Hidden True Crime - 5 Psychological Secrets Criminals Don't Want You to Know | Criminal Psychologist Explains

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

Have you ever wondered what traits make up a criminal? Oftentimes our minds go straight to words like "evil", "psychopath", or "insane"... But the answer isn't that simple. In this episode, Dr. John Matthias explores five psychological traits that often appear in criminal offenders—and why understanding them can help us make sense of some of the most disturbing crimes. Drawing from decades of clinical and forensic psychology experience, he explains how these patterns develop, why no single trait predicts criminal behavior, and how they show up across real cases. Whether you're fascinated by criminal psychology or want a deeper understanding of the minds behind the headlines, this conversation offers thoughtful insights that go far beyond the true crime stories themselves. Sponsors: Amentara- Go to https://www.amentara.com/go/hidden and use code HIDDEN22 for 22% off your first order. Jones Road Beauty- Use code HIDDEN at https://jonesroadbeauty.com to get a Free Gift with your first purchase! #JonesRoadBeauty #ad About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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They can't put on the brakes and stop it. Hello, Hidden Gems. I am with the Dr. John Matthias, criminal psychologist. To discuss a question that he has often asked, many of you have asked us about this, The hidden elements inside a criminal, or in other words, what are five elements that Dr. John Matthias often sees in the criminals that he assesses? What is something that is a pattern of criminality?

I think maybe that's the better way to say it, or what is hidden in criminality. With that being said, Dr. John Matthias has been assessing criminals four years. And I have been covering crime with you for years now. You're also my spouse. So, hello, dear. I can't wait to after this. We have this discussion informally all the time. Yes, we do.

So here we go. Let's go public with it. Yeah, because there's some things that I have noticed now over the years covering crime myself. But number one, what would you say? Well, the first one. Well, let me start with a disclaimer about my, when we talk about the five elements, the five hidden elements of criminality, I'm talking primarily about psychological elements because there are going to be other elements, neurological, genetic, sociological, right there's so many different ways of looking at crime yeah that the discussion tonight is going to

focus specifically on more of the psychological elements so because when you when you talk about what causes crime or what causes what causes contribute to criminality it's such a broad question and there's many ways to answer that so this is a multi what we would psychologists call multi-factorial approach in terms of there's many facts There's many variables that create crime. But let's start with the most interesting one. So this is the one, this is very informal, but when I do assessments or when I do evaluations of criminals primarily to assess risk for community placement largely, at the

end of every one of my evaluations, I ask the question every single time. So I've spent hours with someone. I get to the end, and I ask the question, why do you think you committed this crime? So I asked the why question. And there's a reason I do that, and the reason I do that is I want to assess their self-awareness. I want to assess their level of insight into their own criminality.

And I'd say maybe 1% of the time, maybe less than 1% of the time, the person I'm assessing actually offers a theory of their crime. They offer a theory of the case, and they actually offer some insight into why they committed the crime. And I think that's always interesting

because it shows in those cases that they might be, if they have self-awareness, and I'm not prompting them to think about this question of what led to their crime, they might be more amenable to treatment. They might be more amenable to change, because ultimately to be successful,

on treatment, you probably need some level of self-awareness, or that's one of the goals of therapy, I think, is to create some degree of self-reflection, which then can lead to possible change. So, but let's start with, if we're going to have this discussion, I want to start with the criminals themselves, and I'll give you the answer that when I asked this question to criminals, why do you think you committed this crime, or what do you think led to this crime, or what was your motive in committing this crime? The two answers I get, typically. The first most common answer I get is I have no idea. So the most common answer I get is I don't know. And which would show a lack of self-awareness, a lack of insight. So in other words,

and meaning it's more concerning the lack of self-awareness they have. Okay, go on. Right. And that's typical. A lot of criminals, they don't, and this will get to the first element we're going to talk about in a minute, which is the lack of self-awareness, but that's exactly right. But when they do answer the question, the typical response is because I was angry. So anger comes up a lot. I get a lot of, I was really angry. So that would success the motive might be revenge, a retribution, or something along those lines. You and I sometimes talk about what we call the true crime trio, which is the major three motives behind crime would be greed, lust, and revenge. So anger would fit well within that narrative. Anger would show up as revenge, typically. But oftentimes that's, if someone does answer the

question a lot of times, they'll say, I was angry. I wanted to get back at someone. I wanted to feel good. My anger empowered me. It made me feel good. It made me feel in control. made me feel powerful. And I'll be touching on all of those areas when we proceed here. But I think that issue of anger is important for a lot of reasons. And I'll get to that as one of the five elements eventually because anger would fit into what I would call emotional dysregulation or more broadly emotional intelligence or the lack of emotional intelligence because it's It's not atypical. So that's going to be number four in our list.

