[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MZCHjGkTPg"]YouTube - Michael (author of Freedom from Conscience - Melanie's Journey) about psychopaths part 1‏[/ame] Some political psychology that you might find both interesting as well as scary in the video.
sort of a chicken/egg issue. are psychopaths attracted to politics, or do politicians become psychopaths because it's a basic requirement of the job?
Actually I used to post here a lot until a few pregnancies shut down much of that free time. As for the topic: http://www.viewzone.com/politicians.html
what's wrong with psychopaths? it may be a different path, but many politicians walk the psycho path as well. besides, there apparently isn't much of a difference... psychopath — n Also called: sociopath a person afflicted with a personality disorder characterized by a tendency to commit antisocial and sometimes violent acts and a failure to feel guilt for such acts
I'd never seen it related to politicians - but I know CEOs often test very similarly to serial killers and the like on the psychopath test. I guess now that we're being told (incorrectly, imho) that governments should be run like businesses, maybe those nutty folks are taking an alternate career path into politics as well.
at the higher levels of Government, there's a revolving door between Government and business anyway, so this doesn't surprise.
Huh. Why have the two different words, then? I always assumed psychopath meant what it sounds like it means -- someone with psychosis.
I think that psychologists tend to call it psychopathic since they believe that the cause is a combination of genetic predispositions combined with environment while social scientists like the label sociopath as they believe that the main factor in causing these conditions is environment. So basically it means the same thing, except when one uses the term they may convey their view of how it is caused. I would suggest people look up Hare's work on the subject.
Neither is an official DSM category but rather are subsets within the Anti-social personality disorder category. Many psychologists use both terms and distinguish between the two, albeit only slightly.
There was a This American Life episode related to this topic a couple of months ago. The Psychopath Test. One of the segments featured this Hare person.
That was really interesting -- thanks for the link. When they were interviewing the businessman they brought out some interesting insights on the test itself. The weakness, I believe, is that some psychopaths are driven to success so if you have questions that are more applicable to prison populations, like poor planning to attain goals, you ignore the people who have other traits (lack of empathy, lack of guilt, narcissism, etc.) and automatically score successful psychopaths lower. On another question dealing with sexual promiscuity I and some friends took the psychopath test and one guy scored really high, except that he was a member of a traditional religion so he had always avoided engaging in sex with multiple partners. One of the females scored higher and she teased him for getting two points more than him since she was quite open about her sex life being quite experimental. In the religious guy's case he has one of those intellectual connections to God that is not attached to emotions, but even in regards to morality he deals with issues intellectually, never emotionally.
That is very interesting. So I saw Barb's link and didn't realize there is a whole industry on this "psychopath test" business. Although the fact that two distinct groups score similarly on a test doesn't mean they are anything alike -- but it's fun to make a statement that "CEOs test similarly to serial killers" since that let's you equate people like Steve Jobs with Jeffery Dahmer. And that's useful.
Re: Are business moguls more likely to be psychopaths? Why? Does he have someone's head in his freezer?
Are business moguls more likely to be psychopaths? Has anyone checked his freezer lately? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft