Murderous Minds (28 page)

As a psychologist, Mathieu knows there are dark personalities: “There are a lot of behaviors of great leaders that are very similar to ones that psychopaths would present.”

Her business students like it when she talks about dark personalities. They tell her they like having narcissistic features; they are proud of it. “It’s another world,” she said.

That other world includes a fair number of people who are either successful psychopaths or who at least have a significant number of psychopathic traits. Industrial and organizational psychologist Paul Babiak, Ph.D., and his co-authors examined 203 corporate professionals who had been picked by their employers to take part in seven management-development programs. During these programs, the researchers used psychopathy evaluation tools, the PCL–R or its screening version, to get to know them better. They found that 3.9 percent of this group possessed psychopathic traits higher than those found in the rest of society.
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After numerous reporters misquoted their results and trumpeted the false “news” that ten percent of Wall Street Employees were psychopaths,
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Hare, a co-author of the study, explained that wherever they got that figure, it wasn’t from his scientist colleagues. He added that “The sample was not randomly selected or necessarily representative of managers or executives, or of the corporations in which they work. The approximately 4% who had a PCL–R score high enough for a research description as psychopathic cannot be generalized to the larger population of managers and executives, or to CEOs and the ‘financial services industry.’”
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Some psychologists who have worked with the business community, nevertheless, would be surprised if the actual percentage is not higher than 3.9 percent.
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The nature or structure of the psychopathic traits seen in this 3.9 percent appeared to be the same as that in many psychopaths you would find in your
nearest prison or in your community. The presence of psychopathic traits seemed to help the business managers in terms of their in-house ratings of charisma and presentation style. They were seen as creative, strategic thinkers with good communication skills. The downside for them was the negative association of their psychopathic traits with their in-house ratings of responsibility and performance. They were not great team players, and they lacked management skills and overall accomplishments. Not surprisingly, considering all we have learned about psychopathy, “They look good, but they’re not seen as being very effective so they can’t necessarily do the job,” Mathieu said.

Other successful individuals with many psychopath traits might choose work that offers more modest material rewards than business or finance: law enforcement, the military, or sales, for example. Whatever their economic status, when they can get away with it, these people may lie, deceive, manipulate, intimidate, and flatter to promote themselves and get what they want. As Andrea L. Glenn and her co-authors wrote, “Although the use of these tactics may have potentially serious negative social consequences, some individuals may be better able to escape detection than others.”
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Based on their experience, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare estimate that one in ten people in the general population can be considered “soul mates” to psychopaths.
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These are people who do not meet the criteria of psychopathy using the cutoff of the psychopathy checklist, but they nevertheless have enough psychopathic traits that they also have negative effects on those around them.

If someone with psychopathic personality traits is not undone by impulsivity, they will have a better chance of hanging out with the rest of us and their successful psychopathic soul mates than with their unsuccessful ones. In this case, they might have the inclinations of criminal psychopaths, but are smart enough or lucky enough not to get caught.

Cold-blooded versus Hot-blooded Brains

A common interpretation of “success” in the community of psychopaths is that it describes someone who does not engage in antisocial activities, or at least none serious enough to earn prison time. The people they encounter,
however—co-workers, associates, friends and family—often pay a price by being used and abused. It is a difference between the cold-blooded nature of psychopathic action versus hot-blooded impulses from emotional passion. The distinction between antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy is highlighted in an interesting study conducted by Sarah Gregory of King’s College London and her collaborators.
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They compared the brains of 17 violent criminals with antisocial personality disorder plus psychopathy (the people with whom you really don’t want to share a prison cell), to 27 violent criminals with antisocial personality disorder without psychopathy (well, if you have to share…), and to 22 non-criminals (your best bet for a roomie). The researchers made an effort to control their study by matching their subjects for age, IQ , and lifelong substance abuse histories. They also excluded anyone with a history of psychosis, bipolar disorder, or major depression.

The senior author of the study, Nigel Blackwood, described the differences between the subjects in the study in a King’s College London press release: “There is a clear behavioral difference amongst those diagnosed with ASPD depending on whether or not they also have psychopathy. We describe those without psychopathy as ‘hot-headed’ and those with psychopathy as ‘cold-hearted’.”

The “cold-hearted” subjects had reduced gray matter in the part of the prefrontal cortex that is located as far to the front of the brain as you can get, right behind the forehead. They found the same thing in brain tissue situated around the edges of their temporal lobes. (See Figure 9.) Interestingly, the brains of criminals with antisocial personality disorder without psychopathy, the “hot-headed” group, like the brains of non-criminals, did not show this abnormality.

If reduced gray matter in these regions, resulting from fewer or smaller neurons, turns out to be a feature typical of psychopaths, it would be consistent with their behavior and with the apparent contributions of these structures in making humans capable of feeling empathy, acting morally, feeling remorse, and the type of behavior that generally makes us welcome around others.

Anatomical Disadvantages

Are successful psychopaths simply smarter than criminal psychopaths? Do they have better impulse control than less successful, cruder antisocial
characters? Has their environment, upbringing, or education given them an advantage? Are their brains different? The limited amount of research that has been done suggests the answers may be Yes to these questions.

