Draft #4 of Research Paper
Smiles of Terror
Abstract
This
research paper is mostly about psychopaths which are define as cold headed
people with no consciousness or morality. They are often tag as serial killers,
monsters with no affections towards others. Also what are few difference
between psychopaths and sociopath and woman psychopath. Some finding were that
psychopaths make around 1% of our population and are considered dangerous
because of their uncontrollable behavior. Also, they seem to just care about
themselves and what they seem as a motivation is power and a high prestige. If
we compare a woman psychopath and a male, the ratio is 3:1 with man having the
highest percentage of psychopathy. Sociopaths are often tag as psychopaths
which is very wrong because they both might have a mental disorder but
psychopaths are considered more dangerous because of their thoughtfully plans.
The reason for why they become psychopaths is yet unknown but most of the
evidence point at a biopsychosocial impact.
KEY
WORDS: psychopath, sociopath, biopsychosocial impact, mental disorder.
Smiles
of terror
"Fact:
A psychopath is born every 47 seconds.”
Kent A. Kiehl stated. One might think that a psychopath is that one person
that we see often in movies, the villain who kill for joy, who use others in
rotten ways, a person with no reasoning.
The truth about psychopath is not even close to that image we have. Most
psychopaths are close to normal people with a normal life but with a mental
disorder. But what is a psychopath? An unstable and aggressive person suffering
from a mental disorder with abnormal violent and anti-social behavior is
considered a psychopath. A psychopath can also be charming and chill, it can
play to be a person just like the others in order for him to succeed in his
“mission”. They are coolheaded people with very short control of their
behavior, even though they are considered dangerous people and are more likely
to become criminals, statistics show that psychopath are not a on the top list when
in come to crime. Most of the time both psychopaths and sociopaths are seen as
the same by the common eye certainly there are big difference between them, for
sure one of them is more dangerous than the other. This leads to the question
of why when we listened to these terms "psychopath" and
"sociopath "we only imagine men not women? Most of the studies made
by professionals have come to one conclusion. The conclusion stated that psychopaths
are not easily identified, and most of them had been abused when they were kids.
Some say that genetics is the cause psychopathy. Others argue that the
environment where they grew up determents if someone is a psychopath or not.
Overall psychopaths are considered people with a mental disorder that can be
dangerous and with no empathy toward people, the cause of psychopathic behavior
for sure as to do with biopsychosocial impact.
Psychopaths are like machines with one mission
on their head “survival.” This term was use first in the 1983 and was define by
the “dictionary of social work & social care” by John Harris and Vicky
White. Some characteristics about psychopaths are being a good liar, the
ability to manipulate people to get what they want, and rage problems. (Cannot
control their emotions) Psychopaths are often hard to define and understand, “Psychopathy
is a construct highly associated with immoral behavior, including manipulating
and taking advantage of others, pathological lying, living a parasitic
lifestyle, and sometimes criminal offending” (Hare cited by Pemment, 2015)
immoral behavior is one of the many characteristics psychopaths have. Which
means that they cannot identify between good and bad. Specialist define
psychopaths as a person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests
(expressed) as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or
establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to
learn from experience. We can conclude from the quote that they are good at
lying which make it easier for them to manipulate and take advantage of others.
Lying is very common in everyone's life, children at "the age of 42 months
onward, children become increasingly capable of telling lies" which
implies and gives reason to why psychopaths are so good at lying. (Evans &
Lee, 2013) Is because of their long
experience and their immoral behaviors. Psychopaths are human with no feelings
towards other that just care about themselves therefore they are considered
dangerous.
One
of the many disagreements that people have about psychopaths is if weather the
now what is considered good or bad. Even among professionals there are some
contradictions about this. In the previous paragraph is stated that psychopaths
are not able to identify what is good or bad, which is compliantly wrong, “Individuals
with this personality disorder are fully aware of the consequences of their
actions and know the difference between right and wrong” (Hare, 1999). For sure
they know what is right and what is wrong base on this quote but why they do it
if they know is bad? Is not that they want to do it, is something in there head
that they cannot control, imagine living a life where there is no control over
it and still society judge without knowing.
 |
Oconor, E. (2014, February 21). Iago’s motivation
[Photograph].
The picture by Evelyn Oconor gives a point in
how most of the people don’t know the differences between a psychopath and a
sociopath and how easy is for society to confuse them, it also includes some
sort of humor when it says “do your research”.
