7: "What is it like to be a psychopath?"

for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today we have Kent Keel on the show, who is executive Science Officer of the nonprofit Mind Research Network and a professor of psychology, neurosciences, and law at the University of New Mexico and author of the recent book The psychopath Whisperer, The Science of Those Without Conscience. WHOA, that is some heavy, heavy stuff. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Ken Well, thanks

Scott for having me. There are lots of things that we can talk about that I know will be of immense interest to our listeners. I want to begin by asking why did you title the book The psychopath whisper So the was a fun trying to find a something that would appeal to a large audience, but also some

form of keeping the science together. But the psychopath Whisperer kind of helped to convey you know, a number of different features of the book, which was, you know, using neuroscience to understand them, some new treatment programs that are helping to reshape their behavior, and so called whisper with them or I listened to the So it's kind of

an integration of different things. But there certainly was an interest by the editor and having something that would be catchy and would sell to the you know, public markets, and it has been selling well, right, Yeah, it's done okay. I mean, I think my publisher would like to have five more printings by now, but it's it's doing okay.

It's actually also sold in Turkey, Japan, China, the Netherlands, the UK, and I'm trying to remember all the different ones, but I keep getting contracts every week from my publisher, so it's apparently doing well in international as well. Well. Congratulations, thanks, it's actually very exciting. It's very fun. That is exciting. Yeah, So why are you you know, I think everyone's interested some level understanding psychopaths. Why do you think there is

such an interest in understanding psychopaths? And then I would obviously like to know why are you personally interested in how do you get interest in this topic? Yeah? Well, first of all, I share the general person's interest in understanding psychopathy or psychopaths, and I certainly I think the only difference is that I got so interested in and I made a career out of it, versus most people

have a passing interest in some you know. But I think that the the real thing is that they're just so different from the rest of us, and their behavior is so odd, if you will, or clinically different from what most of us do and act and think and feel that most people, I think are just fascinated by that. And some of them might be a little bit of a morbid curiosity or wondering if your worst, darkest thought

is actually something that makes you psychopathic. But generally I think that there's just a very strong and they're uniquely different. Of course, you have to they often do very, very very bad things, and so it's sometimes quite difficult to, you know, interview and work with them when you know about the things that they've done. But anyway, it's they are just clinically fascinating you. Why how long have you been have you at all? Have they always been a

fascination of yours? Well, it's one of those things that

growing up in Tacoma Washington. Ted Bundy actually grew up down the street and my father was a writer for the local newspaper, and he wrote these stories about this prolific serial killer from the Northwest when I was growing up, and so we would just be sitting there and I remember distinctly at the dinner table just asking my parents, will how do somebody like that or how could they come and behave like that from our little, sleepy, you know, neighborhood that we grew up in, And so that kind

of manifests as something to be I got really interested when I was in undergraduate at UC Davis, and I had a great, admirable psych professor and another couple of great professors who you know, basically got me along in academic trajectory. And then I just decided to try to make a career where that was the main focus and I and it just has been, you know, a ride ever since. Yeah. I mean, you've you've definitely been a

pioneer in this field. And I almost wonder if a lot of people get selected out of studying psychopaths because they can't tolerate be the mind games of you know, actually, you know, especially clinicians who have to writ don't they get I mean, they can't all cut it right. It's true. I mean the working with them necessitates a certain frame frame,

frame of the mind. And also it's not that different from my thinking how a lot of law enforcement individuals have to deal with working with the front lines with individuals like this and seeing the totality of the bad things that they do and then having to you know, maintain a professional distance or an emotional distance so they

can continue to do their job. And working with you know, in maximum security prisons, with you know, psychopaths and non psychopaths and all different other types of individuals that end up in those types of facilities, you do have to be able to have a slightly different frameset. So we've had you know, lots of research assistants who they write me and they say all they want to do is

go work in maximum security prison and study them. And you know, one of my famous cases was a research assistant who I was giving a tour around one of the maximum security facilities. He'd been, you know, excited to move to the New Mexico and work with them, and one of my favorite inmates famously yelled out the tier hey, hey, doctor Keel, thanks for bringing us a new lollipop. Oh no, I heard that. You heard that, and I turned and was going to joke, like, what flavor do you think

he is? You know, and his response was to be petrified. And unfortunately he you know, he left a lot about a week later that he realized that he just wasn't comfortable in that kind of environment. So I guess I've just naturally always felt like I can handle myself in those types of situations and and and work with them and try to study them and understand them, and it's never really bothered me. But it's not something for everyone for sure. Sure. Oh, I mean it almost seems like

you're comfortable with psychopaths at some level. Yeah, and you are you a psychopath? Yeah? In prison, in prison, in

a controlled environment, it's great working with them. I'm very sensitive to all the stories and everything, So like, if I meet someone at a bar who I think might be a little bit off or a little bit different, then I'm like the last person now that's going to get in any sense in an altercation with them, because of all the stories of you know, the guy getting mad and the hitting in the bottle in the back of the head and you fall and kill yourself, you know,

or die, you know, in those types of situations. So I'm very sensitive to know those types of situations now versus when I was younger, you know. And so you definitely learn a lot from from working with them. Yeah, and you certainly sent a lot of research in the book, a lot of really fascinating insight into both the nature and nurture of psychopaths. But I want to you You've mentioned, You've mentioned so many nuggets of gold so far, and like,

I'm like already overwhelmed. Which thread should I pick up first? You know, I'm trying to prioritize. But you said something very interesting going back a little bit. You said that people wonder, you know, are these dark thoughts that I have? Does that mean I'm a psychopath? And yeah, I think that'd be really cool. Let's talk really interesting to talk about the difference between like the dark triad, you know,

non clinical version of psychopathy and like clinical psychopathy. Could you please talk about the difference and maybe to relax a lot of my listeners who might have lots of dark thoughts. Well, sure, I think the most important thing to remember when you're assessing psychopathic traits is that it is a trait, and so that is you have to have evidence of something like a lack of empathy at home, at work, at school, with family and friends, and something

that's pervasive in all forms of your life. And then also that trait has to be associated with some form of impairment. So you have in order to be a personality disorder in order to constitute a really pathological level of the trait. And in that context, you know, to have an inability to appreciate empathy, for example, so that it leads to nothing but short term relationships, very poor relationships with family, no connections with your parents anymore, or

with siblings. It leads to very short term you know, business acquaintances, and you can't keep and hold the job down because you don't develop those types of feelings forwards others and trying to work in a team for example. And so it has to be associated with the high level of different types of impairment. And then you're dealing

