Probing psychopathic brains

Joe

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Harvard Uni put out this piece of research recently. Seems to be an attempt to 'understand' psychopaths just as "people who make bad decisions" (poor babies!)

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-07/hu-ppb070317.php

Probing psychopathic brains Study shows psychopathic brains are wired in a way that can lead to dangerous and violent actions

Harvard University Josh Buckholtz wants to change the way you think about psychopaths - and he's willing to go to prison to do it.
An Associate Professor of Psychology, Buckholtz is the senior author of a study that relies on brain scans of nearly 50 prison inmates to help explain why psychopaths make poor decisions that often lead to violence or other anti-social behavior.
What they found, he said, is psychopath's brains are wired in a way that leads them to over-value immediate rewards and neglect the future consequences of potentially dangerous or immoral actions.

The study is described in a July 5 paper in Neuron.
"For years, we have been focused on the idea that psychopaths are people who cannot generate emotion and that's why they do all these terrible things," Buckholtz said. "But what what we care about with psychopaths is not the feelings they have or don't have, it's the choices they make. Psychopaths commit an astonishing amount of crime, and this crime is both devastating to victims and astronomically costly to society as a whole.
"And even though psychopaths are often portrayed as cold-blooded, almost alien predators, we have been showing that their emotional deficits may not actually be the primary driver of these bad choices. Because it's the choices of psychopaths that cause so much trouble, we've been trying to understand what goes on in their brains when the make decisions that involve trade-offs between the costs and benefits of action.," he continued. "In this most recent paper...we are able to look at brain-based measures of reward and value and the communication between different brain regions that are involved in decision making."
Obtaining the scans used in the study, however, was no easy feat - where most studies face an uphill battle in bringing subjects into the lab, Buckholtz's challenge was in bringing the scanner to his subjects.
The solution came in form of a "mobile" scanner - typically used for cancer screenings in rural areas - that came packed in the trailer of a tractor trailer. After trucking the equipment to a two medium-security prisons in Wisconsin, the team - which included collaborators at the University of Wisconin-Madison and University of New Mexico - would spend days calibrating the scanner, and then work to scan as many volunteers as possible as quickly as possible.
"It was a huge undertaking," he said. "Most MRI scanners, they're not going anywhere, but in this case, we're driving this inside a prison and then in very quick succession we have to assess and scan the inmates."
The team ultimately scanned the brains of 49 inmates over two hours as they took part in a type of delayed gratification test which asked them to choose between two options - receive a smaller amount of money immediately, or a larger amount at a later time. The results of those tests were then fit to a model that allowed researchers to create a measure of not only how impulsive each participant's behavior was, but to identify brain regions that play a role in assessing the relative value of such choices.
What they found, Buckholtz said, was people who scored high for psychopathy showed greater activity in a region called the ventral striatum - known to be involved in evaluating the subjective reward - for the more immediate choice.
"So the more psychopathic a person is, the greater the magnitude of that striatal response," Buckholtz said. "That suggests that the way they are calculating the value rewards is dysregulated - they may over-represent the value of immediate reward."
When Buckholtz and colleagues began mapping which brain regions are connected to the ventral striatum, it became clear why.
"We mapped the connections between the ventral striatum and other regions known to be involved in decision-making, specifically regions of the prefrontal cortex known to regulate striatal response," he said. "When we did that, we found that connections between the striatum and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex were much weaker in people with psychopathy."
That lack of connection is important, Buckholtz said, because this portion of the prefrontal cortex role is thought to be important for 'mental time-travel' - envisioning the future consequences of actions. There is increasing evidence that prefrontal cortex uses the outcome of this process to change how strongly the striatum responds to rewards. With that prefrontal modulating influence weakened, the value of the more immediate choice may become dramatically over-represented.
"The striatum assigns values to different actions without much temporal context" he said. "We need the prefrontal cortex to make prospective judgements how an action will affect us in the future - if I do this, then this bad thing will happen. The way we think of it is if you break that connection in anyone, they're going to start making bad choices because they won't have the information that would otherwise guide their decision-making to more adaptive ends."
The effect was so pronounced, Buckholtz said, that researchers were able to use the degree of connection between the striatum and the prefrontal cortex to accurately predict how many times inmates had been convicted of crimes.
Ultimately, Buckholtz said, his goal is to erase the popular image of psychopaths as incomprehensible, cold-blooded monsters and see them for what they are - everyday humans whose brains are simply wired differently.
"They're not aliens, they're people who make bad decisions," he said. "The same kind of short-sighted, impulsive decision-making that we see in psychopathic individuals has also been noted in compulsive over-eaters and substance abusers. If we can put this back into the domain of rigorous scientific analysis, we can see psychopaths aren't inhuman, they're exactly what you would expect from humans who have this particular kind of brain wiring dysfunction."
 
