I never really met a psychopath myself but I always wonder if they are really that dangerous as portraied in movies and TV-shows.
If not can you please explain me why in simple words as I don’t understand much about this topic?
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No. There’s this story about a doctor who looked at a brain scan and explained that this person would be a dangerous psychopath, only to learn that it was his own brain scan. Just because you don’t feel things like remorse, it doesn’t mean that you can’t intellectually understand and strive at being a good person.
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/)
“Psychopath” isn’t an actual diagnosis. The closest would be Antisocial Personality Disorder, or ASPD which is primarily characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse.
A diagnosis requires at least three of the following criteria to be met:
repeatedly breaking the law
repeatedly being deceitful
being impulsive or incapable of planning ahead
being irritable and aggressive
having a reckless disregard for their safety or the safety of others
being consistently irresponsible
lack of remorse
ASPD is also treatable, although some core tenants of the disorder, such as lack of empathy, may always remain.
As such, I would say people with this disorder are not always dangerous. There are many different combinations of symptoms that can present seeing as only three are needed to diagnose. People with this disorder are more likely to be violent or manipulative, but the majority of them are not going to be the serial killers you see on TV. While lacking empathy and remorse removes a lot of your motivation to not hurt other people, it doesn’t inherently motivate you to hurt them either.
First – psychopathy is not a diagnosable condition as it were, but more a description of personality traits. You don’t really diagnose someone as a “psychopath” from a mental health perspective, but you do talk in terms of traits. Certainly the broad model of psychopathy include a level of disinhibition (poor impulse control) and a lack of empathy (failure to recognise or understand the emotions of other), and with that lack of empathy/close attachments comes a higher tendency to be “mean.” Being charming, manipulative, target-focused, intent on fulfilling own needs and desires, and a disregard for the impact on others, tends to make a “psychopath.”
Are they dangerous? Well, for a given value of “danger.” Certainly someone with the traits and “symptoms” of being a psychopath means they are more likely to be psychologically, emotionally and socially harmful to others, and yes physically harmful. But it will be a person-by-person basis, and how those traits are actually manifested. Again the difficultly is that there is no consensus as to what a “psychopath” actually is – neither the International Classification of Diseases or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (ICD and DSM respectively) recognise a distinct disease by that name.
Nope.
Psychopaths still understand the rules of society, have no difficulty adhering to them, and the ability to “put on a mask” and reduced empathy can be beneficial for some occupations.
It just breaks some of our innate “ape shall not kill ape” safeguards, so psychopaths also find it easier to be criminals that harm and manipulate others.
No. About 1 in 100 people are psychopaths. You almost certainly know at least 1 psychopath.
They are more likely to commit crimes than other people, but not nearly as much as TV depicts.
I once read an interesting piece that psychopathic traits were generally favoured in many upper echelons of companies and can be considered leadership abilities by some in business and politics. The ability to lay off large amounts of people without guilt if it provides business benefit, strategically enact environmentally damaging legislation for personal gain, etc. That seems quite dangerous to me.
As a point, movies will rarely portray serious unusual conditions, especially mental health conditions, in any realistic manner. I mean, you know of plenty of movies with characters with “schizophrenia” (psychosis: delusions, hallucinations) but it affects 1 in 100 people and only 1 in 100 of them have levels of paranoia to the point of being dangerous. Most are usually just scared all the time. You may have seen movies with “split personality” but most people will dissociative conditions only have the one fragmented personality, and even those few who do have DID, well, their situation is far more mundane and boring (even if the trauma that often leads to such conditions is not) and never fun.
However, none of that plays well on the screen. People want to see interesting and gripping characters like Hannibal Lecter. Not someone in the HR department firing someone and then going home and watching TV without a care in the world.
There are studies that people with mental disorders are more often victims instead of harming others themselves.
A psychopath will gain a short term advantage at the cost of a long term relationship.
That is pretty dangerous if you think about it.
[https://youtu.be/yuzV8K-p8YU?t=18](https://youtu.be/yuzV8K-p8YU?t=18)
Yea stay away from them. They usually stay in jail and if they’re lucky they grow up around age 27. They can bring you down to hell with them in the meantime.
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson is an excellent read about this. You’ll never look at psychopathy the same way again.
Iirc, among other things, he suggests that many powerful and successful CEOs are psychopaths. And that it helps them be successful cos for example, they don’t feel bad in the slightest about laying off or screwing over tons of employees for profit.
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