# Psychopaths: Unchecked as other's pet project? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 5, 2013, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923 "2013-04-05T14:38:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/21 "2013-04-05T19:53:14Z")
> [@The Great Sun Jester](#): > > Seriously, the only thing physiognomy can tell you about someone is whether they like tattoos, whether they get beat up a lot, whether they spend time in the sun, etc. Thoughts and feelings take place well behind and a little above the eyes in a seperate organ. Physiognomy & phrenology are pseudoscientific BS. You say that with great assurance, but both long standing folk tradition and modern science [large, colorful PDF; another PDF] tell us that observing the eyes and their motions can tell us a great deal about what people are thinking. Autism is widely thought to be, in part, an innate defect in people’s natural abilities to divine what someone is thinking via their eye movements [[link](http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mindblindness.html?id=MDbcNu9zYZAC)]. The fact that exaggerated and absurd claims about the subject are made by some, such as followers of the “neurolinguistic programming” cult, does not invalidate the general point. Shakespeare knew it (as, no doubt, did people for millennia before him) as does modern science. None of this has anything to do with either physiognomy or phrenology. ---
**Author:** ![SleuFeets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@SleuFeets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SleuFeets)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/22 "2013-04-05T20:07:17Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > random goof on a message board. …ok. well, we can agree to disagree 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/23 "2013-04-05T20:39:04Z")
I appologize. Reading this: > [@SleuFeets](#): > > After watching video and seeing the eyes in his pictures and interview it is clear that he is a Psychopath. and then considering the Ted Bundys of the world get along just fine precisely because you CAN’T tell from a casual observation what demons possess them, irritated me beyond the ability to remain civil. I adopted a snide, condescending attitude and I should not have done so. My general disagreement with the OP’s psychological assessment stands, however. ---
**Author:** ![SleuFeets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@SleuFeets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SleuFeets)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/24 "2013-04-05T20:47:05Z")
> [@The Great Sun Jester](#): > > I appologize. Reading this: > and then considering the Ted Bundys of the world get along just fine precisely because you CAN’T tell from a casual observation what demons possess them, irritated me beyond the ability to remain civil. I adopted a snide, condescending attitude and I should not have done so. My general disagreement with the OP’s psychological assessment stands, however. Thanks for the apology. And not to offend you, but Ted Bundy did frequently have a piercing stare that showed his complete irises - like someone in shock. The reason he “looked normal” was because he was “handsome”. A case study revealed several insane things that TB did that no one took seriously. Reminds me of Jeffrey Dahmer, who police actually returned a victim to: [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial\_killers/notorious/dahmer/index.html](http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/dahmer/index.html) The reality is, you don’t have to be killing and eating people to be a socio/psycho path. You just have to want to hurt people and not care. A good book that talks about this, in my opinion, is M.Scott Pecks “People of the Lie” ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/25 "2013-04-05T20:50:42Z")
> [@SleuFeets](#): > > once people reveal themselves to be psychopaths - in need of rehabilitation - that pretty much closes the case. Psychopaths can’t be rehabilitated. Only handled carefully. QtM, doctor to psychopaths. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/26 "2013-04-05T21:03:51Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > You say that with great assurance, but both long standing folk tradition and modern science [large, colorful PDF; another PDF] tell us that observing the eyes and their motions can tell us a great deal about what people are thinking. Sorry, but no. The documents that you linked to describe involuntary eye movements that may indicate the viewer’s interest in an item in their field of view. They take care to note, however, that these eye movements are not easily perceptible to other humans. > [@](#): > > Autism is widely thought to be, in part, an innate defect in people’s natural abilities to divine what someone is thinking via their eye movements [[link](http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mindblindness.html?id=MDbcNu9zYZAC)]. I don’t think that is at all an accurate summary of the book’s thesis, which is that autistic children are unable are “mindblind”: literally _unable to apprehend the concept that other people have minds._ An inability to read “eye movements” would seem to be a relatively minor consequence of this defecit rather than the root cause. (I hasten to add that the “mindblindness” hypothesis was never a particularly favored one and that even the author of the book has moved on to theorize better autism models.) > [@](#): > > None of this has anything to do with either physiognomy or phrenology. Yes, it did. The post **The Great Sunjester** was responding to contained a link to a website where some doofy fellow attempts to “read” his own personality from the lines and creases of his face. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/27 "2013-04-05T22:31:26Z")
> [@colander](#): > > Sorry, but no. The documents that you linked to describe involuntary eye movements that may indicate the viewer’s interest in an item in their field of view. They take care to note, however, that these eye movements are not easily perceptible to other humans. Not just things in their field of view but also (in the second linked paper) things they are imagining. The microsaccades which are the main focus of the first linked paper are not observable without special apparatus, it is true, but the point there is that you can tell from microsaccades (recorded with the special apparatus) when someone is thinking about something in their field of view, even when they are making a conscious effort not to look at it. In more ordinary circumstances, when they are not making a conscious effort not to give themselves away, people will either fixate upon or make frequent large amplitude saccades towards things they are interested in, and other people can and often do pick up on what they are thinking about by observing these saccades (although they often may not be aware that this is how they know). > [@colander](#): > > I don’t think that is at all an accurate summary of the book’s thesis, which is that autistic children are unable are “mindblind”: literally _unable to apprehend the concept that other people have minds._ An inability to read “eye movements” would seem to be a relatively minor consequence of this defecit rather than the root cause. > > (I hasten to add that the “mindblindness” hypothesis was never a particularly favored one and that even the author of the book has moved on to theorize better autism models.) The main evidence presented in the book concerned the eye movements of autistic children, and the fact that they failed to follow and read the eye movements of other people in the way that non-autistics do. It is true that Baron-Cohen argued that this was caused by a defect in an innate “theory of mind module” in the brain, and that that hypothesis was never particularly widely accepted, but even if we reject that causal hypothesis (as perhaps we should), the evidence that autism is associated with an abnormal response, in young children, to other people’s eye movements, remains. “[Joint (or shared) attention](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_attention)” mediated largely by following the eye movements of others, is a well established psychological phenomenon, and seems to be abnormal in autism. And, of course, my point was not really about autism anyway, but about the claim that we cannot learn anything about the thoughts of others by observing their eyes. We can and we do. All the time. Baron-Cohen’s book contains some relevant evidence and discussion about the phenomenon, which stands up regardless of the more questionable theory of autism that he tries to support with it, and there is much other evidence elsewhere. > [@colander](#): > > Yes, it did. The post **The Great Sunjester** was responding to contained a link to a website where some doofy fellow attempts to “read” his own personality from the lines and creases of his face. Well OK, I am not arguing in support of that link (which I haven’t read, and was not quoted in the post I was responding to). However, **The Great Sunjester** went far beyond rejecting physiognomy and phrenology to the claim that we can tell nothing about how or what people are thinking by observing their eyes. Again, we can and we do. People have probably been picking up on other people’s moods and intentions by (mostly unconsciously) observing their eye movements since _homo sapiens_ first evolved, if not before. Literary evidence tells us that people have been aware that they can and do learn much about the mental states of others by observing their eyes for many centuries, at least, and science confirms that this is true. I am also far from convinced that the lines and creases on a person’s face never provide any clues whatsoever to their personality, although I do not doubt that one can be misled by them, or that the pseudo-science of physiognomy made very exaggerated and largely false claims about such matters. If nothing else, the fact that in everyday life just about everybody heavily relies on such facial cues in their dealings with other people strongly suggests that there is real and important (if not 100% reliable) information to be gained from them. If it didn’t (mostly) work, we would not all do it. Whether it is possible to reliably guess whether or not someone is a psychopath from such evidence (either eye movements or facial characteristics) is another matter, and I make no claims about it. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/28 "2013-04-05T22:50:17Z")
_Sometimes_ we can tell what a person is thinking by observing their eyes, and sometimes we can’t. That means we can’t tell what a person is thinking by observing their eyes. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2013, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/29 "2013-04-05T23:42:34Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Not just things in their field of view but also (in the second linked paper) things they are imagining. Such a phenomenon would not seem to be of any particular use in divining what it is that is being imagined. > [@](#): > > The microsaccades which are the main focus of the first linked paper are not observable without special apparatus, it is true, but the point there is that you can tell from microsaccades (recorded with the special apparatus) when someone is thinking about something in their field of view, even when they are making a conscious effort not to look at it. In more ordinary circumstances, when they are not making a conscious effort not to give themselves away, people will either fixate upon or make frequent large amplitude saccades towards things they are interested in, and other people can and often do pick up on what they are thinking about by observing these saccades (although they often may not be aware that this is how they know). This passage represents a vast improvement compared to the vague, sweeping claims in your first post, and that’s good. Still no cites, though. > [@](#): > > The main evidence presented in the book concerned the eye movements of autistic children, and the fact that they failed to follow and read the eye movements of other people in the way that non-autistics do. It is true that Baron-Cohen argued that this was caused by a defect in an innate “theory of mind module” in the brain, and that that hypothesis was never particularly widely accepted, but even if we reject that causal hypothesis (as perhaps we should), the evidence that autism is associated with an abnormal response, in young children, to other people’s eye movements, remains. “[Joint (or shared) attention](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_attention)” mediated largely by following the eye movements of others, is a well established psychological phenomenon, and seems to be abnormal in autism. Perhaps, but that fact in and of itself doesn’t really do anything to support your claim, does it? It is, after all, merely one of many characteristics that, when observed in combination with each other, can be used to support a diagnosis of autism. > [@](#): > > And, of course, my point was not really about autism anyway, Then in future discussions on the topic, I suggest that you refrain from bringing it up, as it was the tenuous connection drawn between a muddled misinterpretation of a largely discarded theory of autism and the suggestion that one can tell a psychopath by looking at their crazy eyes that caught my attention. > [@](#): > > but about the claim that we cannot learn anything about the thoughts of others by observing their eyes. We can and we do. All the time. Baron-Cohen’s book contains some relevant evidence and discussion about the phenomenon, which stands up regardless of the more questionable theory of autism that he tries to support with it, and there is much other evidence elsewhere. I did not interpret **TBSJ** ’s post as a denial that, say, information about how bored someone is in a meeting can sometimes be divined from the frequency at which that someone glances at their watch. It was, rather, an attack on **SleuFeet** ’s specious assertion that judgements about another human being’s _fundamental moral character_ can be reliably made based on brief observation of their facial expressions. > [@](#): > > Well OK, I am not arguing in support of that link (which I haven’t read, and was not quoted in the post I was responding to). However, **The Great Sunjester** went far beyond rejecting physiognomy and phrenology to the claim that we can tell nothing about how or what people are thinking by observing their eyes. Again, we can and we do. People have probably been picking up on other people’s moods and intentions by (mostly unconsciously) observing their eye movements since _homo sapiens_ first evolved, if not before. Literary evidence tells us that people have been aware that they can and do learn much about the mental states of others by observing their eyes for many centuries, at least, and science confirms that this is true. I agree with you that many humans are quite confident in their ability to read the intentionalities of others from their non-verbal cues. Much more confident then they really should be. This is particularly unfortunate for autistics and other “eccentrics” who find themselves routinely shut out from others due to quirks of their condition. It’s nice for car salesmen who work on commission, though. > [@](#): > > I am also far from convinced that the lines and creases on a person’s face never provide any clues whatsoever to their personality, although I do not doubt that one can be misled by them, or that the pseudo-science of physiognomy made very exaggerated and largely false claims about such matters. If nothing else, the fact that in everyday life just about everybody heavily relies on such facial cues in their dealings with other people strongly suggests that there is real and important (if not 100% reliable) information to be gained from them. If it didn’t (mostly) work, we would not all do it. I hardly think that’s true. The veracity of most judgements of this sort that are made on a daily basis will never be confirmed or denied, and whether or not they are correct, will rarely make a significant impact on the judging individual’s welfare one way or another. I only wish I could say the same for those being unfairly judged. > [@](#): > > Whether it is possible to reliably guess whether or not someone is a psychopath from such evidence (either eye movements or facial characteristics) is another matter, and I make no claims about it. Then I will: it is, of course, **not possible**. ETA: Pretty much what Tripolar said. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2013, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/30 "2013-04-06T00:23:43Z")
As mentioned, people in current culture use the terms pretty casually and interchangeably dependant on behavior. I’m looking forward to the new copy of the DSM which promises to make the distinctions more clear. My understanding is that a psychopath has some form of neurological damage or dissimilarity from the norm. In other words, as QtM has voiced, intractable to rehabilitation. Many of us exhibit sociopathical behavior, some of us frequently, without being diagnosable as true sociopaths - traits, as they are called. And traits can be modified with willingness and good guidance. Some of the most efficient counselors/therapists I worked with had obvious sociopathic traits. They were very good at persuasion and not much subject to burnout. Addressing the initial part of the discussion I have seen that combination in working situations repeatedly. The boss has a firm hand but seems like a nice enough guy. Second in command is unpredictable, mean as heck and possibly dangerous to people’s jobs. You have to wonder why the boss even wants such a nasty dude around. Then you figure it out - hey, he’s doing the big guy’s dirty work for him. Is he a sociopath? Maybe he just wants to keep his job. Is the boss? Who knows as long as he’s flying under the radar? If either of these people continues through life without much legal interference chances are they’re people with sociopathical traits. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2013, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/31 "2013-04-06T00:32:03Z")
I meant to add that I worked with a medical doctor who was fully convinced that many of his patients who had been diagnosed as sociopaths were, instead, ADD. And I believe that the same could be true for Foetal Alcohol Effect and Syndome adults. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/32 "2013-04-07T00:38:55Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I don’t think the term psychopath is used clinically anymore, and the more-or-less replacement term sociopath is thrown around so often that it barely means anything at all. (From a lay perspective, at least. I don’t mean that it means nothing to therapists.) I think it’s better to keep things simple: I don’t know that Mike Rice is a sociopath and at first blush I think that term is much too grandiose. He’s a bully and a selfish asshole. Psychopathy is still a widely recognized and studied condition in psychology and psychiatry, and the term is still widely used to refer to a specific psychological construct. Sociopathy is mostly disused professionally, with a few exceptions (and is popular as a synonym for internet jerk). As far as whether “psychopath” is used commonly as a clinical term, psychopaths don’t commonly appear in a clinical setting; a psychopath would be far more likely to be thrown out of the office and told not to return for disruption than they would be to submit to treatment. Personality disorders are notoriously intractable, and psychopathy is probably the most intactable of the lot. If a clinician needed to diagnose a psychopath with a DSM diagnosis or code them for insurance purposes, Antisocial Personality Disorder or Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified with Antisocial and Narcissistic Features would probably fit, but again psychopaths don’t see much wrong with themselves and don’t typically seek treatment. There’s a reason why psychopathy is typically considered in forensic and correctional settings; it’s because that’s where the psychopaths society deals with tend to end up. As to whether Mike Rice is a psychopath, no telling. He could be a true psychopath, or he could have a anger disorder, or he could come from a coaching culture where that sort of abuse is more normal, or he could just plain be a straight up asshole. Although almost all of the psychopaths I have known have been assholes, the converse is not necessarily true. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/33 "2013-04-07T22:57:01Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > _Sometimes_ we can tell what a person is thinking by observing their eyes, and sometimes we can’t. That means we can’t tell what a person is thinking by observing their eyes. Nope. It means you have to weigh probabilities rather than using the false dichotomy of bivalent logic. It’s called Bayesian reasoning. What’s most frustrating about it is that even proponents of Bayesian reasoning make this obvious error. The writer of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality falsely claims that (in the context of the story) mind-reading is useless because there is a very small number of people who trick you into reading a fake mind they construct in their heads. Very few tests are 100% accurate. That does not mean you cannot glean information from them. As for the delineation between psychopaths and just extreme assholes, I find that no distinction is generally needed in real life. Both are people who have figured out how not to care about the feelings of others. It doesn’t matter if there’s an innate inability to do so or if they just have a bad temper. It doesn’t really change how you deal with them. Thus the reason we are so imprecise with the term psychopath is that the distinction is mostly of use to psychologists, as they want to treat them. The rest of us do what we can to change the conditions that enable the bad behavior. Now, if the distinction is between people who are cold and calculating versus psychopaths, that’s another thing entirely. A “psychopath” doesn’t just have a lack of empathy. They have reverse empathy. They enjoy hurting other people. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/34 "2013-04-11T20:51:06Z")
> [@SleuFeets](#): > > Several ancient practices can be neither “debunked” or “proven” by modern westernized medicine. Such as? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923/35 "2013-04-11T20:54:09Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > There’s a reason why psychopathy is typically considered in forensic and correctional settings; it’s because that’s where the psychopaths society deals with tend to end up. There, and in shockingly large numbers as powerful people in large corporations. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/psychopaths-unchecked-as-others-pet-project/654923.md?page=1)