# How do thieves & sociopaths get by in small, cooperative tribes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 23, 2008, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418 "2008-12-23T07:00:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/21 "2008-12-24T05:33:13Z")
One thing to notice is that even in our society we only have a small percentage of criminals. Per the Wiki article, only 3% of men and 1% of women demonstrate sociopathic behavior. If you’re talking about really traditional societies, that might be one or two individuals in a village of a couple of hundred people, and the vast majority of people in any society are not actually easy victims. Criminals in our society can play the numbers and choose appropriate victims from a huge pool of the population. Enlightened self interest is a big restriction on behavior in the first place. If you piss off enough people by behaving badly in a tribe they’ll stop sharing food and eventually just kick you out of the group, which might as well be a death sentence. It’s _possible_ to survive by yourself, but even very self-sufficient people like hunters and gatherers would have great difficulty and hardship in doing so. And humans are social creatures. True loners are rare even among the most crazy and belligerent people. Being cut off from any kind of human contact is a truly horrifying punishment. Some behaviors are better for particular circumstances than others. Just because it’s a problem in a populous industrial culture doesn’t necessarily mean it would be a problem in a small tribe. Sociopaths don’t usually _enjoy_ violating laws and social norms, they just disregard them as unnecessary obstacles to their goals. Also, just because they’re sociopaths doesn’t mean that they don’t have friends or family that they care for. Those aren’t mutually exclusive things. Sociopaths might screw over a friend or family member, but they’re more likely to do it to someone farther away from their network, if for no other reason than that it’s less likely to result in some kind of difficulty for them. Subcultures or living circumstances can foster some apparently destructive behavior that’s actually adaptive. Take a look at pretty much any ghetto in the world, and you’ll find a larger number of people than the norm for society as a whole who are more prone to impulsive and/or violent acts. “Selfish” behavior that puts their personal welfare, then group or family, above the welfare of all others is more prevalent too because it makes sense in those circumstances. It’s a natural reaction to a high stress environment. Arguably, it’s more like our native inborn behavior than the loyalty to abstracts like law and nation that we’re supposed to have now. It’s certainly closer to the kind of life humans spent most of history living. Quite a few of the symptoms in the DSM IV criteria would not be significant problems in many traditional societies, especially when the more destructive behavior exhibited can be safely aimed at outsiders. Take a look at celebrated heroes in history. Their behavior is practically a checklist for this. A prime example would be Achilles from the Iliad: narcissistic, entitled, reckless disregard for his own safety or that of others, violent, unwilling to act on behalf of others, perfectly willing to let the others outside his main group die unless he had a reward or other motivation like revenge to spur him to act. Some of those, like risk-taking and disregard for the feelings of others, can be an asset in a warrior. Thieves would be basically non-existent in hunting and gathering groups, which are representative of how humans spent millions of years living. There’s not really anything to steal. And as I said in the beginning, if you behave badly, you will eventually piss people off enough that there will be sanctions. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/22 "2008-12-24T05:44:42Z")
But small societies are no more lawless than a family is. As mentioned before, there isn’t a heck of a lot to steal. In a tribal/very small village setting the leaders do not live vastly better lives than the regular folks. And everyone directly relies on each other. It’s like stealing from your own family. If you steal all your village blacksmith’s food and he dies, you are all screwed because now your village doesn’t have a blacksmith. For this reason, I think most small societies focus their crime on outsiders. There may not be formal laws, but there are natural and obvious consequences to your actions. It’s not until a village becomes large enough to afford some anonymity and diverse enough that every person does not have a direct connection to every other person that these social darwinism effects start showing up. There can’t be warlords if there are no full time soldiers or non-working rulers. That said, there will always be some crime. My village had a kleptomaniac who would steal people’s pots of gruel as they boiled in their outdoor kitchens. Everyone knew who it was. But they tolerated it because he was one of their own and eventually the got the stuff back (indeed, nearly everyone I know who got robbed in a village got their stuff back eventually.) If he had graduated to serious theft, I’m sure he’d be kicked out of town or subject to mob justice. ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/23 "2008-12-24T06:26:55Z")
