Traits of a Psychopath
Traits of a Sociopath
Who is More Dangerous?
Clues to a Psychopath or Sociopath in Childhood
- Aggression to people and animals
- Destruction of property
- Deceitfulness or theft
- Serious violations of rules or laws
It is intrinsic to the human survival mechanism that we have this capacity to repeatedly kill. Killers are anachronisms whose primal instincts are not being moderated by the more intellectual parts of our brain.
Perhaps it’s not that serial killers are made, but that the majority of us are unmade, by good parenting and socialization. What remains behind is these un-fully-socialized beings with this capacity to attack and kill. And often that capacity is grafted onto a sexual impulse – aggression sexualized at puberty.
Many serial killers are survivors of early childhood trauma of some kind – physical or sexual abuse, family dysfunction, emotionally distant or absent parents. Trauma is the single recurring theme in the biographies of most killers.
Intense study in the field of serial murder has resulted in two ways of classifying serial killers: one based on motive and one based on organizational and social patterns. The motive method is called Holmes typology, for Ronald M. and Stephen T. Holmes, authors of numerous textbooks on serial murder and violent crime. Not every serial killer falls into a single type, and many are more than one type. Neither of these classifications explains what might actually lead someone to become a serial killer (more on this later). There is not enough scientific data upon which to base these classifications, either -- they are based on anecdotal and interview data. Critics of the Holmes typology point to this as a flaw, but many investigators still find the method useful when studying serial murder.
According to Holmes typology, serial killers, can be act-focused (who kill quickly), or process-focused (who kill slowly). For act-focused killers, killing is simply about the act itself. Within this group, there are two different types: the visionary and the missionary. The visionary murders because he hears voices or has visions that direct him to do so. The missionary murders because he believes that he is meant to get rid of a particular group of people.
What exactly is psychopathy?
The number one trait of a psychopath is a lack of empathy. Others are a tendency to lie, a need for thrills – psychopaths become bored very quickly – and narcissism. But the lack of empathy is the biggest thing.
One common explanation is that psychopaths experience some kind of trauma in early childhood – perhaps as early as their infant state – and as a consequence suppress their emotional response. They never learn the appropriate responses to trauma, and never develop other emotions, which is why they find it difficult to empathize with others.
They grow up not knowing how to “feel”, and learn instead how to manifest what they think are emotions or the correct appearances of emotion. They know the “mask” they should wear.
In the case of serial killers, that’s why there are individuals who can raise a family, be what most people would consider a good spouse and parent, and at the same time have secret second lives where they go out and kill strangers. They can compartmentalize.
Thanks, https://www.theguardian.com/,https://people.howstuffworks.com/
“Seduction is a game of psychology, not beauty, and it is within the grasp of any person to become a master at the game. All that is required is that you look at the world differently, through the eyes of a seducer.”
“What will seduce a person is an effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how much they are worth.”
“Seducers take pleasure in performing and are not weighed down by their identity, or by some need to be themselves, or to be natural.”
“Every seduction has two elements that you must analyze and understand: first, yourself and what is seductive about you; and second, your target and the actions that will penetrate their defences and create surrender.”
Successful seduction starts with who you are and the type of seductive energy you express. It requires creating yourself, or refining yourself, in one of the seducer categories.
Never try to seduce your own type.
People are constantly giving out signals of what they lack, you have to tune in to these signals and interpret their type based on them.
In a series of experiments, a team of researchers at UC Berkeley found that people of lower socioeconomic status are actually more altruistic than those higher on the economic ladder.
That finding is consistent with national survey results showing that lower-income people donate a greater percentage of their income to charity than upper-income people do.
A second experiment built on this finding, suggesting that there’s something about the specific psychological experience of having less that induces people to give more. Piff and his colleagues, including Greater Good Science Center Faculty Dacher Keltner, had participants engage in an exercise that made them feel like they were either of higher or lower status. Then the participants had to say how they thought people should divide up their annual income—on food, recreation, charitable donations, or other items.
In one of these experiments, the researchers, led by doctoral student Paul Piff, gave participants the opportunity to share $10 with an anonymous stranger. A few days earlier, the participants had all filled out a questionnaire in which they reported their socioeconomic status. The results showed that people who had placed themselves lower on the social scale were actually more generous than upper-class participants were.
Those made to feel lower on the social totem pole said that a higher percentage should be spent on charity.
So what is it about being less well-off that causes people to be more generous?
In other experiments, the researchers found evidence that lower-class participants’ greater tendency to perform kind, helpful—or “pro-social”—behaviour could be explained by their greater concern for egalitarian values and the well-being of other people, and their stronger feelings of compassion for others.
However, the researchers also found that when they induced feelings of compassion in upper-class participants, those people showed just as much pro-social behaviour as lower-class participants. This suggests to the researchers that the rich aren’t as generous as the poor because they don’t typically feel as much compassion for others.
Piff and his colleagues argue that the poor may feel more compassion because they are more connected to those around them, psychologically and socially. They are more dependent on other people to get by, for instance, and previous research has found that, perhaps as a result of that dependency, they display more empathy and are more attuned to other people’s body language than the rich. On the flip side, as people attain higher status, their ability to take others’ perspectives is diminished.
Psychology Today reports that a study comparing low and high-income individuals revealed that "low income or low social class participants were more generous and believed they should give more of their annual income to charity (4.95 per cent vs. 2.95 per cent)." The study also suggested that the low income or low social class participants were "more likely to trust strangers and showed more helping behaviour towards someone in distress.”
Why do those who have less give more, relatively speaking? Part of the reason might be that they are more compassionate and more sensitive to the need of others. Psychologists refer to their way of thinking as a “contextualist tendency” marked by an external focus on what is going on in their environment and with other people.
On the other hand, those who have more tend to be self-centred with “solipsistic tendencies” that are concentrated on their own internal states, goals, motivations, and emotions.
The Psychology Today articles conclude, "There is no denying that wealth can provide comfort and security, and a lack of it can produce real hardships. But once our basic needs and even some comforts are met, psychologists suggest there might be greater value in experiencing compassion for others and acting on this impulse."
That the compassion manipulation eliminated class differences in prosocial behaviour suggests that upper- and lower-class individuals do not necessarily differ in their capacity for prosocial behaviour. Rather, those in lower socioeconomic classes may be higher in baseline levels of compassion than their upper-class counterparts — probably because they have seen more suffering. And it may be this differential that — unless moderated — drives class-based differences in prosociality.
Thanks https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/frank-flynn-those-less-give-more,https://www.haventoronto.ca/single-post/2019/11/16/Why-People-With-Less-Give-More,https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_poor_give_more