Take the Robert Hare psychopathy test. Online test for psychopathy (40 questions)
Oh, so much more cynical and heartless! - exclaimed the psychiatrist.
Did he do all this on purpose? - I asked. “Yes, of course,” Bob answered. - He was an extremely unpleasant person.
The purpose of the conference at Lezarka was to bring together all the observations that experts had regarding the most seemingly insignificant details of the behavior of psychopaths, both verbal and non-verbal. It was necessary to find some patterns in their behavior, involuntary manifestations of psychopathic speech pathology. The results of the conference formed the basis of twenty items of the world-famous Hare PCL R questionnaire.
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1. Talkativeness/external charm.
2. Exaggerated sense of self-importance.
3. Need for stimulation/rapid loss of interest.
4. Pathological deceit.
5. Cunning/manipulative.
6. Inability to feel remorse, lack of guilt.
7. Superficial affects.
8. Heartlessness/inability to empathize with others.
10. Weak ability to control one’s own behavior.
11. Disorderly sexual behavior.
12. Difficulties in education in childhood.
13. Lack of realistic long-term goals.
14. Impulsiveness.
15. Irresponsibility.
16. Inability to accept responsibility for one's own actions.
17. Multiple short-term marriages.
18. Tendency to commit crimes in adolescence.
19. Violation of obligations assumed upon parole.
20. Variety of crimes committed.
The next morning began with us starting to learn how to use it.
Tuesday morning. The servants scurried around the large tent that was to be ours for the next three days. Some of them were also fans of Hare. When, stopping in the corner, Bob began to talk about how he “always carries a weapon with him, because great amount psychopaths accuse me of putting them in asylums,” we came closer to listen to him. Peach-colored silk draperies fluttered in the passing breeze. Hare recalled a case - now quite famous among specialists in psychopathy - when Peter Woodcock explained the reason why he killed Dennis Kerr on his first day of freedom. He said he just wanted to experience what it was like to kill someone, and when the interviewer remarked, “But you've already killed three people before,” Woodcock replied, “Yes, but that was many, many, many, many years ago.” . Bob turned to me.
You see, they have a very short memory. Like during an electric shock test.
Some of those listening nodded their heads in understanding and grinned wryly. But there were also skeptics. Psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, law enforcement officers, neurologists do not like to be taught by “gurus” like Bob Hair. I felt an atmosphere of expectant skepticism thickening among those present. We took our seats. Bob pressed the button and a video appeared on the screen.
An empty room. A gloomy, clearly institutional room, painted blue, but such a light shade that it was difficult to determine the color. There was a table and chair in the room. The only bright spot in the room was the red button on the wall. A man entered the room. Pleasant-looking, well dressed. One of his eyes twitched a little. He pulled a chair under the red button. Moving along the floor, the chair made a not too loud, but unpleasant grinding sound.
Do you see? - asked Bob. - He moved the chair directly to the “panic button”. He did this to scare one of my employees who is behind the camera. Just to demonstrate some semblance of power. The feeling of power and superiority over others is very important to them.
The man on the screen spoke.
We never learned the name or the name of the prison in which the filming took place. During classes in the first half of the day, everyone called him “Subject X.” He spoke with a Canadian accent.
It all started innocently enough. Employee Hare asked Subject X about his high school years. “I liked school,” he answered, “I liked studying, learning new things.”
Has anyone ever been beaten during schoolyard fights? - asked the researcher.
No. After all, these were just playful fights.
(The questions were of fundamental importance, as Bob later explained. The answers to them were supposed to provide information on item 12 of his questionnaire - “Parenting difficulties in childhood.” Almost all psychopaths, Hare noted, are the source of serious educational problems in childhood - starting around the age of ten twelve : behavior disorders characteristic of them include persistent hooliganism, vandalism, alcohol or drug abuse, arson.)
I fought with my fists a couple of times,” Subject X recalled. -Well... and somehow I broke one guy’s arm. Disgusting situation. I threw him to the ground and held him there for some time. Then he probably pressed his hand too hard and it snapped. Of course, this happened by accident.
In our evaluation sheets, we noted that in the description of what happened (“ I threw him to the ground and held it like that for some time. Then he probably pressed his hand too hard and it snapped.") there were obvious - and eerie - inconsistencies. It seemed that the subject could not accurately assess his behavior in that situation, since he did not perceive everything very clearly.
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“7: Superficial affects are characteristic of a person who is not capable of experiencing emotions in the normal range and with normal depth.”
“10: Weak ability to control one’s own behavior.”
I remember how once my ears were blocked on a plane, and then for several days everything around me seemed distant, foggy and alien. Isn’t the lippsychopath in a similar state all the time?
