TRIGGERnometry - Psychopath Expert Explains How to Spot a Psychopath - Dr Kevin Dutton

Episode Date: January 12, 2023

Dr Kevin Dutton is a research psychologist, bestselling author, and elite performance consultant. His principal research interests are persuasion and social influence, the psychopathic personality, elite cognition, black and white thinking, and how the fusion of psychology and art can enhance and support mental health. He has authored several books including 'The Wisdom Of Psychopaths', 'Flipnosis' and 'The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success'. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths, we're in fact referring to a distinct subset of individuals with a specific constellation of personality characteristics, such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, emotional detachment. They all sound pretty good. I mean, except emotional detachment, it sound pretty good. There are certain psychopathic characteristics that in the right context, in the right combinations, at the right levels, with the right intentions. can predispose you to success and also benefit society. I did a survey called the Great Bridge Psychopaths Survey. And the survey was unique in a sense that what I wanted to find out was what were the most psychopathic professions in the UK.

Number one were CEOs. Yep. Perhaps not surprisingly. Number two. That is worrying. Let's do the test. Let's find out if we're psychos and let's find out if you're a psycho and you're a psycho. People can follow.

follow up with this test. Yeah, you can feel the tension rising in it. I surprised myself massively. Well, narcissists will want to be the center of attention because that is the end goal for them. They want to be the center of attention. They want to be in the limelight. A psychopath doesn't need to be the center of attention for its own sake, but it's a means to an end for a psychopath. So for a psychopath, being the center of attention, being in the limelight,

gives them access to power. And if being the centre of attention is the primary way of getting that power, then that's what they will do. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. A brilliant guest today is a psychologist and best-selling author. Dr. Kevin Dutton, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks, Constantine. Thanks, Francis. I'll tell you what, you know, if you're one on this conversation, they don't know why he got me on. No, well, you are the professor for the public understanding of psychology in Australia.

That's true. So we would like to publicly understand psychology, which is exactly why we've got you on. We're also like to understand if either of us is a psychopath. So we'll do that test later on. I thought what you were going to say was you want to publicly understand Australia there. That would be a challenge. But welcome to the show. For anyone who's not familiar with you, tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are?

in your journey through life? Well, I'm Professor Kevin Dunton, as you say. I am a psychologist, a research psychologist, research scientist. And I originally started off studying the art of persuasion and social influence. And I wrote a book called Flipnosis, like hypnosis, but Flipnosis, the art of split second persuasion. And in that book was a chapter on psychopaths, because, In order to write the book, I spent best part of a year hanging out with some of the world's top con artists.

So I'm not talking about, you know, you're people that do over old ladies gas meters. But there used to be a show called Hustle on the BBC. I remember it. Not the real hustle, but the drama with Adrian Lester. Yeah. And there really are teams of people that go around who are that good, right? So I studied them. So my research background, PhD, was in social media.

influence and persuasion. But I wanted to find out whether there was a kind of persuasion that was irresistible. So a lot of people before flitgnosis came out thought that a lot of persuasion was very much about due process and negotiation. You get it right as many times as you get it wrong. But I heard a story about Winston Churchill. Now there's a lot of stories about Winston Churchill, a lot of which are apocryphal, but this one is true, which got me thinking about the art of persuasion, the science of social influence in a very different way. And the story went that one evening at the end of a lavish party

for Commonwealth dignitaries in London, Winston Churchill spots a fellow guest about to steal a solid silver salt seller from the table. Now, caught on the one hand between the desire to avoid an undignified contractual and the equal and opposite desire on the other not to let the bastard get away with it, his Churchill to do. Well, what he does is he picks up the matching silver pepper pot, puts it inside

his own coat pocket, wanders over to the gentleman in question, takes it out, sets it down on the table in front of them and whispers surreptitiously in his ear, I think they've seen us, we'd better put the match. Problem resolved simply elegantly and without any further ado. Now, when I heard that story, I thought to myself, I wonder if persuasion is like that in theory all the time. Is there a key to every situation that if we could somehow find it would resolve it, but 99% of the time we can't find it? So, flipnosis was about my search for that key. And in order to do that, I interviewed lots and lots of different people,

put together a lot of different research across social influence and persuasion. And part of that, of course, involved interviewing, and spending time with what I call the evil geniuses of persuasion. So your world's top con artists who, unlike me as the boffin, have learned it all from first principles, who've learned it all from the streets from living on their wits. And I wanted to know who knew more about persuasion. Me, me, the boffin, the nerd, or then the guys that, you know,

who basically, as I say, derived it from first principles. It turned out as a bit of a draw. So I knew all the technical terms, but they knew how to do it. And they are evil geniuses of persuasion. Anyway, they were all of them without exception psychopaths. Now, you don't need to be violent to be a psychopath. We'll come on to that in a minute, but they just had no conscience, no remorse. They were pretty ruthless, and they could destroy people's lives, not by violence,

but by fraud and deception. And is that the definition of a psychopath, the willingness to inflict harm on other people for your own benefit without caring about it? No, that's, no, no, that's more a sadist. Now, you do get sadistic psychopaths, but it's interesting when people, when you hear the word psychopath, people instantly think of in real life serial killers like Ted Bundy and on the silver screen, of course, your Hannibal Lectures. But actually, Constantine, when psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths, we're in fact referring to a distinct subset of individuals with a specific constellation of personality characteristics, such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence. confidence, coolness under pressure, emotional detachment. They all sound pretty good.

I mean, except for emotional detachment, they sound pretty good. Yeah. Well, you have focus, charm, charisma. Right. And, of course, those trademark deficits owe in conscience and empathy that you hear so much about. Now, you've put your finger on it. None of those traits is necessarily a problem in itself. In fact, all of them dialed up at the right levels and deployed within the right

context can actually prove rather useful. The key lies in context and levels. So let me explain that, because this is crucial. Imagine, for example, that the qualities that I've just told you about comprise the hodgepodge of knobs and sliders on a personality mixing desk, okay? So if you twiddle them up and down in various combinations, you're going to arrive at two conclusions. The first is that there is no one size of its all, objectively correct setting at which those dials may be positioned, but rather it will invariably depend on timing upon a particular set of circumstances you might happen to find yourself in. The second is that by its very nature, they're going to be certain jobs or professions are going to demand that some of those mixing desk styles be turned up just a little bit higher

than average, demand what I call some precision engineered psychopathy. So let me give an example. Imagine you've got the skill set to be a top surgeon, right, but that you lack the ability to emotionally disengage from the person you're operating on. You're not going to cut it, are you? Well, actually, quite literally, yeah. Quite literally. Imagine you've got the skill set to be a top lawyer,

but you lack the almost pathological self-confidence to be the centre of attention in the middle of a packed courtroom, that narcissism to be the big shot in front of a jury. Again, it's not going to work, is it? Imagine you've got the strategic and financial smarts to be a top business person, but that you lack the ruthlessness to fire someone if they're underperforming,

or the coolness under pressure to ride out of storm, would a sheer balls necessary to take a calculated risk when appropriate. Now, those characteristics I've just outlined for there, ruthlessness, fearlessness, self-confidence, cornered, under pressure, and emotional detachment, as you rightly say, Constantine, comprise five core characteristics of the psychopathic personality. I certainly wouldn't say they were dysfunctional in those contexts.

I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't. And that's the key. When Flipnosis came out about the conmen, about the rules of persuasion, was there a DNA of persuasion that would make examples like the Churchill kind of story available to all of us?

Were we all capable of doing that kind of thing? Could we all find the key? When that book came out, obviously I was talking to a lot of the top con artists and they were all psychopaths. There was a chapter in that book called Natural Born Persuaders, which was all about how psychopaths

are better at persuading in general than the rest of us. They've got that charm, that charisma, but also they're not caught up in the emotion of persuasion. They're not caught up in that heat and light. You know, they're not involved in it, which enables them to be able to stand back dispassionately and kind of almost move you around the court of social influence, like a top tennis player. And it was that chapter when the book came out for review that, that all the review is kind of zoned in on. And they said, well, if psychopaths are better than at persuasion than the rest of us,

then what else are they good at? And it was then that that chapter then, I didn't actually think there was enough for a book on psychopaths, but it was my agent that said, I think there may well be a book on psychopaths here because of the work I was doing at the time. And I, as a writer, you know, you have to, sometimes when you get an idea, you have to work out, is this a full book,

or is it like a 5,000 word Sunday supplement article? And I actually thought it was a 5,000 word Sunday supplement article, but he persuaded me, I think there might be more in it than that. And it turned out there was. There was a heck of a lot more in it than that. And it turns out the psychopaths are very good at a lot of things. But when the book came out, of course, a lot of people at the time thought it was very controversial.

And that's because they didn't know what a psychopath really was. They'd looked at Hannibal Lecter. they'd seen it all on the media, they thought all psychopaths were rapists, serial killers and suicide bombers. So that was the first reason the book was controversial. The general public didn't really know what a psychopath was. And secondly, the clinicians, the medical experts, couldn't countenance the possibility that there could possibly be benefits to psychopathic characteristics at large.