**mks57** , the major factor with Japanese behavior is that it’s a shame-based culture rather than guilt-based; external morals as opposed to internalized ones. Basically, you avoid doing things that would get you in trouble with society. If your social group says it’s okay, or if you won’t get caught, you don’t feel bad about doing it. There’s a saying 良心は千人の証人のようなもの, which translates as: “Conscience is a thousand witnesses.” Japanese on vacation can behave very badly. The reason is that they know they can get away with it. If they’re not around people they know, then no one can make them feel ashamed of their behavior or report back to their peer group. Outsiders don’t really matter; only members of their group have the power to shame them. Things get really ugly if the group starts supporting or encouraging rude behavior. The relative status of the place they visit makes a difference too. Europeans generally find the Japanese to be good tourists. The opinion of most Asian countries is somewhat different. The reason is that European countries are highly regarded, while most Asian countries, particularly Southeast Asian countries, are considered “below” Japan. A [high profile incident](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3146514.stm) from a few years back demonstrates how wild things can get. You’ll get some argument about how much of the troops’ behavior was condoned by those in authority. There’s a very active right-wing contingent that likes to obfuscate or flat out deny what happened in China and Southeast Asia during the War. They aren’t treated with the same derision that Holocaust deniers get in the West, partly because of that us-them divide. Outside evidence means less in many people’s minds than information in Japanese, based on Japanese sources. The problem there is that unlike the Germans who cataloged everything and often made no attempt to destroy the documentation, the Japanese commanders gave orders to destroy most of the evidence. My personal opinion is that Japanese culture hasn’t really changed, and I can easily see the same tendencies in today’s Japanese. You would not believe how differently the same person behaves in different circumstances, or how licentious groups of Japanese are when it’s socially acceptable, like at drinking parties. Being drunk is an excuse for behaving freely, and some take both acting out and drunkenness to extremes. I’ve seen lots of people passed out drunk in public during the holiday seasons, and at such times there’s usually at least one pile of puke on the train platforms. And that’s how they behave in Japan around other Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/24 "2008-12-24T13:03:44Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > Japanese on vacation can behave very badly. It’s not just limited to the Japanese. The “what goes on in Vegas/Spring Break/Wherever, stays there” mentality is pretty common. It’s kind of like once you are outside your regular social structure and no one is judging you, anything goes. As some people pointed out, being a sociopath or having antisocial personality disorder is a specific condition and is different from simply “being an asshole”. I would imagine that in a small primitive tribe, a sociopath who was suitably charasmatic could do quite well. On the other hand, for anyone who didn’t pull their weigh, I guess that’s what big rocks are for. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Duality](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.duality/32/4098_2.png) [@Mr.Duality](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Duality)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/25 "2008-12-24T15:39:43Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > **mks57** There’s a saying 良心は千人の証人のようなもの, which translates as: “Conscience is a thousand witnesses.” Another one: “Man away from home has no neighbors”. ---
**Author:** ![Buran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@Buran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buran)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/26 "2008-12-24T19:15:55Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > Where did I say that? I didn’t, did I? > > On the the hand it is very often that you read in the news about police abuse so don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. Many cops are on power trips. Put someone in a position of authority and there is a good chance he will abuse it if he can. It’s human nature. > > And did you ever hear of Abu Ghraib? The notion that war is nice and clean and by the book is just not true. You put young people in a situation where they are being killed and where they have the opportunity to kill without accountability and you get Mi Lai and all the similar incidents which have happened in every war and some of which have been reported in Iraq and I am sure many more have gone unreported. In wars people kill without much thought and even in a sporting sort of way. It becomes a game, a deadly game. So you could say wars increase the sociopathic level of the individual because it provides justification for the killing. It will make sociopaths of a few people who were not when they joined and it will increase the possibilities that one who had that tendency originally can act on