Stuff You Should Know - How Psychopaths Work

Episode Date: September 12, 2017

There are people who walk among us who seem normal, maybe even more charming or intelligent than average, yet they hide disturbing and at times dangerous personalities behind what one researcher called a 'mask of sanity.' Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry, and we're here to manipulate you

into learning something new. You're trying to use your least psychopath voice that you have. Yeah, but it's having the opposite effect that I'm trying for, isn't it? You're not the one getting one. Well, you just made a powerful enemy. Oh, how you doing?

I'm good, I'm feeling quite, quite good. I like this one, this is, this one's gonna have it all. You know what I mean? Yeah. Psychology, disputed psychology. Yes. Prison, murder.

Yeah, a little serial killer action. Yeah, we can't not mention at least Hollywood. The DSM. Contradictions in terms, all sorts of stuff. The Bible, China? Yeah. Wait, how does, oh yeah, okay. I forgot about those parts.

So we're talking psychopathy. Yeah. Which, I mean, people say, well, what's the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? We'll get to that by psychopath, don't you mean psychotic? We'll get to that too. Keep your pants on, psychopath.

Just buckle in. Yeah. And if you think you know everything there is to know about psychopaths, well, you may be surprised. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of misconceptions out there about psychopaths, about exactly what constitutes a psychopath,

or what they act like, or how easy they are to recognize. And it turns out, this article actually points out that a lot of the people who tend to lead other people sometimes have psychopathic qualities. Like for example, obviously, you would call Hitler a psychopath.

I think just about everybody would, right? But I guess from studying them posthumously and remotely, guys like Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, but I'm sure basically every president that's ever been president of the United States exhibits some psychopathic qualities, right? And some, because some actually can be considered useful in the right context, right?

Like immunity to stress or fearlessness, or the ability to influence others. These are pretty handy things to have if you're a politician. But just because your reaction to stress is far lower than the average person, or you have an ability to charm other people than to do what you want,

it doesn't automatically make you a psychopath. And the reason why it doesn't automatically make you a psychopath is because there is a spectrum of psychopathy. And there's a threshold where below the threshold, you may have some of these qualities or traits of psychopathy, but you're not a psychopath. At that threshold or above though,

you would be considered a psychopath. And if that is the case, if you are a full blown psychopath, you have a very specific set of characteristics that very much separate you from the average person in some extraordinarily scary ways. If, yes, if psychopaths exist in this form at all. There's a lot of debate about that as well.

Yeah, so if you think, if you have 100 friends, science estimates that one of those people is a psychopath. Yeah, I saw that figure too. So 1% of the general population, so as many as 3 million psychopaths in the United States, States in about 70 million worldwide. And only, I think, what is it, about 25% of those are in the prison population.

So, okay, people, the majority of prisoners aren't psychopaths. Correct. And the majority of psychopaths aren't in prison. Right, which means they're all walking among us. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't in prison because they haven't been caught yet.

There's a lot of what are known as high functioning psychopaths that are full on psychopaths, but they just don't exhibit the kind of traits that would get you locked up in prison. Instead, they exhibit what we would call white collar crimes, which aren't prosecuted in the United States. They're hedge fund managers.

Basically. Well, it is funny because, I mean, I do make that joke, but they said that they think as many as perhaps 10% of people in the finance industry could be psychopaths. Yeah, there was a study that found that, for sure. Yeah, but that makes a pretty good point. Like, there's some in the right context. Yeah.

Being a psychopath can actually be useful to you. All right, well, let's go back to Aristotle. Okay. Like most things. He's the tissue that binds this with the cricket farming episode. Correct, interestingly. So, I know in cricket farming,

we talked about his pillow talk being great. Back in those days, when he was pillow talking, he had a student named Theofrastus. Nice. And Theofrastus was a four-century BCE philosopher, and they talked about psychopaths. They called them unscrupulous at the time, but what they were talking about

was what we would now refer to as psychopaths. And everything from the Chinese to biblical stories, to mythology and Greece and Rome, to Shakespeare, like it's just rife through history, literary history of people writing about what we would now call a psychopath. Yeah, and it's not just the West either. I mean, we call them psychopaths here.

