I was recently reading a 2003 paper in the journal Nature called Forensic psychology: Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers which is both interesting and frustrating. Interesting because it demonstrates that, even amongst murderers, psychopathic murderers are different. Frustrating because the authors extrapolate their finding in a way that is ultimately misleading being so narrow as to completely miss the point.
I pick this particular study only because it is rather typical of scientific studies in the field: 1. it neglects to consider what the psychopath gets out of behaving the way he does, and 2. it let’s the psychopath off the hook.
The study
13 psychopathic murderers, 17 non-psychopathic murderers, 39 psychopathic other offenders and 52 non-psychopathic other offenders were given the Implicit Association Test (IAT) .
Briefly, uppercase words (for example, ‘UGLY’) are classified as being ‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant’, and lowercase words (for example, ‘kill’) are classified as ‘violent’ or ‘peaceful’, by pressing corresponding buttons. When the same response key is assigned for both the unpleasant and violent words (this is termed the congruent condition), most people find the task easy. But when pleasant and violent words share the same response key (the incongruent condition), most people find this confusing. The association between ‘pleasant—unpleasant’ and ‘violent—peaceful’ is indexed by means of the IAT effect (reaction time for the incongruent condition minus reaction time for the congruent condition).
Result
The psychopathic murderers showed a much lower IAT effect than the non-psychopathic murderers or the other psychopaths in the study.
The researchers’ conclusion
They conclude that there are two groups of psychopaths, one of which has an increased disposition towards extreme violence. So far so good. They also claim the following:
Our results indicate that the reduced violent-IAT effect seen in psychopathic murderers is likely to be due to their abnormal beliefs about violence, rather than to some other nonspecific effect such as poor impulse control and/or deficits in decision-making. Psychopathic murderers have diminished negative reactions to violence compared with non-psychopathic murderers and other offenders.
The fallacy
The great sociologist C. Wright Mills once said: “Every cobbler thinks leather is the only thing,” by which he meant ‘read what I write critically; I’m a sociologist and so I tend to have a sociological explanation for everything.’ Well, our researchers have done something similar. Because their test has found abnormal cognitive associations regarding violence among psychopathic murderers, they take it that this accounts for the psychopathic murderers’ predisposition to extreme violence. The authors’ speak of psychopaths having “deficient social beliefs” and “negative beliefs”, and it is these “abnormal beliefs about violence” (and not poor impulse control and/or deficits in decesion-making) that make them disposed towards extreme violence.
But this factor just happens to be what the researcher’s have been testing; just because they found it doesn’t mean that it is THE predisposing factor. Presumably if they had been testing, say, cholesterol-levels and found a difference they’d say that’s they key.
But it’s worse that that. Something in they way they phrase the matter concerns me. They say (with my reworkings in bold):
- “…due to their abnormal beliefs about violence”.
…due to their pleasure in violence (which is, of course accompanied by abnormal beliefs). - “Psychopathic murderers have diminished negative reactions to violence compared with non-psychopathic murderers and other offenders.”
They have increased positive reactions to violence.
In the British TV show Cracker, the main character, Dr. Fitzgerald is asked why he drinks and smokes so much. “Because I like it!”, he says defiantly. This precisely the point. Maybe Fitz could be shown to have abonormal beliefs about drinking and smoking (he’s a gambler too), but he’s insightful enough to know that it’s not the beliefs that cause the behaviour – he does them because he wants to.
Psychopaths enjoy doing evil; they do it not despite the pain it cause others but because that pain increases their enjoyment.
Leave pleasure out of the picture and we missed an awful lot. Or am I wrong?
Buttons
GOOD MORNING, EB! 😀 And, a glorious day it is!
Hopeforjoy
One more thing, Oxy mentioned (I think under another article), how so many people here are dealing with more than one toxic person. I seriously wonder if I have a sign on my back that says “KICK ME”! Narcisstic dad, bi-polar sister, narcisstic 1st husband, and an ‘I don’t know what 2nd husband’. Someone please remove that sign!
silvermoon
Morning ladies!
Hope, best offense is good defense. start pinning those signs on the others- WARNING:TOXIC! Imagine you see those yellow boxes with black pinwheel designs in them like the ones used to designat nuclear waste!
now, turn around and we’ll peel that sign off you. Done. Not so hard was it?
you didn’t come in this world looking for this nonsense. they taught you that you needed to develop a skill set to survive them which in turn gave you the skills to partner with the others.
ok, you survived all that.
Now, those skills are’t going to work as well because you are seeing that you don’t want to live in the wasteland.
try on some new ones here. read, read, read. share. grow.
we’re all on that bus away from the wasteland….
silvermoon
eb-
hope you are doing well. your comments last night were hysterical.
the vocabulary I learn here is a whole new language- suited to a whole new way of life.
happy day to you!