it. > > [Lynndie England - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynndie_England) > > Being a sociopath or psycopath is not a yes/no thing, it is a gradation thing. I know about Mi Lai and I considered mentioning it in my original post, its precisely why the military doesn’t like to recruit genuine sociopaths/psychopaths, because they are too hard to control. And as mentioned below those two conditions have specific medical terms, I read that 1 in 200 people can be classified as a sociopath, it doesn’t just mean that someone is not a nice person. As far as I’m aware both the police and armed forces, in the west at least, do their best to screen out genuine sociopaths and in fact people who will abuse their authority. Because if nothing else its embarrassing for the organisation. I reject your assertion that ‘they’ _(sociopaths)_ can easily join the police or armed forces. ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/27 "2008-12-24T19:44:40Z")
> [@Buran](#): > > As far as I’m aware both the police and armed forces, in the west at least, do their best to screen out genuine sociopaths and in fact people who will abuse their authority. Because if nothing else its embarrassing for the organisation. > > I reject your assertion that ‘they’ _(sociopaths)_ can easily join the police or armed forces. How easy is it to screen out sociopaths? Some professions seem to attract the people that you definitely don’t want in that profession. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/28 "2008-12-24T20:23:00Z")
There’s really no such thing as a truly “lawless” society. There are societies without formal legal codes, but every society has a system of conflict and dispute resolution, be it infomal adjudication by an elder, or action by the community, expectation of individual action, trial by ordeal, or what have you. In many circumstances not much action is needed because competing interests are minimal (as was said earlier, there’s not much to steal), but there’s always going to be a system for dealing with people causing disruption to the group. My anthropology department head gave a hypothetical example of what might happen in a case of multiple serious transgressions in the stone age agriculturalist society he studied: say one guy we’ll call Larry “can’t keep it in his gourd” and is sleeping with everyone’s wives. The men get together to talk about what’s to be done about Larry, and it’s decided that Larry’s got to go. No formal plan of action or execution date is set. The first guy alone with Larry simply kills Larry. American anthropologist Franz Boaz told a similar story in his book _Central Eskimos_: “There was a native of Padli by the name of Padlu. He had induced the wife of a native of Cumberland Sound to desert her husband and follow him. The deserted husband, meditiating revenge…visited his friends in Padli, but before he could accomplish his intention of killing Padlu, the latter shot him…A brother of the murdered man went to Padli to enforce the death…but he was also killed by Padlu. A third native of Cumberland Sound, who wished to avenge the death of his relatives, was also murdered by him.” “On account of these outrages the natives wanted to get rid of Padlu, but yet they did not dare to attack him. When the pimain (headman) of the Akudmumuit learned of these events, he asked every man in Padli whether Padlu should be killed. All agreed; so he went with the latter deer hunting…and…shot him in the back.” ---
**Author:** ![Buran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@Buran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buran)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/29 "2008-12-24T20:39:53Z")
> [@mks57](#): > > How easy is it to screen out sociopaths? Some professions seem to attract the people that you definitely don’t want in that profession. In the UK at least from putting your name forward to finally stepping out the front doors of a police station can take several years, I imagine _(hope)_ that any sociopathic or otherwise unwanted tendencies would show up in that time period. Though you are right, I don’t know how easy it is to screen out sociopaths. ---
**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/30 "2008-12-24T21:01:35Z")
They become managers. Note: originally read titles as “corporate tribes”. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2008, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/31 "2008-12-24T22:52:43Z")
When I lived on a very small island in Micronesia, I noticed a bit of this, but for the most part the society itself corrected or compensated for the individual. As one mentioned earlier, there was not much private property. It was for the most part communal within a clan or to a lesser extent within all members of the island population. Thus the lines between property was sort of vague. However there was some, but your clan or family was responsible to make compensation for that if a person took something that was clearly not his. I probably should mention that there was a ghost thing thrown in on this that added to the enforcement. No one wanted to be haunted for a piece of cloth or fancy geegaw. Violence was another thing all together. In a small society like the small island I lived on, it couldn’t be allowed, so there was a great deal of no nos involved there. In the two years I lived on the island, no one ever struck another person. One did, however, about two or three years before I got there (they were still talking about it when I got there). He was made to sit (or stand) inside a circle drawn on the ground about eight feet in diamenter along the main path between his clans’ homes and the clan of the man whom he struck for a month where everyone could see him. For that month his family gave gifts to the clan of the family of the man whom he stuck. I believe he left the island in shame when the the next field trip ship came to the island after he had served his time in the circle. ---
**Author:** ![elelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@elelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elelle)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/32 "2008-12-26T05:16:43Z")
One of the more glamorous examples is the case of Haitian[Clairvius Narcisse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvius_Narcisse) (a name just begging for a sad history). He was the hinge in anthropologist/ethnobotanist Wade Davis’ psychobiological hypothesis of zombification in his book _The Serpent and the Rainbow_…(not the sad cartoon of the movie), and, better, _Passage of Darkness_. From [cite](http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/davis1.htm): > [@](#): > > "The extraordinary thesis he puts forward is, as the subtitle tells us, an ethnobiological story. That is, on Davis’ account, what makes zombies is the interplay between certain features of the culture of Haiti and the use of drugs. However, neither the cultural phenomena alone, nor the poisons alone can account for zombies. There are even larger historical issues at stake: > > “Evidence suggests that zombification is a form of social sanction imposed by recognized corporate bodies–the poorly known and clandestine secret Bizango societies–as one means of maintaining order and control in local communities.” (p. 3.) > The essence of Davis’ claim is this: > > there are zombies > however, there are actually very very few of them > they are created in part by a poisoned powder > however, they are created in part by the effects of the culture > zombies are created when a person first falls into a death-like trance which is both drug and culturally induced > then is revived and kept under the control of the houngan by the use of other drugs > zombies are created by Voodoo priests who are members of the Bizango secret societies > Bizango societies constitute a totally secret and hidden other government beneath the surface of Haitian society > zombification is not random nor for profit or personal vendetta > zombification is the ultimate punishment to someone who has seriously violated the law of the Bizango society Davis got backlash with his methods and assertions of teterodoxin as the chemical component, but a reading of the above site, and, [this one](http://www.biology-online.org/articles/dead_man_walking.html) gives some clarity. Really fascinating that a brujo/medicine person can facilitate a final"transformation" of an offender. On that, this Christmas night, left on a True zombie thread, gotta goodnight… ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2008, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418/33 "2008-12-26T06:01:34Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > Where did I say that? I didn’t, did I? > > On the the hand it is very often that you read in the news about police abuse so don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. Many cops are on power trips. Put someone in a position of authority and there is a good chance he will abuse it if he can. It’s human nature. > > And did you ever hear of Abu Ghraib? The notion that war is nice and clean and by the book is just not true. You put young people in a situation where they are being killed and where they have the opportunity to kill without accountability and you get Mi Lai and all the similar incidents which have happened in every war and some of which have been reported in Iraq and I am sure many more have gone unreported. In wars people kill without much thought and even in a sporting sort of way. It becomes a game, a deadly game. So you could say wars increase the sociopathic level of the individual because it provides justification for the killing. It will make sociopaths of a few people who were not when they joined and it will increase the possibilities that one who had that tendency originally can act on it. > > [Lynndie England - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynndie_England) > > Being a sociopath or psycopath is not a yes/no thing, it is a gradation thing. What the fuck has Abu Ghraib to do with anything? YES, it was a prison previously employed by the Saddam regeime that employed despicable acts of killing and torture, beyond the pale. And YES, the American military used the SAME facility for imprisonment and SOME members of the prison faculty took it upon themselves to lower themselves to despicable acts, which they were rightfully prosecuted for. How is this comparison valid again? It was wrong, it was a PR black eye, but was it any worse than under Saddam Hussein? I don’t think so. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-thieves-sociopaths-get-by-in-small-cooperative-tribes/478418.md?page=1)