Responses to a hypothetical

Ok, we had a good split of responses from the hypothetical. There were 60 total. Approximately 29 people identified as sociopathic. Of those 29, six were diagnosed. Only 16 total people total were diagnosed with anything, including sociopathy. If you're curious to see all the responses, here's a link (there are 9000 total words).

My response to the hypothetical was that if extreme pain was an issue, we should pair up empaths with each other. If it is true that they feel each others' pain and find it painful themselves to inflict pain, then when an empath smashes another empath's fingers smashed with a hammer, that should be a twofer in terms of amount of pain juice. So my main thought was, given that we are in this situation, we should handle the task in the most efficient way possible.

I gave the hypothetical to me extreme empath friend. She suggested that she just wouldn't play. She would spend that time trying to find a way out or just die because she didn't think it was likely that we would be released after the fluid was collected anyway. Interestingly, she has always bucked what most people (including me) would just accept as their lot. For instance, as a child she refused to go to Kindergarten until her father started bribing her with coffee.

Her neurotypical significant other said that he would lock himself up in a room and just hope to avoid anybody, maybe even take a nap because that's how he deals with stress.

Using those three responses and what I predicted would be a fourth, I came up with four categories of responses: (1) cooperative (main goal is figuring a way to get it done, not necessarily to hurt people), (2) opposition (active resistance, (3) avoidance (passive resistance or noncompliance), and (4) sadism (primarily concerned with hurting people). I coded the responses accordingly (see document linked above).

Perhaps people who read this blog won't be surprised, but the large majority of sociopaths chose cooperating. As one person put it, once they heard the rules of the game they became "task-oriented." Why is this? I'm not entirely sure, but when presented with a game like this, sociopaths (high-functioning?) seem less likely to challenge the underlying assumption and more likely to find a way to game the system from the inside. As long as I'm pretty sure the game isn't rigged I'm most likely to play by the rules (and do it better than anyone else by being creative) than to completely subvert them. For instance, in my younger days I would scam people all of the time but didn't tend to outright steal from them.

Cooperative sociopaths were either coldly rationale about getting the job done or were trying to game the inherent weaknesses of the set-up. Interestingly while sociopaths seemed intent on trying to game the system, they were also concerned with the noncompliance of others and how they might try to enforce compliance. They treated the exercise as if it was a game of Diplomacy, tending to advocate for a more regimented and organized approach with due care to isolate the victims and rabblerousers lest their fear, panic, or rebellion spread. (Prompted by a fear of mob mentality? Desire to keep control of the group?)  While the cooperative sociopaths were concerned with emotions and psychological states to the extent they predicted individual behavior, the sociopaths were not concerned with minimizing psychological or emotional scarring, only physical (and they were oddly concerned about that).

In comparison, non-sociopaths who selected cooperation were often concerned about minimizing pain overall, and even emotional pain. Some were worried about minimizing their own pain or maximizing their own chances of survival. Some were primarily concerned with keeping some measure of at least an illusion of control over the situation, or at least being creative with the solutions to the problem.

Interestingly, most of the non-sociopaths answered both questions (how would you feel and what would you do), whereas far fewer sociopaths bothered to answer how they would feel. Even if the sociopath did address how he would feel, it was often in terms of non-emotional reactions, e.g. being impressed, sighing at the bad luck, or just being angry or frustrated.

More interesting still, when asked to imagine the reactions of their "opposites." sociopaths were most likely to focus on their emotions as opposed to what they would do. In contrast, non-sociopaths focused on what the opposites would do, not what they would feel. This suggests that sociopaths tend to see non-sociopaths in terms of their emotional reactions and non-sociopaths see sociopaths in terms of their actions.

Sociopaths also tended to see empath reactions more in terms of group dynamics (e.g., the sociopath would try to predict how they would act as a group), whereas non-sociopaths imagined sociopaths as operating as more of a lone wolf. Again, this is probably true to life -- statistically this situation would have only 1 or 2 sociopaths and the main thrust of the group dynamic would be from non-sociopaths.

I was pleased to see that empaths (at least the ones who visit this site) didn't assume that sociopaths would be uniformly sadistic. Rather, most of them correctly predicted that sociopaths would be rational and efficient (only two sociopaths were coded as sadistic, the other two sadistic responders were BPD and narcissism).

My favorite response about what your opposite might do was from an aspie: "I honestly have little idea."

Thanks for participating!