Apparently, the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria call them Aranacan, the Yucca Eskimos, call them Kunlangeta. They seem to be around, like you said, 1% of the global population. So, they're not like culturally bound. It's not a culturally bound condition. But it does seem contextual in that psychopaths

are contrary to society. They don't follow the social norms that keep everybody else in line, that typically arise out of things like empathy and feeling bad for other people and seeing other people as their own sentient selves. Yeah, and not just bags of meat to be manipulated. Yeah, to your own ends.

So, psychopaths make appearances throughout history, throughout literature. You mentioned the Bible, so Cain is widely referred to as an early psychopath. The first psychopath. Maybe so. At least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, right? Yeah.

But if we fast forward to 18th century France, like the beginnings, the modern beginnings of our Western, at least, conception of psychopaths were found in the hands of a French physician named Philippe Pinel. Yeah, he was one of the first professional, medical professionals to talk about this. And he referred to them as Maniac sans delir.

Nice. Insanity without delirium. Right. They've gone by other names since then and descriptions from moral derangement, moral insanity, rational madness. Right. And that actually describes like a type of insanity

where you're like morally and even maybe behaviorally deranged, but you're not cognitively impaired and your sense of, your touch with reality is, your grip on reality is totally normal as well. Yeah, like kind of the whole point is they are walking among us and by all accounts are usually very a charming kind of quote normal,

unquote seeming individuals. But predatory. Yeah. And then finally in 1888, there was a German psychiatrist named J.L.A. Koch and he said, I have the term, it is psychopathisch, means suffering soul and that's where the actual word, finally, psychopathy was born.

Right. And then I think into the 30s or beginning in the 30s, sociopathy took over and replaced psychopathy for a couple of reasons, one, from about the 30s to the 70s, there was this idea that psychopaths should be called sociopaths because it was nurture rather than nature that accounted

for their antisocial behavior, that it was say a bad mother, cold father or absent father, something like that. Yeah. That was the basis of sociopathic behavior. The other reason that sociopathy became widely used was because people were getting it confused with psychosis, psychopathic and psychosis.

They're not at all the same thing. Psychosis means it's an umbrella term for a loss of a grip on reality, delusions basically, right? Right. And psychosis can be brought on by any number of things like from dementia to lack of sleep to schizophrenia. So psychosis is a condition where your grip on reality is tenuous at best.

Psychopaths, their grip on reality is 100%, totally fine. It's just, again, it goes back to this idea that it's a moral derangement. They have no morals, they have no scruples, they have no conscience is another way that it's usually put. But they're not delusional at all. Their grip on reality is totally fine.

Yeah, like in a psychopathic brain, there is literally a physical abnormality in the brain. Right, right. And that's a huge, huge new development, Chuck. Like, and as a result, sociopathy is quickly losing favor as a interchangeable term for psychopathy. Yeah, I mean, the terms over the years were mostly interchangeable.

In 1980, the DSM, which we've talked about a lot, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, I think they called it, they said no more sociopathy, let's call it anti-social personality disorder, ASPD. And the terminology is important because you shouldn't just use two different things interchangeably to mean the same thing. Right, no, it's true.

And with psychiatrists and psychologists who study psychopathy in particular, especially a guy named Robert Hare, who was continuing on the work of a guy named Harvey Cleckley, who did his work, Chuck, in Augusta, Georgia. Yeah, I saw that. Said, no, no, no, like you can't just say psychopaths are just part of an anti-social personality disorder,

which is what the DSM does, right? And the reason why is because what they've concluded is that they're basically two aspects, two different facets is what they call them, two being a psychopath. There's primary psychopathy and secondary psychopathy, or factor one and factor two psychopathy, right? Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you.