We'll get to that. I'm jumping ahead. A lack of self-awareness. There's your teaser. No, a lack of self-awareness and... No, anger would be a lack of emotional intelligence. A lack of emotional intelligence. For many criminals, anger becomes the catch-all for every other emotion.

Anger becomes the way, if a criminal is feeling shame or sadness or a more difficult negative emotion that's more difficult to express, let's say shame in particular. A lot of times that's going to show up as anger. It's not going to show up as, you're not very, almost, very rarely am I going to get someone who's going to say to me because I felt ashamed. In fact, I don't know. It's a very emotionally intelligent criminal. Yeah, I don't know.

I think I may have heard that a few times. Maybe, I don't know. But it's, it's very unusual to have a criminal say. I felt so much shame that I acted out of my shame. No, what you're going to get is I was really angry. Anger becomes the emotion that they're able to express. The emotion, that becomes the catalyst or the way for someone to convey their sense of shame without feeling the shame. Because ultimately shame and humiliation are very, very difficult.

Those are sometimes called, shame is often called a self-fueling. conscious emotion, guilt, it would be another one. In other words, those are emotions that involve some sense of identity or some sense of self. So anger is a way to express shame, but without being self-conscious about it. And also, it's going to be, particularly for males, it's going to be more socially acceptable. A male is much less likely to say, oh, I felt so much shame, I felt so vulnerable. If I felt so helpful, the very few males are going to say that. They're going to say, I was angry.

And so anger becomes, if I'm asking that, why question? Anger becomes the most common response, because I was angry. The most common response is I have no idea. And on a broad stage, a great example of that would be Chris Watts. So when Chris Watts was being sentenced after he took a deal, after he acknowledged that he committed the crimes, he said, the judge asked him, essentially the same question I asked, why do you think he did this? Why do you think you did this? And he said, I don't know. And that's a typical interaction that I would have with the criminal. They're going to say,

I don't know. And so that brings us into the first hidden element, which is the lack of self-awareness. So psychologists sometimes refer to this as metacognition, or mentalization, but the simpler way to think of it is, let's call it, insight or self-awareness. So the reason why that's important is because a lack of self-awareness also means that you're very unlikely or you're often incapable of assessing consequences or repercussions. So you're not, if you don't have the self-awareness to understand why or, at least, you're, have some sense of why you're engaging in a behavior or even if you know it's wrong just to have some bigger picture, some bird's eye view of what you're doing, then you're probably not going

to understand the repercussions. So those two go together. If you don't have self-awareness, you're probably not going to understand the consequence of your behavior. And if you don't understand the consequence of your behavior, especially long term, you're going to be more impulsive and more likely to engage in that behavior. So criminals make sense. Oftentimes, oftentimes, they just have no capacity for metacognition.

They have no capacity for insight. They lack self-awareness. They can't see what they're doing. They don't understand why they're doing. They don't reflect on their behavior. Therefore, they're more likely to commit a crime because they don't see the consequences, they don't understand what they're doing, right?

They can't look ahead. And so that, I think that becomes a very, very common and prominent element of a lot of criminality. It's just this inability to self-reflect, to see what they're doing, to see the consequences, to not look ahead,

to not plan. And so I think there would be obvious reasons for why, criminals might have this quality. Growing up, we were taught choice and accountability. Think about, yeah, what you're doing. Interesting. You know that red mushroom with white spots that's been hiding in plain sight our entire lives?

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Number two. And all of these, by the way, are going to be tied together. So the lack of self-awareness is going to be closely aligned with every other element. So it wouldn't be surprising to learn that if I think about some of these hidden elements of criminality, that they're all interrelated, they're all interdependent. And this number two will be an example of that. So there's something that you, I say, this all the time. There's something that I call the fundamental theorem of criminality,

and the fundamental theorem of criminality is essentially the equation that shame and vulnerability and helplessness becomes transformed through violence. So violence becomes the means through which shame and vulnerability and helplessness leads to power. In other words, violence is the the way to take shame and transform it into something more positive, at least for a criminal, some way for a criminal to fuel control and power and invulnerability, significance. And that is the fundamental theorem of criminality. And so this would be related to number two, which would be something like pride or hubris. So ego?

Ego. No, it's, yeah, it's all related, right? Ego, pride, hubris, narcissism. If I throw out narcissism, though, I don't want that necessarily confused with the personality disorder, although certainly that could be tied to this. Sure. You'll see narcissism involved in a lot of criminality. But let's look at it more broadly in terms of this idea that criminals are

trying to transform shame into power. And again, this ties into the anger, the idea of anger, because anger becomes a way. So even if you're not committing a crime, anger becomes a way that you can engage in this idea, this fundamental theorem of criminality, even if you're not committing crimes, anger is a way to transform shame into power as well. you might see it could just be something as simple as an argument with your spouse or your partner where you feel ashamed and you don't want to acknowledge that shame you don't want to acknowledge that you feel helpless or vulnerable and so the way you express that is you become angry now take into an

extreme is when you get into criminality so let's say that a husband let's say that a couple's fighting spouses are fighting and it gets to the point where that couple can't de-escalate or they can't resolve that argument, it could result in violence. So an extreme example of that would be feeling the shame,

let's say somebody's accused of doing something or something that there's some there's some event that's going on in this couple's life and one partner feels a shame, and they don't want to acknowledge it, and they don't want to feel vulnerable. So they become angry, and the other partner doesn't back down,

and they don't back down. Everybody knows where this is going. It escalates. Maybe one partner walks away, but if they don't, now you're getting into the realm of possible criminal activity in terms of if that interaction becomes violent, you're now looking at some element of my fundamental theorem of crime,

which is this idea of shame into power. And the next Dateline episode. Right. Look for that on the next Dateline episode. But Peter Langman has talked about this with school shooters and mass shooters. He talks a lot about this idea of this transformation through violence from vulnerability to invulnerability. James Gilligan has talked a lot about this. He thinks of it in terms of pride that many, he's interviewed hundreds of

inmates that have engaged in violence and violent crimes. And what he finds is that they're all protecting their wounded egos or they're all protecting pride to some degree. But what's behind the pride is shame. What's behind the pride is a more self-conscious or vulnerable emotion like shame. So the second element I think is, and I'll tie this into the first element, which is the lack of self-awareness, because if you think of unrestrained narcissism or unrestrained hubris or megalomania or right if you think of

narcissism as a version as a as a version of someone who lacks self-awareness because if you had self-awareness you would narcissists are not capable of recognizing their grandiosity right that's what makes them so narcissistic narcissists don't know they're narcissistic because they think it's normal and they think people admire their grandiosity and people look up to them. They don't know that people don't. Entire lack of self-awareness. It's the lack of self-awareness, right. There's no self-awareness typically in personality disorders.

Narcissism would be an example of that because, right, you have this grandiosity, you have this need for admiration, you have this lack of empathy. All of that is driven. All of that begins with this. lack of self-awareness, which actually leads us to the third headed element, which has to do with insecure attachment. Oh, I did not see that one coming. I didn't see that coming.

Okay, so first, lack of self-awareness. Second, pride, ego. Third, insecure attachment. So, so insecure attachment. Go on. Let's talk. Right. So there's been a lot of research in the last five or ten years showing that many criminals have insecure attachments, not all, but the probability of criminality increases with poor attachment or insecure attachment.

And the reason for that is, well, there's several reasons. Let me tie this back to the first one, which is the lack of self-awareness. If you think about attachment, attachment is essentially giving a child a sense of safety. And if a child grows up in an environment where they don't feel safe and they don't feel attached to their primary caregiver or any caregiver, for that matter, any primary figure in their life, they're less likely. They're going to be more, they're going to be in more of a flight or flight situation. They're going to be more focused on survival. They're going to be more focused on coping with trauma if that's occurring in their lives than they are on reflecting. So in other words, children that grow up with insecure attachments are less likely to develop self-awareness

because they're less likely to take the time and their parents are less likely to mirror certain things back to them like emotions, like shame. so it's a combination of the child not having the time or energy or means and resilience to reflect on their lives, to develop this capacity for metacognition, and not having a parent that encourages the capacity to self-reflect, that allows that child, gives that child the space, the time and the space to reflect, or the time in the space to the parent, ideally, will mirror back certain emotions like,

oh, it looks like you're feeling sad. And the child will take a moment to think about that and to feel that sadness. And the child will say, I am feeling sad. But the child will mirror that back. And that very, that interaction right there, that very minor interaction can be really important in terms of developing self-awareness.

Wow. And so when you take away that safe space, for a child to feel secure and to feel safe, you're taking away this basic capacity, this basic need for the child to reflect and for the child to step back and think about their lives and to really kind of develop the sense of self.

So you're really kind of eliminating, to some degree, the ability for that child to develop a stable sense of self. And so all of that is related to this idea of attachment, and especially insecure attachment. So I think insecure attachment becomes important because now you can see how these elements are kind of, they interrelate and how they come together, that if you don't have an insecure attachment,

you're less likely to have a stable sense of self, that means you're less likely to have a sense of self-awareness, which means you're less, you're more likely to become egotistical or narcissistic or perhaps develop a personality disorder and extreme case. And so you can see, I think you can see how the, those three elements relate to each other. I feel like we need to create a criminal song because you keep saying, and then this leads to this and this leads to two,

and this leads to one and this leads to and we're right back together back to the chorus. Am I doing? Yeah. Yeah. And that brings us to number. Am I, I feel like I'm, I'm. So in other words, the insecure attachment leads to maybe the ego and the privacy, which leads to the lack of self-awareness.

And now number four was number four. Number four, number four is going to take us, it's going to take us to the lead, which was, remember what I asked criminals, why do you think you committed this crime? They said anger, anger, anger, anger. And that's going to bring us to this capacity and this ability to express and regulate emotions. So a child who lacks the capacity to, let's call it emotional dysregulation or perhaps more broadly, I would call it emotional intelligence.

So I think it would be true. It would be accurate to say that if you lack self-awareness, you're probably going to lack to some degree emotional intelligence because part of self-awareness is having a more acute sense of emotional intelligence. When I say emotional intelligence, I mean the capacity to express and identify emotions within ourselves and to recognize, and identify emotions in other people that we're interacting with. So it's not just me. It's also my ability to read other people's emotions. And so surprise, surprise, this is where empathy comes into play.

If you lack emotional intelligence and you have no capacity to regulate your own emotions, like anger, you're probably less likely to have empathy for other people. And more likely to end up on a Dateline episode. Right. Right. Or I should say hidden to crime. So a lack of emotional intelligence, insecure attachment, narcissism or ego or pride, and then what was the first one? I'm trying to remember.

You said it. Lack of self-awareness. And then emotional intelligence, lack of emotional intelligence. Lack of self-awareness, lack of self-awareness, ego or pride or narcissism. insecure attachment, and then emotional dysregulation. One thing about my job, I never know when I'm going to have to jump on camera. Between breaking news, trial, being a mom, podcast reporting, I don't have time for a full makeup routine.

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our listeners are getting a free gift on their first purchase when they use code hidden at checkout. Just head to jonesroadbeautcom and then use code hidden at checkout. After your purchase, they will ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them hidden true crime sent you. So let's think a little bit more about emotional dysregulation. So let's go back to the example we started with. So let's say a criminal is feeling a tremendous amount of shame and they can't express it. So you're in an argument with your partner.

You feel a lot of shame, but you don't want to acknowledge that shame. The argument escalates you resort to violence. So the root cause of that is your inability not only to regulate your emotion. Okay, the root cause is you're not able to, you're not able to identify and express that shame. That's what's going on. If somebody in that interaction could say, I'm feeling. a lot of shame. I feel so much shame around what I did or whatever the event was. That would probably end the argument. But because that person doesn't want to acknowledge the shame and because

that person doesn't want to acknowledge that vulnerability, probably, or that sense of helplessness or whatever they're experiencing, that gets expressed as anger, which now creates a dynamic where there's more likely that that is going to escalate. So family systems, people, people, sometimes call that symmetrical escalation, which is when two parties are engaged in a conflict, neither party is willing to back down. Something that that argument will continue to escalate until something gives. Could be violence. It could be someone leaving the room. Something is going to have to something dramatic typically is going to have to occur for that for that argument to stop. And so Part of emotional dysregulation would be impulsivity, right?

And this too is related to the lack of emotional intelligence. If you don't identify your emotions and what you're feeling and you can't express it, it's more likely to escalate. You're more likely to act out that anger or those emotions. If it's anger that you're using to express every other emotion, sadness. So anger typically will be a way to convey. way to express sadness. So I've worked with a lot of felons who simply can't express sadness. Sadness and grief were not allowed in their families.

Because sadness was seen as weakness. Many criminals will say, I was not. My father would not let me be weak. My father would not let me be vulnerable. I had to be a man. I had to be tough. Grief and sadness. I had to go out on in the playground and beat up the

other kids. And so you could see how in that situation, that child is being very restricted in terms of what they can feel and how they can identify their emotions. They're being very restricted to a particular emotion, which then becomes a blanket emotion, an umbrella emotion for every other emotion that they're not allowed to express. But here's the problem. They're going to have those other emotions. They're going to have shame, they're going to have sex. They're going to have They're going to have grief at times. Those emotions will come up. And now they don't have the tools or they don't have the ability to express those emotions.