with the trait. Whereas I think normal variation and personality, you know that you mentioned which might be you know, someone with very low psychopathic traits, but nevertheless is different from somebody else they might just have problems maintain any relationships, for example, but they otherwise have adapted and found a way to work at you know, with other people at work or in the job that they've chosen, et cetera, and they don't necessarily leads to dysfunction or failure to

achieve normal occupation, educational or other types of things. But so it's I think it was famously spoken by a good friend of mine who who said, can you know you talk about those that score over thirty on the on the psychopathy checklist, that's like the top fifteen percentile. But I don't want to date somebody who scores a ten, you know, out of thirty. That would be someone who

would be a very problem. So I think that there's there's a lot of utility in understanding that there's both a very powerful dimensional aspect to the condition, that is, some people are more or less, but also that there's only a certain point in which the traits become really problematic from a clinical perspective, and that's that's that's the ones that we work with mostly. Now this under ten? Is it because they'd be too boring? Is that the idea, well,

they would be fun to party with. It depends on where you want to endu the next morning, but you know, it is it is the case that you know, a lot of them are fun and engaging, and they're fun conversationalists, but most of their relationships don't end well, you know, they end with somebody either owing them money, or the somebody who they've stolen things from, or somebody who they've you know, they've left, or children they're not you know, taken care of, or all these other types of situations.

It really is a amazing, if not fantastic, just carnage that they leave behind them. And one of the things that's fascinating is that it just doesn't They don't assume that it's a problem for anybody else because it doesn't bother them, and so they really kind of black insight into how their behavior impacts others. That's one of the central characteristics. But yeah, but your friends says something like they wouldn't want to be someone on the other extreme

either like under ten. Well oh no, no, no, no, no, she was saying that she wouldn't even want to date somebody who scored a ten at a portable. Oh I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought that. I thought the joke there was like, you know, at both extremes, they wouldn't want to date someone like that. No, no, no, no, no, no, sorry, No she is. She would the woman that I'm referring to, she would happily date someone who scored you know, one or two or a three. It's going to be a nice,

stable individual, good emotional intelligence. And yeah. So no, that's sorry. You could see you can see why my interpretation that was like, oh, because they're TV too boring, you know, No, I think that you know, the average North American male will score about four. Okay, well this is good information. I did not know this. So then to be says thirty and above you start hitting psychopath range, is that right? Yes? And then your card carrying psychopath what like thirty seven thirty? Right,

So the scores range from zero to forty. The average male scores about four. The average inmate will score about twenty. The psychopath is usually defined clinically and for research purposes

as thirty or above. Okay, and then we typically for research purposes, if we were studying and we have somewhere over thirty four is going to be the people that we really believe fit the classic definition of psychopathy, so kind of, you know, well above the normal cutoff in terms of the criterion, and you've you've, you've, You're quoted somewhere saying that when you meet someone like at thirty seven above, like they're qual there's almost like a qualitarally

different species like you, really you really see something different at the really extreme end. Could you maybe explain a little bit what does that like being with someone at such the extreme end. So, the way they typically present is they're very forward, they're very socially disinhibited. They might be the first name to start calling you by your first name versus someone else who maintains a large level dose of respect or something. And oh, no, I called

you kent, I interduced. Of course, we've known each other for probably twenty years already, so but it just becomes And the real palpable clinical sense is just that you can immediately recognize that their affect is different. Their eyes have a subtle kind of disconnection with the rest of their their body features a little bit better than yeah, but they look at you with more of a of a flat kind of perspective. Yes, does it give you,

like ever give you the chills. No, I think I when I see someone who has those types of traits again, I just think that it's clinically, you know, fascinating and interesting. And when I meet someone who I know, like before, when I read their file, who's going to score high, Yeah, it's really you know, fascinating to see that fully manifest.

Like I just interviewed someone who had spent the last ten years in solitary confinement and I expected them to you know, be very closed and difficulty talking and everything else, and they were the most glib, entertaining, just like it was like as if they you know, they were on vacation and they were talking to you, and it was that's pretty common. It's just the sense, the voluble sense

of chatting and talking and nothing really bothers them. They don't have any problems being alone, they feel, you know, it was pretty amazing. It's just pretty amazing. So it's the affect though, that I think really strikes you clinically. And then you know, just a frank a willingness to talk about just about anything, and it's completely uninhibited. I mean,

they'll talk to you about pretty much anything. Whereasus somebody who scores low on the traits might be inhibited about talking about their crime or get sad about it, or get you know, and just feel like they don't want to talk about it because they you know, it's just distressing. They made a big mistake and they don't feel like they want to talk about it. And so it's just a very different clinical presentation. So it's just you're incredible.

It's like you're immune to the psychopath charm. It's almost like there's some character set of characteristics in you that allows you to to maybe mindful. It's like your good at mindfulness or something. Do you do any mindfulness meditation. It's like you're able to distance that from you. For the most part, I think I'm able to keep a

good professional distance. But I typically in my clinical style is that's that I try to engage them and talk to them and get them to talk about everything because I need that information to unders stand all the ways in which they're different and how they got that way. Yeah, and so I think I've done I've enjoyed that part of the science that we do is doing the interviews.

In fact, if anything, that's that's what most of my staff enjoy too, is the true interactions and working with them and talking with them, and that that's because they're they just it just it just like pops out like a book, like right out of the text. You know that this is an individual with these traits. They're just

very different. It's it's it's it's very similar to other types of illnesses that you know, you just the first time you ever meet one or see someone, they're just so different and you just like, how could that happen? And you want to understand it. Well, this is interesting because psychopathy is not considered a mental illness, and in the sense that schizophrenia is. They were called suffering souls, right, So mental illness is a good question. How you define

mental illness. I define it as anything that leads to you know, pervasive problems at home, at work, at school, of family and friends. A schizophrenia definitely fits, which is the hearing voices, hallucinations, et cetera. But I also consider psychopathy to be a mental illness if if I consider personality disorders like borderline and et cetera, to have, you know, cause a lot of distress and dysfunction in the individual, and so to me, I consider them to be mental

illnesses as well. So if you take a broad definition of mental illness, then that's typically most people will define it as such. But I don't really try to limit it to just the clinical access one, so to speak, you know, conditions. Okay, well that's interesting. Yeah, because Robert Hare, who was one of your mentors, is that right? Yeah, yes, he was. Would he would he say that it's not a mental illness? I don't think so. I mean I think that, you know, I still work quite closely with him.

