the psychopath challenge

[Gilly]

yeah, I pretty much took his glib self-promotions in stride, unconsciously assuming any tension could be easily quelled, but when he came to our work that day, all glossy-eyed and giddy for a cigarette, the answer was pretty obvious.

Yeah I remember when chef got all freaked out by him, lol. But yeah, if he hadn't been a leech, I could have been ok with him. Kinda glad I wasn't though.

He was interesting though. He confirmed my suspicion that psychopaths aren't just "empty" and do obviously have feelings. Just not empathy.

[strrrng]

it is interesting, given that they all exhibit the same childish bemusement during interrogations, without devolving into incoherent babble. though ian did react more overtly when you called him a snake, and I can recall him making some defense about how he meditated every day when I brought up the prospect of sociopathy, lol. so I think the disparity between the frontal cortex and hindbrain functions suspends their awareness of the social 'bridge' at the basis of what we think of as empathy to a tactical periphery, such that they remain emotionally unaffected by things precisely because they're all appraised as potential threats.

[jessica129]

18

[silke]

meh. wrong approach. looking at effects of one cause and saying that they add up to the cause is not science - it's backwards thinking. There are more than one cause for each effect, and many, even most of the same effects can be in one individual without psychopathy being at all present, which yes, is mentioned, but the "test" gives an entirely wrong impression, because the effects being listed in the test -- have nothing to do with the problem. They are present when someone is a psychopath, but say absolutely nothing about whether someone is or not. What makes someone a psychopath is a lack of empathy, narcissism, etc.

to clarify -- an example: horses have 4 legs, but having 4 legs doesn't make something more likely to be a horse than a cow. too many of the things the test focused on were VERY peripheral things that are present in completely healthy individuals to the same extent or greater extent than their presence in psychopaths.

I think the problem is that the word "psychopath" it too often used interchangeably with phrases like "serial killer" or "violent criminal" which conflates psychopathy with violence, criminal behavior as well as various psychotic disorders. If "psychopathy" was used to simply denote a deficit in amygdalal activity then this set of question would make more sense. There are many people who have these deficits and who are lacking in ability to emotionally sync with their environment, but who nevertheless lead normal lives. I particularly enjoyed this documentary where one of the researchers in course of studying psychopathy finds out that he is a psychopath going by the criteria of his own research, that his MRI scans and genetic profile matched those of criminals participating in the studies, yet he own life has been so different:

[ArchonAlarion]

8 out of a possible 33

Basically, I'm not a go-getter, "fast & furious" douche bag.

[FDG]

Your Psychopath Challenge score is high:

26 out of a possible 33

Meh, we even got the same score!

[Trevor]

10

[Raver]

I found the article below on psychopaths to be very interesting. It basically describes psychopaths as being superhuman and men of the future.

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/subclin.html

[silke]

apparently psychopaths have an impaired sense of smell

"People with psychopathic tendencies have an impaired sense of smell, which points to inefficient processing in the front part of the brain. ... The researchers found that those individuals who scored highly on psychopathic traits were more likely to struggle to both identify smells and tell the difference between smells, even though they knew they were smelling something. ... Both phenomena have been independently traced to dysfunction in part of the brain called the orbito-frontal complex (OFC)."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0920115739.htm

[Oaky]

18 out of a possible 33

[Aquagraph]

8 out of a possible 33

Basically, I'm not a go-getter, "fast & furious" douche bag.

Unlike me, Ashton and FDG.

[Azure Flame]

18

[Gilly]

I found the article below on psychopaths to be very interesting. It basically describes psychopaths as being superhuman and men of the future.

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/subclin.html

In a society characterized by copious advertising and all kinds of temptations, a person with poor impulse control is not set up to succeed by default. If they are "evolutionarily forward," it is a mere sidegrade due to circumstances of, well, capitalism, rather than a full "upgrade" over typical humans.

[squirreltual]

Ime the pivot is the family/financial situation they are born into. They are undoubtedly good for the gene pool, just irritating to live with.

[Raver]

In a society characterized by copious advertising and all kinds of temptations, a person with poor impulse control is not set up to succeed by default. If they are "evolutionarily forward," it is a mere sidegrade due to circumstances of, well, capitalism, rather than a full "upgrade" over typical humans.

I agree to an extent, I find that in the end it all balances out somehow where the positive qualities are equally cancelled out by the negative qualities. However, I think a sociopath would be far more likely to suffer from poor impulse control than a psychopath though. I wouldn't call it an upgrade either, but rather a deviance that enables them to reproduce far easier than a typical person and manipulate people to their whims if they desired to imo.

[Gilly]

I agree to an extent, I find that in the end it all balances out somehow where the positive qualities are equally cancelled out by the negative qualities. However, I think a sociopath would be far more likely to suffer from poor impulse control than a psychopath though. I wouldn't call it an upgrade either, but rather a deviance that enables them to reproduce far easier than a typical person and manipulate people to their whims if they desired to imo.

Well from a clinical perspective sociopathy and psychopathy are different words for the same phenomenon, and while I personally make a distinction between the two terms, I'm curious how you are defining them.

[Shazaam]

I would think eventually psychopaths/narcissism would just become their own worst enemy, they are too ostracized from social groups. If you're being too narc, the people will band together and push you away.... it's what happens to Jews if they're not careful but it can happen to every individual because there's always so much of a test to see how genuinely giving you are to others, like everybody else kinda wants everybody else to be the saint, but ironically of course you grow more looking at your own shit and changing it, and then in turn helping others.

but yeah they are sooo much better at just competing and being strong and influencing people more on an objective scale and also creating narcisisstic business projects out of their own psychosis, that empathy people like to consume because without an empathetic person giving their healing light to anything... how is anything really truly improving, there's duality... but also people who are too psychopathic really go too far and the audience looks away, they turn off the tv - and then the psychopath disappears back into the nothingness from whence it came.

their downfall is you have to remove yourself from others to be strong, because Empathy people grow by being United and the Oneness of emotional truth will just crit them for 150,000,000 damage and they will feel too much narcissistic shame. Narcissists grow either by inspiring the empaths or being psychopathic villains and it's in their own best interest to be a good guy.

[alklonth]

-polr have more chances in the test to become a good psycho

[jessica129]

It seems like it'd be fun to be a psychopath. Like half the traits they list are just badass. I'm already devoid of emotions so I might as well try to be a psychopath. We'll see. Although I think I dated one before and they're truely sick individuals.

[Raver]

Well from a clinical perspective sociopathy and psychopathy are different words for the same phenomenon, and while I personally make a distinction between the two terms, I'm curious how you are defining them.

Imo, from what I've gathered through my own research is that they differ in some subtle ways. Psychopathy supposedly is a result of genetics as opposed to upbringing and these kind of individuals are better at hiding their true selves in the sense that they are a wolf in sheep's clothing. They tend to be more responsible and affable on the surface unless they choose you as their victim for whatever reason. Unlike sociopaths they are aware of others people's needs, but they simply do not care. You can think of psychopathy as being a slow poison in that it is not easily detectable, but very deadly. Sociopathy on the other hand is a result of environmental upbringing as opposed to genetics that was either a result of harsh parenting and/or hanging out with the wrong kind of crowd during childhood. They are less capable of hiding their true selves and may carry on the stigma of a criminal or undesirable individual. Unlike psychopaths they are usually unaware of other people's needs. Sociopathy can be seen as a sharp knife in that it's very noticeable and deadly.

[Dusan Korolija]

ENTJ's are psychotic. The real psychopaths are the ENTP's

[Absurd]

It seems like it'd be fun to be a psychopath. Like half the traits they list are just badass. I'm already devoid of emotions so I might as well try to be a psychopath. We'll see. Although I think I dated one before and they're truely sick individuals.

Not anymore, they're not devoid of them, recent study on them shows that. They can turn it off and turn it on, the emotions.

[Beautiful sky]

Ok this thread is really ridiculous now.

[Absurd]

Ok this thread is really ridiculous now.

Better don't take that test...

[ragnar]

http://www.wisdomofpsychopaths.com/

I got this:

Your Psychopath Challenge score is low:
5 out of a possible 33