And so, again, there's a lack of emotional intelligence. There's an inability to regulate those emotions. All of that is more likely to create problems for that person. And if you are feeling, right, if you're feeling grief and sadness and you can't express it, it's going to be transformed into anger or revenge or pride. or pride or it's a it's a really basic Freudian idea by the way this goes back this is like Freud 101 which is that if that we repress when emotions get repressed they show up somewhere else so yeah they could show up through so many addiction violence right there's a lot of ways that

this is going to get expressed and addiction by the way becomes in many cases addiction is related to a criminality. So in a different way, perhaps, maybe someone needs drugs. They break into a home. That's criminality. But it's the same dynamic. So these elements are still in play with addiction.

There's a lack of self-awareness. There's probably some narcissism. There's insecure attachment. There's emotional dysregulation. These elements are all playing onto each other. They're all feeding onto each other. And so now take a drink because now we're to number five. Now are we going to get into the grand finale here?

Well, yeah, but then I'm going to probably add a few. I don't know what the grand finale is, but I have some thoughts since covering crime. They're probably not psychological, but I'll tell you some patterns I've seen. But here, let's number five, number five. So number five is going to be, so I'm going to throw you a little bit of a curveball here because number five is not number five i think is going to get us to some other issues that i i think are equally important but if i had to pick a fifth element i would say it's something like obsessiveness so wow yeah and again i'm not i'm not so and when i say that i don't mean

oCD i don't mean the diagnosis okay I'm not talking about obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm talking about just in general being obsessive. I'm talking about rumination. I'm talking about holding a grudge. I'm talking about the inability to let something go. That may or may not be related to the diagnosis, probably not necessarily.

But many, many criminals, so many criminals I've worked with. And again, this is just informally. I don't have the exact numbers in terms of my own experience, but I've worked with hundreds of criminals and in groups, in therapy, four evaluations, both, and many, many of them, they obsess over grievances. They have grudges. They have grievances that they cannot get past. And so this is what Peter Langman talks about this all the time. So I want to talk about some of his research.

What Peter Langman says of school shooters and mass shooters is to a large extent that criminals are mass shooters and school shooters in particular are incapable of dealing with the normal disappointments and failures of daily and ordinary life. Oh. And because they can't. Appointments. Because let's say that they're rejected from a peer group, or let's say they're rejected from a club, or let's say they don't make the soccer team.

Something simple. Yeah. Many times those adolescents or young adults, whatever the case may be, they can't cope with that. They don't have the resilience. It could be because they have a personality disorder. It could be because they have insecure attachments. It could be because they have no self-aware.

Whatever the reason is, and again, you can see I'm relating it back now, that because they can't cope with those normal disappointments and rejections and failures of everyday life, which is life, they can't move on. Right. They obsess over those rejections and those disappointments, and they can't let it go. They ruminate for months, maybe for years.

And eventually, those small disappointments and this obsessiveness over these rejections or these little disappointments that many normal people would see as minor, because they can't get past that, they may show up at a college or in a class from years later. It could be months. It could be years. but they show up with an assault rifle or with, right, they show up with violent intent because they can't get past whatever the grievances, whatever caused the grievance. And to many of us, those grievances are going to seem small, but not to the criminal.

To the criminal, it's everything. And again, I can relate this back to, as Langman often does, I can relate it back to this idea of pride and narcissism. There's a, there's a, there's a potentially, there's a disappointment that the criminal can't get past and perhaps they can't get past it because their pride or their ego won't let them. They're maybe because they're so self-absorbed that they feel that they're, they feel a narcissistic insult or narcissistic injury.

and so they obsess over that. They want to repair. There's a sense here in which they want to repair that wound. They want to repair that wounded narcissism or that wounded ego. They want to repair that narcissistic insult. So they obsess over this. They don't have the self-awareness to see that they're obsessing over it. They don't have that self-awareness because, more than likely,

they didn't have that secure attachment. They didn't have that space as children. to really reflect and develop a stable sense of self. And now also they lack that emotional intelligence to cope with those emotions of disappointment, to cope with those emotions of failure, those rejections. And so the end result of that is that

oftentimes you'll see these folks showing up on Dateline or hidden true crime, as you point out. So it's actually quite scary when you all lay it out. I know I teased about a fun song earlier, but the honest truth is when you all lay it, when you lay it's actually you can see it. You can see how one leads to the other, the leads to the other,

the least the other, and the consequences are frightening. It's like a series of dominoes, but you don't necessarily, domino's falling, but you don't necessarily need them all to fall together. and sometimes one domino could be larger than the other. So with Langman's research, for example,