Hopeforjoy
Silver,
That was hilarious! The visual of a toxic waste sign on these people. Priceless!!! Thanks for taking off the sign. It’s all about boundaries, I allowed some of the crap to seep into my life, not anymore!!!!!
If we lined up all the people with a nuclear waste sign on their backs, could we nuke ’em? Ok, that wasn’t so nice…but could we?
silvermoon
well, i don’t know about that……
kinda reminds me of an old story Doc Watson told about a quaker farmer who kicked over the milk bucket every time.
in frustration he finally said, bessie, i won’t lay a hand to thee, but i will sell thee to a baptist, and he will beat the hell of thee!
we have to let them go. to walk beyond our boundaries and then close the gates behind.
that’s the way the real world seems to turn out to work.
but, like you i think if i ever did find the button that’d get’er done, i’d push it.
enjoy your new sign- renewed and vibrantly alive!
Ox Drover
Speaking of “seeing” a toxic waste sign on them, sometimes I try to imagine people NAKED when I am having to deal face to face with them, and it keeps me from taking them too seriously, and helps me focus on what I am doing rather than how I am feeling. LOL (see what a perverse old biddy I am!) LOL
We can’t “see” them as normal human beings and deal with it, because they are4 NOT “normal” in any sense of the word. Many times we may be the ONLY one who “gets that” but we have to be strong enough to VALIDATE OURSELVES that they are EVIL, not just TOXIC but “can be fatal” type of EVIL. Even if we are the ONLY person in the universe that sees they are EVIL we have to VALIDATE ourselves. I’m getting there with that self-validation, but lord it has taken so LONG to get there.
Even here, when that last troll came here, I felt my skin prickle long before they got “ugly” on the blog. I am getting much better at spotting them here as well. Also not feeling the need so much to engage, though actually I did engage when it called me on my comment—and I thought that I should own up on a comment that COULD be interpreted negatively by a newbie here that doesn’t really “know” me. However, the response was a p-type aggression,, so my instinct was verified. I haven’t been around any new folks in RL that are not nice in the last few months, so don’t really know how I do spotting them in the “wild”—but I bet’ya I’m a lot better than I was even a year ago. Practice makes perfect.
Well, you guys have a good day. I gotta run to the doctor (ear infection) this afternoon and will be gone to a college graduation tomorrow, a 3 hour drive away! My NOT favorite thing to do, right up there with a root canal or a colonoscopy! But this is the kid who was in the plane crash (he was 16 then) and spent 5 months in the burn unit so I gotta go!
Hope, the little gallows humor is A sign I think that you are starting to see the irony in all of this crap! It isn’t “funny” per se, the damage is REAL, but yet in a way it is almost funny, what else can you do but laugh when it is all said and done! Sometimes that gallows or dark humor is good for us, I think sometimes my twisted sense of humor (Henry calls me his “twisted sister”) is the only that that saw me through! Bye!!!
one/joy_step_at_a_time
Oxy – I know you have spent countless hours sorting through papers and documents in regards to your son. i remember you posting through the last big effort.
i will be putting in a full day on saturday, getting things together for the AG’s office. I am actually making a spread sheet to log all the characters, their wbsites, twitter an dfb accounts, and all the same info of the REAL people whose lives/ photos were ripped off from. sigh. And there is more.
But i am writing to ask for tips on how to get through the day working with known carcinogens.
thanks.
one step
Ox Drover
Dear One_step,
I too did a spread sheet by DATE, the document that supported it, (and then organized the documents by date) and what it meant or showed.
I took it SMALL doses, sometimes as little as 15 minutes before I took a break, got something to eat or drink or took some deep breaths. It wasn’t easy as I had hundreds of documents. As it was, I ended up with probably 400-600 of them (didn’t count) but taller than a reem of paper which is 500 sheets. I really did have a tough time with it, because so much depended on it,k the outcome, which I still don’t know about and won’t for months yet, but once it was DONE and off to the attorney, I felt some kind of closure, MY part was done. The rest was up to God and my attorney so it is no longer bearing down on me. WHATEVER happens I know I did my best, and it is either a yes or a no about the parole. So I also have a PLAN about what to do if it is a yes, and what to do if it is a No, so whatever happens I will deal with it when it comes and not worry about it before then.
That’s about all I can tell you about how I handled the TOXIC WASTE pile! Good luck! B e kind to yourself.
Banana, yea, I just LOVED taking my toddlers on LONG road trips!@ SUCH FUN!!!!! NOT!!!!
one/joy_step_at_a_time
Oxy – thanks; very helpful, esp. details about supporting document notation and ‘after plans’
x
one step