...For my argument book, I chose The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, and much unlike many of the other blog posts so far, I enjoyed it. The book is sort of like a diary that Ronson writes in as he learns more about psychopaths and how they are studied. He gets his information from multiple different sources; some chapters are about the extremely anti-psychology scientologists, and some are about psychologists who have spent their whole life studying psychopaths and how to identify them. Ronson writes the book in such a way that you feel as if you are right beside him, interviewing and exploring together. In this book and a couple of others of his that I have read, there are interesting people with interesting stories. There is one story that I...
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...Psychopaths Impulsive, narcissistic, antisocial, irresponsible, manipulative, superficial charm; if you guessed that these are traits of a psychopath, you guessed right. A psychopath is someone who has reduced sensitivity to the pain and suffering of others. They can be very dangerous and sometimes fail to notice the emotional harm of certain individuals. Psychopaths are sometimes hard to identify face to face because they can easily manipulate people. Most psychopaths go unnoticed until they commit some act of violence and are put in prison for many years to then be tested by the PCL-R (Psychopath Checklist Revised). For those that do not know, the PCL-R (Psychopath Checklist Revised) was created by Robert Hare, a researcher and professor of criminal psychology at University of British Columbia. After working with thousands of psychopaths in the 1960’s, Hare concluded that psychopaths have specific personality traits and tendencies such as the ones listed above. Hare created a test that would be able to tell who is psychopathic and who is not. The test consists of 20 items that measure elements of psychopathic behavior. The test is scored on a three point scale: a value of zero means that it does not apply to you; a value of one means it somewhat applies to you; and a value of two means that it fully applies to you. For an example, if an inmate was given the PCL-R test, number one might be a visual response such as looking at a horrific picture. Based off of his response, he...
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...among Genders: The Sociopath and Psychopath by Evelyn J. Dotson MS, University of Phoenix, 2015 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Psychology University of Phoenix March, 2015 Abstract Psychopathic and sociopathic general characteristic traits are found in both genders in various populations. More research on the general characteristic traits of females is needed. Research for the female populations will give professionals information about the differences displayed between genders. Different applied sciences will also further their knowledge in treatment options for either tendency. The study used explored if any differences existed between genders with intensified levels of psychopathic traits in regard to psychopathy factor scores. The sample consisted of 2,500 people of both genders (52.6% women) (M=22.15; SD=1.38) from the generalized population, aged 20-24. Results displayed women with psychopathic personality traits had significantly higher levels of behavioral tendencies than men of the same. The genders did display a difference in aggressive behavior. The men showed a significant amount of aggressive behaviors compared to the women. The gender differences displayed in the seven psychopathic features show the variations needed for treatment options. Differences and Similarities in Generalized Characteristic Traits among Genders: The Sociopath and Psychopath by Evelyn J. Dotson MS, University...
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...OF PSYCHOPATHS Is the Performance Unconstitutional? Mental illness and capital punishment make an extremely controversial mix. However, what happens when the subject of psychopaths get introduced to this popular mix? The main focus of this paper is to shed some light on the argument of whether or not it is unconstitutional to execute psychopaths. This paper will introduce definitions, history, and current theories being introduced by both sides of the argument. Brief History of the Death Penalty on the Mentally Ill The death penalty is one of the most talked about punishments in the United States today. However, there are common misconceptions as to where did the death penalty originate in the United States. Early America actually...
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...There have been four serious financial crises and countless more corporate scandals with global implications in just the last decade. All of them driven by greed and corruption, all of them led by dynamic, charismatic business leaders who initially showed fantastic promise, innovation and financial leadership. And it seems with the most recent of these crises, many of the key players in the 2008 global recession have not only not been punished, but are still in the same positions of power and able to continue their transgressions. Here are some interesting highlights of the last decade: Enron scandal (2001): Andrew Fastow the CFO of Enron along with Kenneth Lay the Chairman and Jeffrey Skilling the CEO develop an offbalancesheet mark to market fraud that loses $11 billion and bankrupts Enron. It is the largest bankruptcy reorganization in US history at the time. They are charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, false statements, insider trading and money laundering. Fastow serves 6 years in prison, Lay passes away before sentencing and Skilling is sentenced to 24 years in prison. WorldCom scandal (2005): Bernard Ebbers the CEO of WorldCom loses $100 billion of shareholder value in the largest accounting scandal in US history (until Madoff). Ebbers is charged with securities fraud and conspiracy and is serving 25 years in prison. Bernard Madoff (2008): Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC heads a $50 billion ponzi scheme, the largest in history, and is charged with securities fraud...