Because, of course, it makes sense. You know, if the only psychopaths they had seen were the bad ones that had been referred to them from forensic or clinical settings. So, you know, by their very nature of their job, they weren't going to meet the top surgeons or the special forces soldiers or the CEOs or the people that I'd met. I'd met the bad ones, but I'd also met the good ones.

So when that book came out, that's when I think it's still, to my knowledge, the only book that argues that actually there are benefits to psychopathic characteristics. And I think it took a while, but I think most people now would agree that I've won the argument. I think most of my peers, there's always going to be some disagreement. But at the time it was very much like a punk theory with like a Mohican and spiky hair and, you know,

ripped jeans and all the like, you know, all that kind of thing. Now I say it's like it's a theory that's settled into the comfortable middle age with pipe and slippers and sitting by the fire. But it's still a bit anarchic. Well, right, you came up with the concept of the good psychopath. But the reason I asked you about the willingness to inflict harm is you said no remorse, right? These con men you'd interviewed had no. Is that an important definitional quality of a psychopath? It is.

It is, yeah. Now. So it's ability to do something that other people may not like and not care. Absolutely right. Now, if we're looking at it in terms of bad psychopaths, you could say, yes, no remorse can be used, obviously, to inflict great harm. And we can see it, you know, we don't need to look very far to see that in society on both. with the local and the world stage. But if we look at it in terms of, say, good psychopathy,

we can see that in utilitarianism. So the ability to make really tough decisions, which not a lot of people might be able to make, but actually that people who are able to dial those dials up and down on the mixing desk are able to handle. So when the wisdom of psychopaths came out, People, you know, who were, you know, the haters, as it were, were saying Dutton's trying to, you know, glamorize psychopaths. Actually, I wasn't trying to glamorize psychopaths at all.

What I was saying is that there are certain psychopathic characteristics that in the right context, in the right combinations, at the right levels, and Constantine, to answer your question, with the right intentions, can predispose you to success and also benefit society. And so rather than trying to glamourise psychopaths, where the argument started to turn was when I turned it round on people and said, I'm not trying to glamourise psychopaths at all. But perhaps what you're trying to do is stigmatise them. Because actually, you know, the way, if you start from the premise that psychopathy is a psychological or psychiatric disorder, how many other disorders would you talk about like that? You wouldn't talk about people with depression like that or anxiety. like that or Asperger's like that or ASPD attention or deficit deficit disorder like that or schizophrenia like that.

ADD, that's what I was trying to think about. ASPD's anti-social personality disorder, which is people often confuse that with psychopaths. You wouldn't talk about any other psychological condition like that. So why are you talking about psychopaths like that? Why are you saying that they are all bad? You are in a sense stigmatising the same. surgeon that might well save your life. He might not be the most empathic person you've ever met

in your life. He may be an arrogant narcissist. But actually, he might just be the guy that's cool enough under pressure and he's able to take the risk to remove that, the appropriate risk, to remove that life-threatening tumour. So when people started saying, I'm glamorizing psychopaths, I kind of suddenly changed. I said, I think what you're doing is stigmatizing them. And that was the kind of pivot where the argument started. started to change a little bit, I think. In order to reach an elite level at any profession, whether it's sport, whether it's performing, politics, medicine, do you need to be a psychopath or have very high psychopathic traits?

I think in a lot of cases, yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. So I brought along a few years ago when I was writing Wisdom of Psychopaths. I did a survey called the Great Bridge Psychopaths survey. and the survey was unique in the sense that what I wanted to find out was what were the most psychopathic professions in the UK. So I was on a radio show and we decided to launch this on a radio show. Now, the survey wasn't done very scientifically because I didn't actually think it was going to be that big, but it turned out it was quite big indeed.

And so what I did, I said to people, right, here's a little test, and we might do this test on you guys. We will. Okay. to find out where you are on the psychopathic spectrum. But what I would also like you to do is just jot down your occupation. So what I wanted to do was I wanted to correlate occupations with psychopathy levels. And it became known as a Great British Psychopath Survey. And the results are really interesting.

Manor comedian number one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. so you will be very grateful to know the stand-up comedians aren't in here. But that's because... There's not enough of them around.

Yeah. To be statistically valid, you've got to have enough people saying that that's why politics aren't in. People are going to know, well, what about politicians? Well... Of the common professions. Yeah, that's right.

These are the top ones. A friend of mine always talks about politicians and says, you know, actually, of course, well, you know, even I say. in order to be, you know, if you're going to be a politician, any kind of politician is going to be pretty high on the psychopathic spectrum, even the ones you think are nice. And a friend of mine says the keys in the word politics.

It's derived from two words, Polly, the ancient Greek meaning many, and ticks being blood-sucking incident. So anyway, but anyway, back to the survey. Yes. Number one was CEOs. Yep, yep. Perhaps not surprisingly. Number two, lawyers.

Yep. Number three, media, TV radio. That's not such a big surprise, actually, because it's a very cutthroat world, currency is ideas. It's very easy to nick ideas. A lot of times you're in a state of flux, things are in a state of flux. You've got to think quickly.

Salespeople, perhaps not surprisingly. Surgeons were number five. Surgeons really interesting, actually, because I did a talk once, and I presented this table. And there was a surgeon in the audience who came up to my aunts afterwards. And he said, Kev, I've got no doubt that actually surgeons are in there.

But I think actually you could be a bit more nuanced here because there are, now, I think there's about 12 or 13 different sub-disciplines of surgery within the surgery bracket. And he said, I think you might find that some brackets might be higher than others. And we were going to run a study to find out whether that was the case. but various things got in the way, COVID being one of them, we may well do this next year. But his hypothesis, his hunch, was that the three

surgical disciplines that would be most harm the psychopathic spectrum would be neurosurgery, cardiothoracic and orthopedic surgery. Orthopaedic surgery is pretty brutal. If you've seen orthopedic surgeons at work, they have to really do some pretty nasty things to me. You know, whenever you see those, you know, I have 24 hours in A&E and you've got some with a broken bone, they've got to kind of twist that, you know, even though the person's under an anesthetic, but they're still feeling it.

You've got to be able to do that. That's not, you know, not everybody can do that. But he reckon that neurosurgery, cardiothoracic and orthopedic surgery would be the top three. Neurosurgery is very interesting because neurosurgery you've got, it's the only branch of surgery where if you make a mistake in the brain, you could leave a person permanently disabled or blind or incapacitated or kill them, of course. But in terms of leaving the kind of the corollaries of invalidity that you could leave a person in if an operation doesn't go well, there's no other branch of surgery really like that. And the margins of error between crucial capillaries is very

very, very small. So that's when you're a heart, cardiac, thoracic surgery, obviously, and orthopedics. I spoke to one surgeon when I was writing wisdom of psychopaths, and I said, well, you know, what is the, what's the big difference between people that are great in surgery, people who are just merely good? And he had no hesitation. I've spoken to other surgeons about this. No hesitation in talking, and he answers to him, and he said it's the ability to make a

crucial decision under pressure. It's not technical ability. A lot of consultant surgeons will admit that actually the people who are studying under them, some of the junior surgeons, are actually technically better. But it's the ability to make a tough call under pressure. It's decision-making that separates out the top surgeons from the surgeons that aren't so great. Interesting. Just come back to lawyers who are number two, and then I'll go through the rest of the list. It's really interesting. So lawyers, I don't. interviewed a lawyer when I was writing Flipnosis, which was the book

prior to wisdom a psychopaths. And again, it was the same question. What's the difference between? A great law and a good lawyer. And this guy was a pupil master, which is basically like he ran his own chambers in central London. And the chambers, it was like a teaching,

it was like a teaching hospital only in law. These are chambers where people come in from, you know, your universities with your first class degrees in law to learn how to be barrister. So he said, well, Kev, he said, you know, people are coming into the chambers. He said, they're all the top people from, you know, your top universities. He said, so the ability to get your head around a crucial case very, very quickly, all the detailed nuances of it, that's a given, that's just entry level, having a like a photographic memory,

again, same thing. He said, high intelligence, obviously. He said, but the one thing that separates out a great lawyer from a good lawyer is something you really can't teach. And he said, it's the ability to tell a story naturally. And he said, I'll never forget this. And this is really interesting. This is again why psychopaths are very good at persuasion. He said, you know what? He said, information travels around the brain, like electricity around a circuit, takes the path of least resistance. So if you and I come up against each other in court and the jury's over there, and you are able to present the pieces, the facts of the case. You are able to arrange him in a format that makes them travel round the brains of the jury

faster than my arrangement. You're going to win. Whether you're right or wrong, that's the way it works. So that was, so you can see why law is number two. You can see why surge is number five. Journalists, number six, the police, number seven. That's not too surprising. Actually, you know, some police work, you know, you've got to be pretty tough.

You've got to, you know, you've got it's, you know, some, you know, when you're on front line or you're investigating certain things, you've got to be, you know, you can't be a shrinking violent really in the police. A lot of evidence to show that people at work in so-called hero professions, which are police, the ambulance and the emergency services, and the military are higher on the psychopathic spectrum than the general population. Now, I'll skip eight, because we'll come back to eight. Number nine is chefs. That is worrying. But again, if you think, you know, high pressure, closed environment, you've got a lot of heat, you've got a lot of pressure. A team to manage.