One of my old friends in the FBI was studying a woman named Karla Homolka, Bob told me. “She and her husband filmed how they tortured, raped and killed young women. When the police led her through the house where they dismembered the bodies of the unfortunates, Karla said: “My sister would really like this carpet...” She was led into that terrible bathroom where everything happened, and the woman’s first words were the following: “Can I tell you something?” what to ask? I had a bottle of perfume there..." Absolute alienation. Amazing!
According to Hare, a pleasant - but not very common - surprise is the willingness of a psychopath to talk openly about his inability to experience emotions. Most of them try to feign emotions. When they see non-psychopaths cry, be afraid of something, or be touched by human suffering, it arouses their keen interest. Psychopaths study normal people and try to imitate them, like aliens who are trying to pass themselves off as earthlings - but as soon as you look closely at them, the falsehood immediately catches your eye.
How did the story with Karla Homolka end? - I asked.
“She is currently at large,” Bob replied. -In court they believed her playing at being a little girl. Hair with pigtails. So cute and charming. Everything is very convincing. She blamed the main Georgians on her husband and agreed to a plea bargain. And she was given twelve years.
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"5: Cunning/manipulative."
“4: Pathological deceit - an individual for whom lying becomes a characteristic part of his communication with others.”
The video interview with Subject X continued. Around the same time that he broke one of the children's arms, the subject locked his stepmother in a closet in an attempt to avenge his brother's punishment.
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"14: Impulsivity."
She spent about twelve hours in the closet. Then my father returned home. He released it. The scene was touching. She was crying.
One day, Bob says, one of his employees was talking to a man who had robbed a bank, who described to him in detail how the teller crapped her pants when he pointed a gun at her.
It was so touching to watch this scene,” said the robber.
I glanced at a few of the skeptics who were in our group. They - and I along with them - already had much less skepticism in their eyes. They all carefully wrote down what Bob said. “Item 6,” I wrote down in my notebook. “Inability to feel remorse, lack of guilt.”
How did you feel when you locked your stepmother in the closet? - the researcher asked Subject X. “Inspiration,” he answered. - It’s a very pleasant feeling. Feeling of power. I had real power.
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"2: Exaggerated sense of self-importance."
“I got a job as a bouncer in one of the local bars,” he continued. - If drunk visitors came there, started to behave hooliganly and did not react to polite remarks, I used force against them. I beat a couple of them pretty seriously.
And how did you feel after that?
“Yes, actually, nothing,” was the answer.
All the lecturers present began to look at each other excitedly and creaked their hands. And I thought about those people I knew who were less sensitive than they needed to be.
Have you ever hurt someone seriously enough to send them to the hospital? - asked the researcher.
“I don’t know,” answered Subject X. - It didn’t bother me at all. This is no longer my problem. I won. I must always be first.
I was very well versed in such things, excellent at reading between the lines, looking for hidden hints, needles in a haystack, because I did something similar throughout the entire twenty years of my journalistic career.
Subject X reminded me of a blind man whose remaining senses had been heightened to compensate for his lack of vision. Among the enhanced abilities of a psychopath, compensating for the lack of feelings of guilt, fear and remorse, is the ability to skillfully manipulate people. “I could control people close to me for drugs, for money. I used my friends. The better I knew them, the more accurately I found the technical buttons in the character that, if necessary, should be pressed,” said Subject X.
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“This is business,” he said, remembering one robbery he had committed, and shrugged his shoulders. - And then, they have everything insured.
Psychopaths, according to Bob, constantly challenge their victims' right to complain. “They have everything insured.” Or, as a result of the beating, they learned a good life lesson. In any case, everything happened through their own fault. One day, Hair was talking to a man who had killed his neighbor at the bar.
“He’s guilty,” the killer told Bob. “It was clear to anyone that evening that I was in a bad mood.”
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"16: Inability to take responsibility for one's own actions."
Everything escalated until Test X had to describe his worst crime. He started out rather vaguely. At first, I didn’t even quite understand what the subject was talking about. About some guy he knew. The guy hated his parents. This was a real highlight for him. And Test X thought that he could take advantage of such hatred. Perhaps he will be able to push the guy to rob his parents, after which they will divide the money. So he started egging the guy on. They say that all your problems arose due to the fault of your parents. Subject X knew perfectly well which buttons to press in order to turn on a guy who was already on edge even more.
The more he talked about himself, the more information I received for subsequent manipulation of him,” Subject X admitted. - All that was left was to simply add fuel to the fire, and the more I added it, the greater the benefit I should get. I was the puppeteer pulling the strings.
