at some level.
What tells it apart
Antisocial personality: Antisocial personality disorder is defined by behaviour (crime, rule-breaking); psychopathy is defined by emotional deficits. Most prisoners meet ASPD criteria, but only a minority are psychopathic. Look for absence of remorse and shallow affect, not just a record.
Grandiose narcissism: The narcissist needs admiration and is wounded by criticism; the psychopath is largely indifferent to what others think and is not shamed by exposure. Insult them both: the narcissist bristles, the psychopath shrugs or smiles.
Emotional numbing: Trauma-related numbing is felt as loss ('I can't feel anything'), comes with distress about it, and is sometimes punctured by intrusions; psychopathic shallow affect is not felt as a loss at all.
A test
Watch for the response when caught in a clear lie: genuine embarrassment suggests not psychopathic; calm re-explanation with no shame suggests the trait.
Questions to carry
- Caught in a clear lie, what happens in their face, and what comes out of their mouth?
- Whose pain have I been able to watch without feeling much, and what made that possible?
How strong the research is
moderate. The PCL-R is well validated in forensic settings and predicts reoffending; whether fearless boldness belongs to the construct and how far 'successful psychopathy' exists are still disputed.
Where it comes from
Hervey Cleckley, 1941 (The Mask of Sanity); Robert Hare, PCL 1980 and PCL-R 1991; Christopher Patrick, Don Fowles and Robert Krueger, triarchic model, 2009
Sources
- Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity (1941)
- Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams, The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy (2002)