If he was to h he would he would take the same tact that I have. That is, it's not an access one condition, it's an access to conditions personal disorder. But I consider personality disorders to be associated with impairment,

and to me, that constitutes a mental illness. Okay, So in terms of let's get and dive into the knee nurture controversy a bit, I think we both can agree and start from the point that it's always this interaction, this complex interaction of nature nurture throughout the course of development. You can't neatly separate these components. You've studied these components separately as well as how they interact. And I thought we could start with the difference between the psychopath and

the sociopath. Sure, sure, well, the psychopath, you know, term was coined in the early eighteen hundreds, you know, to describe individuals who suffered from various pathological states, and it became, you know, ever more focused on the interpersonal and affective

traits throughout history. The term sociopath was coined in the behaviorist era, you know, Skinner and others, when they felt that you were a blank slate when you were born, and social forces sociopathics, so social forces would mold you

to be whatever you were. And so that term is not used in you know, academic parlance anymore, but it was very common in that behavior as era of psychology, and some people still refer, you know, and the popular you know writings to the sociopath who was like made to be that way, like a Dexter type of character or something like that. By the way, it's you know, it's very fictionalized. There's sometimes nuggets of truth in there, but it's it's very much a fictionalized, you know character.

Dexter is not like the stereotypical psychopath. Utah, Actually, actually I don't think Dexter is a psychopath. What do you think is so what's interesting about Dexter is is that's difficult because people recognize is that although he does all of those bad crimes, he he's more like a military like person who is charged with ridding the world of

evil in this regard. But when Dexter can keep a relationship and he you know, he see all the emotional payings associated with children, and he can keep a job for a long period of time, and you know he has you know, good relationships with his sister, and so those types of things you wouldn't see in individual's psychopathy would be very They'd be having four or five different wives.

He'd be moving from job to job and switching all around and getting laid off or fired for being you know, latsadaisical or doing cheating or not showing up for work, et cetera, drinking on the job, et cetera. And so those would have to be relevant to score him high

on a trait related behavior. We actually score Dexter in one of my classes for fun to illustrate you know, television characters and how they might score, and people become surprised that he scores just a little bit above the average inmate despite the very bad things that he's done, And so it becomes a bit of an exercise and understanding how traits are assessed in this condition. Yeah, and you know, you make the point in your book that

violence doesn't necessarily equal psychopathy. I thought that was a really interesting point. Sure. I mean, a single bad event doesn't define a person's personality. And so if you you know, have a lot of stressors that occur and all sorts of things go bad in your life, and the person that's responsible for all those stressors and you get in a heated argument and you hit them and they file

and die. But you've otherwise, you know, had a stable relationship with your wife, and you have two kids who love you and you've taken great care of them, and you have your parents are in nursing homes because you've placed them there to take great care of them, and they're aging, and you have all those great interpersonal relationships.

And then you've completed school without cheating, and you've done you know, achieved your academic success, and you have friends that stand by you and say, I can't believe this person would act like this, or whatever something like happened to us have been an accident. Well, those are evidence that the trait it's not really a trait like you know, behavior, and so it basically it's bad. I'm not saying that it's not excusing it, but it's not necessarily a psychopathic

so versus you know, somebody straight. Maybe you're like a temporary Can you be a temporary psychopath? That's a good question. The term psychopath is supposed to be a trait related disorder, but we might have to come up with a state, a state psychopath might do the studies we could try to induce the date of psychopathy. Well, that that might be psychopathic by some, that might be considered very psychopathic.

But the actual motivation to do it and everything else is supposed to have some sort of higher moral ground that leads you to be able to do such a thing. And so certainly some people are more able to do those types of things than others, and many most of us couldn't do those types of things. And so, but that doesn't necessarily mean we're psychopathic. It just means that we're being trained and educated in a difference, you know,

set of circumstances. You know what I mean. It's not a trait versus versus you know, you have somebody who you know, kills somebody, and then they uncovered that they've got four wives in different states, you know, and they

have all in need of help and assistance. And they have another house that they're living in where they keep all of their money and resources, and they have parties there, and they you know, they have convictions for a wide variety of differ in types of crimes, and they've you know, they've planned bankqusty in all these different states, and they

are never willing. They're still willing to go engage in solicit more money from other people, you know, and then you're realized, well, then that homicide might likely be more reflection of their personality rather than a reflection of some trait or state related problem that they had that led

to that type of an incident. So so that's what I try to bring across in the book is that you can't define psychopathy by any one bad deed, and in fact, we actually one of the main ways we score there to eliminate that one bad deed from creating a halo effect. You're often asked to score the individual ignoring that index offense. So score them as if they didn't commit that homicide of the you know, and usually

get the same score. So that's that's one of the difficulties that you run into when someone has done one really bad thing or has sent some sort of sexual crime, that some people have a lot of problems clinically assessing and making sure that they're not allowing that one bad thing to influence all the items, because it really can

only count towards a few of them. And so that's part of the training that we do and provide to clinicians around the world to make sure that they're scoring the traits correctly, because when you score these traits really correctly. The reason why people talk about this condition still is because it predicts things. You know, what other checklist of symptoms could you fill out for somebody to know with an eighty percent chance where they're going to be in

ten years. Oh wow, these predictions that good. Yeah. So if you're a violent offender, and I want to know if you're going to reoffend, if you score high on psychopathy within twenty years, you're going to there's an eighty ninety five percent chance we're going to be convicted of a new violent crime, versus if you score low, we know that you're going to be only about a forty fifty percent chance you're going to commit a new crime.

So there's a rough doubling of risks. You something, Is there a different flavor of the kind of crime psychopaths commit versus non psychopaths. We're in jail for violent crimes. That's a good question. There has been some analyses of different types of crimes and who's more likely to commit those types of crime, and so the psychopath appears to be somebody the best way that you know, we described

as a psychobaston was an equal opportunist. They'll commit just about any type of crime, whereas the non psychopathic individual who's in jail for just drug abuse or doing burglary something that usually sticks to the same type of pattern. So it's actually an item on the psychopathy checklist, which is criminal versatility, And it's not meant to convey that they're good at criminal activity. It's meant to say that

they're willing to engage in a wide variety of activities. Correct. Yeah, yeah, Well, we've we've published a thing on criminal success and we ask, you know, from a treatment perspective, from a punishment perspective, you know, does our psychopaths basically you know, negatively reinforced for you know, a significant proportion of their crimes. And it turns out that psychopaths often commit probably anywhere from fifty to a thousand times as many crimes as they

actually get caught for. Oh wow, Right, So then you're like, well, if you never punish them for all of those different crimes, then they really never learned from, you know, just the single one or two times in which they were caught, And so it raises a whole bunch of interesting questions about how to manage them and how to work with them.