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...The biology of leadership The relation between leadership, psychopathy and hormones Master thesis Economics and Business 8th of August 2012 Name student: Ricardo Westendorp Student number: 294819rw Supervisor: Wouter van den Berg The biology of leadership PREFACE Around October, 2011, I started looking for a subject to graduate on, when a neuro-economical subject, involving the connection of leadership to psychopathy and hormones, crossed my path. I had to jump into it, because this subject matched the field I am interested in. Now, 8 months later, I present you my final work and I have enjoyed working on it. I have to be honest, this product would not have been able to be written if it wasn’t for the help of certain people. Therefore, I would like to use this section, to show my gratitude to some people, that helped me along the way. First of all, I thank the Erasmus School of Economics, for providing the financial support for this research. This research would definitely not have been possible, without the financial support of the ESE. Secondly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Wouter van den Berg, who has supported me, guided me and who has contributed intellectually. I would also like to thank Kashin Hau, who has made great contributions to the construction of the leadership questionnaire. Also, I would like to thank Sarstedt, who provided 500 saliva tubes. I am very thankful for the help of my parents. A great contribution has been made by my parents, Wim Westendorp...
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...on the death penalty being appropriate and that HIV testing of pregnant women should be conducted routinely with or without consent to stop the spread of the disease. The discrepancies coexist with the knowledge I have on the topic being very minimal and my personal values in which I am currently working on addressing. Personal Values v. Profession Values The death penalty is sometime appropriate in cases concerning mass murder and rape caused by psychopathic behavior. Psychopaths lack emotions, have reduce sensitivity to punishment, and they do not fear (Pera-Guardiola, Contrnas-Rodriguez, Batalla, Kosson, Menchan, Pifarre, Bosque, Condoner, and Soriano-Mas, 2016). Most psychopaths commit brutal crimes and have a higher rate of recidivism. Although psychopathic behavior derives from brain disorders associated with several different areas of the brain being affected, punishment by death is the most severe penalty that exist when rape and murder of multiple individuals is the case (Santana, 2016). Yes, psychopaths are victims to mental illness, however, they can still offend other inmates while in prison. It is morally wrong to imprison citizen who have committed a misdemeanor with a mass murderer. Its morally wrong to have correctional officers put their life at risk every day to guard individuals who like to inflict gruesome pain on others. Capital punishment by the state can never compensate a family member. But in my opinion, knowing that the criminal is no longer alive to reenact...
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...the hipster and postmodern psychopaths, as well as the psychopath as an object of emulation and envy. In his 2011 exposition "The Philosophical Significance of Psychopaths: Postmodernism, Morality, and God," Stamos composed, "Generally as insane people need moral excellencies and values and don't need them, postmodernists need epistemic temperances and values and don't need them."9 The Oregon State University therapist Michael Levenson contrasted psychopathy with the bête noire of postmodernists, scientism (the overextension of science to clarify for all intents and purposes everything) this way: "The maniac...
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...The Psychopath Understanding and Treatment Abstract Mental health disorders are among the most complex disorders to understand. Persons with these types of disorders are not commonly accepted into society. Psychopaths are among some of the most difficult disorders to treat. These persons most often come from a background lacking structure and continuity. Proper treatment is heavily debated. Report It is a popular belief that psychopaths are considered to be individuals that are as brilliantly charming as they are morally insane. However, the tendency to refer to the psychopathic behavior as “morally insane” is a misconception. Regardless of scientific discoveries, psychopathy is a disease which results in a physiological deficiency. The brain of psychopaths is believed to fail in generation of proper wave activity. Waves emitted are generally slower in individuals suffering from psychopathic behavior. This fundamental incompetence is responsible for a lower degree of arousal when these persons face a threatening situation. Their lack of anxiety and consequent careless behavior in any situation is commonly referred to as lack of conscience. These individuals lack the plethora of emotions that arise in the “normal” individual; that is, the ability to feel, to anticipate the breaking of the law, or to feel sorry when they break these laws. They are deprived of a conscience which organizes the moral notions of good and bad. In normal behavior, acts are constrained by...
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...Eng. 102 Revealing a Psychopath “If you’re in a room and at one end lies madness and at the other end lies sanity, it is human nature to veer towards the madness end” (Ronson 72). In other words what Jon Ronson is trying to say is that humans by nature are always looking for craziness. One example is a teenage boy always wondering, “What would happen if…” What would happen if I drink one of my dad’s beers instead of the Mountain Dew next to it; would he find out? Or another example when you get your first car, you want to press and investigate what each button or pedal does and you see the accelerator. The first thing that might run to your mind is what would happen if I just press this all the way down? Despite the fact that we know the consequences we still do them because humans by nature veer towards madness as said by Ronson. After reading Ronsons “The Psychopath Test” I realized that we all have some type of manic tendencies or a disorder in us, yet we are not all considered psychopaths. Once Ronson started reading the DSM he started to diagnose himself with disorders and some of these disorders also pertained to me. The disorders were arithmetic learning disorder and caffeine induced disorder. As a kid I was never the best at math so did that mean I had arithmetic learning disorder? How about when you drink coffee for the first time and you start getting the jitters, does that mean you have caffeine induced disorder? In this section of the book I believe that the procedure...
