Are Psychopaths Inherently Evil?

Many remember the notorious trial of John Wayne Gacy, a man who strangled and killed numerous young men only to satisfy his sexual desires. The image of law enforcement officials pulling out the victims’ corpses from a crawl space in his home is forever engrained in some minds. Noted as a monster and a killer clown, he was sentenced to capital punishment and further executed. The public personally attacked his defense attorney, Samuel Amirante, for seeking a sentence of life in prison. He argued that for the sake of research, capital punishment should not be imposed: There is much to learn about psychopathy.

Recently, studies have shown that psychopaths may not be as evil as we think. There is a neurological deficiency that can partially explain their behavior, and explain why Gacy was able to watch his victims strangle to death without even a flinch. Accounting for twenty three percent of inmates and one percent of the general population, psychopaths are characterized as callous, impulsive, and unemotional. In the last decade, researchers have discovered that these individuals contain a cognitive-affective deficiency. Specifically, psychopaths exhibit an abnormal selective attention when presented with complex stimuli. In other words, the individuals ignore cues that are unrelated to their goal, accounting for Gacy’s emotional deficit. As the men struggled for air, his attention was reallocated to the information pertaining to his goal. Similarly, cognitive-affective deficiencies have also been noted in externalizers or individuals who exhibit intense hostility and reactive aggression. 

These individuals have impaired executive functioning and overreact in emotional situations.

With this in mind, Dr. Baskin-Sommers used 103 inmates who exhibited either psychopathy or externalizing traits to determine the efficacy of cognitive remediation. Using the Psychopathy-Checklist Revised (PCL-R) the subjects were grouped into psychopathy or externalizing subtypes. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to training sessions that targeted their cognitive deficiency while the other half were mismatched in treatment. Prior to training, the subjects conducted an assessment session to determine if their scores would improve post-training. Once a week, for six weeks the inmates either received cognitive training for psychopathy or externalizing. Tasks that have been chosen to target psychopath’s selective attention included Reversal Learning, Gaze, and Context Discrimination. Moreover, tasks that targeted the overreactivity of externalizers included Breath holding, the Go-Stop Task, and the Simon Task. After such training, the participants were given the same assessment session to note any improvements.

Dr. Baskin-Sommers found that deficit matched groups only showed significant improvement due to training. While those with mismatched training, performed worse on the assessment as their deficiencies were exacerbated by the training session. Interestingly enough, psychopaths with matched treatment displayed a decrease in the number of correctional punishments received and matched externalizers displayed a decrease in severity in misbehavior. This suggests that cognitive remediation may be effective.

Another study described in Medical News Today, revealed that psychopaths possess empathy, but a neurological deficiency accounts for the fact that the emotion does not always get triggered. Eighteen participants diagnosed with psychopathy were compared to a control group of twenty six individuals. Principally, the subjects viewed movie clips of characters who interacted in either a loving, painful, socially rejected or neutral manner. The participants were then shown the same scenes again but were asked to empathize with the actors to try to understand the feelings that they were displaying.  Subjects were placed in MRI scanners in order to analyze their brain patterns as they viewed the interactions. The results revealed that psychopaths did display less empathy as compared to control participants. However, psychopaths were still able to empathize when asked to understand the actors’ feelings. Moreover, the brain scans showed that psychopaths displayed less activity in brain regions involved with their own emotions and sensations, suggesting a neurological basis for decreased empathy.

What is significant is that with cognitive training, researchers believe that psychopaths may increase their ability to experience empathy. The article describes, “Therapies for psychopathic individuals should focus on making their already-existing empathy ability more automatic in order to prevent them from harming others” (Whiteman). As in the study conducted by Dr. Baskin-Sommers, cognitive remediation may be the key in treating the deficiencies that inmates display. Although initially criticized for this view, defense attorney, Samuel Amirante, is now just one of many who recognizes the importance of studying such abnormal behaviors. Understanding the deficiencies may decrease the harm imposed on society.

References: 

Baskin-Sommers, Arielle, John Curtin, and Joseph Newman. "Altering the Cognitive-Affective Dysfunctions of Psychopathic and Externalizing Offender Subtypes with Cognitive Remediation." Clinical Psychological Science 2014.

Whiteman, Honor. "Criminal Psychopaths Flip a Switch to 'Turn On' Empathy." Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, 28 July 2013. Web.