The traumatic and terrifying effects of psychopaths are visible on our streets and on the faces of people all around us, yet most of us are blithely unaware of their existence.
Over a 28-year-old single-malt scotch at the Scientific Study of Psychopathy's biennial bash in Montreal in 2011, I asked Bob Hare, "When you look around you at modern-day society, do you think, in general, that we're becoming more psychopathic?"
The eminent criminal psychologist and creator of the widely used Psychopathy Checklist paused before answering. "I think, in general, yes, society is becoming more psychopathic," he said. "I mean, there's stuff going on nowadays that we wouldn't have seen 20, even 10 years ago. Kids are becoming anesthetized to normal sexual behavior by early exposure to pornography on the Internet. Rent-a-friend sites are getting more popular on the Web, because folks are either too busy or too techy to make real ones. ... The recent hike in female criminality is particularly revealing. And don't even get me started on Wall Street."
He's got a point.
In Japan in 2011, a 17-year-old boy parted with one of his own kidneys so he could go out and buy an iPad. In China, following an incident in which a 2-year-old baby was left stranded in the middle of a marketplace and run over, not once but twice, as passersby went casually about their business, an appalled electorate has petitioned the government to pass a good-Samaritan law to prevent such a thing from happening again.
And the new millennium has seemingly ushered in a wave of corporate criminality like no other. Investment scams, conflicts of interest, lapses of judgment, and those evergreen entrepreneurial party tricks of good old fraud and embezzlement are now utterly unprecedented in magnitude.
Who's to blame? In an issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, Clive R. Boddy, a former professor at the Nottingham Business School, contends that it's psychopaths, pure and simple, who are at the root of all the trouble.
Comment: While the above article is very interesting and informative and provides fascinating scientific proof of the fact that psychopaths are very much a different type of human than the vast majority of humans, the following paragraph is a rather uniformed and callous attempt to rationalise away the disastrous effects that psychopaths have had, and continue to have, on human society.
"But if society really is becoming more psychopathic, it's not all doom and gloom. In the right context, certain psychopathic characteristics can actually be very constructive. A neurosurgeon I spoke with (who rated high on the psychopathic spectrum) described the mind-set he enters before taking on a difficult operation as "an intoxication that sharpens rather than dulls the senses." In fact, in any kind of crisis, the most effective individuals are often those who stay calm - who are able to respond to the exigencies of the moment while at the same time maintaining the requisite degree of detachment."
Dr. Robert Hare has stated that psychopaths, who may constitute up to 6% of the population, may be responsible for 50% of crimes. This is hardly something positive. The author also misses the fact that when the ability to be "cool and calm" in a crisis is NOT a choice but rather a state of being, any possible positives far outweigh the negatives when you consider that the apathy of the 'calm and focused' neurosurgeon above would just as likely result in serious malpractice. In short, psychopathy has not "double edge", psychopathic traits are in no way positive to human society. The current dire state of our global society is a testament to that fact.
Comment: While the above article is very interesting and informative and provides fascinating scientific proof of the fact that psychopaths are very much a different type of human than the vast majority of humans, the following paragraph is a rather uniformed and callous attempt to rationalise away the disastrous effects that psychopaths have had, and continue to have, on human society. Dr. Robert Hare has stated that psychopaths, who may constitute up to 6% of the population, may be responsible for 50% of crimes. This is hardly something positive. The author also misses the fact that when the ability to be "cool and calm" in a crisis is NOT a choice but rather a state of being, any possible positives far outweigh the negatives when you consider that the apathy of the 'calm and focused' neurosurgeon above would just as likely result in serious malpractice. In short, psychopathy has not "double edge", psychopathic traits are in no way positive to human society. The current dire state of our global society is a testament to that fact.