A new study out of Australia finds that people high in psychopathic traits did poorly when asked to identify common odors. Read:
Psychopaths have poor sense of smell, study finds, on CBSNews.com.
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raised by sociopath
Interesting article.
Question: How about people who suffer with allergies like rhinitis? They aren’t sociopaths just have a physical immune illness. I know people who are normal without personality disorders that suffer from rhinitis that at times do not smell the same odors everyone else do. Also I thought there is a disorder where people smell odors no one else does.
Ox Drover
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Ox Drover
This “study” is VERY SMALL and I think the media reporting about it has exaggerated what it means in a BIG way. I also think this study was very poorly designed. The self report questions that the people took afterward don’t “prove” anything about whether the people are psychopaths or not. If a self report questionaire would prove psychhopathy, then Dr. Robert Hare would use it I am sure.
I get so “tight jawed” when the media exaggerates 1) the quality of a study and 2) the significance of the study
It is already known that there ARE some differences in the anatomy and physiology (shape, form and working) of the brains of KNOWN psychopaths (as judged by the PCL-R) and non-psychopaths, and maybe smell may eventually be shown one of those things, but with (A) such a few subjects and (B) no real way to judge psychopathy in the individuals, this study isn’t going to unleash any great amount of SOLID information.
Psychopathy isn’t an either /or situation where “you is or you aint” a psychopath. Psychopathy is a continuum of behaviors and thinking.
Smell and taste are determined by genetics and there are some things that can be smelled or tasted by X% of the population and Y% of the population can’t smell it or taste . I remember those tests we did in organic chem class to see if we were tasters or non tasters, smellers or non smellers.
Also, whether you smoke or not influences your smell as well, so this study didn’t really prove much, but the media makes out like now all we have to do is to ask our partners to smell the coffee and we’ll know if they are okay. LOL
raised by sociopath
Yes there are individuals in this world who have been born with weird hard wiring in such away they are referred to as sociopaths. They are toxic in one way to another for the rest of the human population.
Question: What is your term for a sociopath individual who doesn’t break the law versus; one who terrorizes others lives versus; commits horrendous crimes?
Ox Drover
Raised by a sociopath,
The terms “psychopath” and “sociopath” do not CURRENTLY have any medico-legal meaning at all. The current diagnostic terms for what WE call P or S is “anti-social personality disorder’ (ASPD) but that is not exactly equivalent to either P or S.
I know that YOU give different meanings to socio and psycho paths but not everyone does.
Dr. Robert Hare uses the term “Psychopath” and other researchers use “sociopath” for what they both determine is fairly the same thing. There is no different terms for ones that break the law or ones that don’t or ones that are physically violent or don’t.
Part of the problem with DEFINING the terms is that PROFESSIONALS DON’T AGREE ON A NAME for the condition, or even the exact symptoms of the condition.
Dr. Robert Hare has developed the “psychopaths check list-revised” which is accepted by most law agencies as the gold standard to deciding who is a “psychopath” and who isn’t.
Research done in prisons shows that 25% of inmates score 30 or above (0-40) and qualify as Psychopaths….but the AVERAGE score is 22, meaning that half the inmates score above 22 and half score below, so the biggest majority of inmates are NOT people you would want to take home as pets.
You are of course free to “define” any word or words as you choose, but right now, there are no medical terms of P or S as a “diagnosis” yet there is a LEGAL term of psychopath.
I hope that the medical field will come to some agreement of what to call it so that the medical practitioners and the public can get an idea of what it is rather than think that all psychopaths are serial killers and all sociopaths are just normal kids who were raised by an abusive person.
AT this point in time, it is pretty well accepted that P or S (whatever your chosen term) is BOTH genetic and environmental, but that doesn’t mean that the child was EVER “abused” in terms that we would generally accept.
Some kids get more P DNA than others, and some are more violent than others, with less impulse control, and some were abused as children, but the bottom line is that psychopathy as Dr. Robert Hare defines it is BOTH GENETIC and ENVIRONMENTAL.
pk
I read this report in the newspaper the other day and it made me smile as the spath I was involved with had very poor sense of smell!
darwinsmom
Ex-spath was a superb cook, who knew how to marinade and spice food. And he was a freak about body odor. In his opinion people should shower at least twice to thrice a day (even in cold climate). There was nothing wrong with his smelling capability. But I consider him a psychopath irregardless.
New Beginning
My ex certainly had a decreased sense of smell.
Not sure how much stock to put in handwriting analysis but it is difficult to discern my ex’s handwriting from Scott Peterson’s……..which I noticed while flipping through the book “Sex, Lies and Handwriting”. One of the key factors are a lot of “trick” letters and numbers. They go unnoticed as one is reading in context but if you look at them out of context they are difficult to distinguish. Scary.
raised by sociopath
Ox Drover
Thank you for your clarifying . It’s just that it seems now that I’m dealing with understanding or trying to understand this mental illness the mere fact they are so hypnotic to everyone is what I’m trying to overcome.
Could it be due to the fact I was raised by 2 psychopaths that would make me more susceptible to their trickery? I do notice now more people with this dysfunction then I had before. Ironic..
spoon
raised by sociopath
Just a note:
People tend to take others as they present themselves. Act confident people will see you as confident. Act happy same thing. But it doesn’t mean the person is confident or happy.
T