Latest news with #psychopathy
The Independent
14 hours ago
- Health
- The Independent
Psychopaths are most likely to live in these US states
A new study indicates a correlation between adverse social conditions and higher levels of psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism. The research analyzed data from 1.8 million people across 183 countries, including 144,000 in the U.S., linking personality traits to societal factors like poverty, inequality, and violence. Researchers found that in societies where rules are broken and conditions are poor, individuals tend to prioritize self-interest, leading to higher 'Dark Factor' levels. U.S. states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Nevada and New York were identified with higher 'Dark Factor' levels, while Utah, Vermont, and Alaska showed lower levels. The study suggests that personality is shaped by societal conditions, implying that reforms to reduce corruption and inequality could help prevent the development of negative personality traits.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
The four US states where psychopaths are most likely to live... are YOU living near one?
Scientists have uncovered the US states where people are more likely to have 'dark' traits. Researchers measured four traits — narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism — across all 50 states, using data from at least 100 participants in each. Nevada, Louisiana, New York and Texas scored among the highest when it came to these devious characteristics. The study suggested that higher levels of dark traits in certain areas may be influenced by unfavorable societal conditions, such as poverty, crime, inequality, and scarcity of resources, which can foster dark traits. Nevada scored the highest likely due to its gambling culture linked to risky behavior, while South Dakota suffers from high poverty and inequality, poor health care and limited resources. New York and Texas experience stark economic inequality, with extreme wealth right next to poverty, which may have attributed to the high score. However, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York and Maine are among the states that scored the lowest in dark traits. These states typically enjoy more favorable societal conditions, such as higher education and income, better healthcare and strong social services. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who asked thousands of people to answer a survey via their own website. The data of 144,576 Americans was collected from February 2, 2019 to February 19, 2024. To measure aversive societal conditions (ASC), the team creator an indicator based on corruption, inequality, poverty and violence. They used Census Bureau data on inequality and poverty, homicide rates and Justice Department corruption convictions, Newsweek reported. Other states that scored high included Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, states with high crime rates, poverty and worse access healthcare. California also made the list as it has some of the widest income gaps in the country, especially in major urban areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where wealthy tech and entertainment sectors coexist with large populations facing poverty and homelessness. Certain areas in California also struggle with higher crime rates, gang activity and drug-related issues, which may contribute to increased suspicion, aggression or defensive behaviors among residents. The team found a small but significant link between a state's ASC score and the average Dark Factor of Personality (D) score of its people. The study suggested that higher levels of dark traits in certain areas may be influenced by unfavorable societal conditions, such as poverty, crime , inequality, and scarcity of resources, which can foster dark traits Alaska, Oregon and much of the Rocky Mountain states scored the opposite. Experts have suggested that the lower D scores in Alaska, Oregon, and many Rocky Mountain states can be attributed to a confluence of geographical isolation, cultural heritage emphasizing individualism and resilience and social environments that promote cooperation and adaptability. This pattern remained nearly the same after we controlled for age and gender, researchers said. The team also found that the conditions in US state, measured by the ASC index, are related to people's aversive personalities about 20 years later. This supports the idea that a society's environment can help shape a person's traits and adds to what is known about how aversive personalities develop. 'This is to be expected as both genetic and other socioecological factors likely also affect individuals' aversive personality,' researchers shared in the study published in . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 'Moreover, even relatively small effects can be cumulative in nature, so the relation between ASC and D may have important consequences at scale, especially because higher aversive personality levels imply notable costs for others and/or society.' Professor Ingo Zettler told Newsweek that he and his team were curious if 'adverse societal conditions contribute to the proliferation of selfish, egoistic and other traits.' 'Aversive personality traits are associated with behaviors such as aggression, cheating and exploitation, and thus with high social costs,' he added. 'Therefore, even small variations can lead to large differences in how societies function.'
Telegraph
09-06-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
Just how psychopathic are surgeons?
These are the people we trust to hold a sharpened knife above our bare bellies and press down until they see blood. We let them tinker with our hearts, brains and bowels while we lie unconscious beneath their gloved hands. Surgeons live in a world of terrifying margins, where the difference of a millimetre can be the difference between life and death. That level of precision demands an extraordinary calm, or what you could also call a cold detachment. But what happens when that same self-possession curdles into something darker? In recent weeks, two surgeons have made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In France, Joël Le Scouarnec was sentenced for abusing hundreds of children – some while they lay anaesthetised in his care. In the UK, plastic surgeon Peter Brooks was convicted of the attempted murder of fellow consultant Graeme Perks, whom he stabbed after breaking into his home in Nottinghamshire. Today, Brooks was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 22 years at Loughborough Courthouse. It would, of course, be absurd to taint an entire profession with the acts of two individuals. But it does resurface a long-standing, uncomfortable question: might the very traits that make a surgeon brilliant also mask something far more troubling? 'When people hear the word psychopath, they tend to think of serial killers and rapists,' says Dr Kevin Dutton, a psychologist and the author of The Wisdom of Psychopaths. 'But the truth is that certain psychopathic traits – focus, emotional dispassion, ruthlessness, self-confidence – can predispose you to success, and in an operating theatre, they really come to the fore.' Dutton has spent much of his career trying to prove that 'bad psychopaths' – people who have these characteristics but who can't regulate them – are the ones who commit crimes. A 'good psychopath', by contrast, is someone who can dial those qualities up and down at whim. He recalls one neurosurgeon who was regularly brought to tears by bits of classical music, but who also said, 'Emotion is entropy. I have hunted it to extinction over the years.' Similarly, a cardiothoracic surgeon told him that once a patient was under, he no longer saw them as a person – just a piece of meat. 'Once you care, you are walking an emotional tightrope,' says Dutton, 'but if you see the human body in front of you as a puzzle to solve, then you are more likely to save their life.' 'There's a ruthless part of me' Gabriel Weston, a London-based surgeon and the author of Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story, describes her profession as one that requires you to 'flick off a switch'. Sent to boarding school at a young age (much of British surgery is the product of elite schools), Weston learnt early how to detach emotionally – a skill she found served her well in the theatre. 'If you asked my family, they'd say I'm very emotional in that I cry in films or at art or literature,' she says. 'But there's a ruthless part of me. I use that in surgery – and in other parts of life where emotion just gets in the way.' Over time, Weston learnt to distinguish between two kinds of surgeons: those who switch their feelings back on once they leave the operating room, and those who never do. 'They don't just have psychopathic traits,' she says. 'They live in that space permanently.' They can also come with a reputation for being not just difficult, but dangerous. Harry Thompson*, a British abdominal surgeon, describes a world of towering egos and simmering aggression. 'If you think about it, all surgeons were in the top five of their class,' he says. 'They are all very competitive, and many play sports: they want to prove they are better than everyone. And if you are at the forefront of major surgery, you think you are invincible. It's a boiling-house environment of jealousy, envy and hatred.' He recalls one consultant who stabbed a plain-clothes policeman with a disposable scalpel after being stopped for speeding en route to the theatre. Another smashed a ward office clock when a nurse arrived five minutes late. Physical assaults were, he says, more common than you would think. 'I was in one operation when a student, John, was an hour and a half late, because he overslept. The surgeon thumped the student's head against the theatre wall until he was unconscious, screamed, 'Nobody move!' then started kicking him. No one ever saw John again.' Nor is the patient always spared. 'When I was training, I saw one surgeon thump a patient for removing a drain from his own bottom after an operation because it had become painful,' says Thompson. 'The patient only admitted this (in tears) after the surgeon had made the nurses and junior doctors line up and interrogated each one in turn about who had done it.' Thompson used to work with Simon Bramhall – the liver surgeon who made headlines and was later struck off for branding his initials onto patients' livers using a laser. 'Simon had always been a bit mad,' says Thompson. 'He was fascinated by the programme Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and he always wore a white suit [like the character Hopkirk], tie, shoes and socks.' As for tattooing his patients' organs: the initials were discovered by his colleagues only during a second surgery when his once-subtle etching was now grotesquely enlarged by liver damage. While Bramhall's actions sparked public outrage, some in the medical community were nonplussed. Perhaps because this is a far more commonplace occurrence than we realise: an article in Harper's Magazine cited examples of anonymous ophthalmic surgeons who had lasered their initials onto retinas, and orthopaedic surgeons who had etched theirs into bone cement. 'Why would you do that? Ego, of course,' says Dutton, 'and it isn't incidental in surgery. It's selected for. From the moment you start training, you have to fight – quite literally – for your space at the operating table.' 'I find it very freeing not to be pleasant' Dutton researched which of the various disciplines within the profession had the highest rates of psychopathy, and the results are revealing. Number one is neurosurgery (which is bad luck for any fans of Grey's Anatomy), followed by cardiothoracic or heart surgery and then orthopaedic. 'The last one is brutal as you have to smash people's bones,' says Dutton. 'Cardio more than anything is about life and death, but neurosurgery is particularly interesting to me. I think it's because this is the only branch of surgery where, if something goes wrong, you leave the patient permanently crippled or blinded or incapacitated, so only very few people can take such a calculated risk under pressure.' And though these traits are often seen as typically male, women are by no means exempt. Weston says the most difficult surgeon she ever worked under was a woman. 'She was very attractive and well-liked – mostly for being gorgeous and good at her job – but privately she made my life hell. Maybe she didn't like another woman being on the team but she did that horrible thing that women do of presenting this incredibly benign face while being very cruel in private. For months, she blamed me for mistakes that weren't mine, stole credit for my diagnoses, and made me feel like my surgical skills were terrible. She was truly villainous.' And yet, Weston admits, the operating theatre offers her a rare freedom: 'If you are a woman who is quite tough and unsentimental, surgery is a really amazing environment in which you can be yourself. There are many areas of my life – mainly motherhood, but also writing – where there is an expectation that I will be softer than I am. Like Simone de Beauvoir, I find it very freeing not to be pleasant.' Perhaps there is something in all of this (criminal and violent behaviour aside) that we, as patients, secretly find reassuring. We don't want our surgeons to hesitate. We don't want them to be emotional or anxious. We want them to be brilliant: laser-focused, supremely confident, even terrifying if that's what it takes to save us. In life, we dislike arrogance. On the operating table, many of us yearn for it. 'I had one boss,' says Thompson, 'a French surgeon. He used to say: 'There are the porters, the nurses, the managers – and then there are the surgeons. Above them, God. And above God? Me.''
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Can YOU spot the psychopath based on these headshots? New study reveals subtle clues in people's faces
Would you be able to detect narcissism or psychopathy simply by looking at someone's face? Science suggests it's possible. A new study has demonstrated that people with so-called 'dark triad personality traits' share similar facial features and expressions. They tend to have stronger brow ridges, unreadable expressions, symmetrical faces, narrower eyes, and a direct gaze — and they smile less. Researchers in Turkey conducted three studies on people from Turkey and America who looked at photos of digitally created faces. The faces has been carefully crafted based on features associated with high or low levels of Dark Triad traits based on photos constructed by averaging the facial features of real individuals who scored either high or low on Dark Triad trait tests. The study showed that people could identify all of these traits at least 50 to 75 percent of the time from headshots alone. Scientists suggest that people's ability to identify these traits may be an evolutionary adaptation that our human ancestors developed to avoid dangerous people. 'Estimating the personality traits of others has adaptive advantages such as being aware of the opportunities and costs that the other party can offer... and it can guide us about behaving and making decisions in our social interactions,' the researchers wrote in the paper published in Personality and Individual Differences. People with the three main Dark Triad traits —narcissism (grandiose self-obsession), Machiavellianism (cold, tactical manipulation), and psychopathy (impulsive ruthlessness)— are often manipulative and emotional brick walls, typically willing to do or say anything to get their way. They also have a grandiose sense of self, are typically impulsive, and may engage in dangerous or exploitative behavior, such as love-bombing and emotional blackmail. People with these traits can be especially adept at hiding them, especially at first. Narcissists often come off as exceedingly charming and engaging upon meeting them. Machiavellians, meanwhile, excel at adjusting their moral values based on what will benefit them most and tend to be callous and cold. Researchers conducted three studies encompassing 880 total people. They viewed composite images from photos of people who scored very high or very low on personality tests, and were asked to guess which face displayed more of a given trait. The first study involved 160 Americans who looked at composite face images depicting high and low levels of the Dark Triad and Big Five traits -- openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (anxious versus stable). People had to guess which of two faces scored higher on a given trait. Participants guessed correctly over 50 percent of the time for Dark Triad traits, while the Big Five were identified less often. There were, however, a few exceptions, including agreeableness – which involves being kind and trustworthy, was the easiest for study subjects to spot, particularly in male faces – 58 to 78 percent of the time; conscientiousness, about 55 percent of the time, and extraversion, roughly 75 percent of the time. But people consistently struggled to identify openness and neuroticism, which covers emotional instability, anxiety, self-consciousness, and sadness, often guessing the associated faces incorrectly. They identified extraversion – being outgoing, sociable, and energized by social interactions – only in women's faces, not men's. In study two, researchers included 322 American adults who participated in the same study as the first but also included demographic questions such as age, ideology, and sex, which helps ensure that effects aren't driven by particular hidden biases, like if one group skews younger or more liberal. Dark Triad traits were again correctly identified, while identification of the Big Five traits was more mixed. Again, the only two that were not identifiable were neuroticism and openness. The subjects were not influenced by age, sex, or political ideology. Study two proved that the results of study one were not a fluke, researchers concluded. Study three involved 402 Turkish college students who repeated study two, but in a classroom setting. The results were the same. And they were better than American adults at identifying narcissism, though less able to judge male extraversion and openness. Researchers did not identify any of the faces belonging to people with psychopathy. Still, those people with those disorders tend to also possess those personality traits, including callousness, thrill-seeking behavior, ease of manipulating people, and superficial charisma. Throughout human evolution, being able to 'read' people has proven a key survival mechanism. Spotting personality traits by how someone looks gives people an advantage, telling us to steer clear of a person who seems manipulative or exploitative. These traits inform the way people act. People who score high in extraversion are typically easy to spot because they are talkative, energetic, and quick to smile. They exhibit outward cues, including a relaxed posture and a warm expression, that are typically easily recognized. On the other side of the spectrum, people with the Dark Triad traits are more likely to lie, manipulate, and act aggressively, which makes them more likely to cause trouble in workplaces and in their relationships.
Daily Mail
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Women really DO love a bad boy: Men with psychopathic traits are rated as more attractive, study finds
From Christian Bale in American Psycho to Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, psychopaths in films are often played by very handsome actors. And according to a new study, this is no coincidence. Researchers from Hunan Normal University have revealed that men with psychopathic traits are rated by women as more attractive. In their study, the researchers showed over 500 women photos of men with varying degrees of Dark Triad traits - narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy. The women were asked to rate the men for attractiveness and trustworthiness. The results revealed that men with high Dark Triad traits were seen as both more trustworthy and more attractive. 'In short-term cooperative settings, individuals with high Dark Triad traits tend to inspire more trust,' said study author, Dr Qi Wu. '[This is] partly due to being seen as more attractive based on their facial features.' Psychopathy has been widely studied for decades. For example, previous studies have uncovered a link between the condition and eye-gaze, sadism, and being single. However, until now, the link between psychopathy and trustworthiness has remained largely unstudied. To address this research gap, the team enlisted 592 participants, who were split across four studies. In the first study, participants were shown neutral facial photos of men with varying levels of Dark Triad traits, and asked to rate them for trustworthiness. The second study was a trust game, while the third centred on another facial evluation taks - this time requiring participants to rate the men for dominance, extraversion, and attractiveness. Finally, the fourth study repeated tasks from the second and third studies, involving different participants. The results revealed that, across all four studies, men with high Dark Triad traits were rated as more trustworthy. Surprisingly, traits like dominance and extraversion did not play a big role in this effect. 'Notably, their faces still prompt greater trust even when other traits like dominance, extraversion, and attractiveness are accounted for, suggesting facial features have a unique influence on how trustworthy people are perceived,' Dr Wu added. The study comes shortly after scientists found a link between psychopathy and 'sadism' – deriving pleasure from inflicting pain, suffering or humiliation on others. Everyday examples of sadism include trolling people online, killing video game characters, killing bugs and even sticking pins on voodoo dolls. So if you engage in these sadistic behaviours – even if it's just making other people feel embarrassed online – you could be a psychopath. WOULD YOU KNOW HOW TO SPOT A PSYCHOPATH? Psychopaths display different traits depending on their disorder. Common signs include superficial charm, a grandiose notion of self-worth, the need for stimulation and impulsiveness, pathological lying, the ability to manipulate others and a lack of remorse and empathy. But despite the popular association, not all psychopaths become killers. Experts claim people usually find psychopaths intriguing, but can't put their finger on why. This is down to incongruous behaviour because psychopaths tend to do a lot of acting to deceive, or mimic normal reactions, sometimes changing their views and reactions quickly. For example, Self-professed psychopath Jacob Wells said that upon meeting someone, he tries to become 'the most interesting person they know' and presumably adopts suitable interests and responses to do this. His response also gives away another common trait - a grandiose notion of self-worth - in that he can be the most interesting person in the room. Psychopaths occasionally tend to exhibit unconvincing emotional responses, with slip-ups including tone of voice or body language. This may be because they are unable to understand emotions such as fear and love, but can mimic them. Generally psychopaths' 'emotions' are shallow and short-lived and there is a manipulative ulterior motive to showing them. For example, Mr Wells said he offers to do favours and tells false secrets to people to gain their complete trust. He also displays insincere charm - another trait associated with psychopaths. He says: 'I keep secrets, and tell them fake secrets to further gain their trust, and once they trust me enough, I ask for favours, reminding them of the favours I did them. I can get literally anything from them, which is incredibly useful.' Psychopaths typically display an incredible ability to manipulate others and sometimes take pleasure in doing so. Psychopaths often have an air of superiority about them, perhaps shown by Mr Wells' belief he can spot other psychopaths