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...Criminal Behavior Lorenzo Reid Virginia College Online Abstract The following paper will address the different areas of the Psychological and Psychiatric Foundations of Criminal Behavior. Within this paper, every aspect from theories to what the law states when it comes to this state will be addressed. Criminal Behavior Doctor Leon Eisenberg once stated, "...persons who are seriously mentally ill are far more likely to be the victims of violence than its initiators." (Campbell) Yet how true is that? When it comes to mental illness, there have been several violent crimes that have been committed, and been blamed on mental illness. There are several shows for entertainment such as the show “Criminal Minds”, that attempts to bring a reality and understanding to mental illness and criminal behavior. This show gives a reality to the fact that people can be simply mentally ill and not simply criminals. In early society times, people simply did not take mental illness into account. It was thought that people, regardless of their mental state, should be accountable for their actions. Yet, in today’s society, this is not the case. Due to research and a better developed country, citizens are given an opportunity to show that their mental state was not steady when they committed a crime. So, what is it then, which motivated a person to kill or maim another? How can a person kill someone else, or a numerous amount of people, with no remorse? These questions and several...
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...self-personality that is autonomous of associations with others; figures that at their amazing portray psychopathy are exceedingly esteemed in individualistic cultures (Bell, 2006). To date, there has been minimal quantitative research on the cross-cultural validity of psychopathic personality issue (Cooke, 1996). A few studies have inspected the dispersion of test scores or commonness of analyses crosswise over cross-cultural cultural groups (Alarcón, Foulks and Vakkur, 1998). Exploration of this sort is in some cases alluded to as the ''vehicle and-test'' methodology (Alarcón, Foulks and Vakkur, 1998) analysts take a current measure, make an interpretation of it into cross-cultural dialects, and after that analyse the dissemination or dependability of scores crosswise over cultures. There are a few issues with this methodology (Alarcon, 1996; Allik and Realo, 2009; Devlin and Pothier, 2006). To begin with, in spite of the fact that it is moderately straight-forward to make an interpretation of a test into another dialect, it is not in the slightest degree simple to guarantee the cultural proportionality of exacting interpretations. Second, tests may need cultural pertinence, notwithstanding when they have been interpreted...
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...To this I would say that although it has been proven that psychopathic behavior is genetic, not all psychopaths go on to become serial killers (Brogaard, 2012, n.p.). Deutschman (2005) stated that psychopaths are “glib, charming, manipulative, deceitful, ruthless--and very, very destructive” (n.p.). When you think about these qualities does anyone come to mind? Maybe the person is not a technical psychopath, but putting it into perspective like this helps to see how common these characteristics are. Chivers (2014) raised the issue that you could possibly work with a psychopath and not even be aware of it. He went on to summarize a study done by criminal psychologist, Robert Hare and stated that Hare and “another researcher looked at 203 corporate professionals and found about four percent scored sufficiently highly on the PCL-R to be evaluated for psychopathy.” The PCL-R is a test created by Hare that evaluates a person to “determine whether someone is a psychopath” (n.p.). As far as the four percent goes, that means that about eight out of those two hundred and three people is a psychopath. This research proves that a person can have psychopathic traits and not be a serial killer. Although it has been proven that psychopathy can be genetic, it does not prove to be the only reason of why a person comes to be a serial...
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...John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown Serial Killers Abstract John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer and rapist. John Wayne Gacy murdered and sexually assaulted young boys. John Gacy killed and hid his victim’s bodies in the crawl space of his home. John seemed like a normal man, he was well-respected in his community. John was a psychopath who had no remorse. When john was captured he was able to give a detailed drawing of where all the bodies could be found. John was sentenced to the death penalty. The term serial killer was a term no one had heard of until about forty years ago. There are many definitions to the term serial killer. Each definition differs by the number of murders, the serial killers motivation, and the characteristics of the murders. The most known one is the FBI’s definition, which is “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender, in separate events.” Numerous people may confuse the term serial killer with mass murders and spree killers. There are six categories of motive types of serial killers. These categories are visionary, mission-oriented, thrill-orientated, lust, power and control, and gain motivated. The visionary type means they hear voices or have visions and they are psychotic. The mission-oriented serial killers will kill a certain type or person because they think that they are bettering the world. The thrill-oriented type will kill because they have fun doing it. The lust motivated killers will kill because it turns them...
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...1037/a0033485 Subcomponents of Psychopathy Have Opposing Correlations With Punishment Judgments Jana Schaich Borg Stanford University and Duke University Rachel E. Kahn University of New Orleans Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Duke University This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Robert Kurzban University of Pennsylvania Paul H. Robinson University of Pennsylvania Law School Kent A. Kiehl University of New Mexico and Lovelace Biomedical and Environmental Research Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico Psychopathy research is plagued by an enigma: Psychopaths reliably act immorally, but they also accurately report whether an action is morally wrong. The current study revealed that cooperative suppressor effects and conflicting subsets of personality traits within the construct of psychopathy might help explain this conundrum. Among a sample of adult male offenders (N 100) who ranked deserved punishment of crimes, Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R) total scores were not linearly correlated with deserved punishment task performance. However, these null results masked significant opposing associations between task performance and factors of psychopathy: the PCL–R Interpersonal/Affective (i.e., manipulative and callous) factor was positively associated with task performance, while the PCL–R...
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