Over time, that guy got so worked up that he found a baseball bat, got into the car, taking Test X with him, and went to his parents. When they arrived, “I looked at him mockingly,” Subject X recalled, “like show me what you can do. And he showed - he walked into the main bedroom with a bat in his hands. Then the beating began. It lasted a very long time. Almost forever. The guy returned to the corridor, waving a bloody bat. I saw one of the victims. That man made an unreal impression. Simply unreal. He was looking straight at me. He had a vacant expression in his eyes. There were three people in the house. One of them died, the other two were seriously injured.”
This is what happens when a psychopath gains control over the emotions of an unstable, suggestible guy with criminal tendencies.
The researcher asked Subject X: if he could go back in time, what would he want to change about his life?
“I have often thought about this question,” the subject answered. -But in that case everything I learned would be lost. -He paused for a moment. “The hotter the fire, the stronger the steel of the blade,” he concluded.
Is there anything else you want to add? - asked the researcher.
“No,” answered Subject X. - Nothing.
OK, thank you.
The video has ended. It's time for a lunch break.
Three days passed like this. By the end of this period, my skepticism had completely evaporated, and I, captivated by the discoveries of Bob Hare, became his devoted follower. I think other skeptics felt the same way. Bob was very persuasive. Thanks to him, I got my hands on a new weapon, akin to the one possessed by the heroes of television series about brilliant detectives: the ability to recognize a psychopath by a specific selection of phrases, the construction of sentences, and behavioral characteristics. Now I felt like a completely different person, a hardliner, no longer feeling the slightest confusion and embarrassment as I had when I met Tony and the Scientologists at Broadmoor. Now I felt only the deepest contempt for those naive people who trusted cunning and insidious psychopaths and allowed themselves to be deceived. And among other such simpletons, I began to despise Norman Mailer.
In 1977, Mailer, who had just published The Executioner's Song, began advocating for a Utah prisoner named Jack Abbott, convicted of bank robbery and murder. Mailer liked his writings. “I like Jack Abbott for his poise and his ability to write,” said Mailer, who launched a campaign to persuade the Utah Department of Corrections to release Abbott.
Mr. Abbott has the makings of a significant writer who can become the pride of America, the writer said, promising to find him a job at a scientific research institution with a salary of $150 a week if Abbott is paroled early. Struck by such attention from the famous writer and somewhat confused, the employees of the Department of Corrections agreed. Jack Abbott has been released. And he immediately went to New York to join the literary bohemia.
However, this was not surprising. It was in New York that his defenders lived. In addition, according to Bob, psychopaths are attracted to the lights of big cities. A huge number of them can be found in New York, London, Los Angeles. Psychologist David Cook of the Center for the Study of Violence in Glasgow was once asked in Parliament whether psychopaths were the source of the problems in Scottish prisons.
“In general, it’s drowning,” he answered. - Psychopaths are mostly in London prisons.
This is not an accident, Cook said. He devoted several months to identifying psychopaths among prison inmates from among the natives of Scotland, and most of those who received high enough scores on the Hare questionnaire lived in London and committed their crimes there. Psychopaths are easily and quickly overcome by boredom. They need variety and brightness of life impressions. And that’s why they leave for big cities.
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"3: Need for stimulation/rapid loss of interest."
In addition, psychopaths often have illusions about their own long-term plans. They think that if they go to London, New York or Los Angeles, they will achieve great success, become movie stars, famous athletes, etc. Bob's employee once asked a severely obese psychopath what he wanted to be when he was released, and he answered who dreams of becoming a professional gymnast.
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"13: Lack of realistic long-term goals."
(Unless it was a joke, of course.)
Jack Abbott believed that in the literary circles of New York he would be surrounded with attention and care - and, as it turned out, he was not mistaken. He appeared with Mailer on Good Morning America. His photograph was taken by the famous New York photographer and wife of Kurt Vonnegut, Jill Krementz. The New York Times thanked Mailer for his assistance in granting Abbott parole. Abbott entered into an agreement with the largest literary agent Scott Meredith and became the guest of honor at a gala dinner at a restaurant in Greenwich Village, where Mailer, the management of the Random House publishing house, Scott Meredith and others made toasts in his honor.
And six weeks after his release from prison, at 5:30 a.m. on July 18, 1981, Abbott walked into a 24-hour restaurant in Manhattan called Beenie Bon. With him were (as it was later reported) “two attractive and intelligent girls whom he met at a party.”
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"11: Promiscuous sexual behavior."
Although, in truth, the eleventh point may not apply to the mentioned trinity. It is impossible to know for sure whether they were all going to have sex together, since everything was about to change decisively very soon. And in the most terrible way.
Behind the bar at Beenie Bon stood twenty-two-year-old aspiring actor Richard Adam. Abbott asked him for permission to use the restroom. Adan replied that it was intended only for employees. Then Abbott said: “Come on, boy, let's go out into the street and talk man to man.” When they left, Abbott pulled out a knife and stabbed Adan. Then he left, disappearing into the darkness of the night.
