Psychopaths

[EllevenSevenSounds]

Indeed. Most organized serial killers like Bundy were bright but not gifted. Typically they could outsmart people with less intelligence, including a lot of local law enforcement types, but usually it was the really intelligent and gifted profilers and detectives who were able to easily see through their facades.


But the danger with bright psychopaths is that they are usually able to fool most people of average intelligence. The high charisma they have allows them to overcompensate for their above average but not genius level IQs, so they can even appear more gifted than they really are. It's interesting to see how Bundy's course as a killer followed his failures in law school. He was never really intelligent enough to be a lawyer, and this really fucked with his ego. Even at his trial, he had some people fooled into thinking he was a legal whiz kid, even his sentencing judge noting he could've been a fine lawyer had he taken a different track in life. But I think the reality is that he was never lawyer or politician material, he just built that image up around his persona. As it became clear he wasn't that person he wanted to be, it's interesting that his killing methods also became increasingly sloppy and careless. It's like the disintegration of his ego coincided with his spiral downward from organized killer to sloppy spree killer. Every time he was "figured out" by those close ones he'd fooled, he would flee to another city and attempt to rebuild his persona and ego, usually masquerading as a law student each time.

I think it's similar with sociopaths like John Gotti and Donald Trump. Both of them have easily fooled a lot of average people. Gotti probably still has a handful of supporters who to this day would testify he was a man of the people and wrongfully tried.


Gacy, who I think probably had an above average IQ, also roleplayed and imagined himself as a sort of hardened detective, using that as a cover to get young male drifters to get in his car. He too became increasingly sloppy as his imagined persona began to deteriorate.


damn I wish I'd been gifted enough to become a profiler. This stuff has always fascinated me.

Same here. I think you would be gifted enough. Your response indicates an IQ upwards of 120, which indicates you probably be what ever you wanted. You are spot on here.

I'd also like to add that psychopaths cannot enter meditative states. They lack the brain power. Without this meditative state (same brain region required for empathy) it is not possible to reach the epiphanies necessary for true long term thinking or revelatory innovations - it so happens that the part of the brain responsible for the caring of others is also the part responsible for novel genius. No studies needed. It's ipse defacto.

 

[EllevenSevenSounds]

Okay, sure...but can you back it up with credible resources? I mean, I'm all for anything countering my own research if it's more credible, but thus far I'm not seeing anything.

Some things are ipse defacto. The psychopathic brain lacks the organs necessary for higher meditative states, even according to Fallon (same part of the brain responsible for empathy and meditation). Without reaching this meditative state of high intensity, focus, concentration, and elevated ability, the psychopath can never achieve anything remotely near genius. There is also no psychopath to date ever identified with an IQ above 125 (official that is not estimated). In fact this is disproportionate to the population at large, so ipse defacto, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, since there are no genius psychopaths in existence.

Furthermore, the study with James Fallon is haphazard and has not been replicated nearly enough to be credible (at all). Fallon himself, someone I know, is a narcissist, and certainly does not have an IQ above 120. To add, he himself concludes that the psychopath is missing the part of the brain necessary for higher thought. Although he does a good job of marketing his research to get some funding - which he has failed at incredibly as of late.

Numerous studies also indicate that all psychopaths cannot execute action over long periods of time. Their long term goals are broken and unrealizeable, and here they resemble someone with the intelligence of someone with a sub 90 IQ since a large part of their brain matter is simply not active. It's true, they are charming and appear to be smart, in a few publicized cases, but they are more than on average quite stupid. Overall the psychopath is like an inverted autistic child who is higher on the spectrum. He has all the social graces, and that is a maybe, but none of the intellect of a fully functioning cortex as part of his or her brain simply does not work. This is why people's personalities can become psychopathic in nature after severe brain damage.

Pop Culture Was Wrong - Psychopaths Are More Likely to Have Below-Average Intelligence

 

[Neal Caffreynated]

So every psychopath is a murderer? Many of them carry on average lives...except the parasitic lifestyle in which they do things like manipulating pseudo-wives and daughters into forking over their money to pay their expenses since their extreme narcissism and other psychopathic traits make them unable to hold a job consistently or find any stability.

A lot of people do that: "I relate to a lot of things on this list." Often, that's used to discredit and discount that there are any valid diagnoses at all. It always turns out that they don't actually grasp the extremes that the list is talking about.

Didn't mean that bro, sorry. I can imagine all psychopaths don't kill people of course I was just joking around

Just thought that the problem with some tests is that you can be easily labeled as psychopath (even if it needs to be more extreme to be the case but its not very clear on this point).

 

[Mind Maverick]

Didn't mean that bro, sorry. I can imagine all psychopaths don't kill people of course I was just joking around

Just thought that the problem with some tests is that you can be easily labeled as psychopath (even if it needs to be more extreme to be the case but its not very clear on this point).

Ok that makes sense gotcha

 

[Scaven]

So after having done some research, I found out that psychopath is something like an old word for ASPD and is generally not used in clinical terms. Because their frontal lobes are wired differently, they have trouble with emotions, empathy and thus morality. Apparently, many are below average in intelligence although there are also really smart ones. I also read that they make approximately 1% of the population. Is that true?

 

[Tomb1]

So after having done some research, I found out that psychopath is something like an old word for ASPD and is generally not used in clinical terms. Because their frontal lobes are wired differently, they have trouble with emotions, empathy and thus morality. Apparently, many are below average in intelligence although there are also really smart ones. I also read that they make approximately 1% of the population. Is that true?

Research distinguishes between psychopathy and ASPD. ASPD only regards a behavioral disorder and composes one facet of psychopathy known as factor 3 (if you go by Hare then factor 2). All psychopaths qualify for ASPD, not all people with ASPD are psychopaths. Psychopaths also present with factor 1 (interpersonal glibness) and factor 2 (low autonomic arousal) (Hare condenses low autonomic arousal into factor 1):

"The evolutionary implication for predation is that the mammal needs to inhibit autonomic arousal as well as disruptive emotional states to be tactically successful in killing its prey—otherwise he will signal his intent. Likewise, in affective violence, intense autonomic arousal and emotional displays, usually anger or fear, will hopefully fend off the threat. Genetic viability, or evolutionary success, would be enhanced by strong adaptive capacities to do both modes of violence, as is seen in psychopathic subjects (Blair et al. 2005; Cornell et al. 1996; Meloy 1988a; Raine 2013). If, as suggested, psychopathy is an evolutionary adaptation for social predation, then individuals who exhibit psychopathic traits should also be prone to low autonomic arousal and emotionality. Indeed, research has demonstrated that psychopaths display both of these characteristics."

"Research conducted by Benning and colleagues (2005) found that within a community sample, individuals who exhibited Factor 1 psychopathy traits did not display the anticipated increase in electrodermal activity in response to aversive stimuli—skin conductance is a direct measure of autonomic arousal—thus indicating low autonomic arousal. Further evidence of the low arousal observed among psychopathic individuals can be found in a meta-analysis conducted by Lorber (2004). The research examined the psychophysiology associated with psychopathy during various states of arousal. Results demonstrated that psychopathy was associated with significantly lower resting electrodermal activity, weaker electrodermal reactivity (specific to stimuli with negative valence), and a smaller change in arousal as a function of stimulus presentation. Therefore, across studies, psychopathy does indeed appear to be associated with low arousal, specifically with respect to electrodermal hyporeactivity."

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2018.0012#_i3