Big Think and the Mental Health Channel are proud to launch Big Thinkers on Mental Health, a new series dedicated to open discussion of anxiety, depression, and the many other psychological disorders that affect millions worldwide.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/james-fallon-on-the-psychopath-next-door
Learn more at the Mental Health Channel: http://mentalhealthchannel.tv/show/big-thinkers-on-mental-health
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - Go to a party with fifty people in it, there’s a psychopath, a full-blown psychopath there. There’s probably five borderline psychopaths there. They’re not going to kill you, rape you, or maybe even take your money, but they’re going to manipulate the situation, make you look bad, or use you in some way. Something bad is going to happen. And if you sense that… people have a sense that something is wrong with somebody, you walk away, you don’t fight these guys, because they’re masters at manipulation. The psychopath, in its simplest form, is an intraspecies predator, is a predator on other humans. It is hard to look at the actual behavior of a psychopath and say that thing is psychopathic or not, because psychopaths will come to the rescue of people. “Can I help you up, ma’am?” They, they can see the outward behaviors, and they just can mimic it to get along. But fundamentally, they don’t feel it. You know, some psychopathic traits and what goes along with it can be very advantageous. First of all you’re fearless. You walk into a room, you own everybody, and you look like you own everybody, and they let you own them because you have that aura around you, that charisma, that light. That’s why elect people president, because they have that light around them. Another thing is you’re not very susceptible to pain. Pain doesn’t bother me, and also when you’re caught doing something, you have no tells. You could be caught red handed, you know, having an affair with somebody, and you could say, ‘no that’s not me’, it’s like, are you going to believe me or your lying eyes. And so it’s this ability to lie, without any tells, because in fact it doesn’t cause any anxiety. Two main areas of the brain of a psychopath that are not regulated correctly: orbital cortex and the amygdala. Orbital cortex is involved in inhibiting your behavior. Now, the amygdala, on the other hand, really causes behavior. And normally they’re in balance. They inhibit each other. Now, in a psychopath, they’re both turned off, so they don’t inhibit each other, and they don’t regulate it. So the normal balance of animal drives and your social interactions, your morality, are not right. It’s never right. I mean, there’s a time for aggression. There’s a time for killing, even. There’s a time for sex. And part of it is how the rest of the brain is able to tell your orbital cortex the social context is correct now. Psychopaths don’t have that. They’re doing things completely out of context, out of social context, and that’s the problem. Usually the question is, what percent do you think is due to genetics, and what percent is due to environment? And it turns out not to be the great question to ask. Because it looks like the answer is, if you are born with the biological markers for psychopathy, for example, that is the genetics and the altered brain pattern, early on. If you are a susceptible kid, then environment means everything. It means a lot. Maybe eighty percent. Read the Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/bsU88F.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/james-fallon-on-the-psychopath-next-door
Learn more at the Mental Health Channel: http://mentalhealthchannel.tv/show/big-thinkers-on-mental-health
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - Go to a party with fifty people in it, there’s a psychopath, a full-blown psychopath there. There’s probably five borderline psychopaths there. They’re not going to kill you, rape you, or maybe even take your money, but they’re going to manipulate the situation, make you look bad, or use you in some way. Something bad is going to happen. And if you sense that… people have a sense that something is wrong with somebody, you walk away, you don’t fight these guys, because they’re masters at manipulation. The psychopath, in its simplest form, is an intraspecies predator, is a predator on other humans. It is hard to look at the actual behavior of a psychopath and say that thing is psychopathic or not, because psychopaths will come to the rescue of people. “Can I help you up, ma’am?” They, they can see the outward behaviors, and they just can mimic it to get along. But fundamentally, they don’t feel it. You know, some psychopathic traits and what goes along with it can be very advantageous. First of all you’re fearless. You walk into a room, you own everybody, and you look like you own everybody, and they let you own them because you have that aura around you, that charisma, that light. That’s why elect people president, because they have that light around them. Another thing is you’re not very susceptible to pain. Pain doesn’t bother me, and also when you’re caught doing something, you have no tells. You could be caught red handed, you know, having an affair with somebody, and you could say, ‘no that’s not me’, it’s like, are you going to believe me or your lying eyes. And so it’s this ability to lie, without any tells, because in fact it doesn’t cause any anxiety. Two main areas of the brain of a psychopath that are not regulated correctly: orbital cortex and the amygdala. Orbital cortex is involved in inhibiting your behavior. Now, the amygdala, on the other hand, really causes behavior. And normally they’re in balance. They inhibit each other. Now, in a psychopath, they’re both turned off, so they don’t inhibit each other, and they don’t regulate it. So the normal balance of animal drives and your social interactions, your morality, are not right. It’s never right. I mean, there’s a time for aggression. There’s a time for killing, even. There’s a time for sex. And part of it is how the rest of the brain is able to tell your orbital cortex the social context is correct now. Psychopaths don’t have that. They’re doing things completely out of context, out of social context, and that’s the problem. Usually the question is, what percent do you think is due to genetics, and what percent is due to environment? And it turns out not to be the great question to ask. Because it looks like the answer is, if you are born with the biological markers for psychopathy, for example, that is the genetics and the altered brain pattern, early on. If you are a susceptible kid, then environment means everything. It means a lot. Maybe eighty percent. Read the Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/bsU88F.
Category
🤖
Tech