* * *
“I don’t understand what happened,” Scott Meredith said in an interview with the New York Times. - We talked a lot with Jack, and all our conversations were about the future. He had a great future.
Bob explained to us what happened, although we no longer needed his explanation. Jack Abbott was a classic psychopath. He did not tolerate the slightest manifestation of disrespect for himself. His self-esteem was too high for such humiliation. And he couldn't control his impulses.
And do you know what Abbott said to the police about the guy he killed when they finally caught him? - Heir asked. - “He would never have made a good actor.”
These fucking psychologists and psychiatrists are constantly telling management and the police what you're going to do. Even Jesus Christ could not know in advance what his apostles would do,” sounded the voice of another of Bob’s wards, captured on video, “Test J.” Everyone laughed in unison, because now we understood everything perfectly. The mysterious, powerful knowledge of how to recognize psychopaths and predict their behavior even if they feign normality now belonged to the aliens. And we understood the main thing: they are ruthless and unscrupulous monsters, capable of committing any crime without hesitation.
Sitting at the lecture, I thought about how I could use my new knowledge. To tell the truth, the thought of becoming a great crime fighter, forensic or prison psychologist and devoting all my energies to the selfless fight for the safety of society did not occur to me. Instead, I I tried to remember those I had met in my life and figured out who I could now identify with psychopathic traits. First on my list was the Sunday Times/Vanity Fair critic E. Gill, who has been a regular critic of my television documentaries and, most recently, admitted in one of his publications that he killed a baboon while on safari in Africa.
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“My bullet hit the monkey just below the armpit. I knocked the lungs out of her. I wanted to feel what it was like to kill someone, someone completely unknown. You see all this in the movies: weapons, bodies, and threads of doubt or regret on the killer’s brow. What does a person feel when he kills someone - for example, his relative?”
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"8: Heartless/inability to empathize with others."
I chuckled to myself and turned my attention back to Bob. At that moment, Hair said that if he himself was tested on the questionnaire, he would score four or five points out of a possible forty. And Tony Broadmoor told me that on the three occasions he was put through the questionnaire, he scored between twenty-nine and thirty.
Our three days in West Wales were coming to an end. On the last day, Bob surprised us all by suddenly bringing up a large photograph of a man's face being shot at close range. This happened immediately after he managed to lull us a little by showing charming photographs of ducks on picturesque ponds in summer parks. Here there was solid gore and broken bones. The victim's eyes completely popped out of their sockets. There was nothing left of the nose. "GOD!" - flashed through my head.
A moment later, the whole body responded to the shock it had just received with tingling, noise in the head and weakness. These sensations, according to Hare, were the result of our amygdalae and central nervous system sending stress signals to each other. The same feeling occurs in a person when someone suddenly scares him - for example, jumping on him in the dark - or when we suddenly realize that we have done something terrible: feelings of fear, guilt and remorse are physical manifestations of our conscience.
It is the ability to experience such feelings that psychopaths lack, Bob said.
As Hair explained, it has now been established with almost complete clarity that it is precisely the stage of psychophysiological anomaly that is at the basis of the development of psychopathy.
“A lot of different laboratory studies have been carried out, and the results obtained can be considered quite objective,” he noted. - It has been established that there are some anomalies in the way that emotionally rich information is processed in the psyche of these individuals. They experience a certain dissociation between the linguistic meaning of words and their emotional connotations. In the minds of psychopaths, for some reason the two are not connected. Certain parts of the limbic system do not function correctly.
* * *
This completes our course on identifying psychopaths. Having collected my things and heading to the car, I said to one of the seminar participants:
After all, psychopaths should probably be pitied. All their disgusting features are a consequence of the malfunction of the tonsil glands. It is not their fault that some part of their body is not working properly.
Why on earth would we feel sorry for them? - he answered. - They don’t feel sorry for us.
BobHare came up to me. He was in a hurry. He needed to catch a train from Cardiff to Heathrow to catch a plane to Vancouver. Can I give him a lift?.. Bob saw what happened before I did. One of the cars overturned. The driver was still in his seat. He sat as if he expected someone to come up and turn his car over so that he could calmly continue the trip. “What endurance he has!” - I involuntarily thought and immediately realized that the driver was unconscious.
His passenger was sitting on the grass next to the car. She crossed her legs as if thinking. The woman must have been thrown out of the car only a few moments ago.
My gaze recorded all this within one second. People had already started running out of their cars and gathering around the scene of the accident, so I walked to my car, feeling some relief that I wouldn’t have to deal with the problem alone. And then an unpleasant thought came into my head: could my feeling of relief in this situation be regarded as a manifestation of point 8 - “Heartlessness/inability to sympathize with others.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror at the good Samaritans rushing to the overturned car and drove on.