You've got absolutely right. It's one, yeah, exactly so chefs. And number 10, this is why the surveys kind of fell down to it with civil servants. So that's a catch-all, that could be anything. But that's because I didn't think it was going to fly. The categories of professions weren't that great. I have run an experiment again, get more. more results next year.

And a couple of million people filled it out online. So we'll have a proper look at this next year. But come back to number eight. Number eight, the clergy, church people. You didn't expect that, did you? Now, I didn't at the time, in hindsight, a few years have passed now since this came out. In hindsight, it's not that surprising because a lot of scandals have come out about the church. Also, the church, the more I've looked into it, is just like,

like pretty much any other business. And it involves power over people. There is an uncontroversial phrase. The church is like any other business. Well, I'll tell you something even more chilling, Constantine. I mean, there was a church person, quite an eminent church person who I interviewed once. And he turned around to me and he said one of the most chilling things anyone had ever said to me. And he says, Kev, I don't believe in God.

I'm just good at him. Now, that is chilling. I don't believe in God, I'm just good at this. Now, that is pretty awful. Now, I'm not digging church people out because, of course, there's always rotten apples in every barrel, but that was a pretty chilling thing. If you can manipulate God

so that announes you to have power over other people, that's pretty psychopathic. And, of course, you know, like I said, it's like any other business. There's power hierarchies, there's all kinds of things, and you're going to go up the ladder using the techniques that you would use in any other business.

If you happen to be good at God, then you're going to get up there. The world is run by psychopaths. Well, God himself is pretty much a psychopath. If you look at the Old Testament, you know, all that kind of fire and brimstone and all that. You know, I think if I, maybe I will, maybe if I were to profile God. I think St. Paul I profiled. So a bit of background on that. So obviously spending years at University of Oxford and Cambridge,

I'm surrounded by some of the world's top biographers of famous historical person. And I've often been fascinated by psychopaths in history and wondered how, you know, famous historical personalities might fare on the psychopathic spectrum. So it dawned on me that actually biographers of famous people, famous historical people, obviously know these people almost, well, I would say virtually better than they know themselves. So I thought if I gave them a specially validated psychometric questionnaire, which is developed to detect psychopathy, not in forensic populations, but in members of the general public, there's different tests for that,

and got them to fill it out on behalf of their subjects, not on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of their subjects, we'd probably get a very accurate portrayal of where certain people featured on the psychopathic spectrum. and St. Paul was actually quite high on the psychopathic spectrum, the founder of Western Christianity. Before he turned into Stain glass, St. Paul was a ruthless bastard. I mean, he basically was guilty of genocide, of course. You know, he was before the road to Damascus. He was persecuting Christians in large numbers.

So St. Paul himself, the founder of Western Christianity, is very high on the psychopathic spectrum. He's at the gates of heaven. Huh? He's at the gates of heaven, St. Paul. He's got the keys. No, that's St. Peter. Oh, that's the one. That's some Peter.

Psychopaths don't... What kind of Catholic are you? Psychopaths don't have very good memories. Well, speaking of that. You've basically just kicked yourself out of heaven there. Yeah, that is true. Listen, if you don't know the guy on the door, mate, you're never getting in. He wasn't going there anyway.

But Kevin, on that happy note, why don't we find out? Can people follow along with this test that we're going to do for us at home? Oh, yeah. You want to do a test? Yeah, sure. Yeah, let's do the test. Yeah. So, um...

Let's do the test. Let's find out if we're psychos and let's find out if you're a psycho and you're a psycho. People can follow up with this test. They can play along as we go. Do we need to make notes on our phone? You do. So what you're going to need, you're going to need a piece of paper or a mobile phone. You've got it there.

Yeah. Yeah. Because what you're going to, Nick, what you're going to do is you're going to score. I'm going to read you out 11 items. Okay. 11 simple items. And these items all hypothetically describe you as a person. Okay. And what you're going to do, you are going to score each item according to how accurate

a description you think this is of you, okay? And you're going to do it according to the following scoring key. Okay. It's a four point scale going from zero to three. Okay. If you strongly disagree that the statement describes you, strongly disagree, give yourself zero, right? If you disagree, give yourself one. If you agree, give yourself one. If you agree. agree, give yourself two, and if you strongly agree, give yourself three. So it goes from zero strongly disagree, one disagree, two agree, three strongly agree, okay? And I'm going to read through them, you're going to score it as we go along, right? Number one, I rarely plan ahead, I'm a spur of the moment kind of person. I rarely plan ahead. I'm a spur of the moment kind of person. So zero strongly

disagree, just to recap, one disagree, two agree, three strongly agree. Number two, cheating on your partner is okay so long as you don't get caught. Now, whenever I do this with students in universities in large numbers, this is always the one where people are looking over their shoulders, seeing what the other person is. Cheating on a partner is okay so long as you don't get caught. Number three, if something better comes along, it's okay to cancel a longstanding appointment.

Something better comes along, it's okay to cancel a longstanding appointment. Number four, seeing an animal, injured or in pain, doesn't bother me in the slightest. Number five, driving fast cars, riding roller coasters and skydiving, appeal to me. Number six, it doesn't matter to me if I have to step on others to get what I want. Number seven, I'm very persuasive. I have a talent for getting other people to do what I want. Number eight, I'd be good in a dangerous job because I can make my mind up quickly. Don't think too long about that one. Number nine, I find it easy to keep it together when others are cracking under pressure.

Number 10, if you're able to con someone, hey, that's their problem. They deserve it. And the final one, number 11, most of the time when things go wrong, somebody else's fault, not mine. don't pin it on me right so 11 items you should have 11 numbers on a page there gentlemen i want you to top that up and come to a grand total don't say what it is yet got the total there francis not yet okay i can see why you never got the job on count down mate you got yours constantin got yours francis all right now i'm going to go through for the folks at home, I'm going to go through what this, the little key on the spectrum, so you can see where

you score. What we should say at this point is we're not diagnosing anyone here, all right? This is just a general indication of where you are on the psychopathic spectrum. It's quite accurate, but it's just not, we're not diagnosing. Right. Zero to 11, you are low on the psychopathic spectrum. Have either of you scored zero to 11? No. No. All right, okay. You look at your face. Look at him. You can just see he's itching to go here, isn't he? Right.

12 to 17, you are below average on the psychopathic spectrum. You're the first down. What did you score? I've got to scored 17. 17. That's on the high end of that. That's the border between below average and average, which is 18 to 22. Which is me.

Oh, you're in there. I, okay. What are you? 19. 19. I surprised myself massively. Oh, do you know what? I think Pete, I think, was Pete.

is Morgan 18 or 19. I think Pearce might have been 18 or 19. Well, I'm more psychopathic than Pierce Morgan. Jesus fucking Christ. I think you might be one point higher. So 18 to 22 is average. I'm average. Your average, yeah. Yeah, you can feel the tension rising in here. 23, or you would do anyway, for people are playing on at home. It's been interesting if people send their scores in, actually. I don't know if they have a facility. Yeah, yeah. People can post their scores on our locals. And also maybe what they do for living would be quite. good actually. So 18 to 22 is average. 23 to 28 is high.

And 29 to 33, which is obviously quite rare, is very high. So that's a very simple test of where you might feature on the psychopathic spectrum. Very good. Do you do it? No, no. All right. He did. He was 32. He was 32.

So there we go. But you can see, yeah. But also, as I say, when people talk about psychopaths, they, you know, You need to know what a psychopath is. So it doesn't mean to say you're going to become an act, if you do score high, it doesn't mean to say you're going to be an axe murder or anything like that. It just depends on what you do for a living.

I mean, you know, I know quite a few special forces soldiers who are very high on the psychopathic spectrum, surgeons as well. It just depends. I mean, there are some situations. I mean, you're asking a question earlier, actually, France, about which I still probably haven't quite answered. And that is, like, in order to be good at anything, do you need to be high on the psychopathic spectrum?

Well, not everything. I mean, it depends what obviously it is. Probably not child career. Well, no, exactly right. If your parents say it's exactly right. But, I mean, let's say something really interesting, like sport, for instance. Now, in order to be, you know, an Olympic champion or a world champion in any sport, you're going to need to be pretty high on the psychopathic spectrum,

even the nicest people. People I always use an example like Roger Federer, right? So Roger Federer, one of the nicest guys, you know. But actually, if you look at a lot of his early games when he was, was starting off. He would, he would, he would, he would quite often lose the first set and then come back and win three one while he was actually dissecting the person's game. He was looking for the weak spots like a predator playing with prey. And then he would dismantle that, that person. Now, I would say, you know, obviously a very, very nice guy in Roger Federer, but were he to behave

like he behaves on say Centacord in Wimbledon or in Flushing Meadow, you know, where he behave like that in everyday life, you know, smashing and slicing his opponents into oblivion, he'd soon find himself in a very different kind of court, right? So in order, when you get at the higher echelons of sport, talent is often quite similar. It then comes down to how badly you want it, how ruthless you are, whether you are prepared to push yourself into the black, into the darkness, to really go for it. And I think it was actually another tennis, John McEnroe said that, you know, in order to be number one at anything, the world has got to revolve around you. Because if it doesn't, then, you know, your opponent, if it revolves more

around your opponent, than it revolves around on you, he's going to come out or she's going to come out on top. There's a lovely story about Sebastian Coe, the athlete back in the 1980s, when Great Britain were fantastic at middle distance running. One of his big rivals, was Steve Ovette, who many of your listeners will remember the Co-Ovet rivalry of the early 80s. And Sebco was having Christmas dinner in his parents' house in Sheffield one day. And he had just done a seven-mile run, very hilly run in the morning. And it was an icy wind outside and absolutely awful weather. And he was like nodding off by the fire after a big Christmas turkey and dinner and all that.

And he suddenly had a very uneasy feeling. It was in the buildup to the, I think it was the Moscow Olympics or the maybe the LA Olympics in 84. And he had this very uneasy feeling that actually Steve, his big rival, Steve Ovet, might well have gone out and done a second session that day. And it was beginning to prow on his mind. And so he thought, I can't let it rest. So, you know, last thing he wanted to do, moved away from the fire, got his kit on and went out and did another seven miles in the icy wind and all that. Anyway, many years later, he met Steve Overt at a big function in Olympic dinner.

The two are very good friends now. And he told Steve Overt the story. And Overt's response was, oh, you only went out twice on Christmas. So, you know, you've got to have that. It's a lovely story, in the true one. You know, you've got to have that ruthlessness. Everything's got to focus around you. And I think this is really interesting, actually.

I think when people, when you hear people say, you know, parents or cultural leaders say, you know, we, you know, role models for our kids should be, you know, your Andy Murray's or your Steve Redgraves or, you know, your really top sports people like that. Actually, there's an element of real pathology in being at top level sport. And that's in no way, you know, detracting from your Red Graves and your Murray's and your Federer and, you know, your Tyson Furies. But you have to have that tunnel vision, that single-mindedness, that ruthless of pursuit.

of excellence to be up there. And what that does is it doesn't, in a lot of cases, make you the, you know, most rounded of individuals. So when we, when we kind of, you know, say that we want to, you know, our kids should have those kinds of aspirations, be careful what you're wishing for. And it's funny that you should tell that story about Sebko, because of course, famously after his athletic career, he became a politician. He did indeed. He did indeed. He did indeed. That's right, yeah, yeah. I've done a couple of talks with Seth Kahn. He's a very, very bright and polished guy, you know.

Well, no doubt. Which brings me to a question that I think is very interesting, which is, is this why psychopaths, we have psychopaths that we've evolved in societies where we have a certain number of psychopaths because it's useful to have them? We need, you know, now it's athletes, but in the past, they would have been warriors and leaders and tribe chiefs and all that sort of thing. I think that's right. If we go back in evolutionary time when we were living in small groups on the East African Savannah,

you know, people who were ruthless warriors were obviously going to be in high demand. People who were able to infiltrate other groups and perhaps get information out of other groups were also going to be in high demand as well. And also expert hunters and predators were going to be in high demand as well. So those kinds of ruthless and fearless psychopathic traits, it's not difficult to see how they may well have evolved. And also the ability to persuade to reduce conflict and trouble in a group without getting caught up in the heat and light of the emotion itself.

You can see how that might have evolved. And all these characteristics exactly are, you know, we've still got pretty much the same brains now as we had back in those days. so you can see how those traits are still valuable today. So you're absolutely right, Constantine. That's why these characteristics are still knocking around. But there's a much more prosaic answer to that question as well. And that is by their risk-averse nature,

they're less risk-averse nature, psychopaths are more promiscuous. So there's a lot more psychopathic genes knocking around than they would be non-psychopathic genes. So actually, because they tend to have more offset, spring, and they tend to be more sexually promiscuous. It's another reason why psychopathy is still hanging around in the general population. So not only do they have more kids, but actually in the right context, these kinds of characteristics can predispose you to success and are valuable.

Where they become toxic is if we go back to the mixing desk dial analogy, and you have those dials just slammed up on maximum and you can't regulate them according to context. So as I was saying, if Roger Federal was as ruthless on centre court, was as ruthless in real life as he is on centre court at Wimbledon, as I say, it'd end up in another kind of court. That would be the equivalent of having those mixing test dials jammed up on maximum. So good psychopaths, in my terminology, are people that are able to dial those dials up in the right context when it's needed and use those characteristics for the right intentions, but are able to dial them back down when needed. And people that have them jammed up on max all the time, they're the people who are

toxic, they're the people who are going to end up in prison, they're the people. And it also links up with intelligence as well. So if you are a violent, stupid psychopath, you are going to be probably going to commit a violent crime and you're going to be caught very quickly and put in prison, rightfully so. However, if you are an intelligent psychopath that say had a good start in life, and maybe you're not even naturally violent, then as the famous Reuters headline, once put it, you're more likely going to make a killing in the market than anywhere else. And then if you're a psychopath, intelligent and maybe naturally aggressive, then any number of exotic occupations might await you anything from special forces operative to maybe the head of a criminal syndicate,

something like that. So there's all kinds of other variables in the personality cupboard. So you might be a psychopath, but you might not be violent and you might be intelligent. That might predispose you to success in, say, business, all the markets or something like that. If you are a psychopath, you are violent and you're not that intelligent, then you might just be caught up as a violent criminal. So there's a lot of other things. And then you get into like, you know, people often say, well, where do serial killers come into this kind of thing?

Not all psychopaths are serial killers. Not all serial killers are psychopaths. So, you know, that's very interesting. I mean, but if you are a psychopath and say you had a formative experience, which wasn't so great, say you were sexually abused or violently abused or emotionally abused, and you also had a psychopathic personality, then that might predispose you into, say, serial crime. I always use the analogy of a bullet in a gun.

So let's say that the bullet in a gun is your DNA, is your genetic predisposition. Could be anything, but because we're talking about psychopaths, let's say the genetic predisposition to be a psychopath is a bullet in a gun. That genetic predisposition, that DNA won't become live unless there's a finger on the trigger to make that round life, to fire the gun. And that finger on the trigger would be a formative experience in your childhood.

So, as I say, it could be emotional, sexual or violent abuse. That might then trigger you into a life of crime. If you are, say, psychopathic and you have an experience, perhaps in your early childhood where sexual arousal is paired with seeing someone in distress or seeing someone in pain, and as I say, that's paired with a psychopathic personality, then there may be a chance that that could escalate. And so you start on the road of fantasy, and you fantasize with that. But then when you come to the end of that fantasy road,

somebody who might not be psychopathic may think, well, okay, that's the end of the road. But somebody who is less risk averse may well then say, well, okay, what do we do now? Well, let's start reenacting this in real life. And then you're into the criminal element, maybe serial crime or something like that. So that's the relationship. So the relationship between psychopathy and crime is actually more complicated than it might seem. What is the link between narcissism and psychopathy? Are people who are psychopaths more likely to be narcissistic and vice versa?

Yeah. Kevin, maybe define narcissism for us in a professional way. I think it's like psychopathy. People use the term without necessarily understanding what it means. So define it before you answer. Yeah. Narcissism is basically, it's a personality disorder like psychopathy. So there's something called the Dark Triad. The Dark Triad consists of three personality disorder, which are all actually linked.

If you remember the old Venn diagrams, when we were the kids, the old circles, if you were to draw the circles between, narcissism, psychopathy and something called machiavellianism, which is the ability to manipulate people and, you know, act as a bit of like an emotional puppeteer for your own benefits. There's a lot of overlap between the two. So narcissists are people that are very, very grandi, have a very grandiose view of themselves, very egocentric,

love to be the centre of attention. Now, the interesting thing there is, I don't know why you're smiling there, actually, Francis, recognise yourself, never know. But the interesting thing there is, machiavellian egosentricity is actually a trait found in psychopaths as well. So a lot of psychopaths are going to be narcissistic, but not all narcissists are going to be psychopathic.

That's the way the variation is. And I'll tell you why. That's where we are, mate. Because I'll tell you what. I'm more psychopathic than Pierce Morgan, so I've not come out of this well. Anyway, carry on. No, so what it is is the fact that, so a narcissist, just in general, right, to keep it simple, narcissists will want to be the center of attention because that is the end goal for them.

They want to be the center of attention. They want to be in the limelight. They want to be recognized. They want all the kudos. It's all about them. They want to be on stage. That's a narcissist, right? A psychopath doesn't necessarily need that.

A psychopath doesn't need to be the center of attention. attention for its own sake, but it's a means to an end for a psychopath. So for a psychopath, being the centre of attention, being in the limelight, gives them access to power, which is what they do want. Psychopaths are into power. And if being a centre of attention is the primary way of getting that power, then that's what they will do. But it's not the end, it's a means to an end, whereas with a narcissist, it's the end

goal itself. It's so funny you should say that because Francis and I, we recorded like an end of year conversation between him and I. And I stopped doing stand-up during the, basically during the pandemic, and he carried on. And he was saying how much he loves being on stage, where I was saying, well, I enjoy being on stage. And he was trying to convince me that, you know, stand-up, whatever. And I was like, well, the thing is, I never really cared that much about being on stage. And I never, I always want to. wanted to leave a gig. I didn't want to hang around and meet adoring fans or anything like that. That's not how I think. But I used to enjoy writing jokes and performing them and being on stage.