So, Harvey, great name by the way, Harvey Cleckley, he's the guy from Augusta, and he's the one who wrote a book called The Mask of Sanity, which is sort of the foundation of modern psychopathic research. But he was the one that came up with factor one and two, and is that basically just what we now call primary and secondary? He came up with these, the first descriptors

that are still kind of in use today, where things like that they lack social responsibility, but they're usually highly intelligent, they're very irresponsible, they have a winner take all attitude. He spelled out like 16 character traits, and he was basically the father of psychopathy. It was Hare who came up with the two factors,

or more to the point they emerged from his psychopathy checklist that he developed back in I think the late 70s or early 80s. So, with factor one, Chuck, that relates to interpersonal behavior. So, the idea that psychopaths are very charming, but that they also lack remorse. Right.

This is all considered factor one or primary psychopathy, and I actually think that this is where psychopathy is rooted. The seeing other people as means to an end, and using people in that sense without any regard for the other person's feelings or the consequences it has on their life, and then genuinely lacking remorse.

These are classic traits of psychopathy, right? Yeah. But that's just one facet of it. There's another facet, factor two, which is the behavioral aspect of psychopathy, and factor two relates to things like impulsivity, sexual promiscuity, parasitic lifestyle. And so, if psychopathy is a spectrum

that we all potentially could be on the psychopath spectrum, but we would, most of us fall below that threshold, then factor one and factor two are like a spectrum within a spectrum. So, where on one side you have high functioning psychopaths like CEOs say, and then on the other side, you have very low functioning factor two psychopaths

like a truck stop serial killer, right? Right. Who's getting sloppy. And then in between you would have a mixture, but you can kind of lean more toward the factor one psychopathy, you could lean more toward the factor two psychopathy, but the factor two psychopathy relates

almost exclusively to the DSM's antisocial personality disorder criteria. And so therefore the DSM is ignoring factor one psychopathy. And so therefore really the only way you can be diagnosed as a psychopath is through the hair psychopath checklist. So there's almost like this competing field that's going up against the DSM

as far as the study of psychopaths is concerned. You take the rest of the episode. All right, well let's take a break so I can memorize all this stuff. And we'll come back and talk a little bit about demographics and that hair test right after this. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing

who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So we're back with talks about demographics. Studying psychopathy and psychopaths

is tricky to say the least because there is no, you can't, well, we'll talk a little bit about the brain, but there is no, you know, you can't hook someone up to a machine that will spit out a diagnosis of psychopath. So you're going to have to get someone who self-reports this stuff, which you're not going to see a lot because no one usually likes to think of themselves that way. Yeah.

But most of the data they have right now is gathered from psychiatric examinations of criminals. Yeah, so there's really like a sheltered view of psychopaths. We have just a limited snapshot of the full spectrum of psychopathy because, yeah, if you're a psychopath, you're not going to go in to look for help. You think you're better than everybody else. So the very traits that make you a psychopath

would make you feel like you need the opposite of psychiatric help. Yeah, like what are you saying? I'm winning in life. Exactly. So as far as age goes, when they analyzed some of the results of some of these examinations, the prisoners, they did show that it seems like psychopathic traits might decrease.

Some as you get older, they don't know why. But there's a lot of controversy about whether or not you can diagnose a kid as a psychopath. Sometimes you might see some traits that a child expresses that you might associate with psychopathy. But legally, technically, you can't diagnose a child as a psychopath. And just because you might have some psychopathic tendencies

as a kid doesn't mean you're going to grow up to be that way as well. No, but they do have, as part of that anti-social personality disorder spectrum, they have diagnosed these four kids like oppositional defiant disorder, which seems to be basically like a factor two psychopath diagnosis for children. Right.

But you think they just don't like to use that word for kids? No, no, and you should be very careful with clinically labeling somebody as a psychopath just because of the stigma associated with it. Yeah, can you imagine seeing parents down and saying, well, Francis is a psychopath. Like your six-year-old is a psychopath. Yeah.

Not good. No, there's probably a company who specializes in that because nobody else wants to do it. Oh, like up in the air, people would pay to come in and fire people? Right, exactly. Yeah, if it was George Clooney, that'd be a different deal. Right.

Your child's a psychopath. Here's some literature on that. I'm George Clooney. And some fine tequila. Right. Is it fine? Yeah, it's good. But man, he sold that thing for a billion dollars.

