This month’s Newcastle PiPs explored the complex topic of psychopathy, introduced by PiPs regular Beryl Hylton Downing.

Beryl drew together several relevant strands, focusing on the issue of empathy. Empathy, or perhaps the lack of it, is central to psychopathy, which is one of three linked conditions in “Cluster B” personality disorders, the others being borderline and narcissistic personality disorders.

Empathy relies on the ability to perceive the emotional state of others. A test psychologists can use to assess this ability is the “reading the mind in the eyes” test. PiPs participants were given the opportunity to try this out on a few photos of facial expressions.

An empathy deficit can be associated with autism and may arise as a corollary of other problems, including schizophrenia, manic bipolar disorder, severe depression and other forms of cognitive or mental impairment.

Psychopaths, in contrast, can typically readily perceive the emotional state of others. They are quite capable of cognitive empathy, but they are not capable of emotional empathy. They understand, they just don’t care.

Recent research using functional MRI (fMRI), which allows parts of the brain activated in response to visual or other stimuli to be visualised, suggests psychopaths have structural differences in the limbic circuit of the brain. The loci related to affective emotional responses or empathy are not activated in psychopaths. They appear to have a smaller pain circuit and do not learn from punishment. Conversely, reward circuits may be activated by cruelty and suffering in others may give psychopaths pleasure.

Traditionally in law, culpability may not be assigned in cases of cognitive impairment due to underlying psychological or physiological causes, but were does this leave psychopathy?

Not inhibited by emotional impact on others, some psychopaths represent a danger to the public and commit serious crime, but to what extent are they truly culpable and how should they be treated by society? Should dangerous psychopaths be confined outside of the prison system?

A wide-ranging discussion followed!

Formal diagnoses of psychopathy in the justice system are not straight-forward and involve other tests, such as the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) test, which requires specific training to administer. As might be anticipated, psychopaths can be good at “reading the mind in the eyes” and are often of above average intelligence.

Psychopaths don’t commit most crime. In prisons, homicide prisoners are usually domestic killers. They are not usually psychopathic and are unlikely to be a further danger on release. Many psychopaths are not criminal. They may include some cardiac- and neurosurgeons recognised for their ability not to allow emotion to interfere with their work, literally a matter of life or death. Psychopaths may be professionally successful and valuable leaders in crises. But how do socially-useful psychopaths behave in other contexts, such as in the family?

There was some discussion of the controversial nature of research, including that on autism.

Where are the female psychopaths? It is said women are more empathetic and men better at systematising, although the overlap is large. Female offenders in the justice system often claim to have been traumatised, but are these claims always valid? Rather than in prisons, maybe female psychopaths are being overlooked in damaged families with damaged children.

The lack of empathy evident during war and now, prolifically, on social media were further sources of debate.

Beryl was careful to point out that although she was a psychology graduate, she wasn’t a clinical psychologist, but had some exposure to psychopathology and related disorders during her career as an NHS Speech Therapist and, prior to that, as a police officer. Her stimulating introduction kicked off another great PiPs with many others giving informed contributions to a lively debate.

Links

Patric Gagne

HG Tudor

Zero Degrees of Empathy (Simon Baron-Cohen)

The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (Simon Baron-Cohen)