And it's funny that you make that distinction. Well, it's interesting because I know a couple of other stand-up comedians. I won't mention her names. And they've said the same thing. And it's interesting because one stand-up committee, I'm not, this may be true for you, it may not. But one stand-up comedian, who's a friend of mine, saying, like, they don't like hanging around meeting fans either because being on stage is a persona. Yes. And it's very much about, you know, you are very funny on stage.

But actually, when you're off stage, actually, you can't be that funny all the time. So it's almost like they don't want to let the fans down. They don't want to like access to the real person. So that was the kind of the motivation for them, which is quite interesting. So it's really, you know, when you think of like stand-ups, you think, they're funny like that all the time. You know, they're wisecracking. They're making everyone laugh.

But, you know, as you know, it's very hard work. As you've experienced today, they're not. But it's very hard work. And it's, you know, you've got to work at an act like that. So, so one of, as I say, one of the friends of mine said, actually they don't like meeting fans. They prefer to keep it as the persona on the stage, which is totally understandable. But suppose if you're not that funny, Francis, it's just like, you know, doesn't make any difference. It doesn't make any difference.

It's very naturally funny. But Kevin, is it possible to be a psychopath and live a good life? Yeah, I think it is. I think if we come back to what we're saying, if you go back to the mixing desk dials, I think if all those dials are turned up to maximum all the time, then you're not going to live a good life. Okay.

But if you have got some of them turned up high and some download, depending on the circumstances, then I think it is. Another way of looking at it would be to say, well, think of psychopathy as being like, going back to athletics, think of it being like a decathlon or a heptathlon. So a heptathlon or decathlon, you've got seven or ten events that comprise the entire discipline. So if you look at psychopathy as being, you know, a condition comprising of various psychological traits, such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, lack of empathy, lack of conscience, charisma, all those kinds of coolness under pressure.

If you're good at the right disciplines, then it's possible to leave a good life. But if you're good at the wrong disciplines, if you know you've got conscience and empathy turned down low all the time, then it's not possible to lead a good life. So it all depends, as I say, on what you use those characteristics for. So a good friend of mine, the Special Air Service, guy Andy McNabb. I've written a couple of books with Andy. I mean, he's a, he's a, he's a, came to my lab in, in a few years ago and we plugged him into a load of computers that went ping and did the psychometrics on him. Very, very high on the psychopathic spectrum.

And it made absolutely perfect sense to him when he found out. All his life suddenly started, he actually said, you know, now it makes sense. And Andy leads a very good life. He's, but, you know, as I say, he's ex-special forces. Those characteristics predisposed him to great success. Very cool under pressure. Can be very ruthless. But he can turn it on and off when he has to. I mean, I'll give you a great example.

I always remember going down to a gastro pub once. Me and my immeasurably superior other half a lane went down to a gastro pub to watch the England Wales, Six Nations Rugby match with him and his misses. And we went to this pub and it had opened at something like 11 o'clock. The game was at 3 in the afternoon,

something like that. And we got in there about two. We were going to get some drinks, get some food and watch the game. When we went in there, there were four Welsh guys, about 6 foot 3, 6 foot 4, standing at the bar.

They'd obviously been on the lash since the place had opened at 11 o'clock. They were, you know, pints of Guinness, leather jackets, big old boys, you know. And they were effing and blinding, right? Now, no one's approved, you know, no one's going to really worry about that. But there were women and children around. Just, they were very loud. It just wasn't the kind of right occasion for it.

So Andy said to me, he said, right, you go and get the drinks. I'll go and get the food. So I said, fine. Okay. So it was kind of one of these bars where the food was served in a different kind of place to the drink. So I've gone around one side, but I'm not too. far away about from here to wear anton his wing and he's gone around this side where these four guys are so i could kind of hear and he wasn't showing them up he said excuse me lads look not don't want

to ruin your day or anything but look can you just turn the volume down a little bit uh and they're all kind of leaning over the bar like this and one of them put his pint down and it's kind of stood it squared up and i thought this is going to be interesting because and he's not a big guy he's about he's broader than me he was about my height about five nine five ten I thought this is going to be interesting so I've gone round to his side of the bar, I thought one and a half against force, God, so I've gone around there. And I'll never forget it, chaps.

He kind of leant forward. And Soto Bocce, you know, it wasn't showing anyone up. He kind of put his hand very gently on this guy's forearm. He said, okay, right. He said, here's what's going to happen. He said, the door is over there. He says, you, you, you, you.

Never pointed at any of them, right? Open hand. because pointing is inflammatory. You, you and you and you, you're going to put your pints down and you're going to walk through that door and you're going to remain on the other side of it. Very, very polite. You're going to remain on the other side of it for the duration of the game.

And he said, I'll never forget it. And something in his eyes just went. Arctic blue eyes and they just absolutely changed. And he said, because if you don't, I'm going to formally introduce you to a level of physical violence. You never knew fucking existed. And there's no... saw exaggeration on that line.

That's exactly how it went. And there was a moment of quiet reflection. And these chaps just filed out in line. And that was the end of that. But here's where it gets interesting. You would imagine that after that, you know, if it was a normal person, they'd still be kind of pumped up. But it was literally like a tap going on and off,

like a switch on and off. And it was right, Kev. Fish and chips twice, pizza and burger, wouldn't it? Simple as that. Business as usual, like nothing had happened. It was what we call instrumental. it was right, this is how this is going to end, this is how it's going to pan out, that's what you're going to do, the situation is sorted.

Now, I became very interested. After that particular episode, I became very interested on remaining on the right side of Andy McNabb. But I became very interested, because I'm sure you're there already. Well, can you fake that? There was no doubt in my mind or in Andy's mind that he would have totally dismantled those guys had it come to that. No one wanted a fight in a gastropub, but,

Actually, if it had come to that, he could have done it. But what I became very interested in was, is it possible to fake that? Do you need to be the real deal or can you actually act that part? And we were going to run a study looking at that. I can't go into too many details now because COVID scuppered it. But hopefully we will get around to look at it next year to see whether you actually do need to be the Royal McCoy or whether it's possible for anyone to kind of method act their way into that kind of role. So, perhaps you'll have you back when you've got the results. Yeah, we'll be able to go into more detail about that.

Quick question. Are psychopaths, are a lot of them in control of their character traits and personalities? Like you talk about them being dulled, you know, certain people being dolled up to Max and some people not. Yeah. Can they actually control it? Yeah. Somebody like Andy can. Again, the bad ones can't.

The ones who end up in prison. Exactly right. Because they can't control it. And if there's one of those dials, so we've got two analogies going here, we've got the mixing desk dials and we've got the decathlon, heptathlon thing. There's one major difference between what we might call good and bad psychopaths. And it's depending on whether you want to use the athletic analogy or the mixing desk dial analogy, it's the impulsivity dial or the impulsivity discipline.

in the Tassalon de Casill. If you are impulsive and a psychopath, which is one of the key traits in psychopathy, if you've got that dial turned up and you can't control that, that's the answer to your question. Then you're going to wind up in a lot of questions. And if Andy had had that,

that would have been a fight. Exactly right. Then you're getting into the realm of what we call. This is one of the major... I'm glad you asked me that, actually, France, because it's a major theoretical point. This is the difference between, again, in general terms between sociopathy and psychopathy, all right?

So a lot of people say, well, what's the other terms interchangeable? Well, a lot of the time when they're used in the media, excuse me, they're interchangeable. But actually, if we're looking at it, you know, professionally, technically, sociopaths are people that are impulsive, who are violent a lot of the time, who react rather than respond. So give you an example. Let's say that we met in a bar. Let's say that I was a sociopath and you happened to annoy me in some way.

Let's say you walked in and spilled my drink. If I was a sociopath and I just got annoyed at that, I might pick up a bottle and smash it over your head, react violently like that. I might then be carted off to the nick and I might in the morning really, regret that. I might show remorse for that. However, if I was a psychopath and you did that, and let's say I also saw 200 quid in your wallet, I might not react at all. I might just go, okay, that's interesting, but I might be waiting for you outside the pub with a knife. And I might use that knife instrumentally to get that money out of you. So,

psychopaths are capable of very cold, premeditated violence, whereas sociopaths, the impulsive, of hot-headed antisocial personality, is more predisposed to reactive hot violence than cold premeditated. That's very interesting. And Kevin, am I right in thinking that there are more male psychopaths than female? Yes, that's true. Just going back to come back to that point a minute, just the point on the previous. No, no, no, it's fine.

On the previous point, it's really interesting. one very bad psychopath who I interviewed in a secure unit once came up with a very good way of looking at it and he said again very very chilling he said you know what there's when you stop at a traffic light red amber and green you don't need to have colour vision to know how that works you just need to know which bits are lit up

and that is very much how psychopaths pure psychopaths not the sociopaths see emotion they don't see the colour of it they see which bits are lit up, which means that they're very good at moving people around and emotional puppeteering and all that kind of thing. So they don't hear the tune. They just read the score,

if you want to look at it in a music analogy. The gender differences in psychopathy, yes. So first of all, it's important to remember that psychopathy, pure psychopathy is rare, so it's less than 1% of the population. So there's, you know, the old joke about bloke's hitchhike, down a road one dark night and puts his hand out on a lorry stops for him and he gets in and he can't believe it and he turns around to the lorry driver and he says i'm amazed you

stop for me for all you know i might be a serial killer and the truck driver says nah a chance of the two serial killers you don't pretty much zero so i mean it's like yeah so it's it's it's kind of gets at the point that it's pretty rare but within that very rare bracket yes there are generally more males than psychopaths. Again, the old joke is... More male psychopaths than female psychopaths. Sorry, more male psychopaths than female psychopaths. And again, the old joke is that generally agreed that women prefer to kill just a one man over a longer bit.

That's sound of me getting cancelled right there, by my wife. But yeah, I mean, and we don't quite know why that is, but there's a number of hypotheses, a number of reasons why. Early upbringing, guys are generally brought up to be more competitive. more rough and tumble, more aggressive. So that might be one reason. Another reason is that male and female brains tend on average to react differently to aversive stimuli.

So if you come into the lab and you're a female and you, say, are subjected to electric shocks or white noise or something like that, you may well be more predisposed to be anxious, whereas a moment. male brain may be more predisposed to be angry. So there's a kind of a slight difference there between how man of femurban brains react to versus stimuli. Possibly one of the more interesting theories is actually that it's kind of a sociocultural

theory, that there may well be a bias in diagnosing women. Because the word psychopath has a pejorative, it's got a negative connotation. And in somewhere like America, for example, it has legal connotations as well, which can result in the difference between getting the death penalty or not in some states. So there may well be a bias in clinicians to not diagnose as many women as men. And also, I think to a lot of people, psychopathy is correlated with violence. Women are less likely to use violence. Absolutely right.

Well, that's another theory that actually the same brain states that you might get in psychopathy in males, might manifest, a great point content, it might manifest itself in a different way. Well, this is what I was going to ask you. What is, is there a behavioral difference between your average male psychopath and a female psychopath? Because I think most people have an idea of what a male psychopath behavior might look like. Yeah. What does a female psychopath look like? There's evidence to show that in female psychopathy may be more akin to what we call borderline personality disorder,

which is narcissism, manipulation, mood swings, black and white mood swings. If you remember fatal attraction, the film Fatal Attraction, with Glenn Close, that was a brilliant depiction of it right there. So, as I say, you know, very black and white thinking, manipulation, intimidation, emotional kind of blackmail. You're just describing women, man. That's right, yeah. Now, now you've cancered, but I've long since been cancelled.

You know what's interesting? You talked about borderline personality disorder. We had Dr. Diana Fleischman, who is an evolutionary psychologist. Right. A couple of years ago now, and she was saying more women got diagnosed, get diagnosed with BPD every year than men. So could it that just be that these are more just female psychopaths being diagnosed Absolutely. Well, that's one, one, there is one school of thought which says that, actually.

The same brain state manifests itself behaviorally in a different way in females than it does in males. There is a school of thought which says that. So absolutely. I always say, you know, for instance, the brain is like, it's like a mysterious gray planet. And it's, you know, everyone talks about landing on Mars. If you think of the brain as a planet, a mysterious gray planet between our ears, we haven't really landed on it yet. We've seen it through long-lens telescopes. But it's still a very new world. We actually don't really know that much about it. We're learning more and more. But it's really interesting when people say,

oh, you know, we're sending a probe out to Mars and all that. We've still got to land on this planet. That's fascinating. We're nowhere near landing on this planet yet. And it is, you know, when you see it on the scans, it's like this grey world, which is at a distance. And, you know, it's actually right inside our own head. So it's really interesting.

But, I mean, I have my own background. I mean, I grew up with my own father was a psychopath. That's how I kind of started, really. He was a market trader in London, not on a stock market, on the streets. He was like Del Boy. I mean, he even looked like Del Boy. I would say he could sell shaving cream to the Taliban. He could sell anything to anybody.

And he was ruthless. He wasn't violent. He was ruthless. He was fearless. He was fearless. He was shameless. But I never once saw him embarrassed. And he could do things that most people would find psychologically impossible.

I mean, I always remember one, I'll give an example. I mean, I always remember one time, I was about nine or ten. I used to help him on the stall, you know. And we got hold of a load of diaries once, calendar diaries. And they were very different to anything we got our hands on before, because they were actually bloody nice, right? They were leather, or fake leather anyway. They were embossed.

they were slim. There was a reason why they were slim. Anyway, we knocked out about 300 of these and about an hour and a half on the stall somewhere in like I remember it wasn't. It was like curry to a piss head, you know, these things. And when we got back to the flat, I was remember something like nine and I said,

they were fantastic. I said, you know, they're not thin those diaries, weren't they? And this gives you indication what he's like. He said, yeah, there was a reason for that, Kev. I said, oh, what's that? He says April was missing. So when you were, he gets one out of the draw. January, February, March, May.

He said, exactly like, Delaw, June. I said, Dad, we've just sold 300 of these. What are we going to do? He said, I'll never forget. He said, nothing for now, some. But come the end of March, make sure you pack your swimming trunks because they're off to Toro Molinas for six weeks. Couldn't give a shit about anything.

He was like, absolutely no sense of consequence, but a real cheeky charm, cheeky kind of chappie. And he was one of the most persuasive men. He wasn't an educated guy. he left school at the age of 15. But as I say, he was absolutely a brilliant salesman. And he said something to me, which in all my years in academia, I don't think I've ever heard a more profound statement about the art of persuasion.

And it was actually one night, it was fun enough, it was always remember it. He was taken me into an Indian restaurant in Brick Lane in the east end of London. And we just finished on the stall. And just as he's about to pay the bill, he turns around and he says, Kev, if there's one thing I want to remember in life, son, is this, persuasion isn't about getting people to do what they don't want to do. It's about giving them a reason to do what they do want to do, right? Very, very different.

So watch and learn. So I'll never forget it. He gets his spoon and he tinkled against his glass. The entire restaurant falls silent, and he gets to his feet and he makes a speech, right? And he says, right, I'd just like to thank everyone for coming. Now, I know that some of you've come just around the corner, some of you come from a little bit further afield, but I want you to know that you're all very welcome.

It's very much appreciated. Oh, there's a pub across the road called the King's Arms, in which we'll be hosting a little drinks reception after this. It'd be great to see you all there, at which point he starts to clap, right? So at which point everyone starts to clap. So picture the scene, we've got an entire restaurant full of people

who've never seen us before, never seen each other before, all applauding wildly, because none of want to be seen as a gate crash. as the party, you know how it works, right? So as we leave him, remember, I'm only about nine or ten. I can't resist it. I say, but Dad, we're not really going to the pub, are we?

And he puts his armour and he says, course, not some, but let me tell you something. That lot in the restaurant are, my mate Malcolm, he's just taken over his landlord. He'll make a few good tonight. Again, no sense of consequence, no sense of, you know, what might happen. But what he'd done, he'd demonstrate his own point,

that actually there's something in it for these people. They're going to go to that pub. There's free drinks there. They're going to get them in there. So exactly that kind of guy. So I grew up with this kind of, and I often think that, you know, years later, it was probably bottom line of it all, I might as well admit,

it's probably trying to get to the bottom of whom my old man was, really. Well, very much on that point, Kevin, I think a question that a lot of people want to ask, and my sense is women more than men, but both probably sexes, is how do you know if your partner is a psychopath, if you're not going to get them to do an 11-point test? Like what are the red flags for someone who is psychopathic, particularly in a way that you'd want to avoid, really?

Yeah, if your partner's a psychopath, your boss is a psychopath, there are, I mean, you know, we're not talking about serial killing psychopaths. We're talking about like, you know, your common or garden, people who harm the psychopathic spectrum. There are a few tell-tale signs. Psychopaths are very, very good at first impressions, really good at first impressions. So if you've got someone that is really love, love,

you from the... Now, this is a general rule of thumb. There are some very nice people out there as well. So, but if you've got someone who is really love bombing you from the start and perhaps making you feel a little bit uncomfortable, no, you might want to just start thinking yourself, okay, let's see how this pans out. If then that goes to emotional manipulation, say you're not responding to that,

so they may then start manipulating you into feeling guilty that you've let them down or that you're preferring to spend time of your friends rather than them. Look what I've done for you. You know, how can you make me feel like this? Look what I, you know, that's another red flag, especially in conjunction with, as I say,

with the love bombing in the early stages. If you're at work and you've got someone who is, maybe it's the same person, who's taking credit for your ideas, so they will, you know, ask you for a report or something like that or to put together some presentation, and then they take that and pass it off as their own work without giving you credit.

That's another tell-tale sign. Belittling you in public bullying is another tell-tale sign. Being very, very nice to people that are above you, but pissing on people below them is another. So the authoritarian kind of style of personality is another sign. What we call emotional puppeteering. So moving people around as if they're chess pieces. There's no real empathy there.

It's just like what you can do for me. That's another sign. So if you've got someone that's demonstrating all these kinds of signs, I'm sure there will be people out there that recognize that. Yeah, there probably there's a few red, flags there, I think. And how'd you become more like a psychopath, Kevin? How do you become more like a psychopath? Some weird question to ask. Not surprising for someone who was like below average on the yeah. But think about it. Is that your takeaway from the interview? You're not psychopathic enough.

Yeah, exactly. I need to be more. No, but you're a good question. It's a good question. I'm not disputing that. I'm just curious why he's asking it. Because you look at these character traits. Yeah. And a lot of them, as we've already assessed, highly. desirable. So how do you, how does somebody who is not high on the psychopathic spectrum attain those character traits without all the other negative baggage? You could start by buying a book, which I wrote with Andy McNabb called The Good Psychopaths Guide of Success, which is exactly answers that question. Of course, when the wisdom of psychopaths came out, checks in the post, by the way, when the wisdom of psychopaths came out, people said, well, this is the

this is the popular science version, where's the self-help version? So McNabb featured highly in Wisner Psychopaths. So then we got together and we decided, it was actually his idea, it was a great idea, that why don't we, you know, I'm the real deal and I'm the expert in it. Why don't we write a book together where we pool our expertise? And we try to help people who are perhaps not as assertive as they might want to be, who are probably more anxious than they might want to be, how do we turn those dials up a couple of notches

to get them to a level? And there's a number of little tricks of the trade. I mean, it's really interesting, right? So imagine I was to put a plank of wood on the floor. Let's say it's a five-foot plank of wood, and it's say 10 foot long, 20 foot long. And I was to say, Francis, I want you to walk along that plank of wood. You'd have no trouble doing it, right?

imagine the same plank of wood and I hoisted it up 20 metres right it's exactly the same five foot wide 10 foot long and I said now walk along it all of a sudden you'd think shit why it's the same plank of wood you're still putting one foot in front of the other you could do it quite well when it's on the ground but all I'm doing is hoisting it 20 20 foot in the air 40 foot in in the air well you've increased the price of failure that's absolutely absolutely right and yet it's exactly the same process all you've got to do is put one foot in front of the other, but all of a sudden what you are doing is you are now not looking at one foot in front of the other, are you? You're looking at the edges and what could

possibly go wrong. Well, psychopaths don't do that. This is like penalty shootouts, right? If I was going to have a, if I was to pick a person to win the World Cup for England in a penalty shootout, I'd pick someone who was very high on the psychopathic spectrum. Someone has got absolutely reward focus, tunnel vision, no anxiety, decisive, bang, that's where it's going to go. a psychopath wouldn't have any trouble walking over that plank at 44. It's just the same process. So tip number one would be to decouple emotion from behaviour. All right. So, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of the times we confuse emotion. Emotion clouds our judgment. But actually just kind of thinking, you know, okay, it's the same process.

Just do what you're doing, you know. Don't get caught up in the emotion of it. And you can train yourself to do that. It's really interesting. There's a study done a few years ago, which looked at, and we've all been there. We all, we all kind of differ on this. Let's say you're on holiday, right? You're at the seaside. There's the sea.

First down the beach, you've got your trunks on. You're going to go in for a dip, right? So you've got people that run straight in. We've all seen them, right? People that run straight in, banged, dive in, get it out of the way. Or then you've got, they're called what we might call the runners. Then you've got the splashes, haven't you? The people that are going tiptoe up to their knee up to their, all like that.

And then finally after about five minutes. Now, what are you? Finally, they're getting in. You're a runner or a splasher? I just tend to, I want to get it over with. You want to get it over with, right? I want to go, dive in, Bosch. Okay, get it all over in one go.

Constantine, what are you? I'm the same. I just dive in. You're diving, right. Okay. So there was a study done a few years ago, which actually looked at who experience is the most pain. And it's unbelievably, it's the splashers.

Of course it is, yeah. Of course it is, right? Because you're aggregating the pain, right? Actually, if you just get it over within one go, you actually experience an aggregate less pain than if you're kind of like prolonging it. So what impact does that have on real life? Well, next time you've got to do something

which you don't want to do, let's say you've got to pick the phone up and give something bad news or you've got to do a chore that you don't want to do. What do most of us do? We psychologically splash, don't we? We put it off. Yeah, I'll kind of do that in a minute.

Yeah, okay, yeah, I'll do it. I'll tell you what I'll do it after I've made a cup of tea. More splashing, right? What you've got to do is just go straight in. Pick the phone up. up, just make the call. Or just get straight down and do the chore. Don't overthink it, just do it.

Because actually you've got to do it anyway, and you're aggregating less pain than if you just keep putting it off. There's a very simple discipline, just knowing that fact, will help you kind of just turn that dial up a little bit. Another way of doing it would be like, well, how many times do you get people to ask you to do something, let's say in three months time? And you say, yeah, I'll do that in three months. yeah, okay, you put it in the diary.

And then it gets to three months' time. Oh, shit. I've got to go and do that now. You know, we've all been then done it. How do you stop yourself from getting into those situations? Well, another little tip that we give is like every time you're asked to do something, right, just imagine it's tomorrow, right? Do you want to do this?

Is it a benefit to you? Are they paying you enough? All these little questions because it's tomorrow. Because one day it will be tomorrow, right? if the answer to any of those questions is no and you don't want to do it, we'll say no. Just fast forward it to three months as if it's tomorrow. And that way, your diary will be full of things that you actually want to do. Another thing on those lines would be if you're trying to decide what to do,

imagine a rating score between 1 and 10, right? Now, most people, if they're asked to rate whether they want to do something, but kind of the tipping point is around seven, right? Seven, yeah, I kind of want to do that, but yeah, yeah, it's kind of good, but okay, right. So in order to get away from that grey zone of deciding whether you want to do something, rate stuff you want to do on a rating scale, but miss out seven, just go from six to eight. So seven doesn't exist. Do you want to, how do you feel about this?

Six, one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, ten. again, you'll find that you start becoming a lot more selfish, perhaps, as a word, but maybe, you know, just caring a little bit more about yourself. Again, it forces you into a more binary decision. And again, if you're true to yourself, then you'll be honest, then you'll find yourself, you know, just doing a few more things that you might like. So very simple tips and techniques to sometimes it's okay to put yourself first. You know, you see, it's okay.

And I think that's, you know, if people that aren't as assertive, people who are a little more anxious tend not to do that. And it's really interesting. I've often found that the inability to say no is actually a form of narcissism. Now, I know that sounds a bit silly, but imagine that somebody says to you, oh, Francis, will you do this for me? And you say, you're frightened to say no. So you say, yeah, all right, I'll do that. Let's have a look at what that means. you are thinking in your mind that you saying no is going to be way more important to that person it's going to have a really bad effect on them well are you really that important to them is that what you think you think that you saying no is going to really upset them who are you you probably

no one to them so when people have trouble saying no it's often an inverted form of narcissism that you overinflate your sense of importance to that person. So actually, a lot of the time saying no, won't have that effect on a person at all. It's just okay, fair enough. But you see, there's a flaw in your argument because I'm everything to him. There's the narcissist.

But Kevin, we've taken up a lot of your time, and that's just because it's been absolutely fascinating. Before we go to our locals' questions and the usual final question we ask, let me get the converse question for you. you, which is I was actually extremely surprised by how low I was on the, on the psychopath scale, because I am naturally very low in empathy. Yeah.

So, and I've had to, so I guess the question is, how do you become less psychopathic in a beneficial way to you? Because I'll give you an example. I've always been self-employed. I've always worked by myself. Yeah. And it's only when we started doing this and there was a team of people to manage and whatever. Yeah.

I've ever actually had to care about what the people. people around me think and feel, right? And to me, it doesn't come naturally. And to this day, I'm almost like, I feel like I am mechanistically getting there. Like, I know I need to care about the people who work here because that's how we get the results we want. Yeah. But if I could switch that off and everything just got done without me thinking about the emotions, I would take that option any day or the week. I'm not going to lie. Right. So, and I've got there over time by consciously focusing on it. And it's been beneficial to me and I think to everyone around. So how does one address negative psychopathic behaviour within oneself?

Yeah. Well, there's a number of answers to that question, Constantine. And the first thing is, actually, what you're describing is interesting that you felt that you needed to change that. Because actually, it sounded like being mechanistic was doing actually just as well as actually feeling it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It gets the result. It gets the result. So if it gets a result and you were able to like do that coldly and mechanist passionately, it's interesting that you felt the need to actually kind of change.

You wanted to feel it yourself rather than anyone else feeling it, which is kind of interesting, I think. So that's an interesting thing. The reason I feel the need to do it is I know that we can't get to where we want to get to without that. Without it being genuine, without you're genuinely feeling it all. No, without caring how other people feel about things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, that's true. That's true. What I'm saying is you can kind of, how can I put it?

You can kind of care about how other people feel about things, but there's two ways you're doing it. You can coldly care or you can warmly care. I'm more of the coldly type. And actually, personally, I don't think there's much wrong with that, to be honest. I mean, actually, to be honest, but there's a much more in-depth answer your question. And actually, psychopaths, when you look at empathy in psychopaths, it's very, very interesting because there's cold empathy and there's warm empathy, right? Very, very basic distinction.

Cold empathy is the ability to calmly and dispassionately gauge what an understanding. person might be feeling. That sounds like something that you're very, very good at. Hot empathy is actually feeling what another person is feeling. And that is something that psychopaths aren't very good at, but they're better than average at coldly and dispassionately engaging. Coming back to the traffic lights, don't need to see the covers. You just need to know what bits are lit up. That's you describing yourself, I think, there to a certain extent. You just need to know what bits are lit up. But actually, that doesn't make your worst driver. Actually, but what you're saying is, that would be kind of nice to see the colors. But actually, you don't need to see the

colours necessarily. I mean, you've got a great setup going here, so you've done pretty well. However, the interesting thing here is it touches on to the question of treatment, whether, now, I know you're talking about like, you know, people in everyday life, but, you know, whether psychopaths are actually treatable or not in forensic and clinical settings. Now, for a long time, it's been thought that they haven't been. treatable because of the very nature of who they are. Psychopaths kind of touches on a point you made earlier, France, which I never actually got round to answering. I've now remembered it. Psychopaths have, especially when you're right up the high end of the spectrum, they tend to have very little self-insight

into their condition. And that was, if you remember, the quiz that we did. Number 11 was when most of the time when things go wrong, it's never my fault. It's always somebody else's. So psychopaths lack a self-insight. You know, it's always other people's. If something goes wrong, it's always their problem, you know. So you'll see this with like, say, you know, very unsavory topic, but rape, for instance, a lot of psychopathic rapists will say, well, she was asking for it. I taught her a lesson. You know, she won't do that, you know, they frame it. So there's no responsibility from them and all the responsibilities on the victim. That's, and again, when we were talking about, you know, in everyday life, in, say, office politics or in relationships, whether you can spot a

psychopath. That's, again, we talked about that victimization. You know, they make themselves a victim, you know, where actually, you know, it's not, it's not your fault at all. So traditionally, it's been thought that psychopaths are untreatable because they're very good at passing things off as, well, they're not responsible. They were actually behaving in the right way and it's just the situation that made them or you that made them behave that way. And they were justified in doing it. that. And also, remember, they're very good actors and actresses. So, you know, parole boards or, you know, tribunals, they're very, very good at telling you what you want to hear, putting on that good face, you know, it won't happen again or whatever, whatever. And as soon as they're out,

they're back to their old ways or whatever, as soon as they're out the other side of the tribunal. So for a long time, it's been thought that psychopaths are not treatable. However, there's a lovely story, which I heard, it almost goes back to hypnosis, the art of persuasion, you know, split second persuasion. There's a wonderful story I heard about the prisoner, one of Britain's most violent men, Charlie Bronson, who you might be aware of.

So Charlie Bronson is notorious. He's been in loads of prisoners. And there's a film about him, Tom Hardy, played the role of Bronson a few years ago. And Charlie takes a lot of hostages or used to. And makes outrageous demands. So there was one time he took a hostage, which was a prison guard.

And the story went something like, it was Charlie had him catch if, and he said, if you do one thing wrong or you say one thing, I'm going to cut your fucking ear off. And this prison guard said, oh, don't do that, Charlie. Me glasses will be all wonky. Brilliant line. And Charlie Bronson just laughed and went, I'll fuck off. Let him go.

Now, that's really. interesting. So clearly there was a way through in that particular situation. Now, when I hear those kinds of stories, it brings us right back full circle to how we started this. You know, with persuasion, are there keys to every situation who's just most of the time we're scrabbling around trying to find them? Or is it the case that actually some situations do not have any key to unlock it? I'm a firm believer in the former, hence flipnosis. Now, one of the reasons I think, this is a very long answer to your question constantly, I'm getting there, but one of the reasons I think why psychopaths, we believe them to be untreatable,

there's another story about an American mathematician called George Danzig. Now, George Danzig, you won't know, but he solved two probability statistical equations that were previously regarded as being unsolvable. And the reason he says he was able to do that. was because he was an undergraduate at the time. And he showed up for class late that day. And when he showed up for class, the teacher had already written the equations on the board.

And George Danzig had missed the part where the teacher and the lecturer had said, these are unsolvable. He thought they were just courseworks. Examples of coursework that had to be done. Because he didn't know they were unsolvable. He went away and solved them. And I think this shows the power of expectation.

A lot of the things we do is in four. by what we expect. The power of expectation really informs how we, how confident we are and the outcomes we expect to get. And I think one of the problems with psychopathy is we have this expectation that they're beyond the pale, that they can't be treated. And actually I think that's informing a lot of our thinking about this. Now, there is a kind of therapy which does work with psychopaths,

and it's called decompression therapy. And it's a very intense form of training. to be fair, the evidence shows that it works with juvenile psychopaths, so when the brain's a little bit more malleable, not with older psychopaths. And decompression therapy is, because of the nature of psychopathy, because psychopaths tend to not fear consequences, they don't give a shit about what people say about them, they're very thick skin, they don't learn from consequences. If you punish a psychopath, or you take sanctions against them for bad behavior, they actually become more entrenched a lot of the time because they just don't care. They will just react

against that and they will just double down. So that clearly doesn't work. And psychopaths, psychopathic prison are almost double twice as likely to reoffend. Their recidivism rates are double that of normal prisoners in general. So the punishment angle doesn't work. However, if you reinforce good behavior, starting off with just very, very, very, very, very, minor behavior like you might just smile at me is walking past in the corridor and you get a little treat for that little reward and you then escalate that reinforcement schedule up to bigger and bigger forms of behavior there is evidence that that does work with psychopaths and you can turn people around especially juvenile psychopaths now of course there's a criticism of that and the fact that you're not

really changing the person you're not changing what's under the bonnet you're kind of just modeling behavior that is a criticism of decompression theory therapy but it does show show that actually psychopaths aren't beyond the pale. But to go back to everyday life, if you are high enough on this, and it's really interesting, but sometimes people say to me, they email me as a way of studying conversation, and they say, Dear Professor Dutton, I'm very worried about being a psychopath. And I instantly say, well, you're not a psychopath.

But anyway, I never do that. But actually, as soon as somebody says I'm worried about being a psychopath, the game's up, right? You're not a psychopath. You're worried about it. But if you do have kind of a self-insight into being that you might be, you know, a little bit high on the psychopathic spectrum, I think the first thing is a great sign that you've had the insight because you know that there might be a problem.

And then as soon as you might be a problem, that's the way into it. That's a door into it. So what I would always say is resist the first option. Let the first impulse pass and then have a maybe take five minutes. and then consider the second impulse. So that's the main thing. So just, you know, you might want to do something, just resist that and think, okay,

it's an academic intellectual exercise. Now, if I do that, which I previously might have done, how might that pan out? So put yourself deliberately, dispassionately, coldly in the other person's position or in your own position, maybe a couple of weeks down the line, just literally as an academic exercise,

plot out the iterations of that decision. Let the first impulse pass and then go with the second impulse once you've considered that. So it's a variation on the theme, sleep on it, basically. But that's the best and most powerful everyday tool you can use if you feel that you might have a bit of a problem. Fantastic. Well, Kevin, we'll ask you a couple of questions from our supporters

that only they will get to see the answer to. But before that, we've got our usual final question, which I can't wait to hear your answer to. Which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Yeah. Well, I think that one of the main things which bothers me in society, which doesn't get a lot of traction, is loneliness. I think there are a lot of people out there who are lonely. That's very different to being alone.

Alone is fine for some people. but there are a lot of people out there who are isolated who are lonely. I had a friend of mine who I hadn't seen for a while who committed suicide during COVID because he ended up on the streets. And that made me really reflect on the fact that there are people who are falling through the cracks who are very lonely. There is gradual awareness building on this now. I actually did, I don't know if you're aware of it, I did a thing called the Metro Marathon Challenge back in 2021 with a friend of mine, John Collins, who's a great British rower.

And in order to raise awareness of people on the streets and the homeless, we became the first two people to run the entire network of underground metro network of a major city in one go. And we slept rough all the time we were doing it. And then, so there's 315 stations on the London Underground. We ran all of them in one go. We got a firm of mathematicians called Capa Gemini to map out the shortest route between all 315 stations.

And then we did that. And then we ran the London Marathon on the final day to top it off. Unfortunately for us, transport for London, while we were doing it, we did it in a fortnight, decided for the first time in 25 years to open up two new underground stations. And we'd already passed those by the time. So when we finished the London Marathon, we had to keep going, and we had to tick off nine Elms and Battersea,

which was actually great, because you don't want to stop straight after a marathon. So we kept walking. We ticked them off. But it was called the Metro Marathon Challenge. We did that to raise awareness of homelessness and loneliness. So that is something which is very close to my heart. And I think we need to be aware that there are people out there who are on their own

and you might need help. So that's me being very un-psychopathic. So that's what I think we should be talking more about. That's a wonderful answer. And Kevin, if people want to find your books, if they want to find you online, where is the best place to do that? My social media handle is at the real Dr. Kev, or one word. So that's Instagram and Twitter. I'm not the best at it, but give me a hand.

Come on. That's good. And my website is www. Dr.kevindutton.com. Fantastic. So that's me. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Well, I've loved every minute at that.

And as of weed. It's been an absolute pleasure. One of the best set of questions I've ever heard. That's a very kind of you to say. And thank you guys for watching and listening. We will see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one, or a show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time.

And for those of you like, your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. And go to our locals to see the bonus questions. with Dr. Kevin Dunden. Take care. Do you think Megan Markle is a psychopath? How do you know for sure, he says?