You know, when they're willing to engage in such a wide variety and such a frequency that they never learned from the occasional punishment, it's kind of like it just doesn't reinforce, you know, the behavior to be good. Yeah, and that is something a common thing with psychopaths, is that reinforcement learning seems to be impaired, correct, right, Yeah, and you've done research on that, Yeah, there's we have

done a bit. The classic thing in psychopathy is that they don't appear to have any anticipatory concerns with punishment. So if I told you that you know, your finger on the keyboard is going to get shocked when I count down from ten to nine to eight, and when I get you a freak out at nine, yeah, you'll probably remove your hand away from the keyboard, right, And so you have ample dose of anticipatory fear for punishment, whereas there's been a number of is you know, replicated

that he is showing the individual psychopathy. Don't get nervous or anxious and anticipation of punishment. Now, they do get the same response to the punishment stimuli. So when I punish you, they show the same response as you do. Yeah, and they get skinning accents and heart rate changes, et cetera. But we think that there's a normal distribution in how people respond to punishment and so or fear of punishment,

and that helps shape people's behavior. So if you're in the low end of the responsiveness to fear of punishment, then you're likely to necessarily learn from that in the same way the rest of us. We take it for granted, for example, that you know, if we do something bad, we're going to end up in prison and we don't want that to happen. Or if we you know, speed on the way home from work, we're likely to get

a ticket, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's just an ample dose of us being you know, anticipatory concerns. Whereas that anticipatory concern is what's really lacking in psychopathy. What percentage of prisoners are psychopaths? Well, the North American you know, scores generally if you use that cut off of you're looking at about fifteen to eighteen percent, we'll meet criterion for psychopathy. It's not, in fact, it's in

some of the prisons we've worked at. For example, here in New Mexico, for whatever reason, the rate is about half that we find the problems here are most more likely related to substance abuse and other types of problems, social problems, poverty, et cetera. And whereas the rate of psychopathy is different versus some of the prisons we work at in other states, you know, and it might be

because they're just much larger states. But we find the violent offenders have and the offenders we're working with of a normal rate of psychopathy or a higher rate. Is there a lower rate of psychopathy in Los Angeles because most of them are out there in the movie business instead and not in the jails. Well, unless they're getting caught. I can tell you an interesting story. We actually had

a colleague at a big meeting. It was one of these small meetings where you isolate a group of scientists, know, one hundred scientists for about two weeks, and Scottish professor got up and talked about how the rate of psychopathy was only five percent in the Scottish prison population. And immediately to my right and English professor from England started

typing on his computer and analyzing some data. And he proudly stood up and boldly interrupted in the middle of the guy's pocket, and he said, he said, David, David. He goes, I'd like to let you know that the rate of psychopathy of Scottish prisoners in my English prisons is fifty percent. And he goes, I'm afraid your town's boring, my friend. And they came to London where they got pinched,

and so they're all doing time in my prison. And they actually did some analyses and found that there was a massive, you know, kind of migration of individuals with high psychopathic traits out of Scotland and into the London because that's what it's exciting. So psychopaths's really fascinating. Part of the behavior of the condition is that they're very nomadic. That is, they don't develop attachments to any person, place,

or thing or education anything. So when bad things happen, there are no problems moving and starting up someplace new and their glibs so they're funny and they're entertaining, and they meet people quickly and then they asked, hey, can I stay with you? Sure? And then the next thing you know, you're you know, your wallets stolen and they've moved on someplace else. And so you know, this happens, you know, very you know, very very commonly, and so

I think that they don't do well. And this is some of the evolutionary theories tap into this type of drive, that is, they're just they're really pushed or pressured to continue to move into seek new environments. So they're very socially disinhibited. I have two follow up questions to that one Sure one was Christopher Columbus a psychopath? I wish

I had a better assessment of his personality. If you could give me some uh some you know, biographical details, I might be able to tell you, but certainly well you know, willing to command, and if you look at it as a military like conquest, then those are not

necessarily again, good things to do, but they're not necessarily psychopathic. Objected. So, yeah, well again, if if Christopher Columbus came over and killed some people in order to claim his steak in the New Land, and then he actually took the money there are something that he earned, or the gold or the scents or whatever back to England and gave it to

the king. You know, well, now if you took three quarters of it to Jamaica and he's got a special place there that he's got all of his friends hanging out with and partying and drinking, and he only takes five percent back to the king to pay for you know, never pays him back, but ask for ten more ships. Well, now you're talking one and more, one of my guys.

You know, that's nice saying so I Christopher Columbus acted like that, then then we might be having to score them a little higher, you said, one of my guys. Are there sex differences in psychopathy? And if there are, is there a different flavors the female psychopath a different flavor than the male. Yes, for every one psych sorry, for every ten psychopaths, there's only one female. I think there's variety of reasons, but the most important is biological.

That is, women have very different brain than men, and the areas of the brain that we find the void or deficit in psychopaths, the majority of those regions. Women actually have more gray matter than men do, and so it might be that there are neuroprotective factors associated being a female that leads to you to have lower psychopathic

traits than males. I mean many, many, many studies around the world have shown consistently, including my undergraduate thesis you know twenty five years ago, showed that you know, women whore lower on psychopathic traits. Then do men and women have different brain regions, you know, brain structure and function in the same regions that we find deficits in psychopaths. But the female psychopaths, when they do exist or they pretty much the same kind of things. Yeah, they are there,

and again they're very rare. I've only interviewed a handful in my career, and they are the behaviors are very similar, I mean the way they present, the affective problems they present with the behaviors and the things that they've done are very similar. You know, it's rare for them to be violent, you know, generally, but they will have stabbed somebody or they will not have any fears around you know,

hitting somebody or other types of stuff. But they're not usually going to kill someone with a single blow like you find with a lot of psychopaths. You know, there's a lot of psychopaths I've interviewed who get in a lot of bar fights and they keep kicking just that one extra time that puts the guy's skull through the side of his head and then they run off. And now, yeah, that guy died, they said, but he deserved he got what he deserved, whereas the female, just from a physical

size perspective, is unlikely to have that same outcome. So the person might have been injured, but isn't necessarily a fatality. Well, so what is the prevalence rate of This is my second follow up question, ADHD and psychopathy and autism and psychopathy, what are the Yeah, So, I think ADHD is definitely

commonly misdiagnosed in individuals with these characteristics. So you often find that children with these traits are being seen by psychiatrists center psychologists, and they're interpreted as saying that, well, they're just you know, they're not able to sit still. They don't do it, you know, they don't sit around.

But those traits can often be misconstrued as being related with psychopathic or psychopathic like traits, and children are what we refer to as callous and emotional traits, and kids and the impulsivity that we see in kids can usually be or as commonly just attributed first to ADHD, and the frontline medication is given to try to see if that helps, and in many cases I think it does.

But in other cases, the ones that I usually hear about are the parents who said their child was diagnosed with ADHD and then they gave him riddle and it made him worse. It got even you know, and started or hurting other animals or doing other things that are even greater level. We don't know how to deal with this.

He's very violent and aggressive. And then they say they diagnose them with bipolar disorder, and they gave him medicine that made him, you know, draw weird things on the side of the you know, and then it progresses towards you know, they realize that their child has the difficulties with empathy and theory of mind and other types of problems, and then you end up, you know where someone saying like,

how do I treat these types of problems? And so I think ADHD and psychopaed the traits probably are correlated. So if you the instruments, but it's probably a predictor criterion overlap. That is, there's not a good assessment procedures that differentiate them fully. So they are a little bit correlated.

But the traits that do differentiate ADHD from psychopathy are those callous and emotional traits, the lack of empathy, guilty of memoirs, the glidness, the superficiality that lying the manipulative behaviors that not planning well in social environments and stuff. That's those are traits that you don't see in kids

with ADHD. But the impulsivity overlaps. Yeah, Autism is a very different Simone wrote a book on this zero empathy and trying to talk about the difference between autism and psychopathy. I don't love to hear your take. Well, I don't think they're related at all. I think I think autism is more of a theory of mind problem than the Secondarily, then you have problems with empathy because you lack the

ability to understand other people. That's not a lack of empathy, that's the theory of mind deficit in my opinion, Whereas psychopathy individuals with these traits as adels have excellent theory of mind. They're very capable of understanding what they're doing to other people. They just really just don't care. They

lack the empathic ability to appreciate what they're doing. So I think psychopaths have excellent theory of mind, and especially when you sit down and talk to them, they can say, yeah, of course that I was in pain, or of course that person is going to act like this. Psychopaths do, although, actually have low emotional intelligence. So we've published some studies on this saying that they have difficulty working and understanding how groups work. They don't know how to cooperate very well.

We've published on social cooperation like studies and social exchange studies, and psychopaths don't do well on those types of things. So I really think that their emotional regulation, their emotional behavior, their emotional understanding of others is what's really truly impaired. And when you combine that with somebody who's impulsive and doesn't plan well and has done this from a very early age, then you get somebody who's who's quite dangerous.

Do you have you ever seen a psychopathic pix his nails, cleans his nails, pix his nails out of a nervous I mean, are there any nervous psychics? Are there? Are there like a certain read of like covert you know, narcissist and covert psychopaths like what is well, so there is a there is a you know literature, you know, writings, books and stuff. They talk about the primary psychopath from

the secondary See you've talked about primary secondaries something published research. Yeah, and so the primary the primary psychopath is is somebody who is you know, parents were otherwise taking care of kids normally. This child was just always different. We don't understand why. We thought they had a great environment growing up, so there were no social forces that they believe really crafted somebody to end up with these types of traits

as an adult. And it's and those can be particularly mystifying to people versus those that have, you know, terrible environments and they've been abused and they thought all sorts of other problems and they've not had a good schooling or education, and then they they kind of manifest those things as you know, not caring for other people and being impulsive, etc. And sometimes it might be that those two paths might lead you to score high on these traits.

And still an active area of research to prove these two pathways. But the belief is that those that score on the secondary pathway through those types of trauma histories and other types of processes, that they're more high anxious and they have more other anxiety related problems that go along with their psychopathic life problems. And people have been

trying to study the two different things. In some studies suggest that the real affective deficits that we see in the laboratory tasks and imaging related stuff is more limited to those with the primary path than necessarily the secondary path, although I don't think definitive science has been done yet to prove that both don't have problems in the affective domain.

I just think that anxiety and when you have a psychopath that has some anxiety related problems, then it can mask or can make it more third moderating variable, they can make it complicated to understand the primary or the underlying you know, affective problems. So freaking interesting. I want to like change research topics that I still well, I'm the guy if you want to come to prison, you're welcome to come rotated through the lab. Well, I mean, you know, I have jokingly say that, but what I

study is not terribly different from what you study. Just if you think about this a second, I study high achievement and creativity. And I suspect that we're an awful lot of psychopaths that we have put the label genius on who may have maybe have taken credit for other people's work, who have what they've done is they've they've ruthlessly, uh manipulated their way to the history books. So certainly it would be an interesting exercise to get credible background

information and score some individuals to have historical prominence. I can tell you though, that some of the most individuals psychopathy you know, they can have they have very normal to I think even above normal IQ and some of the most impressive psychopaths, the highest scoring psychopaths that ever met, have had IQs of one forty or one sixty and unbelievably smart individuals, but have again very limited understanding of

emotions and affects. So as you know IQ, as we typically assess, it does not include anything related to the affective domain. Very analytical, yeah, and so theysic are extremely high on those things, but it's the emotional side of things that they're just really devoid of. And so that's why I really like this construct of emotional intelligence, because it helps you really quantify or assess another enormous domain of life, which is interpersonal relationships and how you work

with others in group and social cooperation. And so we've been continually to study these processes to find out how they're related to the problems we see in psychopathy. I love this, so I want to unpack some things here. We can actually talk shop here a bit there. So let's talk about two major large scope brain networks, the executive attention network and the default mode network. The default mode network has been laid a lot to social emotional functioning.

I'm sure you found that psychopaths have a very fine executive functioning in the sense that they're there are very they can analytically abstract reasoning, They can process non social emotional information well. But is do you see altra default mode connectivity. Well, so to start the first one, yes, psychopaths pass all sorts of executive functioning tests, from working memory to you know, a wide variety of different attention

based stuff. They they do show impairments in in some forms of cognitive control like tasks though, so especially if it engages limbic circuitry and and maybe that boost isn't necessary for performing it, you'll you'll see some some abnermalodies there. The default mode network, which obviously includes singular posters, singulate and you know, bilateral temporal lobes. We do see and have published studies showing that there's you know, abnormal connectivity

in those circuits and individuals with psychopathy. And so my general you know, theory that we've been testing is that that it is these limbic paralympic circuits that are basically not coordinating or functioning with an underlying gray matter or deficit actually as you know, as you would see in normals. And so the default mode is definitely the one that we found to be more impaired than than the APP,

than the executive control system. So you know, there's the famous essay was it like to be a bat or something like that. What is it like to to be a psychopath? Do you think that it feels like if I woke up, you know, if we woke up tomorrow and we were suddenly we're psychopath for a day, would we suddenly not feel any emotions? Would we not feel emotions? Do they feel emotions at all? Oh? Yeah, no, they have. They have a hyper if you will, almost a hyper

repetitive drive that is there. They're very much into, you know, finding something that's going to be exciting or novel or fun to do today. Often at the you know the cost of it's almost like they're just very short sighted. You know, they just there, they see something, and they want more of the immediate gratification and rather than the long term gratification associated with accomplishing and planning and doing anything.

So so, a typical day in a psychopast life and the outside the world would be involved usually some form of, you know, something that's going to be enjoyable or fun or interesting or exciting to do, like maybe doing some drugs and then going to work and then slacking off and then you know, going out and having some drinks and and and I mean they're they're really you know, it's it's probably quite difficult to get them to achieve

a normal day of work and effort, et cetera. Very rarely would they ever, unless they're completely you know, hungover, would they spend that time alone or ruminating or meditating. That's just not like them. They just don't ruminate at all. Do they have the capacity for love? They usually equate

So this is what I was gonna mention earlier. They usually equate love with physical satisfaction, and so they'll often describe love in very concrete terms, in terms of the woman who was the most of a luptious or the three women they had in the one day, they love them all, et cetera. One point that I mentioned earlier is something that we studied for a bit, which was abstract representations of stimuli, So are are are lost in psychopaths.

They're very concrete, and so even proverbs, metaphors, you know, even abstract text like very justice, and then more emotional stuff, love, empathy, et cetera. They have a lot of difficulty responding and processing those words. So if you said justice, you said very the word very yes, really, yeah, So psychopaths actually have difficulty estimating time. So if you ask them, if you ask them, yeah, well there, it's a really interesting

part of it. It turns out that I noticed those types of abstract problems very early in my career, interacting with them in prison, and I did a bunch of studies looking at abstract representations. Then we found this interesting effect at the right temporal lobe, and the temporal poll

was showing you know, deficits associated abstract processing. And it wasn't until when I was at Yale where we met that I figured, I developed this theory based on cider archetectonics or types of numbers and layers of neurons, that the temple pole, this right temple pole is actually linked to medial temple level and make de lay Hippi campus or repart of cortex from a cider archetectonic perspective, and like, oh my god, now it just kind of clicked and

made sense that this, uh, these behavioral deficits we were seeing are linked to an anatomical region that develops along you know, its own trajectory, and it's that development that we think is impaired in individual psychopathy or it is abnormal. I'm noticing an overlap here between lots of brain regions and appet appetitive drives and extraversion. Do you not have

introverted psychopaths? No, because when I study extroverts, they have a heightened dopamine rewards system, and you probably see the same thing in psychopaths, right, So, well, psychopaths are It's a good question. We haven't seen any clinical studies of high scoring individual psychopathy looking at reward related stuff in great detail. But my clinical observation is with them is

that they are well. It's interesting. So they're very likely to engage in reward seeking related behaviors, consuming a wide variety of different types of drugs, you know, engaging in a wide variety of pleasurable activities like sex, et cetera. They're very promiscuous, but it's almost more that they're interested in the frequency of it rather than in the cultivating

of a more deeper, you know, understanding of it. That's what's interesting about their drug use is that they don't even really stick to any drugs, so we actually think their neurobiology is even protected from dependence on drugs, and published a series of studies on this. But it really is interesting how different their biology is from others and how they and how it's related to their behaviors that we report and score and assass Yeah. Yeah, so obviously.

And I want to make clear I'm not suggesting that all extroverts are psychopaths. No, but but I I just want to get clear it before I get in trouble. But I, you know, just dawned on me, you know, because there's we know, we heightened heightened reward network brain areas and extroverts as well. Sure, no, I think that, yeah so. And classic assessments of personality, you know, the extraversion is you know, one of the most closely aligned

with you know, psychopathic traits. It's that classic modial models of personality don't often assess or carefully assessed the interpersonal and affective staff. And that's what is what really differentiates psychopaths from extroverts is that they have both the extraversion impulsivity and outgoingness and social disinhibition, but they also have an inability to appreciate those emotional stimulate those emotional contents.

And you know, the Hexico model, not the big FIB, but the his Coe model has an extra factor that seems to world very highly on psychopathy. And the so is that the calling is that Colin's model calling the Yeah, okay, no,

he's he's one of my major collaborators. I know that you guys know each other, right, yes, yes, yes, well I was when last time he was here we were speaking about this and he was saying that there's some new personality models that you are coming out trying to assess psychopathic traits, calison and emotional traits more carefully because they work. Yeah. So his model is the bee Fast Big five aspects he has, but that's actually still part

of the Big Five. But the hes Co model has this humility dimension that seems to be the opposite end of the humility poll dishonesty seems to correlate almost perfectly with the dark triad common variance. Okay, so yes, anyway, so maybe that's like a good model Mexico model. We're talking a lot of shop here, by the way, I bet we've lost a lot of people, by the way, not because they're low intelligence, but you know they're not.

