Facts About Sociopathy

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In the September/October 2010 issue of Scientific American Mind is an article entitled, Inside the Mind of a Psychopath. Among other things, the researchers wrote:

Aided by EEGs and brain scans, scientists have discovered that psychopaths possess significant impairments that affect their ability to feel emotions, read other people's cues and learn from their mistakes.

These deficiencies my be apparent in children who are as young as five years old.

When you tally trials, prison stays and inflicted damage, psychopaths cost us $250 billion to $400 billion a year.

Charming as they may seem, psychopaths can also be tone-deaf because they lack access to their own feelings and those of others. Imagine what it would be like never to be depressed or anxious, never to have regrets or low self-esteem but also never to care deeply for anyone or anything. Psychopaths' emotions are shallow: they feel irritated when they don't get their way and turn to risky behaviors for the flimsiest of reasons. Bereft of loyalties and passions, they wander through life, often straying into criminality on a whim — forgeries, thefts, assaults, even murders may be committed out of some trivial impulse. As for complex emotions such as devotion, guilt, or joy, theirs remains a textbook understanding — it has been said that they "know the words but not the music."

Dozens of studies reveal that psychopaths experience the world differently from other people. They have trouble making appropriate moral value judgments and putting the brakes on their impulses. They are also hampered in how they respond to emotions, language and distractions — a disconnect that is sometimes seen as early as age five.

Psychopaths are notable for their fearlessness: when confronted with images such as a looming attacker or a weapon aimed their way, they literally don't blink.

Chances are, you have met a psychopath. People with the disorder make up 0.5 to 1 percent of the general population. When you discount children, women (for reasons that remain a puzzle, few women are afflicted), and those who are already locked up, that translates to approximately 250,000 psychopaths living freely in the U.S.

Some researchers have estimated that as many as 500,000 psychopaths inhabit the U.S. prison system, and there may be another 250,000 more living freely — perhaps not committing serious crimes but still taking advantage of those around them.

Whatever the reasons, many psychiatrists are left with the false impression that psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder are the same. They are not. Antisocial personality disorder is a helpful diagnosis when the question is whether a person is likely to behave badly, but it does nothing to discriminate among criminals. Only one in five people with antisocial personality disorder is a psychopath.

The above was written by Kent A. Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico, and Joshua W. Buckholtz, a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University.
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