How to spot a Psychopath. The Psychology of Psychopaths | Psychopathy Explained

hi everyone my name is facility gofundme and today's topic is on psychopathy psychopathy is a topic i really enjoy reading about or watching series about this topic and i think many of you would agree with me that it's a really interesting topic so i decided to create this video gather as much information as i can and hopefully you're also going to find useful so in this video we're going to discuss about the key features of someone who scores high on the psychopathy checklist how we might see some differences in the anatomy of the brain how they're able to manipulate others some key features during childhood nature versus nurture and we're also going to touch upon treatment before we start off i also want to mention that sarcopathy is also known as antisocial personality disorder according to dsm 5 our diagnostic manual for the sake of this video i'm also going to refer to the psychopath as male but please don't think that men are more likely to score high in the psychopathy checklist i'm only doing that so that we won't get confused both women and men are equally likely to score high on the psychopathy checklist okay so let's start well i think when we talk about psychopaths when we think about psychopaths the first thing that comes to mind are mental pictures of individuals who might be criminals or murderers and it is true that around 20 of individuals who are going to score high on the psychopathy checklist are also prison inmates however this does not mean that anyone who scores high on the psychopathy checklist are necessarily criminals in fact people who might score high on the psychopathy checklist have managed to adapt very well into our society they might be in professions like police force or law or medicine and i'm going to discuss about this throughout this video why those jobs might be more appealing to them so it will make sense to you so the first key feature that i want us to touch upon is that they're egocentric and grandiose everything evolves around them they need to be the center of attention the grandiosity part becomes mostly present in a more dramatic fashion maybe in a courtroom so a psychopath is very likely to fire his own lawyer because he thinks that they are incompetent and that they're not doing a very good job for example ted bundy and if you don't know who ted bundy is he was a notorious serial killer in the us and he was a person who decided to fire his own lawyer because he thought that he would be able to do a much better job than any lawyer could so you see a psychopath is not very likely to follow societal norms societal rules they're more likely to create their own rules and just follow those they're also glib and superficial and by that i mean that they're very good conversationalists they have this great comeback story or comeback comment that would create this wow effect to you and you might think it's too good to be true and most of the times it is too good to be true however the way that they're going to sell the story is very convincing although you might think it's quite unrealistic i'm not quite sure it's very likely that you're going to believe them so that brings me on to the next point that they're very manipulative and deceitful so lying to a psychopath is like second nature they don't care if someone else knows that they're lying so i know that you might think that everyone lies and it is true everyone might tell a white lie however the difference is that a psychopath it's so easy for them to do so and they do take pride in being able to deceive another person so a key difference here between a psychopath and a narcissist is that a psychopath doesn't really feel embarrassed even if he knows that the other person right now does does know that i'm lying he won't care about that whereas a narcissist really does care about the opinion that others have of him so if he thinks that well they know that i'm lying they will feel embarrassed a psychopath does not care about that another key feature is that they're very impulsive so a psychopath is not likely to take a notepad and a pen and write the pros and cons list before making a decision there are people who are just act on the moment and they won't think twice and that's why that's because they they're very eager to have this excitement this adrenaline rush and that's why we might find them in professions like police force or um medicine so a policeman is a person who does not know what each day might bring they do not know uh what this case is about so every day is different for them and that brings an adrenaline rush for a psychopath you won't find them in professions that it's more boring more of them this the same routine every day that i'm in the office and i have the same duties every day they need the excitement the that thing that makes them through the day another really important key feature is that there is lack of empathy so they won't feel any empathy their lack this emotional intimacy there is also lack of remorse and guilt so even if they have committed the worst crime even if they are imprisoned because of that they won't feel any guilt they won't feel any remorse and actually that's a really important feature because it does tie very well with lack of empathy there's also lack of responsibility for someone who scores high on the psychopathy checklist nothing is because of them nothing is their fault if for instance they have children and when you have a child then by nature you might feel more responsible for them they won't care about their welfare they will just view them as inconvenience so all those are some of the key features that we might see in someone who scores high in the psychopathy checklist but do bear in mind that those are just the surface and if you are going to have a diagnosis it takes more time it does not mean that anyone who does touch upon those features is definitely a psychopath it just means that those are some of the features that we might see in someone's course high on the psychopathy checklist so i'm now going to move on to the anatomy so research has shown that actually for individuals who score high in the psychopathy checklist they're not able to process emotional cues let me give you some uh some examples so to be very concise we have two hemispheres we have the left and the right the left hemisphere is responsible for language production and comprehension the right hemisphere is responsible for spatial and imagery perception as well as emotional regulation so research has shown that as i said for psychopaths they're not able to process those emotional cues those emotional words if i have let's say a word like a pen or book or glass those words are considered to be mutual words but if i give you the word like kill or murder or cancer those words are very likely to create that emotional effect on you you might remember a person who was diagnosed with cancer or you might remember that movie that you saw and many murderers were portrayed so you will feel a bit uneasy now for the psychopath what was shown was that the brain response was exactly the same when we showed them the neutral words and the emotional words whereas for another individual who does not score high the brain response was different so what that tells us is that they're not able as i said to have this emotional connection with the words that emotional cues that processing of the emotional words so let me give you some other examples so that you can understand this idea let's say that we have um a woman in this case and she tells you that well this person cheated on me they told me that they loved me they begged for my forgiveness and then they turned around and did the same thing so they left wondering why did that happen when they begged for my forgiveness and they told me that they loved me well what you fail to understand is that a psychopath does know the meaning of the words so they do understand what the words mean however they lack the emotional capacity that comes with a word so that that means that even if they have let's say assaulted someone they don't find anything wrong with telling them that they love them after they have assaulted them because for them i love you it's just the word they have learned what it means and that's why they use it and sometimes they might also mimic the behavioral response that comes with the word so for instance when you say to to someone i love you you might be in a more vulnerable position or you might be tearful so they might even mimic that in order to be very convincing and to manipulate others so this is why um sometimes they might say things and people are left wondering how could they do that when they said the exact opposite well this is why so let's move on now to how they're able to manipulate others well we get sucked in into the emotional triggers that they push so it's not what they say but how they're going to say things they're very likely to put on a show through dramatic gestures through intense eye contact and what happens is that our attention is being drawn away if that's not enough then maybe an expensive car or a nice outfit or a powerful position at work might do the job research has also shown that actually individuals who are more attractive are also more likely to be successful at a job interview i'm not saying that if you are pretty it definitely means that you're always going to get the job but i think you see what i mean so imagine that you have a psychopath who is very likely to put on the show and they're also very attractive what will happen is that you won't be paying attention to what they're saying but you will be paying attention to their hand gestures to the way that look at you and that's why they just move on and get what they want now how are they able to push our buttons well it's simple really what happens is that they are going to befriend another person they're going to act as their friend in order to learn their vulnerabilities once they know what makes them vulnerable then they're just going to use it to the best of their advantage they don't really care about the other person as we said the people around them they're just there for their amusement and their benefit so once they have that they're going to use it and they're also most likely going to target helpless and vulnerable individuals so that they they get what they want in a more easy way now let's look at this from an outsider's perspective so if there is a person who might think well why did that woman just continue on taking the abuse why did didn't she ever reported to the police and the answer is actually very simple it's because of embarrassment because imagine if the psychopath is maybe your husband or a very close friend or a loved one so imagine how they will feel they will feel as if they how could i be so blinded why didn't i see this coming so it's all because of embarrassment and they are left feeling tired embarrassed and that's why they won't press charges they will try to warn the next victim about everything but because the next victim might think that well why didn't you tell anyone they might actually not believe them and actually the psychopath might also enhance that so they might say that well she's jealous of us as we said they're very good conversationalists so they will know how to get their way out of it now the khan's psychopath will also very likely target nurturing women and by that i mean women who always try to see the good in others the woman that actually will take abuse for many many years um because they think that they will be the ones that change them they will be the ones that show to them that actually what you're doing is wrong and actually that that's not true what we might also see is that some individuals do not see that they have been the victims of abuse they have been the victims of the situation and we call that a psychological denial it's a defensive mechanism that actually we use in order to block out painful truths so it is something that we might also see let's move on now the final topics of discussion we have childhood we have nature versus nurture and we also have treatment during childhood some of the symptoms that you might see include aggressiveness petty theft impulsivity lying and animal cruelty amongst many others so those are not the only ones they're also very likely to meet criteria for conduct disorder it is also really important for me to mention here that actually if you are going to offer some sort of treatment some sort of therapy this is the best time to do so because if they are going to move on to adolescents and adulthood then they're very unlikely to change any behavioral patterns okay so let's move on now to nature versus nurture because i know that you are wondering whether someone becomes a psychopath or whether they are born a psychopath well on the one side we have the nature side that supports the biological model and that someone who is a psychopath will also have some brain damage to the frontal lobes so if someone has damage to that part of their brain what they will display includes symptoms like aggressiveness or impulsivity and those are also key features that we discussed that someone who scores high in the psychopathy checklist will also display however we also have the other side the nurture side that supports that if someone is being raised in an environment there that there is some emotional abuse then they are going to become a psychopath so it is true that if you have been exposed to some emotional mold treatment of course there might be some psychological effects some psychological difficulties later on however research has not shown that if you have been exposed to some emotional abuse you are definitely going to become a psychopath in fact you might actually have been raised in a very loving and supportive environment and you are going to become a psychopath so for instance uh you know as a child that well if i cry or if i shout they will always give me what i want so you will start creating that manipulative side that deceitful side so you see the truth is somewhere in the middle we need to take into account both sides both the nurture and the nature so it's not clear-cut it does not mean that if you are raised in an environment that has some emotional abuse you are going to become a psychopath or if you have some brain damage you are definitely going to become a psychopath so the last thing that i want to discuss is treatment well unfortunately there is no treatment that has shown to be very effective for someone who is going to be a psychopath so we have talking therapy we have counseling but factors that are really important in talking therapy include that someone owns up to what they are facing knows what it is that they are going through and they want to change that so they know that maybe how i'm behaving is creating an issue so i want to change it well a psychopath will not think will not feel that anything that i'm doing is wrong so they see nothing wrong with what they're doing so this is why they are not the ones who are going to come into therapy probably a loved one maybe their wives or their friends are going to bring them in and that's the whole problem there because in order to make therapy work as i said you need to have some insight you need to also to have some motivation to have a behavioral change to make a change into the way that you are thinking of things into the way that you are behaving so that's why therapy won't work for someone who is a psychopath the best time to offer treatment as i said is doing childhood that's the best stage that we can possibly see and hope for any successful results so that's it for today guys thank you very much for watching in this video we discussed about the key features of someone who scores time psychopathy checklist about how they're able to manipulate others childhood nature versus nurture treatment many different things so i hope you found them useful the last thing that i want to give you include some books and some serious recommendations one book is by robert here called without conscious if you do not know who robert here is he's a really important psychologist who was actually the inventor of psychopathy checklist so if you are interested in this topic i think you should definitely check this book out another one is by babiak and robert hair again called snakes in suits so those two books will give you a very good understanding of everything that we have discussed here today and they're also very easy to read so i'm sure you're also going to find them enjoyable in terms of series we have the ted bundy tapes on netflix so as we said ted bundy was a notorious serial killer in the u.s and through this series you will be able to see and hear everything that ted bundy did throughout his trial so everything will make more sense because now we know about the key features of someone who scores high on a psychopathy checklist another series is called dirty john the first season and again you will be able to spot some of the symptoms some of the key features of someone who scores high in the psychopathy checklist and this is also actually a true story so i hope you find it enjoyable that's it guys thank you very much bye

Channel: Dr. Becky Spelman

Views: 78,497

Keywords: dr becky spelman, private therapy clinic, the psychology of psychopaths, psychopathy explained, what makes a psychopath, psychopathy vs sociopathy, psychopathy checklist, psychopathy symptoms, psychopath childhood signs, treatment for psychopathy, brain anatomy psychology, psychopath brain vs normal brain, psychopath brain differences, how a psychopaths brain works, psychopath manipulation techniques, inside the brain of a psychopath, the brain of a murderer

Id: taNk1kWyEiw

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020