My wife once took a psychological test for work, and apparently tested towards being a sociopath or whatever. It was mostly because of the way she viewed the questions. She’s very open-minded and empathetic and most of the questions were simple “Yes” or “No” and she could think of exceptions for every situation where the answer they wanted was “No.” Or like when they asked “Do you get angry often” she thought once a week or so was probably often.
(The only question I recall was “Have you ever wished you were the opposite gender” and she said “Yes.” When asked why she answered that she said “You’ve never had cramps.”)
The guy she met with told her to take the test again without thinking about the questions as hard.
It is interesting though, looking at checklists and descriptions of psychopaths. My wife had a trouble childhood, is very charismatic and well liked, and can read people like a book to the point where it’s scary. She also claims to have a mind palace like (the Benedict Cumberbatch) Sherlock Holmes, the high-function sociopath. Basically, if she wanted to be evil it would probably be easy for her to manipulate people into doing horribly disturbing things without them realizing it.
Many fictional sinister psychopaths are portrayed as deriving gratification from inflicting harm on others. I have always found this a little confusing - if you don’t intuitively care about other people’s feelings, you might trample people as collateral damage en route to selfish objectives, but why would you expend effort and take risk for the explicit purpose of harming them? No doubt a small number of such dangerous people have existed (some of the real serial killers), but I’m skeptical that sadistic behavior is in reality typical of, or even correlated with, psychopathy. It seems almost that a psychopath would be less likely to derive gratification from inflicting harm per se.
I’m open to more expert views on the typical characteristics of real high-functioning psychopaths, but I tend to think this portrayal is hogwash. He comes across more on the autism spectrum or Asperger’s, similar to Sheldon in Big Bang Theory. You don’t have to be a psychopath to shoot someone for good reason, you just have to be determined and believe that the ends justify the means.
Yeah, not knowing what someone’s feelings are doesn’t mean you’re a sociopath. Maybe not caring what someone’s feels are would. Kind of like breaking the rules because you don’t know them vs because you don’t care about them.
And on reflection, I think even “don’t care” might be rather ambiguous. Perhaps “don’t intuitively grasp the significance of” is better? I find it difficult to imagine quite what it’s like - having empathy for psychopaths is hard!
Yup, the message from that would appear to be: maybe you can’t cure psychopathy; but it’s just not necessarily the terrible thing that it’s popularly assumed to be.
This issue of sincerity is interesting. All humans clearly have an immense capacity for self-deception, perhaps because it’s easier to maintain a believable public persona if we think we’re being sincere. But does someone who sincerely believes that they are a “good” member of society necessarily act any better? Non-psychopaths still do incredibly selfish things, and then construct preposterous post hoc rationalizations of why their actions were okay in order to maintain their self-image.
They will do destructive things thinking they will not be caught…
And they will do destructive things knowing they will be caught, but that that the consequences for their actions will be acceptable.
Should the consequences be more harsh than what they were expecting, then they become quite miserable. (Sort of like expecting a $300.00 repair bill for a car, but instead getting a $1,000.00 repair bill?)
And I’ll just add that there most certainly (after having a few unfortunate encounters with same) are some psychopaths which definitely get their jollies by toying with and manipulating people, just to see (or even imagine) their deeply puzzled if not hurtful reactions. They can often be slyly passive-aggressive in said efforts too.