Science of Psychopathy

David Pescovitz 3:14 pm Thu Dec 14, 2006

The cover story of Science News this week is about psychopaths, defined in the article as those pleasant individuals who "lack a conscience and are incapable of experiencing empathy, guilt, or loyalty." (On the cover, Ted Bundy.) From the article:

Psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley wrote The Mask of Sanity (1941, Mosby), a classic textbook on psychopathy. Cleckley portrayed psychopaths as superficially charming, intelligent people who don't feel deep emotions and lie about almost everything because they neither understand nor care about others…

Although psychiatrists don't currently label psychopathy as a formal personality disorder, a wave of new research has yielded insights into how psychopaths think and suggested biological and temperamental roots of this condition.

These findings have not only sparked debate among researchers but also attracted widespread interest among lawyers and judges. Courts in the United States and other countries increasingly rely on psychopathy measures to make sentencing judgments. New studies suggest that being labeled a psychopath increases the likelihood that an offender will be locked up indefinitely or even executed.

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