No. You believe that? No. No. Like George Clooney rolling in dough. Yeah, wow. Rolling in handsome. Billion dollar tequila.

Rolling in charm. And he sold this tequila company for a billion bucks. Yeah. He's a psychopath. I feel like we talked about that before, have we? Is that possible? No, we talked about him being smug. Oh, well, you did, sir, not me.

Right. Well, you said, oh, I know, he's so smug. No, I didn't because I want to date him. So when it comes to race, it gets even more controversial because there have been analyses that tried to link higher rates of the disorder to Native American communities, African American people. And most psychiatrists have come out and say, you know what?

This is really not taking into account socioeconomic factors. And it's pretty racist. Yeah. There was this guy named Richard Lynn who wrote back in the early 2000s a journal article about that and tried to basically say that the order of psychopathy, as far as prevalence is concerned, is highest in blacks and Native Americans,

and then followed by Hispanics, and then whites, and then East Asians. And he said that it had everything to do with evolution. And he totally left out the fact that Hispanics are actually just 500 years or so removed from Caucasian Spanish people, and that East Asians are tied genetically to Native Americans over the last like 10,000 years or so. So people just had fun kind of trashing this guy's ideas.

And he was like, you might also want to read my manifesto on eugenics. Right, exactly. One thing is clear, though, when it comes to gender, they're definitely more psychopathic men than women. We can say that right. Dude, yeah, yeah, all of the numbers bear it out. Like, this guy is the guy who, the people who say no,

it has to do with race. There seem to be total crackpots. Yeah. But the people who say that there is a difference in gender, they're backed up by numbers for sure. Studies show that women definitely have lower occurrences of psychopathy, but it has been pointed out that perhaps what women psychopaths, their behavior

manifests itself differently than male psychopaths, and that the psychopathy criteria is geared more toward males and is missing female psychopaths. So for example, you think of a psychopath, you think of like a high functioning one, say like a CEO or a Patrick Bateman type or something, right? Yeah. That's like a classic psychopath.

But what if there are just as many women psychopaths, but they're like Joan Crawford and Mommy Dearest or something like that, you know? Like they just, they're the way that they behave as a psychopath manifests itself differently than how men do. That's, it's a theory. It's not necessarily true, but that's what some people say.

Well, and the waters are so muddy with how men and women think of each other and their roles in society that it's bound to play a part here and how that gets all mixed up, you know? Right, yeah, that's true. Well, and then, you know, there are like the Eileen Warnoses of the world as well. Like I know there aren't many female serial killers,

but there have been some for sure. Sure. But there's definitely not. I mean, when you look at the list of serial killers, you hear, you see way more Ted Bundy's and who is the guy? BTK? Yeah, Dennis Rader. Yeah, there are more of those dudes out there

than Eileen Warnoses for sure. Sure, that's, I mean, as far as the numbers suggest, yes, that's true, but I think it's extremely interesting that like we're, we've got the blinders on and are just looking at one set of behaviors for psychopaths and are totally missing an entire population out there that are women psychopaths. That's just fascinating to me.

So should we talk about the psychopath-y checklist? Yeah, we kind of have to. Yeah, I mean, we mentioned a little bit of it through Herbie, Herbie Cleckley. That's got to be my new hotel name. Herbie Cleckley's work. And then Hare is the man who is responsible for the modern, the modern checklist and test

that people still give other people. Yeah. And it's pretty simple. Well, it's not simple. Well. It's extensive for sure. Yeah, simple in that there are 20 characteristics. And when you take the test, you either give yourself a two

if you have one of these characteristics or a one if you may or may not. And then at the end, you do a little math. And is it 30 and above out of 40? You qualify as a psychopath? Yeah, I saw it depends on what country you're in. But seriously, but somewhere like between 26 and 30 over that, you're probably a psychopath.

Or you qualify as a psychopath. Yes. So here are those 20 characteristics. And you can either just listen to these or you can have fun thinking about your own self and doing a little math along the way. That's so true. I did math on mine earlier.