Langman now is much more interested in this idea that initially Langman saw violence as a way to repair a damaged sense of self. But now Langman is more interested. His current research is essentially saying, or what he is saying, is that personality disorders often drive this. So with Langman, and again, this is me, this is Langman. I just attended one of his webinars a few months ago, but his argument is that the normal failures and disappointments of everyday life,

the reason why criminals cannot get past those is because they have personality disorders. So to him, if you want to identify a personality disorder, the best way to do that is to see, and the best way to assess risk for future violence is to see how people deal with rejection and failure and disappointment. It's particularly what most people would think of as kind of minor. So a relationship ends. Can that person, so it would be typical,

if you're close to someone and you've been in a relationship with them, it would be, of course it would be typical to grieve the end of that relationship and you'd be hurt, you might feel lost, you'd feel pain, maybe you'd feel some shame, whatever, right, you'd have all those emotions. Yeah. But essentially, a healthy person would experience those emotions and then move on. They wouldn't romanate, they wouldn't obsess. The reason, according to Langman, that people can't get past that is because more than likely

there's a personality disorder or something resembling a personality disorder. And so to him, it's not just the rejection. It's not just the pride. It's also something more severe, more ingrained, more habitual. And that would be a personality disorder. But I'm not including that as one of my five. Okay. Well, I feel like you've covered.

Maybe that's the sixth sense. It would be a personality. Maybe that's the sixth element would be something like a personality disorder. I feel like you've covered. five or six, we had the bonus, the six, fairly well. The things I want to point out that I've noticed about criminals since hosting hidden true crime probably fit the six things you've laid out. In fact, maybe you can even help me place them.

Yep. One thing I've noticed, criminals seem to me to lack a really great sense of humor. Right. Okay. I agree. You agree. It's something I see across the board. Some of them think they're funny. You know, Lori Val, I thought it was funny. Alex Cox thought he was funny, and Chad thought he was funny. There's a lot of criminals that think they're funny. Maybe that goes to the lack of self-awareness, but not a lot that are genuinely, sincerely funny. And you just nailed it. That's exactly right. So let's talk. Let's think about humor. Humor, you know, there's different

types of humor, but most humor is based on the ability to read context. So what humor does essentially, people that are funny are able to take something and change the context. Take something that seems one way and then you switch the context a little bit and now it becomes something else. It becomes funny because you're switching the context. That takes self-awareness. And also not only self-awareness, but a really good comedian is going to have some,

probably is going to have some self-deprecating humor. that it takes self-awareness to make fun of yourself, to step back and see how absurd it is to be so invested in your ego and to be narcissistic. And so criminals lack that. Because they lack self-awareness, they lack the capacity.

Typically, they lack the capacity to see the larger picture, which means they can't see the context. So I've seen some criminals that they, they think it's self-deprecating humor, but it's more like, it's really not. Or like sarcasm? Like you're like,

yeah. Yeah. Sarcasm is not humor. No. Corkasm is more an expression of anger. And so I've seen some criminals that kind of do this, yeah, it's like this sarcastic kind of,

it's more like kind of taking on the victim role and then making fun of being a victim. So it's not, to me, yeah, it's not really humorous, but you're right. Like the tie, the relationship there is if you're really self-absorbed and narcissistic, you're not going to have the capacity to, number one, see out, to see the big picture, to see outside of yourself, to understand context so that you can make fun of yourself and make fun of the situation. Right.

And so it's absolutely humor absolutely has to do with self-awareness. Criminals aren't funny oftentimes because they lack self-awareness. And they see humor actually, they actually see humor as a threat, like real humor. It's a threat because it's threatening their narrow view of themselves. It's threatening this ego, this cocoon that they've built and constructed and have tried to keep very, keep under wraps, humor threatens that because humor threatens to expose that or unravel that potentially. Another one I've noticed, which probably goes along with obsessive,

is a need to win. Or maybe you can simply be a need to be right. I don't know which you have to be right or to win. I don't know. Does that go with obsessive or I don't know if you've noticed something similar? I think that ties into, I mean, it depends if, you know, the gender might play a role in that. I think that males, some males are just completely obsessed with winning because they see that as strength. So if you see winning as strength and power, those often go together, then you're going to be much less likely to explore or acknowledge or identify the more self-revelling.

conscious emotions, shame, guilt, you know, sadness, fear. Fear would be, fear would be a very threatening emotion. So winning would be all about negating those negative, fear, sadness, those more difficult emotions, shame, right? It would be a way to present yourself as powerful and strong and always in control. and therefore invulnerable and not, again, getting back to my idea of the fundamental theorem of true crime, it begins with the sense of vulnerability.

