The orgins of criminality as a feature of sociopathy (part 1)

“People tend to think of psychopaths as criminals. In fact, the majority of psychopaths aren’t criminal.”

--Dr. Robert Hare

In his seminal treatise The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality (1941), Hervey Cleckley theorized that sociopathy was due to an underlying impairment in emotional processing, e.g. an emotional colorblindness.

Common manifestations of this impairment included emotional disconnectedness:

• ·        lack of feelings of guilt
• ·        shallow emotions
• ·        self-centeredness
• ·        lack of empathy
• ·        insincerity
• ·        lack of awareness or understanding of their own emotional states
• ·        failure to imbue sexual behavior with emotional meaning

Adaptive (positive) traits:

• ·        intelligence and social aptitude
• ·        absence of irrationality
• ·        boldness and confidence
• ·        low incidence of suicide

And maladaptive (negative) traits:

• ·        deceitfulness
• ·        unreliability
• ·        impulsivity
• ·        failure to learn from experience
• ·        unrealistic expectations that things will work out
• ·        recklessness, especially when intoxicated
• ·        atypical sexual behavior

Modern researchers would call Cleckley’s sociopath a “Factor 1 psychopath”. Factor 1 traits make up the first half of Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) and/or the similar set of personality traits in Scott Lillienfeld’s Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI).

Factor 1 sociopaths are associated with:

·        High social abilities and emotional resilience. Hall et al. (2004).

·        High five-factor model (FFM) extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness. Id. The Five-Factor Model includes the five major personality traits that all people share in different levels: extraversion, openness to experiences, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness. These standardized traits are used to compare different personality types or reflect the prevalence of certain personality characteristics in particular populations, like sociopaths.

o   FFM extraversion is associated with social confidence, social adeptness, and charm.

o   FFM openness is associated with novelty seeking, adventurousness, and openness to unconventional beliefs and behaviors.

o   FFM conscientiousness is associated with an awareness of the effects of one’s actions.

·        Low FFM neuroticism. Id.

o   FFM neuroticism is a preoccupation with avoiding negative experiences or punishment, worrying, focusing on problems, and an inability to cope with every day stressors. People low on neuroticism are much more influenced by positive rewards than punishment.

·        High verbal intelligence and personal and parental socioeconomic status. Id.

·        High self-interest and self-regard, prone to manipulation and Machiavellian behaviors. Harpur, Hare, & Hakstian, 1989; Hare, 1991; Verona et al., 2001.

·        Long-term planning to use people and things in an instrumental way to achieve the psychopath’s desired aim. Patrick & Zempolich, 1998; Porter & Woodworth, 2006.

·        Low empathy. Hare, 2003.

·        Social dominance. Hare, 1991; Harpur et al., 1989; Verona et al., 2001.

·        Low fearfulness, distress, and depression. Harpur et al., 1989; Hicks & Patrick, 2006.

·        Low physical responses to fearful situations. Cf. Patrick, 1994, 2007.

Patrick, Fowles, Krueger (2009).

Are you surprised at how many positive characteristics there are? It’s easy to imagine how traits like emotional resilience and social dominance could promote success. Or how low fearfulness and depression might improve overall mood? How extraversion and adventurousness might help in love, business, and overall life satisfaction? Indeed, I receive several emails a month asking me to help the writer become more sociopathic.

Noticeably absent in Cleckley’s sociopath are traits like intentional cruelty, sadism, misanthropy, or even violence. Id. In fact, only three out of fifteen of Cleckley’s sociopaths showed high interpersonal aggressiveness. Id. They were no one’s angels, but nor were they devils. Instead, they were “charming ne’er-do-wells who harm others incidentally rather than deliberately.”  Id. Cleckley even argued that sociopaths are less prone to violence because they’re less likely to be emotionally triggered. Id.