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  • Go to a party with fifty people in it, there’s a psychopath, a full-blown psychopath there.

  • There’s probably five borderline psychopaths there. Theyre not going to kill you, rape

  • you, or maybe even take your money, but theyre going to manipulate the situation, make you

  • look bad, or use you in some way. Something bad is going to happen. And if you sense that

  • people have a sense that something is wrong with somebody, you walk away,you don’t fight

  • these guys, because theyre masters at manipulation. The psychopath, in its simplest form, is an

  • intraspecies predator, is a predator on other humans. It is hard to look at the actual behavior

  • of a psychopath and say that thing is psychopathic or not, because psychopaths will come to the

  • rescue of people. “Can I help you up, maam?” They, they can see the outward behaviors,

  • and they just can mimic it to get along. But fundamentally, they don’t feel it. You know,

  • some psychopathic traits and what goes along with it can be very advantageous. First of

  • all youre fearless. You walk into a room, you own everybody, and you look like you own

  • everybody, and they let you own them because you have that aura around you, that charisma,

  • that light. That’s why elect people president, because they have that light around them.

  • Another thing is youre not very susceptible to pain. Pain doesn’t bother me, and also

  • when youre caught doing something, you have no tells. You could be caught red handed,

  • you know, having an affair with somebody, and you could say, ‘no that’s not me’,

  • it’s like, are you going to believe me or your lying eyes. And so it’s this ability

  • to lie, without any tells, because in fact it doesn’t cause any anxiety. Two main areas

  • of the brain of a psychopath that are not regulated correctly: orbital cortex and the

  • amygdala. Orbital cortex is involved in inhibiting your behavior. Now, the amygdala, on the other

  • hand, really causes behavior. And normally theyre in balance. They inhibit each other.

  • Now, in a psychopath, theyre both turned off, so they don’t inhibit each other, and

  • they don’t regulate it. So the normal balance of animal drives and your social interactions,

  • your morality, are not right. It’s never right. I mean, there’s a time for aggression.

  • There’s a time for killing, even. There’s a time for sex. And part of it is how the

  • rest of the brain is able to tell your orbital cortex the social context is correct now.

  • Psychopaths don’t have that. Theyre doing things completely out of context, out of social

  • context, and that’s the problem. Usually the question is, what percent do you think

  • is due to genetics, and what percent is due to environment? And it turns out not to be

  • the great question to ask. Because it looks like the answer is, if you are born with the

  • biological markers for psychopathy, for example, that is the genetics and the altered brain

  • pattern, early on. If you are a susceptible kid, then environment means everything. It

  • means a lot. Maybe eighty percent. Because those kids can be really thrown off track,

  • and they can be helped by a good environment too. Back in the early 90s, some of my colleagues

  • were studying these killers, real bad guys, some serial killers, nasty guys. And they

  • asked me to come in to look at the brains. So I put myself and some other people in as

  • normal. And I got to the last scan, and I looked at it, and it was like completely pathological.

  • And I told the technician, I said, “You got these mixed up. There’s obviously, you

  • know, a psychopath or one of the killers. We just mixed the pile up. Go check it.”

  • And he went and checked the machine and everything. He came back, he goes, “No, it’s one of

  • these controls.” And so when I pulled back the name, the tag covering the name, of course

  • was my name on it, and we had a good laugh about it. We were so busy, I kind of blew

  • it off. Which seems incredible. You know, most people go, we gotta be kidding! But I

  • said, I know who I am. I’m not a psychopath. There’s something wrong with the data, or,

  • you know, something’s wrong. I mean, within a year and a half, all the other genetics

  • came back, and I had all the genetic markers for violence and, you know, this poor empathy

  • and everything associated with psychopathy. So I had the two main biological markers.

  • I still laughed at it. Well, it wasn’t till about 2010, I was invited to give a talk in

  • Oslo, Norway. And they talked to me for a few hours. They had my data, and they said,

  • Oh, by the way, youre probably a borderline psychopath.” I went, “What?!” And that’s

  • the first time I took it seriously, because these people didn’t know me. They were just

  • going from the scientific data from interviewing me. And when I flew back, that’s when everything

  • changed. And so, I asked my wife. I said, “Don’t tell me anything, now. I’m not

  • gonna be mad.” And I did that to my close friends and family. They all said the same

  • thing. They said extreme narcissist, you have the extreme, you know, youre very aggressive,

  • and on and on. Youre cold. I’m very fortunate, you know. I was, grew up in a wonderful family.

  • And, and those genes were never really triggered in a bad direction. Even though I’m, I have

  • those traits, they didn’t go far south, because I should be a really bad guy.

Go to a party with fifty people in it, there’s a psychopath, a full-blown psychopath there.

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