And I'm like, all right, I'm not a psychopath. And you can also, if it doesn't apply, you score a zero on any of the questions. Yeah, correct. Right. So we start with glibness and superficiality. And I think these aren't things like everybody can be a little superficial every now and then.

I think these are personality traits that you own. Right. Wouldn't you say? Yeah. All right, so glibness and superficiality is one. Grandiosity, need for stimulation, pathological lying, cunning and manipulativeness, lack of remorse or guilt, and emotional shallowness.

I'm going to take the rest. Yep, callousness and lack of empathy. Take one. Parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioral controls, sexual promiscuity, early behavior problems, lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, you take the rest. Failure to accept that responsibility.

Multiple marriages, that just seemed unfair. Juvenile delinquency and revocation of conditional release, which is like recidivism or violating your parole. Yeah, and committing a variety of crimes. Yeah, so some of those you were like, ooh, I can be callous and I don't, I can be impulsive and don't have realistic long-term goals.

Like, don't sweat it, just do the math. Like, a 30 out of 40 is a pretty, that means you're scoring on a lot of these. Right, but so these are the 20 characteristics that the checklist is getting at. The checklist is actually hundreds of questions long. Right. And takes between two and five hours to administer

and can only be administered by a highly trained psychologist, right? Who's trained in administering the tests. Or a cheap website. So, right, so it's not like the psychologist is like, did you have early behavior problems? Maybe, so that's a one. There's dozens of questions for each of those things, right?

And so when you put the score together for all of them, if you score over a 30, you're a psychopath. As far as psychology, the field of psychology is concerned. Yeah, and hopefully you are a functioning psychopath who is getting along in the world, but it can also manifest itself as Ted Bundy. So let's say you are a psychopath and you're not getting along in the world.

One of the characteristics of psychopaths is something called externalization, where you blame others or everything else but yourself for your own problems. But if you are a psychopath and you're more, so if you're not getting along very well in the world, you're probably more like a factor two psychopath. If you are getting along well in the world,

you've got a nice job or whatever, a family, all that. You've got your mask of sanity, as Clickly put it. You'd be more like a factor one psychopath. You're probably an intelligent human being. And even if you're incarcerated, there's probably a pretty good chance that you're above average intelligence, especially compared to the general prison population, right?

I was reading this article about by a psychologist who was basically telling other psychologists, if you go interview a psychopath, here's what to expect. And one of the things he said is you can bet they've probably done more research on you than you have on them. Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter, great example, right?

He knew everything about starling, everything. But like just with say internet privileges, if a psychopath knows that he's coming to be interviewed by you, the psychiatrist, he's probably going to read papers you've written, and he's going to read about your education background. And all of this is to figure out how to best tell you what you want to hear,

so you can be more easily manipulated to that person's ends. It's pretty fascinating, but it's also kind of scary, and you kind of reach the point now where it's like, oh, okay, this is kind of dangerous actually to interact with people like this. And there's a lot of people out there who suggest just staying away from psychopaths,

just if you encounter a psychopath in your normal life, say at work or something like that, you want to keep your distance is kind of the prescribed treatment. Well, at least how to deal with them, like, because if you're being manipulated by a psychopath, that's part of their game. So if you engage, like Jody Foster had no choice.

Right. Clary Starling had to engage in Hannibal Lecter and play that little psychological cat and mouse game so she could get the information that he had on Buffalo Bill. I know she didn't want to do it, but she did it anyway and she saved the day. Yeah, so that is the advice,

is to not give them what they want, which I imagine would make a psychopath angry. I don't know, I think depending on, say, like their tendency for a parasitic lifestyle. Right. They may just move on to find somebody else who's more easily manipulated. Yeah, sure, sure.

