This video answers the question: What is the relationship between heroism and psychopathy? First let's start with the concept of psychopathy. Psychopathy is really a paradox in terms of the traits that are encompassed in the definition. Oftentimes we see psychopathy divided into two factors, factor 1 and factor 2 traits. There's this two-factor model and sometimes we also see three and four factor models of psychopathy. Some of the traits we see associated with psychopathy would include superficial charm, low anxiety, grandiosity, antisocial behavior, low levels of empathy, or lack of empathy, impulsivity, irresponsibility, and sensation-seeking. Now we can think about these two factors I mentioned before as interpersonal/emotional as one and lifestyle-behavioral as the other. With factor 1 we see traits like that superficial charm and grandiosity and with factor 2, we see antisocial behaviors, impulsivity, irresponsibility, and sensation-seeking. Generally, we think of factor 1 as primary psychopathy and factor 2 as secondary psychopathy. I talk about these constructs in a prior video. Now we can also look at psychopathy from a slightly different angle by using an instrument that's very popular to measure psychopathy: Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised. Here we see dimensions like dominance like physical fearlessness, stress, immunity, and that superficial charm (this is usually considered adaptive). We also see self-centered impulsivity. This has the antisocial traits under it and coldheartedness, which would be lack of empathy, lack of guilt, and lack of attachment to other people. This brings me to the idea of successful psychopathy. This is a theory on the study of psychopathy and it says that some of the traits associated with success really align with some of the traits we see with psychopathy like narcissism, fearlessness, and sensation-seeking. We know from studies on leadership for example that there are both pros and cons associated with psychopathic traits. On the positive side we see strategic thinking, better communication skills, and high levels of conscientiousness. On the negative side we see individuals who are poor team players and have dysfunctional management styles. With the theory of successful psychopathy in mind we take a look at the particular studies here related to psychopathy and heroism. What were the results from these studies? When they compared first responders and a number of heroic acts to a control group they found that both heroism and altruism were positively associated with narcissism, boldness, and sensation-seeking but also with interpersonal workplace deviance and workplace conduct problems. So what we really see here from this study is that there's a theory that antisocial and prosocial behaviors are opposite poles of the same dimension. But that doesn't seem to be the case. These results indicate that antisocial and prosocial behaviors relate in a more complex way. Now a word of caution about these results, and this was made clear in both of these studies, this doesn't mean that first responders have psychopathy. That's not what's indicated by these results. It means that there are certain psychopathic traits that were more elevated in first responders. Another important point when interpreting the results of these studies is the psychopathy is complex and dimensional. These are several traits that load together on this construct of psychopathy but together they represent a paradox. We see adaptive traits and maladaptive traits. So somebody really isn't psychopathic or not psychopathic, rather there are particular levels on certain traits.
Patton, C. L., Smith, S. F., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2018). Psychopathy and heroism in first responders: Traits cut from the same cloth? Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 9(4), 354-368.
Falkenbach, D. M., Balash, J., Tsoukalas, M., Stern, S., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2018). From theoretical to empirical: Considering reflections of psychopathy across the thin blue line. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 9(5), 420-428.
7 июл 2024