his goal is to erase the popular image of psychopaths as incomprehensible, cold-blooded monsters and see them for what they are - everyday humans whose brains are simply wired differently.

I have my doubts about this, if someone wants to see me suffer and everyone on this planet. That just makes it a bit impossible to see them as simply 'everyday humans'.

Nice try though by Harvard, reaffirms that they are essentially rooting for team Psychopath.


Wonderful to read about the possibility of sorting them out through brain scans. So why only scan prison inmates. It should be applied and extended to members of congress and everyone that holds a key position in structures of power the world over.
 
bjorn said:
his goal is to erase the popular image of psychopaths as incomprehensible, cold-blooded monsters and see them for what they are - everyday humans whose brains are simply wired differently.

I have my doubts about this, if someone wants to see me suffer and everyone on this planet. That just makes it a bit impossible to see them as simply 'everyday humans'.

Nice try though by Harvard, reaffirms that they are essentially rooting for team Psychopath.


Wonderful to read about the possibility of sorting them out through brain scans. So why only scan prison inmates. It should be applied and extended to members of congress and everyone that holds a key position in structures of power the world over.

There's also the "publish or perish" issue. Better do a study, get it peer reviewed by some of your buddies (fellow psychologists doing equally crap studies)), giving said study a thumbs up (you scratch my back and I'll scratch your's), and we're all good for more funding for more useless, flawed, irrelevant, and ultimately misleading, studies and/or experiments.
 
Redrock12 said:
bjorn said:
his goal is to erase the popular image of psychopaths as incomprehensible, cold-blooded monsters and see them for what they are - everyday humans whose brains are simply wired differently.

I have my doubts about this, if someone wants to see me suffer and everyone on this planet. That just makes it a bit impossible to see them as simply 'everyday humans'.

Nice try though by Harvard, reaffirms that they are essentially rooting for team Psychopath.

Wonderful to read about the possibility of sorting them out through brain scans. So why only scan prison inmates. It should be applied and extended to members of congress and everyone that holds a key position in structures of power the world over.

There's also the "publish or perish" issue. Better do a study, get it peer reviewed by some of your buddies (fellow psychologists doing equally crap studies)), giving said study a thumbs up (you scratch my back and I'll scratch your's), and we're all good for more funding for more useless, flawed, irrelevant, and ultimately misleading, studies and/or experiments.

The Harvard study was probably funded under the CIA mind-control program, MKULTRA to enhance their psychiatric studies? So, through brain scans, they were able to identify traits common in "psychopathy". In the meantime, studies have been conducted to identify drugs and substances that can mimic characteristics and conditions of psychopathy or worse. Is the introduction of Common Core into the school system, a form of behavior management to systematically degrade the individual's mental abilities, thus the need for drugs to control normal impulses conductive to growth in learning and coping with every day life experiences? Is Common Core, a program to promote a generational - degradation - to function normally within society, by short circuiting the emotional center, so the natural inherit ability of conscious moral judgment of "right and wrong" is reduced and nullified?

Is it possible, that "psychopaths", instead of mimicking emotional responses in normal human beings, are trying to get "human's" to function like them ... for control?