They don't have all this expertise. But I'll put some links in the show notes to things to further explain the kind of things we're talking about. Great, just a couple more minutes actually, because this is we're almost done. This was really great. I do want to end. I want to talk about about the environmental developmental path like what do psychobasket are like in child? What's myth and not myth about that? And yeah, let's start there, and

then I have one last topic I want to cover. Okay, I wouldn't mind wrapping up a little bit about some of the treatments. That's that's well, yeah, that's why, that's

why we think. Okay, So, so developmentally, the earlier you try to go and assessing these council and emotional traits, I think, the more complicated and difficult it is, and the more careful you have to be for many reasons, but also because you don't want to, you know, identify someone as being on this trajectory when there's a strong probability they're not, for example, so you don't a label

or have other types of problems. But the children, you know, I can tell you that every adult psychopath I've interviewed had a very different childhood from pretty much any kid I've ever interacted with. And so I think that if we are careful about it, we can assess and understand kids who are on a high risk trajectory towards developing

this disorder as an adult or scoring high. But you know, the things that we typically see are are some of them you hear about in the movies, and something that they've they've definitely done something with animals, or they've had some sort of a you know, they've had some aggression or violence towards animals. But aren't necessarily serial killers. Correct, correct? So I don't so, yes, that's absolutely correct. In fact, serial killers are extremely rare and usually have other problems

in addition to psychopathy. But maybe could you include in your description of the early development path also talk about the factors that separate the developing serial killer from the developing psychopath. Well, that would be the next book that I'm working in writing. Yeah, but I think that if you start to see, you know, the kids, they don't develop strong attachments with their peers, they don't engage in any social sports, even though they're fully capable of doing so.

They don't engage in team activities. They're never participating in the chess club, for example, or or something that I mean, you know, clubs that require you know, team cooperation and showing up and practicing and stuff like that. They're just not capable of sticking to that type of a regiment. And then you would often see that there's going to

be high risk behaviors starting very early. So this might be burglaries by themselves before the age of twelve, not done with some older kid who got them in trouble. For example, it's going to be precocious sexual activity before the age of twelve or so. Not This is not the kids to find the Playboy and go read them in the corner and anything like that. This is some kid who's you know, broken into a house to watch you know, girls on dress or do something you know

that is extremely you know, disinhibited. You know, it's it's basically it's something that the parents are like, what what

just happened? You know, And it's it's not just like the one event where you might see them getting in an argument or a fight or do a kicking or throwing blocks or doing something like that, but it's it's a repetitive you know, low frustration tolerance, willingness to engage in significant aggression, and then a real inability to learn from you know, the sanctions that are put in place,

and so they keep doing those bad things. And so this is the type of thing that we're seeing and interpersonally, you know, being potentially manipulative, being lying, and not even necessarily for any reason, like we've all told our parents lives, like I didn't go out too late, or I and do this, But this is where they do it when there's really not even a reason why. And so it's it's modacity is how it's typically referred to, which is just just a little bit just like one stroke below,

you know, confabulation. So they're they're making up stories to impress and play and create you know, a sense of excitement and that they're cool for whatever, positive for whatever reasons. But there's just readily checked and they're just like they're totally lying, you know. And so that's the very common

thing that you see in these kids. And then if anything, it just continues to escalate an adolescence more severe and social behavior gravitation towards even riskier types of things from a you know, antisocial types of things, and then they end up you know, often in some sort of correctional environment. That's where we typically see them. But in terms of the nature interaction. You're sing about parents earlier, I think I cut you off. Oh well, there have been some reasons.

So I is looking at assessing these traits and kids and the interaction with various parenting styles for example. And so if parents reach their you know, authoritative parents for example, who are very strict and rigorous, et cetera, that tends to interact with these kids and it becomes this back and forth that ends up both having even more severe

behavioral problems. So there are certain parenting styles that appear to be you know, I think it's you know, you provide firm, concrete rules, but you reward the positive behaviors. You have small, graduated punishments. It's very much like a contingency management kind of approach that we use in adult contemporary psychotherapy. And you provide those really concrete rules for them about the bad things, and then escalate the rewards in such a way that it's likely to you know,

change their behavior. So they learn that it's in their own best interests to act in a better way, in a different way, and then that eventually molds and changes them into learning that I get more things that I prefer with this behavior. Then the really bad things that can happen with the other behavior. I mean, there's this psychologist Fallon is that his name. He says he's a psychopath. Yeah, he's not he's not a psychopath. Yeah, okay, yeah, maybe

you can talk a little bit. So his argument is like, well, I have the genes for psychopath, but I didn't become a psychopath because my parents were nice to me. Is there some truth to that statement, like can you have can you have the predisposition to be a psychopath but

have good protective factors? Well? I think that that's one of the shapes in the models around you know, being, you know, with the parenting research and the other types of things that people are doing, is that there can certainly be a lot of social environments that can curb

the full manifestation of these traits. That is, you can you know, you can take someone with most any disability and help to improve the outcomes with the right environment so that they can function and appear to work more normally. And certainly with children who have these traits, who have these problems or whatever it is genetic, biological, environmental vulnerabilities to these traits that can play a huge role in treatment.

In and helping to manage those traits. I mean, I can tell you that, you know, doctor Follen's not a psychopath because he's the rest of his life is one hundred percent certainty, you know, doesn't score high in psychopathic traits. He's a little bit you know, I'm not quite sure. I think he was just trying to sell a book. I would say, but I don't think that he's done any real science in this area, and I don't know that he really understands how to assess the traits and

stuff like that. We've interacted a few times. I've often tried to, you know, help adjust or correct some of the things that he's written about. But there's a lot of there's been a large proliferation of these books. That was one of the motivations that I wrote it, because there's so much misinformation. They just people continually jump on the bandwagon of writing about something that's interesting, but they don't necessarily do their homework to get it correct, and

that's unfortunately. I just wish that I consider Jim's work to be like an interesting work of fiction that's kind of you know, interesting, but I don't consider it to be nonfiction. Sure, And then there's like this other person who said that I think I have somewhere myself like by not a non scientist. She's like a woman, and she says what it's like to be a psychopath, and you know, and all the professions of a psychofession. Yeah, yeah,

we were. I've had a colleague who actually interacted in a television production or radio production, and I haven't read the book, but my interactions and listening to that interaction was that she's actually has different issues. Those are not psychopathic issues that she's describing. Okay, the question I'm asking is what kind of person would want to make pretend they're a psychopath when they or not really a psychopath. That seems to be an individual difference is variable in itself.

You see, I'm saying, yeah, well, I only know one person who's tried to do that, or two. I guess that we're both trying to sell books. Are those the two people we just talked about, Yes, so I probably trying to do a healthy dose of these types of things. But the genes also that that doctor Fallon talked about, those those are not necessarily ever been related to psychopathy, And so we are actively doing that type of research, but the vast majority of studies that have been done

today would suggest that those are not genes related psychopathy. Yeah, the m AOA and the DoD and the other types of genes so that he is referring to. So again, definitive science hasn't been done yet, but certainly there's the only one paper published on MAO by psychopathy and didn't find this association. So yeah, I really want to be respective of your time, and let's talk about treatment sairement because this is obviously has so much important societal implications.

We can we treat psychopaths. I think there's a very exciting program in Wisconsin called it at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center, And this is a facility that treats the highest risk boys in the state of Wisconsin that you can't be managed by other correctional sites, and so they're sent there for behavioral maladjustment treatment to try to help develop a way to make them behave within the prison

setting and then hopefully behave when they get out. And what this program has done is it's tapped into all of the science of psychopathy and behavioral treatment and it has created a state of the art intensive treatment program that really has shown that it makes a difference. And the main difference that it shows is it reduces institutional infractions. The kids don't get more fights and other types of things, which leads to less prison time. They get out on

a more normal schedule. But also the kids develop a sense of self worth and a sense of cognitive control of themselves such that they don't act violently when they get out, or at least there they're fifty percent less likely to act violently if they went through this program then if they went through the system as normal. And so if you can show that's a huge, huge effect fifty percent reduction economically as well, right, it does. It

does Chapter ten that's talked about in my book. So I knew that saying I know, I know, I'm just easy. So absolutely, I think that economically, when you can develop a program that helps to reduce the chances the kids come back to prison and it reduces violence as well, that that's going to be it's an economic windfall for the states to implement such programs. In fact, Georgia, the

State of Georgia just adopted an identical program. So they're building a facility and setting up the same type of program in order to try to duplicate the successes that they've had in Wisconsin. What are some specifics about the program? Sure,

it's intensive, it's one on one. It uses contingency management principles, so it uses reward and significant rewards, rewards that get the kids' attention all the way up for example, to like video games and their cells, candy bars if they're you know, other things that kids are intrinsically motivated to try to obtain, and it uses that to help shape their behavior so that they're not aggressive and violent towards their peers, and then they gradually gravitate towards interacting and

working with peers. Young kids are working with peers then who are farther along in the program, and it slowly engages them in a lot of different skills training and education of course, but then eventually integrates them back with their family while they're at the facility so that they're everybody is prepared for when the child's going to be released and come back home. They've dealt with those issues,

cured environment so that there's much less. So there's a whole variety of for principles, but the main ones is that they've addressed this poor decision making, poor planning, impulsivity component, and they've really helped to cultivate through positive reinforcement be

shaping the behavior so they're more thoughtful in planning. And I mean, my favorite character that I've written about, you know, he's been crime free for now some ten years, and he was one of the highest risk kids at that facility. But he's been married a couple of times. This is his third wife that he's with right now. So it's not like they cured psychopathy or they cured his ability to work and manage all of his relationships, but he

has certainly had a significant improvement. And in a field where the dogma is that they're untreatable, this type of program and the steps that it has made to make such positive change in the lives of the kids and in the lives of society, I think it is just one of the best things we should be talking about. I agree that that is wonderful. But you know, in the spirit of like positive psychology, the filled I work, and that's like getting them from like you know, negative

twenty to zero. What do you think there's a there's a positive psychologist. Psychopaths possible. Are psychopaths ever capable of not only being rehabilitated or to reduce their crime, but to have them in compassion, to have them have love, have even self compassion? Could they have like, has anyone ever done self compassion meditation with them? And has anyone ever injected them with oxytocin my questions, So, to my knowledge, there's been no such clinical trials looking at those types

of mindfulness types of techniques. We actually are in the middle of working on a potential grant. I don't even want to name the collaborators yet because we're still formulating them. But we are planning to work a very prominent person in mindfulness and trying to implement a multi site study of mindfulness by imaging to see if it can improve rich Yes, as far as it's Richie, it's a long time friend and so hopefully you won't see this before,

he'd say out signs on the dotted line. But we're trying to No, that's fine, and and with other colleagues, Michinis and others in Wisconsin. So we would really like to try to do some sort of a large scale mindfulness program. And NIH's credit, they encouraged us to submit such a program. Beautiful. Oxytocin is another great question. I've actually worked with some people. We've done some initial studies that I would say that the results have not been great.

And the reason is that there are also with some some issues in the sense that we were working with sex offenders in that study and there's some other issues going on besides just psychopathy. So, but we don't have any good evidence of oxytocin yet as well. So there's a lot of science that could be done and more appreciation of the impact their behavior has another good less toxoin for them. Yes, you know, there's still main specific psychopathy,

you know, and it's impact with extosin. Have you ever I want to leave with this question, have you ever been with a psychopath and you were you know, shaken, You're you're definitely shy with the cinkive example of just because I I want to romanticize psychopathy at all, and I would like to before we leave today, if you would give a concrete example of just what depths of

evil some of them are are carrying with them. So there's been a few cases in my life where I've actually stopped the interview and have said I just don't need to know anything more about this person because that they did was so bad that that they're you know, they're just never going to let them out. And so

that's that's happened only a few times. And you know, I actually I've written about a lot of the different individuals that I have worked with and some of the things that they've done, and hopefully the stories will come across as they're very fund and exciting and engaging. And then they tell you about how they raped and killed someone and disposed of the body, and you, you know, you realize, I think you get a poignant sense of

just how bad they can be. And certainly it's when you know, I recently interviewed somebody who scored very high in psychopathy and I said, so, you don't have any problems with rape? I mean, you know, no, no, no. Their response was, I like, consensual sex too, Oh I really yeah, And they're like, but they just there was just absolutely no concerns whatsoever with rape. But it was a really truly amazing how just without any concerns whatsoever,

just has no concerns with rape. And someone with four sisters and a daughter, you know, it's just it's just it was staggering. It actually it actually took me a few minutes to compose myself. I took a big drink of water and sat back. And I've never had anybody, you know, even convicted rapists, they know that they're doing is potentially wrong. But this one just said no vibe whatsoever, had no thread whatsoever that he thought that was a problem. Wow,

so its a very dangerous person. Well he's never going to get out of prison, so that's a good thing. But it was just clinically fascinating to really study that there actually are people that are like that. Absolutely, Kent, thank you so much for the important work you're doing to advancing our understanding of these breed of humans. And do you think they're human? Oh? Sure, I mean I I do hold out a lot of help that they could be managed and treated and you can steer them

away from doing those bad things. It just takes a lot of effort and hopefully it's some good science. Thank you so much for your time today. Well, thanks Scott for the invitation, appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as Foreman a falker. Listen I did. If you don't read the show notes for this episode your past episodes. If you go to the Psychology podcast dot com, assass