According
to some research done by Kara Mayer Robinson in 2014 there are plenty of
difference that can tell which one is most dangerous. One of the pieces of
evidence that she uses is L. Michael Tompkins, EdD. He's a psychologist at the
Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center. Which stated (Robinson cited Tomkins,
2014)
A
key difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is whether he has a
conscience, the little voice inside that lets us know when we’re doing something wrong, a
psychopath doesn’t have a conscience. If he lies to you so he can steal your
money, he won’t feel any moral qualms, though he may pretend to. He may observe
others and then act the way they do so he’s not “found out,” [...] some experts
see sociopaths as “hot-headed.” They act without thinking how others will be
affected. Psychopaths are more “cold-hearted” and calculating. They carefully
plot their moves, and use aggression in a planned-out way to get what they
want. If they’re after more money or status in the office, for example, they’ll
make a plan to take out any barriers that stand in the way, even if it’s
another person’s job or reputation (pg.1).
Tompkins is telling us that psychopaths as
compare to sociopath have no conscience and give us an example that proved how
psychopaths have no morality which is dangerous in anyway. The skill to
identify between wrong and right is not part of psychopaths. In the research
that Kara studied we can infer by using Tompkins words that psychopaths are
able to think more and plan everything carefully which helps them with the
getaway and destroy anything that stand on their way. As for sociopaths who act without thinking,
which can be pretty dangerous too but we can clearly see that if a sociopaths
goes in a rampage it will be easier to stop him. In conclusion both are dangerous
but for obvious reason psychopaths should be considered as threats to society
duo to their thoughtful plans, immorality and unconsciousness.
After all this shocking facts about
psychopaths’ people still have misconception about them. For example, they are often seen as lovers of
blood. For this type of people must be hard to feel that you are incapable of
feeling other emotions or to think that you are being blame for being a
psychopath when it was not your fault to be that way. Through this research
certain illustrations were found of how to deal with psychopaths this being one
of them in which we tread psychopaths as serial killers
 |
How to deal with a psychopath [Photograph]. (2013, August
31)
we can see this through
the word “psychopath” which is in red that can stand for blood. We put tags on
their forehead without releasing that they are also human. Also, the fact that
we view them as dangerous without consciousness but we don’t think that they
have a mental disability that the reason for that disability has not yet be
found, nor the cure. To contradict the view that society have in psychopaths
some research were done (Thomas, 2013) “Of course, not all psychopaths are killers
and not all killers are psychopaths. It is important the mention that not even
every psychopath is a criminal, that most criminals are not psychopaths, and
that the bizarre and violent behavior of serial killers often has more to do
with their life/philosophy than with their psychopathy.” As is being stated not
all psychopaths are killer in fact only a few of them are but society still tag
them because some of the most dangerous serial killers like Theodore (Ted)
Bundy was a psychopath people tend to tag all psychopaths as serial killers
which is incorrect.
One important factor to have in mind will
researching about psychopaths is what motivates them and what goals they have. Psychopaths
and their hidden motivation have been very complex to identify not only because
they are cold are heart (no feeling) but also, they have no interest in others.
(Gleen, Efferson, Iyer, & Graham, 2017) said
Overall,
psychopathy was related to both pleasure-seeking and a desire for relative
social positioning [...]Individuals scoring higher
in psychopathy placed more value on seeking power […] psychopathy would be
positively associated with self-enhancement values, especially power, which
involves obtaining social status and prestige, and exerting control over others
(pg. 110).
According
to these studies some there are few motivations, goals and seeking that
psychopaths have. One was that they only seek for pleasure something that will
excite them that will make them feel alive. Individuals that have a high level
of psychopathy seek for power. Some of their motivations are to obtain prestige
and to have control over others. Most of the people will agree that psychopaths
are terrible human being base on their motivations and goals but in history
people that tend to have power often took advantage of other and abuse of their
power. An example of this is owner of slavery were they force them to work and
abuse them because they had power yet they are not seen as monster like
psychopaths which make no sense.
Most of the time people seem to know someone that has no feelings, with little empathy and greedy, which they might confuse him with a sociopath or a psychopath. Some people belief they are psychopaths themselves because they read certain symptoms that relate to them, but how do we know if we are or not psychopaths. One test which helps to identify if someone is a psychopath and most widely used is the psychological tests of PPD (Psychopathy or psychopathic personality disorder) is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, or PCL-R (Hare, 1991, 2003). “The PCL-R is a 20-item symptom construct rating scale for use in forensic settings. Each item reflects a specific feature of PPD. The lifetime presence and severity of each feature is rated on a 3-point scale (0 absent, 1 partially present, 2 present) [based on] of all available clinical data.” (Storey & Hart, 2015) (pg.136) The scores from this test are brought up to yield or form a total score. If the total scores is 30 and higher, out of maximum possible 40 points, are generally considered diagnostic of PPD which is psychopathic behavior. For this type of test a lot of time is required, is long procced of carful studies. So if you read a form and you are willing to know if you are a psychopath or not, don’t test yourself in a google web site by typing “psychopathic test” because for common person to self-identify as a psychopath is not the smartest way.