And winning and anger, right, all of those become a way to transform vulnerability to invulnerability or vulnerability to power. And so winning is a big part of that equation in the sense that you're taking something that's potentially negative, or you're taking something that's potentially hurtful, something that's potentially painful, and you're trying to transform it into something that's not,

something that's positive and feels good and gives you a sense of control. And, you know, it's interesting, when I think about that, by the way, so if you look at people at the absolute top of their game, if you look at people, the most successful people, the most masterful people, and I don't mean, like,

I'm not talking about, in terms of business or making money. I'm talking about maybe entertainment or sports or authors, right, maybe the arts. Someone that has perfected their craft or worked really hard on their craft. Exactly. Those people are less concerned about winning and they have a tremendous sense of self-awareness. And they also often have a very strong sense of humor. So I think it's interesting that people at the absolute top of their games,

people that are masterful in their areas tend to not be as concerned with winning. They're more concerned with honing their skill set. In fact, it's quite often the opposite, that the people, the masters of their crafts actually become more humble over time because they see how difficult what the artists, novelists, poets, painters, they see how difficult it is to master what they're trying to do. Yeah. Musicians.

And so many of them have this tremendous sense of humility. What about, here's another one, is, I don't know what you would call this, but a lack of being able to understand like the complexity of things. human beings or humanity in general, you know, the complexity of individuals. And I don't know what I'm trying to say, that the full human beings, the depth of a human being. Let's call it narrow-mindedness. I think that this idea of narrow-mindedness or closed-mindedness, there's several psychologists that have really examined this. Eric Kruelansky is

Kruklansky is one of them. He's done a lot of really excellent research in this area. But he argues that this need for certainty and this narrow mind, which is essentially being narrow-minded or closed-minded, it creates this vision that's so narrow. And again, this is going to relate to the lack of self-awareness and the obsessiveness and the romanation,

you become so focused, narrowly focused on, let's say the rejection or failure or disappointment or whatever it is, that you have no capacity to see outside of that. So criminals become so obsessed and so certain that they're right, that they can't veer from that path. They don't have the brakes. They can't put on the brakes and stop it.

They just, and a great example of that would be a terrorist, that if they're driven by this really harmful, let's say, ideology that condones violence, they're more likely to stay on that path because they're so immersed in that ideology, almost in a cult-like way, that they can't see anything outside of that. And so they're more likely to engage in behavior that's consistent with that. Well, those were the ones that I wanted to bring to the table. And on that issue, by the way, there's an instrument I often give called the Neo, which is related to the five-factor model of personality. And one of the components in the five-factor model of personality

is called openness to experience. And the reason I give that instrument to people I'm evaluating is precisely to examine what you're talking about. That if somebody is low on openness to experience, it could become one piece of a larger puzzle where I'm looking at, so if I'm looking at all these dynamics like personality disorders, like attachment styles, like emotional intelligence, now I also want to look at, Is this someone who has the capacity to stay open to different experiences? Do they have the capacity to learn?

So if you're not open to new experiences, essentially what you're saying, what you're showing. And by the way, this can be fundamental to some people's personalities that they don't have any interest in learning. Zero interest. Yeah, part of their personalities. So that becomes, that can certainly become part of. of this larger equation of criminality and recidivism, that if you're not willing to learn, then you're probably not going to be a good candidate for therapy. Or if you are a candidate for therapy, you may be in there twice as long or five times

as long as someone that has more of that capacity to learn from experience and who's embracing new experiences and willing to learn and they're willing to challenge their existing beliefs. That's part of it too. So if you look at a lot of criminals, you'll find that their beliefs are very narrow and very limited and they're simply not willing to entertain that their beliefs might be wrong. Yeah. Fascinating. Thank you. We're going to be covering actually a very interesting case in the coming weeks, the case that you and I have been covering since we.

learned about it since it happened. Lindsay Clancy killed her three children, young children, Cora Dawson and Callan, and then tried to kill herself by jumping out of a second story window, paralyzing herself. Her husband at the time, standing by her, supporting her saying that she had psychosis, that this is not who she was.