Yu Gao and Raine of the University of Pennsylvania suggested in 2010 that successful psychopaths are successful because they enjoy “intact or enhanced neurobiological functioning.”
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This advantage may explain their average or even above-average intellectual abilities. With better cognitive functioning, they find it easier to get their way without regard to the feelings of others and without getting caught or having to resort to violence. Even though they don’t experience emotions exactly like most people, they are nevertheless motivated to satisfy themselves and get what they want, whether it is power, money, or sex. They often have well-developed abilities to fake feelings and manipulate others to help them achieve their goals.

If Gao and Raine are correct, unsuccessful psychopaths may end up as criminals because they were unlucky enough to be born with, or to develop, brains and nervous systems that prevent them from thinking things through and experiencing emotions like most people. These deficits could be the reason they resort to criminal, and in some cases violent, behavior. It is possible that impulsivity and a desire for thrills to offset muted emotions help undo unsuccessful psychopaths.

A few studies suggest
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that there are indeed neuroanatomical differences between psychopaths who have had no, or only minor, run-ins with the law, compared to the psychopaths you are liable to meet in prison. For example, reduced gray matter has been reported in the prefrontal cortex of criminal psychopaths, but not in successful psychopaths. The higher-order executive functions of the frontal lobes of unsuccessful psychopaths seem to be impaired, compared to frontal-lobe function in successful psychopaths. In fact, preliminary research suggests that successful psychopaths may have better frontal-lobe function than both unsuccessful psychopaths and even many non-psychopaths.

Another difference between the two groups indicates a possible difference in the way their peripheral nervous systems work. Unsuccessful psychopaths have been shown to have reduced activity in the part of the nervous system that controls involuntary functions such as heart rate and sweating in response to events and stimuli with emotional meaning. Both
of these functions, heart rate and skin conductance, are reduced in unsuccessful, but not in successful, psychopaths. As with their frontal-lobe function, successful psychopaths may enjoy an advantage over others, criminal psychopaths and non-psychopaths, in their involuntary (or what scientists call autonomic) nervous systems too.

Remember the Hippocampus

Back in 2004, Adrian Raine and his group reported that a structure in the limbic system, the hippocampus (Figure 11), differed in unsuccessful psychopaths compared to successful psychopaths.
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Previous studies had suggested that the hippocampus did not look or work the same in institutionalized violent individuals, including psychopaths, compared to non-offenders. Raine’s preliminary study was the first to make a side-by-side comparison of successful and unsuccessful psychopaths.

The researchers managed to locate 12 suitable, successful psychopaths working at temporary employment agencies who they defined as having PCL–R scores between 23 and 31. Their average was close to 28. These successful psychopaths had never been charged with crimes, although they reported breaking the law after being assured their interviews were protected by a legally binding confidentiality agreement between the researchers and subjects. This group was compared to 16 unsuccessful psychopaths who had been convicted of crimes. Their PCL–R scores averaged 31.5 and ranged from 23 to 40. The control group included 23 people with an average score of 11, ranging from 2 to 14.

The hippocampus was larger on the right side compared to the left in 94 percent of the unsuccessful psychopaths. Less than 50 percent of the successful psychopaths and non-psychopathic controls had this asymmetry.

The hippocampus is often described as the place in the brain where long-term memories are made. This association was tragically illustrated by a patient known as “HM” to several generations of neurologists and neuroscientists.

In 1953, Connecticut resident Henry Gustav Molaison involuntarily provided a famous example of just how specialized some brain tissue can appear to be.
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Molaison was incapacitated by epileptic seizures, which had
started when he was ten years old. By the time he was sixteen, the severity and frequency of his seizures made it impossible for him to live even a semblance of a normal life.

Eighteen years later, in a last-ditch effort to provide some relief from his incapacitating symptoms, surgeon William Scoville cut out small sections of Molaison’s brain located beneath his temples to a depth of a little over 3 inches. Removing the medial temporal lobes including the hippocampi on both sides of Molaison’s brain partially relieved his epileptic symptoms, but at a terrible price.

He was still Henry Molaison—his personality had not changed—but the surgery cost him the ability to form new memories. He could no longer remember people he had just met if they left the room and came back in. He could not remember places or anything that happened for any significant length of time after his operation. He had lost his ability to form long-term memories, although he could remember what had happened before his surgery.

Known by his initials HM, Molaison attained a type of celebrity in neuroscience circles. His name appeared in more than 11,000 journal articles. He helped convince neuroscientists that the process involved in forming long-term memories is not distributed throughout most of the brain. If it were, damaging a small part of the brain would be expected to only partially interfere with the process. Molaison’s unfortunate experience identified a specific region of the brain that played a crucial role in the formation of long-term memories.

But the hippocampus, like all parts of the limbic system, is interconnected with the other key brain structures. It plays a role in more than long-term memory formation. For example, it is a key player in the processes that regulate aggression. And it plays a role in helping people learn when they should be afraid in particular situations. If the hippocampus or its connections are abnormal, it makes sense to wonder if such a deficit might not lead to impulsive behavior with antisocial consequences in unsuccessful psychopaths. Destroy the hippocampus completely and you end up with total short-term memory loss. But if you only impair its ability to participate in neural circuits underlying behavior, then you get more subtle deficits.

One explanation for the persistence of asymmetries in the brain such as these is that they are the result of developmental abnormalities. The findings do not prove this is the reason nearly all of the unsuccessful psychopaths showed signs of uneven hippocampi, but it is consistent with the suggestion that something went wrong somewhere during the development of their brains, as Raine and his colleagues contend. And this implies that this neuroanatomical abnormality might influence their behavior and personalities, specifically their criminal psychopathic behavior.