Scott Lilienfeld: The Search for Successful Psychopathy 

Scott Lilienfeld is fucking awesome. He stays awesome even after he dies. That's how badass he is.

Devastated to hear this great man has died. Stumbled upon his videos & been entranced, hoped to write him an e-mail of appreciation. My deepest condolences to ail who knew & loved him, what a phenomenal man.

Ah, Scott. I remember his lecture on how most modern domestic appliances could accommodate a decapitated human head. Delivered in a deadpan voice. Unforgettable.

Fondly remembering Scott and his work today.

1:54 - Talk Outline 5:28 - Folk concepts of psychos 7:05 - Book recommendation to understand psychos 15:23 - Typical view of psychos up until 10-15 years ago 18:30 - Relation between psychos, antisocials and criminals. 22:30 - Different terms for succesful psychos

I feel like some psychopaths have had a generally good life. If you are Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan you don't need to steal and you can legally cut people into pieces on live television through sports.

I appreciate his balanced approach.

Thank you for everything, Scott.

RIP Scott.

Great lecture!

Just listen to sociologists as well. We pointed out since a loooong time what we call "white collar crime" and how their effects are more detrimental to society as a whole and people in particular than nothing else! You guys seriously should look at the "white collar crimes", where people are usually not in prison but do horrible things. Psychology is sometimes too entitled to visit our conferences. We often go to yours but generally speaking, only few psychologist or psychiatrist are interested in sociological research or work interdisciplinary. I studied both, hence I know. WHITE COLLAR CRIMES (white has nothing to do with race but wearing a tie and a suit, hence white collar instead of blue collar workers).

Excellent lecture. We need a lot more research into psychopathy and cluster b personality disorders more generally.

If you want to know where to look, check out the Accident & Emergency wards, or watch the psychiatrists. But to be fair, many in that fraternity are merely a little narcissistic, and possibly need to be, more than people imagine are problematically so. But the allowance of near infallibility to people in extraordinary power positions is a dangerous economy. Take it from someone with wide experience and a bias to love doctors, still.

Finally, someone who gets it.

“Adaptive”-possibly…..a moving target? Like maybe, as groupthinks evolve so the psychopathy in them adapts to the “needs” and “requests” of groupthink.

That's like the theme in Aliens where the company wants to take the aliens and use them as a weapon. Although they make a great weapon they would tear everything apart! Not just those designated as the enemy.

Thanks

20:00 variable trait assoc - sometimes

I think they performed a group survival function through evolutionary time and that is why the gene(s) was passed on.

If a psychopath can pursue rewarding things without doing harm or risking trouble for himself, why wouldn't he? The focus should be on incentives and boundary setting, not on diagnosing people, which is so often a shitshow.

This is an excellent lecture on psychopathy! I fully recommend this to anyone interested in issues related to personality disorder or more specifically psychopathy. As with any treatment of such a complex phenomena, there are issues. However, any discussion of psychopathy cannot be complete without a consideration of the work of Stanley Milgram (Obedience to Authority) or the Philip Zimbardo (Stanford Prison Experiment.) Another glaring absence is the lack of discussion of the attachment system. This is primarily because Scott takes an 'outside-looking-in' approach which is standard in psychology. In this discussion, the focus is on 'traits' which have been defined from the outside looking at behavior, yet what relationship do these traits have to the brain systems that attempt to guide adaptive behavior? In 2017, there is a substantial amount that is known about the neuroscience of psychiatric conditions. What happened to all the fMRI studies which he never discusses here? Too much of the neuroscience was missing, yet so much could have contributed to a more state-of-the-art discussion. A model of CNS systems that includes the attachment system as a significant influence in the shaping of our cognitive approach to the world is possible today. There is a bit too much drama here that takes advantage of the public's 'fear of deception' with all this talk about "persona meaning mask". Yet, was this really informative? The sense from the lecture is that there is some unique form of deception going on, but is that really the case? All human beings have things which they do not divulge in their interactions. We all have unspoken agendas, hidden vulnerabilities, and also competitive aspects to our behavior which does not necessarily hold the best outcome of the other person above ours. Many people would not remain employed if they felt so honest one day that they decided to tell their boss how they feel. We all have a necessary social mask in place that allows us to work cooperatively with others. And, sometimes, we can all be competitive, which often means that someone will win and others will not. Without discussing competition for resource access, how would one understand all the centuries of tribal warfare, including the sanctioned behavior of one race towards another or one religion over another that often encourages brutality towards the other team. Many of our sports are about punishing physical contact with one's opponent. So beyond the competition for resources, one also has the aspect of whether something is socially sanctioned by one's group. What is the difference if your boss is a yakuza encouraging you to kill for new territory versus someone telling you to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima? The second was unthinkable right and in that context the first seems trivial in comparison. Besides the issue of 'right versus wrong', Scott speaks of the issue regarding his study that proves psychopaths know the difference between right and wrong. Recently, a study of adolescents indicated that adolescents accurately can assess how risky certain behavior is when asked in tests. We all know, if we are honest, of situations in which we do things that we know break some rule. However, things are always more complicated than that in real life. Multiple influences impinge upon our brains and there is a competition between urges and interests. In that context, something which has longer range implications may be of less value in our reflexive behavioral patterns than an immediate gain. Many psychopaths are deeply troubled because they do something in certain contexts that are inconsistent with what they understand. Many of these individuals lack a high degree of integration in their internal model for guiding conduct. The lack of such considerations in this talk undermine it's potential for a modern understanding of psychopathy. This is straight forward neuroeconomics. Many more issues, but that is a few. This traditional trait based surveys of personality disorder can be faulted because it does not take into account how the brain actually works and may have more in common with phrenology than we imagine. How does the brain encode experience and what processes allow and block high levels of integration? What neuromodulatory subsystems are involved in determining the associated risk or cost-to-benefit? How the level of stress effects the shunting of signals throughout the brain in determines the behavioral output? When someone gets no reward or hedonic benefit associated with being involved with others, how does that shape their behavior?

