A psychopath is a person that lacks empathy for the people around them, who is also extremely selfish and has a lack of guilt, etc. In society psychopath and sociopath are always getting mixed together the difference between the two is that a sociopath can form bonds with others (usually family) while a psychopath will not. So a sociopath will feel emotions about hurting someone they know well while a psychopath will feel nothing about the situation. Psychopathy isn’t something that only has one type, it’s more of a spectrum. Not all psychopaths are going to resemble the ones from mainstream media such as ted bundy, nannie doss, or albert fish. Most psychopaths only contain some of the character traits of the condition, some traits will be higher in some people while lower in others. Since you can’t identify a psychopath through things like blood test or brain scans they usually use a psychopathy checklist.
This is a 20 item list that allows examers to compare their subjects psychopathic tendencies to what is believed to be the ideal psychopath. The test is scored 0-40, 0 being the lowest achievable and 40 being the highest, In the US the cut off score is 30. The only time this test is administered is usually when legal action is taking place so all of the psychopaths that does not end up in jail are just around without knowing it. I choose this topic because psychopaths have always interest me,it’s something that a few people have traits of but you’ll never know because they have become accustomed to hiding it so well. Specifically this article caught my eye because it tries to find the type of psychopaths that you could have an encounter with everyday not just what the article calls the “unsuccessful psychopath”. Psychopathy is topic that we try to understand but never really have a fully grasp on the concept of.
Research Design
This people who conducted this experiment attracted their volunteers by placing an ad in the classifieds in the Boston counterculture newspaper. In the ad they asked for “charming, aggressive, carefree people who are impulsive irresponsible but are good at handling people and at looking after number one.” The experiment conductores got a total of seventy-three responses, forty-five from males twenty three from females . One person’s sex couldn’t be identified and three were company advertisements. They determined who they were going to study by reading the volunteers letters and by calling them on the phone and talking trying to hear for psychopathic traits.
Method
After reading all the letters and calling the people who responded to the ad the examiners had a total of twenty eight participants.The participants were twenty-three males and five females, the group had a mean of 25.7 in age and a range of 19-47. The participants were given multiple test and surveys that allowed the examiners to evaluate their mindsets. These test included a biographical interview ,the Porteus Maze Test ,and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The biographical interview is when the examiners ask a few question that are on topic with what they are looking for but without trying to get certain answer. The porteus maze test is a nonverbal test that suppose to measure planning ability and foresight. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is a psychological test that is suppose to evaluate personality traits.
Results
During the biographical interview the examiners ask the participants about a variety of things such as their marital status, economic status, drinking and drug usage and legal past, etc. Most of the participant had never been married but the few that had been either got a divorce or was separated from their spouse at that moment. When asked about their jobs some were unemployed, five were students the rest had jobs but they had what would be considered what we call minimum wage jobs. The results to drinking and drugs were on the higher scale with almost fifty percent of the participants participating in heavy drinking at one point in their lives. Only three of the participants never used drugs the most dabbled in drugs and seven were heavy drug users at on point in their lives. Around 35 percent had never been arrested, 21 had been arrested but only stayed for a night. At least half of the group had been in jail though some for only two weeks and others for as long as three years.
The sonme of the crimes the participants committed were “ grand larceny, breaking and entering, armed robbery, vandalism, rape, assault with intent to rape, morals charges, possession of drugs, possession of heroin with intent to sell, shoplifting, and drunk and disorderly”. The Porteus Maze Test results were compared to previous groups that were the group of young psychopaths and the a group of clinic patients that had done the test and the participants made less mistake than that of the groups they were getting compared to but was fairly similar to the Sutker et al. study. As for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory the males showed the same character traits as a classic psychopath while the women’s score was lower. The examers came to the conclusion that the participants did appear to similar to people who are psychopathic, though they had some difference the participants still fit into the category.