John, Bob called out to me.
Mm h?..- I answered.
How will you get the car out?
What is it?
You weave all over the road.
Really?..
We drove in silence for a while, then I said:
This is from the accident.
I was pleased to realize that what happened had at least some effect on me.
Bob explained that my condition was caused by the amygdala and central nervous system sending each other signals of fear and stress.
Yes, of course,” I agreed. - I can even feel them. They are very sharp and painful.
And the witch-shaped glands of psychopaths,” Bob continued, “would hardly react in any way to the picture of the accident.
Well, in that case, I'm the exact opposite of a psychopath. My amygdala and central nervous system are communicating too many signals.
Please focus on the road,” Bob interrupted me.
“I wanted to go to your seminar,” I said, “because of a guy named Tony.” It is currently located in Broadmoor. He claims that he has been unfoundedly diagnosed with psychopathy, and hopes that I will organize a media campaign for his release. Frankly, I quite like Tony. But I cannot say with any certainty whether he has psychopathy or not...
It seemed that Kheir was not listening to me, as if the accident had forced him to think about something of his own.
I shouldn't have limited my research to prisons. “We should have taken care of the stock exchanges,” he muttered under his breath.
I looked at Bob.
Indeed?
He nodded.
However, it is unlikely that stock market psychopaths can be as dangerous as psychopathic serial killers, I noted.
“Serial killers bring misfortune to individual families,” Heir shrugged. - Psychopaths in economics, politics, religion destroy entire societies and states.
This, Bob decisively declared, is the answer to the age-old mystery of humanity, namely: why is the world so unfair? Where do the monstrous economic inequality, barbaric wars, everyday work and domestic cruelty come from? There is only one answer - psychopathy. A part of the brain that is not functioning properly. You are riding an escalator and you see people riding another escalator towards you. If you could read their thoughts, you would understand that we are all different. We are not such good people at all, and some of us are generally psychopaths. And it is psychopaths who are to blame for the fact that our society is so unfair and cruel. They are like stones thrown into a calm pond.
Bob was not alone in believing that a huge number of psychopaths could be found at the highest levels of the social ladder. After Essie Widing first mentioned this theory to me, I talked to many psychologists, and they all unanimously said the same thing. Among them was Martha Stout of Harvard Medical School, author of Your Sociopath Next Door. (The reader may be wondering what the difference is between a psychopath and a sociopath, and my answer is: there is no difference. Psychologists and psychiatrists all over the world tend to use different terms for the same concept.) Well, she told me that sociopaths are everywhere. You are having lunch, for example, in a crowded restaurant, and you are surrounded on all sides by sociopaths. You can be sure that there are plenty of them at your work too.” “Sociopaths in general make a much more pleasant impression than ordinary people,” Martha noted. -They do not have their own warmth, but they have studied the emotions of those around them very well and imitate them perfectly. They are the type who like to make other people jump and then watch them do it. Many sociopaths get married just to look normal, but in family life they demonstrate outright indifference and coldness towards their spouse.
“I don’t know how many people will read my book,” I said. -Maybe a hundred thousand, which means that about a thousand of them turn out to be psychopaths. However, perhaps there will be even more of them, if we assume that psychopaths like to read books about psychopaths. What message should they get from my book? Don't interfere with other people's lives?
“Okay, if so,” Martha answered. - But they are unlikely to be able to control their aggressiveness. After all, they, as a rule, think: “She is lying when she says that conscience exists.” Or: “This unfortunate man is being held back by his conscience. We should teach him to be like me.”
What if the wife of a psychopath reads my book? - I asked. -What should she do? Leave him?
Yes,” answered Stout. “I would like to say: yes, it’s better for her to leave him.” It is impossible to hurt the feelings of a person who does not have them in principle. - She paused. - Sociopaths love power. They love to win. If love and kindness are taken away from a person, he will have nothing left but the desire to win at any cost.
Does this mean that most of them are at the very top of the social pyramid? - I suggested.
“Absolutely true,” Martha agreed. - The higher you climb the social ladder, the more sociopaths you find.
So, wars, social injustice, various forms of exploitation are the result of the activities of an insignificant percentage of the population at the very top - people suffering from mental pathology? - I asked. It was like the ripple effect of Peter Nordlund's book, but on a gigantic scale.
I think a lot of what you listed is really related to psychopathy,” Stout replied.
It’s scary to imagine, I noted, that ninety-nine percent of humanity does not even suspect that their fate is controlled by a pitiful handful of psychopaths.
Yes, it’s really scary,” Marta agreed. - Rarely does anyone dare to imagine this. After all, from early childhood we are taught that every person has a conscience.
At the end of our conversation, she turned to you, the reader, and said that if you were worried and began to look for traits of a psychopath, you need not worry. Your anxiety means that you are not a psychopath.
Almost all professional psychiatrists describe psychopaths in the same way: they are inhuman, immoral, ruthless, just a bundle of malice, aimed at causing the greatest harm to society. But only a person who has undergone special diagnostic training can recognize a psychopath. There is another way - to conduct an examination on a complex functional magnetic resonance tomograph. This opportunity is available, for example, to Adam Perkins. Adam is a researcher in the field of clinical neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry in South London. I visited him shortly after my meeting with Essie because I learned that he specialized in anxiety conditions. I wanted to test my theory that anxiety is, from a psychological and neurological point of view and from the point of view of the peculiarities of the functioning of the amygdala, the opposite of psychopathy. I imagined my amygdala as a Hubble photograph of a solar storm, and the psychopath's amygdala as a Hubble photograph of a dead planet like Pluto. Adam confirmed my theory, and then, to demonstrate its correctness, he connected some wires to me and placed me in the mentioned tomograph, and then, without any warning, turned on the current, which gave me a strong shock.
ABOUT! - I howled. - It hurts a lot!.. Please reduce the intensity. It seemed to me that electric shock was completely banned. What was the level?
Third,” Perkins answered.
Which one is the top one?
The history of the psychopathy test
Initial research on this topic was based on the idea that people with mental disorders exhibit their own characteristics in their reactions to something. The Psychopathy Test was developed by Robert Hare. He is a researcher in psychopathy and psychophysiology. First he studied reactions to “punishments,” that is, small unpleasant things, then reactions to things that bring joy.
This was carried out in order to understand how individuals with such deviations are able to experience the full emotional spectrum of a healthy person, and to identify differences, if any.
Through his research, Robert Hare was able to establish that sociopathy is not a sign that a person does not feel emotions towards people or that he has any special moral principles. This is just a consequence of growing up in an unfavorable environment or the consequences of poor upbringing. In general, something that has been ingrained since childhood and over a long period of time. All this formed the basis of the test for psychopathy.
In addition to his scientific and research works, he was also engaged in popular science activities. For example, before the psychopathy test, he wrote the book “Deprived of Conscience: The Frightening World of Psychopaths.”
He calls psychopaths in it social predators and understands the entire phenomenon of psychopathy as a whole, from its origins (that is, causes) to ways to neutralize psychopaths. The causes of psychopathy are heredity and growth conditions, coupled with upbringing. The work is not only of theoretical significance, it is actually filled with practical advice on psychopathy for all occasions. She teaches you to recognize psychopaths and take the necessary precautions in time. The book also contains many cases from psychiatry and everyday life; it is in some way a catalog of psychopaths, their actions, psychology and philosophy.
This work is of interest not only to specialized psychologists for their professional growth, but also to ordinary readers who are simply interested in the topic and also want to learn something new and useful. The book is written quite simply and interestingly. The large content of practical cases makes it especially exciting.
The Psychopathy Test is based on this book and many other works by Robert Hare. Since psychopaths don't walk down the streets with a big "Psychopath" sign in their hands, people need to understand who they are communicating and interacting with on the streets, at home and in public places. It is always difficult to tell from a person what is on his mind, and it is even more difficult to “read” people with disabilities. They differ little from ordinary people in appearance, so they easily blend into the crowd. Anyone you know may not be such a law-abiding citizen as you used to think. Your friend, boss, neighbor, no one knows what's in their head, sometimes even they themselves don't know. That's why this test exists so you can test yourself and seek help if necessary.
At the moment, many psychiatrists use a list of characteristic features, as well as a test developed by Robert Hare back in 1991. So you can use it too, there is nothing particularly difficult about it.
Psychopaths in the highest echelons of the corporate world are more common than one might think. But psychologists, as Daniel Bennett discovered, have also succeeded in developing new methods for identifying them.
“Snakes in jackets” is how criminologist Robert Hare and organizational psychologist Paul Babiak figuratively call people who have climbed into the upper echelons of power with almost no talent or success. These individuals are characterized by cruelty, callousness and a peculiar charm - traits that, apparently, ensured the rise of their careers. Outwardly, they may seem harmless, and often even sympathize with them, but in reality it turns out that such people are something sinister: corporate psychopaths.
Over the past three years, Babyak has been hired by seven different companies to help evaluate the potential of their employees for possible advancement. The people he had to evaluate held a variety of positions: from low-level executives to CEOs; among them there was even one eccentric president.
To assess the productivity and overall potential of employees, Babyak was allowed to use the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which is a list of signs of psychopathy. This test is usually used to assess the relevant tendencies of criminals. Babyak found that out of 203 individuals he tested, one in 25 could be considered a psychopath (despite the lack of a criminal history). This is four times higher than the corresponding figures for ordinary people.
When the questionnaire's developer, Robert Hare, reviewed the results, he discovered something else. “The company's thinking goes something like this: This guy is a natural leader, he's got a great personality, he's got a fresh perspective, he's trustworthy, he's passionate about his work,” Hare says. “In fact, the higher their scores on the psychopathy scale, the more favorable the impression they make on others. However, when we assessed their labor productivity and effectiveness in promoting the interests of the company, the scores dropped sharply. Moreover, at the very top of the list, sorted by psychopathy level, job performance was usually completely unacceptable. Such people should have been fired, but this never happened because others perceived them differently. “Snakes in Jackets” skillfully manipulated their colleagues.”
What made you write about psychopaths??
Many years ago I made a film about a man named David Icke. He believed that the world was ruled by blood-drinking pedophile lizards, and everyone thought he was crazy. But eminent psychologists, in fact, think the same thing: that there are people with the qualities of lizards who run everything.
They talk about psychopaths who find themselves at the top of the “food chain.” This made me think that madness can be a more powerful driver than reason. Calm, happy, rational people simply play life like a musical instrument, without creating unnecessary waves and ripples. Those who can be classified as not quite normal are precisely those who play the role of the locomotive.
I have always deliberately avoided the possibility that my interviewees might be crazy. In the end, I had to face the truth: gradually you begin to ask questions: “What is madness and who defines it?”
What is it like to meet a psychopath??
External charm can often be noted. For example, in the book I talk about Tony from Broadmoor - a pleasant young man. His psychiatrists say that you need to be very, very careful with him. This is scary, because absolutely nothing in his behavior suggests that you need to keep an eye out for him. There are other types: when communicating with Toto Constance, the leader of the Haitian death squad, I really felt that this man was like an unexploded shell.
It didn't feel like Tony was trying to trick you with his charm.?
It has quite an interesting story. He feigned insanity to get a lighter sentence, but was eventually sent to Broadmoor. If he had not pretended to be crazy and simply gone to prison, he would have been free for several years already. Regular prisons are full of psychopaths, but they are outside the mental health system. Psychologists from Broadmoor believe that Tony poses a potential threat to himself and others, and he is not released.
At first, it seems logical to assume that either Tony is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, or that he is truly a psychopath. It took quite a long time before I realized that he was both. He's a psychopath, but that doesn't mean we can't feel positive emotions towards him.
How did your views on psychopaths change while working on the book??
I always start my stories without a preconceived concept. But one meeting with a Fortune 500 man got me thinking. I met with him to find out whether he had traits similar to those observed in psychopathic patients - such as those held at Broadmoor Hospital, one of the three most famous prisons in England for dangerous criminals, recognized as mentally ill. - Ed.). And during the meeting, I literally tried to squeeze him into the criteria for psychopathy that I was taught. If he did something completely sensible, I refused to notice such reasonable actions.
It was then that I realized that my role as a skilled observer of psychopaths could make me a psychopath myself: I became more callous and cruel. Working on the book helped me understand how easily we deny the human component to others, and in the end we ourselves become inhuman.
Have you ever wondered if you have psychopathic tendencies??
I'm the antithesis of a psychopath: a very anxious person. Sometimes it seems to me that someone lives behind my face and ignites matches on my skin. This is the opposite of a psychopath: they do not have anxiety.
But then I started identifying psychopaths - and suddenly I began to look like them. Although, in general, it is difficult to find a less psychopathic person than me. A few of their qualities wouldn’t bother me at all: then there wouldn’t be all this anxiety.
Psychopathy Test
The Hare Psychopathy Inventory identifies 20 hallmarks of psychopathic behavior, such as garrulousness and charm, sexual promiscuity, and pathological deceit. Each characteristic in the list is assigned a score from zero to two, after which the scores are summed up. As a result, the person receives a score on a 40-point scale.
A score above 30 classifies the person as a psychopath. Typically, this test is used on patients in high-security psychiatric hospitals to decide whether it is safe to discharge them. In our case, we are talking about the personal characteristics of supposedly normal people. But it was precisely these characteristics, which allowed others to kill and maim without pity, that helped the people Babyak assessed make their way to the top.
So what is the difference between a corporate psychopath and criminal psychopaths? “Serial killers are unusual and rare,” Hare says. “We don’t know why one person with a lot of psychopathic tendencies becomes a serial killer, but hundreds of others don’t.” It could be some kind of accident, an unfortunate coincidence, the result of experiments - we just don’t know.”
Criminal Minds
While it's not clear what turns one psychopath into a criminal and another into a CEO, ongoing research at a New Mexico prison could provide insight into what goes on in the mind of a psychopath. The prison cells at the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility are like no other. In addition to photographs of friends and family, prisoners proudly display something more unusual on their cell walls: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images of their brains.
These images are a gift to prisoners from neuroscientist Kent Kiehl and his research team after long hours spent in the CT scanner chamber. Criminals serving time get a rare opportunity in their situation to somehow have fun, as well as a chance to show off the size of their brains. And Keel, whom they call Doc, hopes to find out what really makes a person a psychopath.
Keel believes that psychopaths are characterized by problems with the brain in an area called the paralimbic system, a network of brain structures that work together to recognize and analyze emotions. It is believed that this department also controls attention and the processes of inhibition of mental activity.
So far we can say that the pictures confirm this. When a person classified as a psychopath is inside a CT scanner and is faced with a serious moral dilemma (for example, he is asked to decide whether he would direct an out-of-control tram to a bus full of schoolchildren or to another one bound for a nursing home), his brain doesn't work as one would expect. The brain's amygdala, an area associated with emotions such as fear and anger, should tremble in terror at the mere thought of such a catastrophe. However, the photographs show that in psychopaths it remains relatively calm. And the more severe the psychopathy, the weaker this part of the limbic system seems to react.
It is not the only area of the brain that is affected by pathological changes. “In response to fearful stimuli, the orbitofrontal cortex should produce an emotional outburst,” says Keele. “In other words, it gives meaning to the basic emotions that form in the amygdala. When psychopaths were asked to rate various types of moral abuse, this system also showed lower levels of activity than non-psychopathic prisoners. Not only did they not respond to the content of the stimuli with emotional content, but their brains seemed fundamentally unable to attach any meaning to it.”
Due to the malfunction of this system, such people are unable to experience emotions, cannot be aware of them, or simply do not know how to react to them. Keel had a chance to see this personally.
“A serial killer once admitted to me that he had committed a number of crimes in addition to those for which he was convicted,” says Keel. “Immediately after talking to me, he was accused of these murders. He told his cellmate that he suspected that I had informed on him, and therefore he intended to kill me. Then the cellmate went straight to the security representative and reported him. The police came to my home and told me that for my protection I was being placed in custody until they sorted this all out. In general, I went on a hike for the weekend, and when I returned, it turned out that someone from that guy’s gang had been arrested, he made a deal with the justice and denounced the leader. I’m very lucky that in the 17 years I’ve been working with psychopaths, this episode is still the only serious incident – knock on wood.”
Digging Deeper
Although Keel's MPT technique is unique, he is not the only brain student to delve into the brains of convicted criminals to find the roots of psychopathy.
At the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London (UK), a team led by Michael Craig has taken this even further. They found that the brain tissue of psychopaths also had physical differences.
Using a completely new imaging system known as Diffusion Tensor Tractography, Craig was able to take a closer look at the tissue that connects the two areas of the brain that Kent Keel talked about: the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex. “We know that the brain regions do not function independently,” Craig says. “What really matters is the connections between them. In short, we found that the integrity of the tissue connecting these two areas is less pronounced in people with psychopathy than in control subjects."
In other words, the neural pathways connecting the two brain regions that are key to recognizing emotions were more bumpy in psychopaths than in normal people, making it difficult to transmit a clear signal—much like a scratched CD. This small but significant biological difference suggests that psychopathy is not just a psychological condition. It is also caused by physical pathologies, and the approach to treating psychopaths (assuming that such treatment is possible in principle) must take these deviations into account.
Craig hopes that in the long term, this knowledge will help develop treatments that will repair damaged white matter. But it also highlights the incredible importance of early diagnosis. Of course, treating psychopathic conditions is the holy grail of psychopathy research. Due to its nature, this condition is uniquely resistant to any therapy, and the only possible way to combat it at this stage is through early diagnosis.
Essi Viding is a developmental psychologist at University College London (UK). She works with children at risk of developing severe disorders that cause antisocial consequences. She agrees that psychopaths are virtually untreatable. At the same time, she has her own innovative way to prevent such conditions.
Psychopaths may carry genes that help humanity survive as a species. “You can emphasize that they tend to have lower levels of anxiety, are confident and goal-oriented,” says Viding. - Look at it from an evolutionary point of view. If we were all exclusively empathetic and community-oriented, it is unlikely that anything worthwhile would come of it. In the life cycle of an organism, there are situations when the need to look after one’s loved ones is more important, and therefore the corresponding genes are preserved in the gene pool. If we can work in this way and get them to use these qualities for good, then perhaps we can treat this condition before it becomes a disorder.”
Robert Hare, the father of the modern school of psychopathy, shares this opinion. In an interview for this material, he noted: “There are advantages to having some signs of psychopathy - not in their extreme manifestation and not by many. A relatively low or moderate degree can provide great advantages in many areas of business. I myself would like to have some of the abilities of psychopaths.”