It's possible that you might really capture their attention in which case you're not gonna be very happy with having to shed that person. But Chuck, something that really struck me, and this is gonna sound really weird to say it, but I can't help but think 50 years from now, we're gonna look back at a lot of the writing and a lot of the suggestions on how to deal with the psychopath,

which is get rid of them, get away from them, they're predators and awful people, that they're gonna, there's going to be a, historically it's not gonna hold up very well. That yeah, I think we're gonna come to find that psychopaths have no way of helping themselves, that their brain is physically different from the average person's,

and that they can't help their behavior any more than the average person can change their own behavior, right? Right. Probably even less, actually, and then we're gonna look at, back 50 years from now, it's like, man, that's how they treated psychopaths back then? How awful. You know, like how we used to treat them mentally impaired,

or they cognitively impaired and they were classified as morons, idiots, or imbeciles, depending on how extreme the impairment was, and it was just lock them up, keep them away from society. I can't help but wonder if, once we know how to treat psychopathy, that we will view them much differently, and maybe even with sympathy.

Well, I mean, they have something physically wrong with their brain. It seems like it, but that's a new thought, and we'll take a break and we'll talk about that after this. ["Hey Dude"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen

so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, we're back. So we promised a little bit to talk about the brain. And, you know, there's a couple of things that work here. And at play, there's the physical aspect of the brain

is actually, well, I would say damage, but just not right in some ways. There tends to be regions of the brain they're really trying to zero in on which one it is. Like underdeveloped. Underdeveloped, yeah. It's either smaller, it has less volume, or it's less active than it is in control groups.

Right, so there's that going on. And then there also, and this is what we talked about with Factors 1 and 2, there's also social factors that play in. And they get- Supposedly, supposedly. Well, I mean, that seems to be losing favor pretty quickly. You think? You think it's going 100% brain damage?

That's supposedly what I'm seeing is that that's the, and it could just be the people who are like really bullish on MRIs are really, you know, getting more press or whatever and getting their message out there more, but it seems like over time favor has swung from, you know, insanity to nurture and then back again to, you know, a physical brain structure, possibly even genetics.

Well, yeah, genetics, they have done studies on twins, identical twins, and they think it could be 50 to 60% genetically determined, but it gets a little muddy because you can say, well, you might have gotten your, or not psychotic, we should point out that is a very different thing actually. Right, we did.

Oh yeah, we did at the beginning, right? Mm-hmm. You could say that your dad was a psychopath, so that means that you got that from him, but the fact that your dad was a psychopath, it could also be a very strong social factor in why you became a psychopath. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Your absent father, did that make you a psychopath or was he absent because he was a psychopath himself and passes genes on to you, right? Yeah, so it definitely gets muddy. It is very muddy, and the way that that will be sussed out ultimately is if they can show definitively, no, dude, like in case after case after case, this region of the brain is underdeveloped

and this region of the brain has to do with, say, processing emotions. Right. Like for example, one of the places they zero in on is the amygdala, right? Yeah. The amygdala helps you, it helps regulate emotions. It helps you experience emotions,

and in psychopaths, at least in some studies, using MRIs, they show that if your amygdala is less active as it is in people who score high on the psychopathy checklist, their amygdala does not react normally in certain tests, right? Uh-huh. And this actually makes a lot of sense

because when you're being socialized by your parents, one of the ways that they socialize, you probably the most important way they socialize you is by punishing you when you're bad. Yeah. And you feel bad, you feel bad for letting your parents down, you might feel angry because you can't leave your room or have dessert, whatever it is,

you're experiencing some pretty pronounced negative emotions right then. And so over time, you start to associate those negative emotions with the bad behavior that your parents are trying to curb, and eventually, you're gonna stop doing that bad behavior because it feels bad to do it. Yeah.

Because you keep getting punished and then maybe your own brain takes over and you feel negative emotions when you do that stuff, right? Yeah. If your amygdala is not functioning properly, then that's not going to happen, that process isn't gonna work. Yeah.

Because you're not going to experience those negative emotions, you're just gonna be like, well, I wish I could leave my room, I think I'll just climb out the window over here. Right. Not, oh, I feel so bad for letting my parents down, you're not gonna experience that because your amygdala is not functioning.