When
it comes to psychopaths, woman are not very common among them. If we compare
the number of psychopaths diagnosticate between man and woman we can clearly
see that woman are less likely to be diagnose with psychopathy. “Research has consistently shown that there
are more male psychopaths than female.” (Grann, 2000; Hart, Cox, & Hare,
1995; Jackson, R., R, C. S., N, & Lambert, 2002; Salekin, Rogers, &
Sewell, 1997) (pg. 241) But why is this so? (Warren et al 2003) “Found female
occurrence rates of psychopathy of approximately 17% in prison
populations—significantly lower than the rates for men in prison.” (pg. 1) Prisons
have shown reports that woman’s are less likely to be in the field of
psychopathy, which means that only a short percentage of female inmates are
psychopaths.
 |
Source: Aleshyn_Andrei/Shutterstock, 2013
The photograph shown a woman who clearly seems like any other
woman this leaves the point that woman is less likely to be consider as a
psychopath as compare with man. Who could imagine that a girls like the one in
the photograph will be psychopath? BPD
(Borderline Personality Disorder) is also a disorder like psychopathy but if we
compare the ration between man and woman in APD (Antisocial Personality
Disorder) and BPD, for APD is 3:1 man having a highest and for BPD is 1:3 woman
having the highest. Which give us a point in which we can state that BPD is
more feminine therefore less woman is diagnose with APD. (Pemment, 2015) We see
how woman are less likely to be diagnose with psychopathic issue but also that
there is a separation between who can be a psychopath and who cannot.
After looking a certain definitions,
comparison and ways to now if someone is a psychopath we finally arrive to the
main question of all. What causes psychopathy, very hard question that yet as
not been answer. Even until today the origin of psychopathy as not been found,
but some experts due argue some points. (Kolla et al, 2013) “[...] found that
prison inmates with APD and psychopathy reported higher levels of physical
abuse than inmates with APD without psychopathy” which can give us a connection
between psychopathy and child abuse. In other word is saying that psychopaths
have suffered from child abuse, most of them had been abused when they were
kids not all but a big portion of them had been victims of child abuse. Also,
psychopaths seem to be abusive parents which can impact their kids and later
own they can also be psychopaths as their father. Is being prove by (De Bellis
et al, 1999) that when a child is abuse it develops post-traumatic stress
disorder which is found in psychopath. Through research it has been proved that
Genes and alleles have somewhat to do with psychopathy. Is being said and
proved that if a psychopath has a kid his kid is more likely to become a psychopath
because of its genes. Dr. Schlesinger from john jay college ones stated, “is a
biopsychosocial impact that cause someone to have psychopathic behavior”
(Shlesinger, 2017). Which means a that a way to look how psychopaths are
created we must look at their biology ( DNA), psychology within them and social
impacts that they had. As for now is the
only reasons that can cause psychopathy is child abuse, some part of genes and
the way it was raised. But even if a child has been abused it does not mean he or
she will be a psychopath therefore is still unconcluded of what causes
psychopathy.
Psychopath
are humans with no feelings and little to nothing consciousness, they are often
seen as serial killers and people that will do anything that they can to
achieve their goals. But isn’t the same as all the people, greedy to get want
the want, people that want power and when they have it the turn to be worse
than criminal. Psychopaths is said that are the only once to be happy because
they don’t have to worry about love hate something that must of us human need.
But when we love someone don’t we become greedy and don’t want to share it.
Even people that are not considered psychopaths commit brutal crimes like mass
murder or rape, yet they are considered normal people just like anyone.
Psychopaths are label and treated like monster yet we spec them to be nice to
us. We don’t know what made him a psychopath or what he has been through to
become one but still we judge the actions without being in their feet.
Work
cited page
Glenn, A., Efferson, L., Iyer, R., &
Graham, J. (2017). Values, Goals, and Motivations
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Storey, J., Hart, S., Cooke, D., & Michie,
C. (2015). Psychometric Properties of the Hare
Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) in a
Representative Sample of Canadian Federal Offenders. Law and Human
Behavior,Law and Human Behavior, 2015.
Lykken, D. (1996). Psychopathy, sociopathy, and
crime. Society, 34(1), 29-38.
Evans, A., Lee, K., & Eccles, Jacquelynne.
(2013). Emergence of Lying in Very Young
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J. (2015). The reappearing psychopath: Psychopathy's stain on future
generations.
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Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. (n.d.). Retrieved
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