The Wisdom of Psychopaths Read Online Free Page B

better at decoding vulnerability, then there had to be applications. There had to be ways in which, rather than being a drain on society, this talent conferred some advantage. Enlightenment dawned when I met a friend at the airport. We all get a bit paranoid going through customs, I mused—even when we’re perfectly innocent. But imagine what it would feel like if we
did
have something to hide.
    Thirty undergraduate students took part in my experiment, half of whom had scored high on the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, the other half low. There were also five “associates.” The students’ job was easy. They had to sit in a classroom and observe the associates’ movements as they entered through one door and exited through another, traversing, en route, a small, elevated stage. But there was a catch. The students also had to note who was “guilty”: which of the five was concealing a scarlet handkerchief.
    To raise the stakes and give the students something to go on, the “guilty” associate was handed £100. If the jury correctly identified the guilty party—if, when the votes were counted, the person with the handkerchief came out on top—then they had to give the money back. If, on the other hand, they got away with it and the finger of suspicion fell more heavily on one of the others, then the “guilty” associate would stand to be rewarded. They would keep the £100.
    The nerves were certainly jangling when the associates made their entrance. But which of the students would make the better “customs officers”? Would the psychopaths’ predatory instincts prove reliable? Or would their nose for vulnerability let them down?
    The results were extraordinary. Over 70 percent of those who scored high on the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale correctly picked out the handkerchief-smuggling associate, compared to just 30 percent of the low scorers. Zeroing in on weakness may well be part of a serial killer’s toolkit. But it may also come in handy at the airport.
Psychopath Radar
    In 2003, Reid Meloy, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, conducted an experiment that looked at the flip side of the scarlet-handkerchief equation. Sure, traditional “hole-in-one” psychopaths may well have a reputation for sniffing out vulnerability. But they’re also known for giving us the creeps. Tales from clinical practice and reports from everyday life are replete with utterances from those who’ve encountered these ruthless social predators: mysterious, visceral aphorisms such as “the hair stood up on the back of my neck” or “he made my skin crawl.” But is there really anything to it? Do our instincts stand up to scrutiny? Are we as good at picking up on psychopaths as psychopaths are at picking up on us?
    To find out, Meloy asked 450 criminal justice and mental health professionals whether they’d ever experienced such odd physical reactions when interviewing a psychopathic subject: violent criminals with all the dials on the mixing desk cranked right up to max. The results left nothing to the imagination. Over three-quarters of them said that they had, with female respondents reporting a higher incidence of the phenomenon than males (84 percent compared to 71 percent), and master’s/bachelor level clinicians reporting a higher incidence than either those at doctoral level or, on the other side of the professional divide, law enforcement agents (84 percent, 78 percent, and 61 percent, respectively). Examples included “felt like I might be lunch”; “disgust … repulsion … fascination”; and “an evil essence passed through me.”
    But what are we picking up on, exactly?
    To answer this question, Meloy goes back in time to prehistory and the shadowy, spectral dictates of human evolution. There are a number of theories about how psychopathy might first have developed, and we’ll be looking at those a little later on. But an overarching question in the