Quote:
What they found, he said, is psychopath's brains are wired in a way that leads them to over-value immediate rewards and neglect the future consequences of potentially dangerous or immoral actions.

And:
We found that connections between the striatum and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex were much weaker in people with psychopathy."


CIA mind control morphed into psychiatry? By Jon Rappoport - July 11, 2017
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/cia-mind-control-morphed-into-psychiatry/

Here is a new introduction to a piece I wrote several years ago. Then I’ll reprint the piece.

The famous CIA mind-control program, MKULTRA, always used psychiatrists; often these professionals headed up projects; they carried out the bulk of the research. But what I’m talking about here is the “evolution” of MKULTRA into mainstream psychiatry that affects the lives of millions of people every day.

I’ve demonstrated, on a number of occasions, that not one of the 300 so-called official mental disorders has a lab test to back up the diagnosis. No defining lab test. No blood test, no saliva test, no brain scan, no genetic assay. All 300 “disorders” are described and defined by committees of psychiatrists—and their non-scientific decisions are published in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Unfortunately, the treatments for every one of these arbitrary diagnoses are toxic drugs; drugs that addle the brain; drugs that reduce people to a state of abject dependence; drugs that make people think they’re insane; drugs that cause violent behavior; drugs that create life-threatening problems when patients try to withdraw from them quickly; drugs whose effects mimic the very descriptions of mental illness.

In other words, modern psychiatry, backed by drug makers, has an ideal formula for disabling populations.

So it’s more than interesting that the CIA has pursued a mind control program (MKULTRA) to achieve, in certain respects, the same objectives.

—end of introduction—now here is my piece on a forgotten CIA document:

Drugs to transform individuals…and even, by implication, society.

Drug research going far beyond the usual brief descriptions of MKULTRA.

The intention is there, in the record:

A CIA document was included in the transcript of the 1977 US Senate Hearings on MKULTRA, the CIA’s mind-control program.

The document is found in Appendix C, starting on page 166. It’s simply labeled “Draft,” dated 5 May 1955 (note: scroll down to #123-125 in the document).

It states: “A portion of the Research and Development Program of [CIA’s] TSS/Chemical Division is devoted to the discovery of the following materials and methods:”

What followed was a list of hoped-for drugs and their uses.

First, a bit of background: MKULTRA did not end in 1962, as advertised. It was shifted over to the Agency’s Office of Research and Development.

John Marks is the author of the groundbreaking 1979 book, Search for the Manchurian Candidate, which helped expose MKULTRA. Marks told me a CIA representative informed him that the continuation of MKULTRA, after 1962, was carried out with a greater degree of secrecy, and he, Marks, would never see a scrap of paper about it.

I’m printing below, the list of the 1955 intentions of the CIA regarding their own drug research. The range of those intentions is stunning.

Some of my comments gleaned from studying the list:

The CIA wanted to find substances which would “promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness.” Serious consideration should be given to the idea that psychiatric medications would eventually satisfy that requirement.

The CIA wanted to find chemicals that “would produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way.” This suggests many possibilities—among them the use of drugs to fabricate diseases and thereby give the false impression of germ-caused epidemics.

The CIA wanted to find drugs that would “produce amnesia.” Ideal for discrediting whistleblowers, dissidents, certain political candidates, and other investigators. (Scopolamine is such a drug.)

The CIA wanted to discover drugs which would produce “paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.” A way to make people decline in health as if from diseases.

The CIA wanted to develop drugs that would “alter personality structure” and thus induce a person’s dependence on another person. How about dependence in general? For instance, dependence on institutions, governments?

The CIA wanted to discover chemicals that would “lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men.” Sounds like a general description of the devolution of society.

As you read the list yourself, you’ll see more implications/possibilities.

Here, from 1955, are the types of drugs the MKULTRA men at the CIA were looking for. The following statements are direct CIA quotes:

A portion of the Research and Development Program of TSS/Chemical Division is devoted to the discovery of the following materials and methods:

1. Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.