So they've really zeroed in on the amygdala, but apparently the big toast of the town these days is the Paralympic system. Yeah, that's one in the Wonder Machine, the FMRI machine, it lights up and shows you what parts of the brain are being used and to what extent. I know we've talked about that a lot,

but in case you didn't know. And the Paralympic system is underdeveloped in psychopaths, or it seems so at least, and that region controls emotional memories, inhibition, and moral reasoning. So that seems pretty obvious if you have an underdeveloped Paralympic system that's kind of big on the checklist of psychopathy.

Yeah, and there's a whole group of people who are kind of leading the current research in psychopathy studying the prisoners. Because if you're a prisoner, chances are you're going to be forced to take the psychopathy checklist. And again, that's where most of our psychopath study population resides is in prison.

So if they volunteer for a follow-up study, if they score high on the psychopathy checklist, they'll probably be put into an MRI and given different tests. And these are the people who the results are starting to be cold from, basically, using the MRI, and it does seem to be pointing to the Paralympic system.

Very interesting. It is extremely interesting. But again, it makes you feel like, well, wait a minute, if it's not these people's fault, like what can we do? And part of the problem, Chuck, is that there's like zero, none, a million percent to the negative cure.

Yeah, you're not going to cure, if you have an underdeveloped Paralympic system or amygdala, there's nothing you can do about that. Right. What you can do is hope to improve with therapy, obviously. Catching it earlier in life is obviously going to help more. And what they found, there's one sort of treatment.

They found that a lot of the typical treatments you might use don't work. Everything from group therapy to electroshock and drugs. Group therapy in particular was found not to work because it gave psychopaths a chance to hone their manipulative behavior, which is just a bad idea out of the gate. Yeah, it made things worse.

So recently, they started work with kids that they seem to have gained some ground on called decompression treatment, the basis of which is basically rewarding. And this is through hours long session, hours long. Hours long sessions of psychologists increasing reward for good behavior. So instead of talking about the bad behavior

and punishing bad behavior, it's rewarding good behavior and kind of feeding that desire of the psychopath to feel like they're winning. I don't know, it seems to work. It seems a little dangerous to me too. Like you're feeding the thing that they require, but maybe that makes sense.

I read a really, really interesting Quora post called what it feels like to be a psychopath. Oh, wow. And it's exactly that, the person wrote it anonymously. They seem to be legit that they're just making it up as they go along. And they talk about basically being trained that they're a psychopath.

They're going to be a psychopath for the rest of their life. And they're just trying to learn how to be good in society while being a psychopath. So they can go along and get along. It's really interesting, but that's supposedly the best you can hope for. Again, there's no cure, there is treatment,

but if you, unless somebody's saying like, son, there's something really, really wrong with you and I'm really worried about you and I'm going to cut you out of my will unless you go see a shrink. The psychopath is typically not going to say, I really need some help with my moral reasoning. So I'm going to go get some treatment.

It's just not going to happen. So there's a really big catch 22 in there with psychopath-y to begin with. But then Chuck, there's also a question of, what is psychopath-y? Like, are we sure we know exactly what a psychopath is? And psychiatry and psychology is such a long history of just so much overconfidence and self-assuredness.

When they're really getting it wrong. Yeah, that you can be forgiven for stopping and saying, whoa, you guys are the arbiters of what's normal in society. And this is a really serious thing to label somebody. So are we sure we know what we're talking about? And not everybody says, yeah, yeah, we know what psychopath-y is.

I mean, we're using interchangeable terms that don't even describe the same thing still, like sociopath and psychopath. It's just, there's a lot of confusion and it just seems kind of dangerous to label people with that stigma. At the same time, if psychopaths do exist in the form that psychiatry and psychology says it does,

it's dangerous to have those people out and about too. Yeah, I think I agree with you now that this is just some acts of 50 years later saying, I can't believe we used to do things and label people this way. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

It's hard to tell when you're in the middle of that time. Yeah, for sure. But, very interesting. Yeah. There's a, did you ever read the psychopath test? I have not read it. I know of it. I know Ronson wrote it.