“Psychopathy is bipartisan.” Lololol. Truth.

He sounds like the principal from the Simpsons

54:00 I have something to announce, I have been shot

A psychopath will leave you in a very confused state. If you haven't felt that incredible confusion, you just met an a$$hole. Big difference between those and psychopaths because an a$$hole will have a sane motive, not necessarily a nice one. Not very many real psychopaths.

Geez, what a topic! Mission impossible . ( not for the Swedes, presumably.) Jesus Christ, what else? Lat mig ga I fred..... mens sana In corpores sano!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Persona" is an Etruscan word used by Latin language many centuries before Middle Ages.

There's successful narcissists. They have careers and blend in very well. I don't agree with them not being successful.

Can a person have ASPD and psychopathy?

I thought Abignail passed bar exam being the only truth about him ????

Outdated lecture in 2016 ... DSM 5 explains the best about psycopathy and the difference with ASPD or factor 1 psycopathy and factor 2 psycopathy (ASPD) . It is not as complicated as he makes it to be. Did not touch on the upbringing and environmental factors.

Ask ex-wives!!! They’ve done a lot of research to discover “what in the world happened...in their relationship with this person”!

I was able to choose the real psychopath as soon as I saw him!

Are all of these commenters in the mental health field? Because the comments are critical and even arrogant revealing your own insecurities.

Psychopaths will commit suicide when they see themselves as having lost everything.

Study political candidates

Why does he repeatedly use the the word or phrase, "looking for *sanity*"? Few psychopaths get off on an insanity defense. They know what they're doing, but they don't care. One can't be insane if one is calculated, cunning, manipulative and premeditative. It seems he's confusing Psychopathy (having one or more personality disorders), with Psychosis (cognitively insane). He talked about certain careers (adaptive niches), where Psychopaths can be found. Politics, high risk sports, firefighters, and law enforcement, to name a few.. Then there's Navy Seals, Green Berets, surgeons, marketers, mechanics, stock brokers like Bernie Madoff, "Pharma Bro" Martin Shreli, Juliane Assange, and the Christian charlatans like Benny Hinn who lives a lavish lifestyle all the while bilking the poor. I think political historians will put The Donald at the top of the list, above FDR. We can't overlook the fact that males are just naturally higher in risk-taking. There movies of choice tend to be blow 'em up, shoot 'em up action flicks, they dominate in every professional sport, and when was the last time you saw a mother toss her baby up in the air just for giving him a little thrill? Only dads do that, while mama stands there gasping. I'm wondering about oxytocin levels in males. Child-bearing females are naturally higher in that, according to Michael Gurian, a social philosopher who's written several books on neuroscience.

Wait you kinda a look like the guy

What is your mask hiding ?

He looks like he is coming off a bender

"Kitty Carlisle! Peggy Cass! Orson Bean!

The fact that he had a slide of Trump and not of Kamala Harris tells you all you need to know about his integrity as a scientist.

notice how is all feminist in room

Ok so this must be a parody video right? Every single "indication" of psychopathy mentioned literally applies to every single person alive. To varying degrees of course, but to say you might be a psychopath if, you care about yourself and your things more than other people's things, or if you feel incapable of deep love, unreliable... I mean come on this is truly a crystal clear lecture on what it means to be human. If an alien species came to earth, remove the word psychopath, and this could be a quick intro into humans.