2. Substances which increase the efficiency of mentation and perception.

3. Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.

4. Materials which will promote the intoxicating effect of alcohol.

5. Materials which will produce the signs and symptoms of recognized diseases in a reversible way so that they may be used for malingering, etc.

6. Materials which will render the induction of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.

7. Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing”.

8. Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.

9. Physical methods of producing shock and confusion over extended periods of time and capable of surreptitious use.

10. Substances which produce physical disablement such as paralysis of the legs, acute anemia, etc.

11. Substances which will produce “pure” euphoria with no subsequent let-down.

12. Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.

13. A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.

14. Substances which will lower the ambition and general working efficiency of men when administered in undetectable amounts.

15. Substances which promote weakness or distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties, preferably without permanent effects.

16. A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.

17. A material which can be surreptitiously administered by the above routes and which in very small amounts will make it impossible for a man to perform any physical activity whatsoever.

—end of quoted section from the 1955 CIA document—

At the end of this 1955 CIA document, the author [unnamed] makes these remarks: “In practice, it has been possible to use outside cleared contractors for the preliminary phases of this [research] work. However, that part which involves human testing at effective dose levels presents security problems which cannot be handled by the ordinary contactors.”

“The proposed [human testing] facility [deletion] offers a unique opportunity for the secure handling of such clinical testing in addition to the many advantages outlined in the project proposal. The security problems mentioned above are eliminated by the fact that the responsibility for the testing will rest completely upon the physician and the hospital. [one line deleted] will allow [CIA] TSS/CD personnel to supervise the work very closely to make sure that all tests are conducted according to the recognized practices and embody adequate safeguards.”

In other words, this was to be ultra-secret. No outside contractors at universities for the core of the experiments, which by the way could be carried forward for decades.

A secret in-house facility.

Over the years, more facilities could be created.

If you examine the full range of psychiatric drugs developed since 1955, you’ll see that a number of them fit the CIA’s agenda. Speed-type chemicals to addle the brain over the long term, to treat so-called ADHD. Anti-psychotic drugs [Haldol, Risperdal, etc.], AKA “major tranquilizers,” to render patients more and more dependent on others (and government) as they sink into profound disability and incur motor brain damage. And of course, the SSRI antidepressants, like Prozac and Paxil and Zoloft, which produce extreme and debilitating highs and lows—and also push people over the edge into committing violence.

These drugs drag the whole society down into lower and lower levels of consciousness and action.

If that’s the goal of a very powerful and clandestine government agency…it’s succeeding. In mainstream psychiatry.


Common Core is not about education, it is Technocracy’s initiative to collect life-long data on young students in order to condition them for the global citizenry.

Government Schools Are Tracking The Mental Health Of Your Children (Video)
https://www.technocracy.news/index.php/2017/07/06/government-schools-are-tracking-the-mental-health-of-your-children/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZLxIk8zDk (8:20 min.)

The 1934 Technocracy Study Course wrote about education as a “continental system of human conditioning’, which is exactly what we have today. ⁃ TN Editor.

Government schools are now conducting mental health and psychological assessments of your children each month under the unconstitutional Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA),according to various reports. Even more alarming: Parents have not offered their consent, or even been told that the exams are taking place.

Welcome to the Brave New World of government “schools” — or indoctrination centers, depending on your point of view.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Aida Cerundolo, a physician in New Hampshire, exposed the use of a highly controversial psych test being forced on students in the state as part of the “social and emotional learning” (SEL) scheming of the federal ESSA bill passed by Big Government Republicans, at the Obama administration’s request. (Article continues.)


3 Examples That Show How Common Core Is Destroying Math Education In America By Michael Snyder, on July 14th, 2017
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/3-examples-that-show-how-common-core-is-destroying-math-education-in-america


America sees alarming spike in middle school suicide rate July 14, 2017
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/07/14/america-sees-alarming-spike-middle-school-suicide-rate/479478001/


School Ditches Common Core Then Soars To #1 In English Language Arts July 10, 2017
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/07/10/school-ditches-common-core-soars-1-english-language-arts/
 
I wonder if there are quantifiable differences between hard to spot high functioning psychopaths and the more visible imprisoned psychopaths?
 
aaron r said:
I wonder if there are quantifiable differences between hard to spot high functioning psychopaths and the more visible imprisoned psychopaths?

The Snakes in Suits by Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare describes the differences between psychopaths very well.

The initially used measuring tool was called Psychopathy Checklist - Revised, or PCL-R. It consists of a list of 20 emotional, interpersonal and lifestyle traits and behaviours. It was used among offender populations, psychiatric patients and the general public. For the last group a more suitable tool was developed, which was a derivative of the PCL-R: the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV).

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist#Usage

It is stated in the book that "not all psychopaths are smooth operators (...). Some do not have enough social or communicative skill or education to interact successfully with others, relying instead on threats, coercion and violence to dominate others and get what they want."

As pointed out in the book, the charming ones are less likely to end up in jail for violent crimes although they are in fact very likely to commit business related crimes.

All psychopaths appear to share the affective features of the disorder: shallow emotions, lack of empathy, guilt or remorse but they differ on the other dimensions.

The subtypes of psychopathy described in the book are:

The classic style: those that score high on each of the psychopathy dimensions: interpersonal, affective lifestyle, and antisocial.

The manipulative style: those that score high on the interpersonal and affective dimensions and somewhat lower on the lifestyle and antisocial dimensions. They manipulate, deceive and charm, but are less impulsive and antisocial than other types. They are mostly charming and manipulative corporate bullies and it is thys type the book is focused on.

The macho style: those with a high score on the affective lifestyle and antisocial dimensions, and a low score on the interpersonal dimensions. They are aggressive, bullying individuals, less charming and manipulative than other types. They are more doers than talkers.
 
aaron r said:
I wonder if there are quantifiable differences between hard to spot high functioning psychopaths and the more visible imprisoned psychopaths?

Adrian Raine wrote a book titled The Anatomy of Violence, and it deals with a lot of those differences. I found it to be quite fascinating. It's not only about psychopaths, and it includes neurological differences between people who commit, say, ONE single violent act from a rage episode, for example, and the whole range up to serial killers. But there is are indeed quite a few quantifiable and qualitative differences, it seems.

He quotes some studies like this one:

Successful and Unsuccessful Psychopaths: A Neurobiological Model
Yu Gao,Ph.D. and Adrian Raine,D.Phil.

Abstract

Despite increasing interest in psychopathy research, surprisingly little is known about the etiology of non-incarcerated, successful psychopaths. This review provides an analysis of current knowledge on the similarities and differences between successful and unsuccessful psychopaths derived from five population sources: community samples, individuals from employment agencies, college students, industrial psychopaths, and serial killers. An initial neurobiological model of successful and unsuccessful psychopathy is outlined. It is hypothesized that successful psychopaths have intact or enhanced neurobiological functioning that underlies their normal or even superior cognitive functioning, which in turn helps them to achieve their goals using more covert and nonviolent methods. In contrast, in unsuccessful, caught psychopaths, brain structural and functional impairments together with autonomic nervous system dysfunction are hypothesized to underlie cognitive and emotional deficits and more overt violent offending.


I think it's worth reading the whole paper, but here are a few excerpts:

PSYCHOPATHS IN THE COMMUNITY

The first study to examine psychopathic personality in any non-institutionalized population was conducted by Widom (1978), who used newspaper advertisements in Boston to recruit community-dwelling individuals with psychopathic features.The advertisement read ‘‘Wanted: charming, aggressive, carefree people who are impulsively irresponsible but are good at handling people and at looking after number one’’ (Widom, 1978). Of the final sample of 28 male subjects, they were generally from the lower socioeconomic classes, and nearly 25% had some college education. Subjects scored high on the Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Although 64% of the sample had adult arrest records,only 18% had convictions as adults; 21% had received inpatient psychiatric treatment,and 46% had received outpatient psychiatric care. Nearly half of them had both criminal and psychiatric records. Later a similar study was conducted in a suburban area (Bloomington, IN) by the same researchers (Widom & Newman, 1985). They found that psychometric test data in the individuals from a non-urban community( N ¼40) were nearly identical to those of the prior study, with the exception that subjects were more college educated and had fewer arrests (41%). In addition, the authors failed to find in these community psychopaths the delay of gratification deficits found in incarcerated psychopaths (Newman, Patterson, & Kosson, 1987). Although sample sizes were small, these two studies provide evidence that this new methodology is successful in locating non-institutionalized psychopaths among the community. Belmore and Quinsey (1994) also used the advertisements described in Widom’s study (1978) to recruit community-dwelling psychopathic-prone individuals. Subjects were assigned to one of two groups based on a semi-structured interview that was composed of eight items from the PCL and eight items of childhood and adolescent problem behaviors. Compared with those with low psychopathic traits (n¼15), individuals with high psychopathic traits(n¼15)were more impulsive and scored lower on the California Personality Inventory Socialization Scale. They also performed worse in a card-playing game, suggesting their proneness to rewards and difficulties in modulating their responses to punishment. However, a large proportion of the subjects(93%) had previously been incarcerated; therefore these findings may not be generalized to successful, non-criminal psychopaths who escape detection.

More recently, using advertisements in local newspapers and flyers posted in the community, Justus and Finn (2007) assessed emotional modulation of the startle response in 99 male and female subjects.Males with high levels of psychopathy assessed by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI; Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) failed to show the typical increase in the startle response that non-psychopaths showed when exposed to aversive pictures, whereas females did not show this deficit.

Furthermore,the association between psychopathy and response modulation was moderated by harm avoidance and anxiety: only psychopaths with low levels of harm avoidance or anxiety failed to show significant responses to aversive pictures. These findings suggest complicated associations between emotional deficits, gender, and personality in non-incarcerated samples. Using a large sample of twin men recruited from community( N ¼353), Benning, Patrick, and Iacono (2005) found that individuals with high trait levels of fearless dominance exhibited attenuated startle potentiation and reduced electrodermal responses to aversive pictures, whereas the impulsive antisociality facet of psychopathy was associated with smaller overall electrodermal activity magnitudes,indicating that the non-incarcerated psychopaths show similar autonomic dysfunction to that shown by incarcerated psychopaths (Patrick, Bradley, & Lang, 1993).Using the PCL-R, DeMatteo, Heilbrun, and Marczyk (2006) reported that 54 participants from the general population exhibited the personality features of psychopathy (Factor 1) to a greater extent than the behavioral features (Factor 2). They identified 27 highly psychopathic individuals who showed similar levels of psychopathic traits as forensic psychiatric samples, although the PCL-R scores of the sample were lower than those of the prison samples (Hare, 2003). The authors argued that the findings suggest the potential risk of this group engaging in future criminal behavior and the promise of using PCL-R to measure psychopathy in community samples. Interestingly, about 60% of the sample reported a history of arrests. In summary, findings from the community-dwelling psychopathic individuals who are recruited through public media are inconsistent. Earlier studies in general failed tofind neuropsychological deficits in community psychopaths (Widom & Newman,1985), although this may be partly due to reduced statistical power.

More recent studies seem to suggest that the community psychopaths bear some similarities to incarcerated, unsuccessful psychopaths with respect to biological deficits, including impaired behavioral modulation, attenuated startle potentiation, and reduced autonomic responses to aversive stimuli (Belmore & Quinsey, 1994; Benning et al., 2005; Justus& Finn, 2007). However, with one exception (Belmore & Quinsey, 1994), these more recents tudies did not include court records of the participants and as such it is unknown whether they are successful in escaping detection of the criminal justice system;psychopathy–neurobiological deficits among these community psychopaths could conceivably be attributable to an ‘‘unsuccessful’’ psychopathic subgroup.