Yeah, John Ronson, who, a friend of stuff you should know, and he's actually done one of our live shows at the Bell House with us. Without shoes on. Did he not wear shoes? He was just wearing socks. I don't think I knew that. Well, he very strangely walked from the upper west side

of New York to Gowanus. Maybe without shoes. Well, maybe his feet were just hurting from that walk. That's possible. Anyway, lovely guy. And he wrote a great book called The Psychopath Test and he does a lot of extensive interviewing with hair and other professionals and psychopaths and CEOs.

So investigative journal, it's just really terrific book. And I hate to be pluggy, but it seems like an organic time to mention that I've got a new solo podcast coming called Movie Crush. I think the tagline is your favorite people, their favorite movie. Oh, that's a good tagline. You like that?

Yeah. I came up with that. Nice work. My buddy Scotty thought of Movie Crush, the title, but basically I sit down once a week and talk to some kind of notable person about their favorite movie. It's a great idea, Chuck. Thanks, man.

Very simple content. It's gonna be gangbusters. Well, I wanna have you on. Oh, I'd love to be on. Which would be very strange. Who would? I mean, it's a conversation, but just the thought of like, quote unquote interviewing you would be weird.

Well, anytime you want me on, I'm happy to be on. But if it is too weird, that's fine too. Oh, no, it won't be too weird. That'd be great. But anyway, long story short, I had Ronson on. And his favorite movie, I'll go ahead and just set this up as a teaser, was his Let the Right One In. Oh, that's such a good movie.

The Swedish Vampire movie. Yeah, man, that was so good. And I don't know when it, we're gonna start releasing them. We gotta get a bunch of them in the can because scheduling people is tough. So I need a nice pad, but sometime in the fall, look for movie crush. Well, best of luck.

I'm sure it's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to hear it. Yeah, and just talking to Ronson's great. I love that guy. Yeah, he's such a good guy. Really good dude. Yeah, and just pro tip if any of you are ever around John Ronson,

be careful not to step on his feet. Correct. Well, you got anything more about psychopaths? I got nothing more about psychopaths. That's pretty interesting because it seems like there's a lot, but there's not. We said it all.

Correct. If you wanna know more about psychopaths, again, there's nothing more to know, but if you wanna read this cool article on how stuff works, you can type psychopathy into the search bar. And since I said psychopathy, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm gonna call this short and sweet. And it's basically kinda set up to promote the stuff you should know army. I don't know who first coined that phrase, but the stuff you should know army is a collection of our most ardent listeners and fans who over the years have got their own little mini-community on Facebook even.

There's a Stuff You Should Know Army Facebook page. And they're just like the cream of the crop and just good people who love to talk about the episodes and help each other out in life with various things. Just they're not psychopaths in any way. Right, you know? Ironically, they're not militant either. No, they're not.

So this is just kind of a short email about that from Tony. Hey guys, been listening to you for a little over two years now. And even though I love learning about all the topics, my absolute favorite thing I ever see from your work is unintentionally meeting real life Stuff You Should Know army personnel out there at work and in social situations and going way too far down the rabbit hole

with them about our favorite episodes. Even though he says S-Y-S-M instead of S-Y-S-K, Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know. Lawns You Should Know. All right. Anyway, thank you for the work and all you've done. You three really brighten people's lives.

Forever a devoted listener. That is from Tony Latham Jr. from Sacramento. Thanks a lot, Jr. We appreciate that. Yeah, big thanks to all this Stuff You Should Know army. Like you're the core that kind of keeps this machine running. Yeah, and if you're interested, you want to connect to some really great people online and in real life. Just go to the Stuff You Should Know army Facebook page.

Is it, by invitation, is it open to the public? I think you have to, I mean, you don't apply, but it's a member's only page. Yeah. So you got to click on something and then, you know, one of our admins, I'm sure it goes, they look all right. Right. Let's let them in.

Yeah, I think they have a Twitter handle as well too. Okay, great. So check that out. And you can check us out on Twitter too. I've got my own Twitter handle. It's Josh Clark. There's also the official one at SYSK Podcast. Chuck is on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant

and at Stuff You Should Know as well. And you can send us all an email to StuffPodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s,

called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts.