Psychopaths (Adult and Otherwise)

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goole, what you're describing does not sound to me like psychopathy

my understanding is that there's a part of your brain that helps you give up.

Don't I fuckin' know it.

Thread relevant but pretty terrible article about how we can all learn some good tricks from psychopaths:

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/13/how_psychopaths_take_over/

I think maybe more interesting as Exhibit A on the pop cultureization of psychopathy.

What would you think if somebody started trying to make deals with somebody you didn't get along with about you behind your back online , then openly announced they'd done that to a whole chatlist you were on?

Just been wondering about this for a while.

also if after a rather psychotic flame had been posted about putting an individual's child in the microwave, somebody reposted the flame message to show how it was punctuated?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201305/confessions-sociopath/confessions-sociopath

i'm distrustful of that magazine on the whole but goddam

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/31/5025744/james-fallon-the-psychopath-inside-interview

jimmy-fallon-the-psychopath-inside-interview

Should I find the pop-culturisation of psychopathy more frightening than the existence of psychopaths?

Because in reading this thread several dozen people I knew briefly became identified as 'psychopaths' in my mind, before I remembered I have no acceptable data about them and am not a psychologist and have only the shakiest idea of what a psychopath even is

I wouldn't like to be pathologised and want to avoid pathologising others, etc

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/11/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath/#ixzz2lcOhO2WY

“I got to the bottom of the stack, and saw this scan that was obviously pathological,” he says, noting that it showed low activity in certain areas of the frontal and temporal lobes linked to empathy, morality and self-control. Knowing that it belonged to a member of his family, Fallon checked his lab’s PET machine for an error (it was working perfectly fine) and then decided he simply had to break the blinding that prevented him from knowing whose brain was pictured. When he looked up the code, he was greeted by an unsettling revelation: the psychopathic brain pictured in the scan was his own.

YOUR SCORE 33%

You are warm and empathic with a heightened awareness of social responsibility and a strong sense of conscience. You like to carefully weigh up the pros and cons of a situation before you act and are generally averse to taking risks. You are very much a ‘people person’ and dislike conflict. ‘Do unto others…’ are your watchwords. But, although you avoid hurting others, those residing at the higher end of the psychopathic spectrum might not be as considerate, so stay vigilant to avoid being hurt unnecessarily.

What's your psychopathy percentile? http://psychopath.channel4.com/quizzes.html

15%

Although that's for a test with only 11 questions, on Channel 4's website advertising their 'Psychopath Night'. So, pinch of salt, etc..

39%

36% which is higher than I thought!

Though your conscience is in the right place you also have a pragmatic streak and generally aren’t afraid to do your own dirty work! You’re no shrinking violet - but no daredevil either. You generally have little trouble seeing things from another person’s perspective but, at the same time, are no pushover. ‘Everything in moderation – including moderation’ might sum up your approach to life.

Even if you only score 15%, it means if you took your personality and chopped it into 100 equal pieces with a cleaver, then sorted the pieces into two piles, you'd end up with a little heap of 15 raw chunks of pure psychopathology. That sounds very worrisome.

ha i scored 3%

100%

jk 33%

^ psychopath move

30%

what are you guys agreeing with? i hope it was just the roller coasters!

Fallon says he'd prob be a lot worse if hadn't had such a cushy life; it's nature x nurture. But also, right off, makes this other major point:
You’re right that there are a lot of definitions of psychopathy, and there isn’t one governing set of symptoms that point to it. If you look to the DSM-5 [ED: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] psychopathy doesn’t exist, and if I asked my psychiatrist friends they’d agree with that assessment. In large part, that’s because many of the traits that characterize a psychopath — things like narcissism, sadism, anti-social behavior — appear in other disorders. So there isn’t a clean set of defining traits we can look to and come up with a diagnostic criteria. Really, that’s how much of psychiatry has turned out to be: we don’t have categorical answers, because there’s much more dimensionality to these conditions.
Third point is, "Stop being an asshole." Even if it's just to see if you can do it (as he claims he's doing).

24% on this one.

There is another test which is much more interesting, and measure primary and secondary psychopathic traits. It is the Levenson scale, and is here: http://personality-testing.info/tests/LSRP.php

Took it recently and scored, iirc, over 24% of respondents for primary psychopathy (which is thankfully low), and over 85% of respondents for secondary psychopathy (which is very high). I'm pretty clearly not a psychopath, though, seeing as I spend half my life torturing myself with guilt and self-hatred.

*measureS

i also scored 36%. i'm fine with stepping over people to reach my goals. n.b. it didn't say 'fuck people over'.

9%

ha I had to ponder the semantics of "stepping over" as well

Well shit, 42%

I win?

*crosses self*

21%

I scored 24%, but I think this is higher than it would have been partly because my non-psychopathic self-doubt and cautiousness compelled me to answer 'slightly disagree' rather than 'strongly disagree' to most of the questions.

YOUR SCORE 42%
Though your conscience is in the right place you also have a pragmatic streak and generally aren’t afraid to do your own dirty work! You’re no shrinking violet - but no daredevil either. You generally have little trouble seeing things from another person’s perspective but, at the same time, are no pushover. ‘Everything in moderation – including moderation’ might sum up your approach to life.

61% lol. You all are too nice. Got the same blurb as sarahell though.

48%. But I also did it a week or so ago and got 30-something, so Xmas obviously made me psychotic.

9%, but some of that's just because I'm a wimp.

12%

what are you guys agreeing with? i hope it was just the roller coasters!

"I like rollercoasters, and have no reaction to seeing animals in pain."

24%. Rollercoasters, and fuckups are always someone else's fault.

42%. should I, or more importantly, the people around me be worried?

27%, same answers as ledge

Twitter tells me that every hardcore fashion person who took this test got 70 per cent and they were proud of their scores.

I got 42, but my dad was/sister is a total sociopath, so could have been worse.

18% - I think I must be feeling particularly guilty about causing fuckups today.

Longer test that emil.y posted is slightly more interesting.

You score (1) for primary psychopathy was higher than 0% of people who have taken this test.
You score (3.3) for secondary psychopathy was higher than 81.09% of people who have taken this test.

Primary psychopathy was described as the usual lack of empthay/thrill-seeking etc but secondary was described thusly:

Secondary psychopathy is the antisocial aspects of psychopathy; rule breaking and a lack of effort towards socially rewarded behavior.

^^^Kind of disregards that there might be other aspects of "rule breaking" and "lack of effort towards socially rewarded behaviour" than just psychopathy? (e.g. rules and rewards which are impossible to follow or attain due to other (societal) pressure?) e.g. if the rule one is breaking is "whites only at the lunch counter" then breaking that rule is not evidence of psychopathy, but its exact opposite, a sense of justice or fairness or indeed empathy?

You score (1.2) for primary psychopathy was higher than 5.51% of people who have taken this test.
You score (2.6) for secondary psychopathy was higher than 54% of people who have taken this test.

Yep - these psychological tests usually make subtle and not-so-subtle accommodations to conservative social conventions.