PSYCHOPATHS FROM TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES

Widom, based on her initial data on community-dwelling psychopaths, proposed that the more ‘‘successful’’ psychopaths might be ‘‘arrested frequently but convicted infrequently’’ (Widom, 1978, p. 83), and hypothesized that they would lack the autonomic dysfunction frequently found in institutionalized, unsuccessful psycho-paths. To test this hypothesis, some researchers recruited subjects from temporary employment agencies wherein the proportion of psychopaths is theorized to be relatively higher (Gao, Raine, & Schug, in press; Ishikawa, Raine, Lencz, Bihrle, &LaCasse, 2001; Raine et al., 2004; Yang et al., 2005b). In the series of studies conducted by Raine and colleagues, the PCL-R was used to assess psychopathy and successful psychopaths were defined as those scoring high on the PCL-R but who had never been convicted for any crime based on official criminal records. Compared with unsuccessful psychopaths (n¼16), who had at least one conviction, Ishikawa et al.(2001) found increased heart rate stress reactivity and enhanced executive functioning (Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) in successful psychopaths (n¼13). Successful psychopaths even showed significantly better executive functioning than the non-psychopathic controls (n¼26). In contrast, unsuccessful psychopaths exhibited reduced heart rate stress reactivity and impaired executive functioning compared with the non-psychopathic controls, as observed in criminal psychopaths. The two psychopathic groups did not differ on full scale IQ compared with the non-psychopathic controls. It was argued that enhanced autonomic responding and better executive functioning may protect a sub-group of psychopaths from being detected and arrested, allowing them to perpetrate significant harm to others in the community. Using the same sample, Raine et al. (2004) reported an exaggerated anterior hippocampal volume asymmetry (right>left) in unsuccessful psychopaths, but not in successful psychopaths or non-psychopathic controls, suggesting a neurodevelopmental basis to unsuccessful psychopaths. Similarly, significant gray matter volume reductions in the prefrontal cortex (Yang et al., 2005b) and amygdala (Yang, Raine, Colletti,Toga, &Narr, inpress) have also been found in unsuccessful but not successful psychopaths. Within the prefrontal cortex, structural impairments in unsuccessful psychopaths are specific to the orbitofrontal cortex and middle frontal gyrus. Using thesame methodology but a different sample of temporary employment workers, Gao andcolleagues (in press) compared successful psychopaths (n¼23), unsuccessfulpsychopaths (n¼22), and non-psychopathic controls (n¼23) on P300 amplitudesand latencies recorded during an auditory three-stimulus oddball task. Compared withnon-psychopathic controls, unsuccessful but not successful psychopaths showed reduced parietal P300 amplitudes to target stimuli, indicating some neurobiological deficits in this subtype of psychopaths.

Another group of researchers have also directly compared criminal and non-criminal psychopaths. Iria and Barbosa (2009) examined fear facial expression recognitionability among criminal and non-criminal psychopaths in a go/no-go paradigm. Thenon-criminalpsychopaths andnon-psychopathswererecruitedfromlocalemploymentcenters and the psychopathic and non-psychopathic criminals were recruited from theprisons and police stations. Psychopathy was assessed using the PCL: ScreeningVersion. Compared with non-psychopaths (11 criminal and 13 non-criminal),psychopaths (22 criminal and 16 non-criminal) performed significantly worse on detecting and discriminating the facial expression of fear; the criminal and non-criminal psychopaths did not differ on this task. These findings implicate some cognitive deficits common to both successful and unsuccessful psychopaths, although one limitation is that the authors did not control for duration of incarceration and alcohol and drug use,factors that may confound associations between psychopathy and facial expression recognition ability.