You know, I'm, I think this is a really important case because of everything you just shared. I don't know if I see all of these things or even some of these things in Lindsay Clancy. I don't know. Maybe I will. I think, I think what's interesting. So it's interesting you're mentioning this case because in some ways that's going to be that Lindsay Clancy would challenge the very model I just laid out. That's what made me think of it.

That's why I jumped into it. What you just said, I was like, let's talk Lindsay Clancy. And the reason it challenges the model I laid out is because it's an exception. If you're going to make an argument about insanity or criminal responsibility, one of the things you might argue is that the person was experienced such a severe case of psychosis that that they were so disassociated from their experience that they didn't understand right from wrong, or they didn't understand what they were doing. And so the model I laid out is more about ingrained

or habitual criminality, not these one-off cases. So with Lindsay Clancy, I suspect the defense is going to try to argue that this was an aberration, this was an outlier. this is not criminality. She's not a criminal because it wasn't premeditated.

It was impulsive. It may have had some of these elements. Like in that moment, it certainly could have lacked. There was absolute lack of self-awareness. In that moment, there was a lack of emotions. Yeah. A lack of emotional.

Right. But the question is, if you're looking at someone like Lindsay Klanj, the larger question is, does that define her, though? is it in other words the prosecution is going to have to show that somehow this was more premeditated and that perhaps she had more of the elements perhaps there's some history of where she had more of these elements of criminality that could explain how this is premeditated and right i i don't know i mean that that's what's going to make the trial interesting but but there are so that's a great example in terms

of lindsay might be the exception to this model I laid out. Perhaps she doesn't fit this model. Perhaps postpartum psychosis is an exception in the sense that someone murdering children in a psychotic state is utterly unaware of their environment, of reality, of what they're doing, and therefore probably may or may or may not fit these elements that I just discussed. And of course the prosecution is saying that she planned and plotted this and that she is guilty of first degree murder of all three of her children. It's a case I think that really matters to us here at Hidden True Crime because of these elements because it challenges. It challenges, I think, some of these elements and some of the things we think about criminals and criminality.

So we will be covering this trial. we have a full backstory and you will be joining us as we learn more at the trial. I think it'll be interesting. I think having talked about some of these components of criminality or at least the psychological components of criminality, because you can argue that I haven't touched on this, you can argue with Lindsay Clancy that perhaps there's more, perhaps there's more neurological issues. related to, for example, maybe bipolar disorder, maybe more genetic issues, perhaps bipolar certainly might have a genetic component that, right?

I'm not touching on those. Yeah. So it's certainly possible with Lindsay Clansway that you could argue that there's other things, other elements of criminality I haven't discussed that could play a role. But I think what would be interesting or what we could think about or our viewers could think about is the elements I have discussed. do those come into play in terms of thinking about Lindsay Klansey's, do any of those elements come to play?

Because that would suggest a more ingrained psychological criminality. Yeah. I know. I'm going to be thinking about this. So watch this trial and report on this trial. Thank you. Another thing I want to share, John and I now do a little. lot of our episodes on Patreon.

Patreon.com slash into crime. Sometimes with our face, sometimes without, depends on how we're feeling. But we did share our thoughts on covering the Sam Bateman trial. Sam Bateman from trust me, a false profit Netflix documentary. That Sam Bateman. Yeah, many people didn't realize he never had his state trial. He had been, he had taken a plea deal for his federal charges, but he still had a state charges. And not only did he want to go forward with those, he represented himself. We covered that

trial. John and I discussed that in our latest bonus behind the scenes, patreon.com slash indecrime episode. So check that out as well. Anything else, babe? I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's, I could go on on this. I could go for hours on this topic. I'm sure. And I could probably list five other things. But those are, I think those are kind of the main elements that I see over and over. And I think, you know, it's interesting or important to recognize that, that anger. And by the way, anger, anger does. I mean, I don't want to negate the role of anger, but anger does play a role in homicide. There is some correlation between criminals that have unusually high amounts of anger and potential homicide.

So, but, but I want to, so I want to, but as I said from the start, like that's what criminals say, at least many of the criminals I've assessed, that's what they'll say in terms of why they did it. But it's really important to kind of unpack that and understand that it's not just anger. And in fact, anger is probably a component, but maybe a small component of why they're doing it. Thank you. Thank you to those that support our channel. and our work here at Hidden True Crime, hit subscribe, hit notifications. Thank you for joining us.

And yeah, we appreciate your support and we will be back with more. We'll see you. Thanks, guys. All right. Good night. Good night.