In summary, evidence from employment agency populations seems to suggest that successful and unsuccessful psychopaths share some similarities in terms of fear expression recognition deficits (Iria & Barbosa, 2009), factors that may explain whyboth successful and unsuccessful groups are psychopathic. At the same time, differences between successful and unsuccessful psychopaths are also apparent in these populations. It is suggested that neuropathological characteristics that include reduced prefrontal gray matter and amygdala volumes and abnormal hippocampal asymmetry, in combination with P300 deficits (Gao et al., in press; Raine et al., 2004;Yang et al., in press, 2005b), may contribute to the cognitive and emotional dysregulation in unsuccessful psychopaths, and consequently render these individuals less sensitive to environmental cues predicting danger and capture. In contrast, enhanced frontal functioning and better executive capability may protect the successful psychopaths from being detected/convicted for the crimes they perpetrate.

The authors then describe studies done with college students, psychopaths in business and working environments, etc. I suggest you read the whole paper.

So, the way I understand it, FWIW, is that even at a neurological level, some successful psychopaths may have an advantage. They have all the psychopathic traits, except that, to a certain extent, they are able to learn from mistakes and plan better, which means that they are harder to catch, they may tell better lies, get into positions of power, etc.
 
angelburst29 said:
Is it possible, that "psychopaths", instead of mimicking emotional responses in normal human beings, are trying to get "human's" to function like them ... for control?

Yeah, normalizing pathology is part of the ponerization process and it's gotten so bad that it's also glorified. The 'problem' of course that humans can't function as psychopaths and become hysterical instead. This does seem to be a method of control, but it's also very unstable and pathological types also out themselves in the process to people who still have some capacity to actually think. I've been watching Tucker Carlson's interviews lately and he often has guest showing both the highly pathological as well as people who are fully hysterical, usually concerning Russia. It's interesting that his show has become the most watched news show and is also spread pretty wildly on youtube.
 
Chu said:
Adrian Raine wrote a book titled The Anatomy of Violence, and it deals with a lot of those differences. I found it to be quite fascinating. It's not only about psychopaths, and it includes neurological differences between people who commit, say, ONE single violent act from a rage episode, for example, and the whole range up to serial killers. But there is are indeed quite a few quantifiable and qualitative differences, it seems.

He quotes some studies like this one:

Successful and Unsuccessful Psychopaths: A Neurobiological Model
Yu Gao,Ph.D. and Adrian Raine,D.Phil.

(...)


I think it's worth reading the whole paper, but here are a few excerpts:

PSYCHOPATHS FROM TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES

(...)Compared with unsuccessful psychopaths (n¼16), who had at least one conviction, Ishikawa et al.(2001) found increased heart rate stress reactivity and enhanced executive functioning (Wisconsin Card Sorting Task) in successful psychopaths (n¼13). Successful psychopaths even showed significantly better executive functioning than the non-psychopathic controls (n¼26). In contrast, unsuccessful psychopaths exhibited reduced heart rate stress reactivity and impaired executive functioning compared with the non-psychopathic controls, as observed in criminal psychopaths. The two psychopathic groups did not differ on full scale IQ compared with the non-psychopathic controls. It was argued that enhanced autonomic responding and better executive functioning may protect a sub-group of psychopaths from being detected and arrested, allowing them to perpetrate significant harm to others in the community. Using the same sample, Raine et al. (2004) reported an exaggerated anterior hippocampal volume asymmetry (right>left) in unsuccessful psychopaths, but not in successful psychopaths or non-psychopathic controls, suggesting a neurodevelopmental basis to unsuccessful psychopaths.

(...)

The authors then describe studies done with college students, psychopaths in business and working environments, etc. I suggest you read the whole paper.

So, the way I understand it, FWIW, is that even at a neurological level, some successful psychopaths may have an advantage. They have all the psychopathic traits, except that, to a certain extent, they are able to learn from mistakes and plan better, which means that they are harder to catch, they may tell better lies, get into positions of power, etc.

That is interesting, and it supports Lobaczewski's work. If I recall correctly he said psychopaths had a deformed instinctual substratum. Or something like that. Basically they have poor self preservation abilities. Higher functioning psychopaths as described by the study above explains how successful psychopaths have better autonomic systems, giving them an advantage over the unsuccessful type and thus an improved ability to manipulate. They have an ability to learn a type of self preservation, but only in the very narrow scope that is purely self-serving.
 
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