A rare happening occurred recently: my family found a documentary we were all interested in. Usually, my mum wants “Who do you think you are” or something else historical, my brother wants Dara O’briain explaining complex physics, my dad can usually settle for simply good camera work and I will punt for anything with either Sir David Attenborough, a furry face or a toxic wonder. More often than not, I somehow seem to win out and we watch a wildlife documentary, but some family members will subtly drift out within the first 10 minutes. The miracle of a documentary that we were all intrigued by was a BBC Two Horizons episode entitled ‘What Makes a Psychopath?’
Despite the undeniably fascinating insights into the psychopathic life, the one thing I was constantly wondering was what is it about psychopaths that inspires such avid curiosity in humans. I can confidently say there is not one person I have encountered that does not find the subject of psychopathy interesting (not that that is the first thing I enquire about on meeting people). Whilst watching the Horizon episode I began to brainstorm explanations for this interest.
The iPlayer summary of the programme is actually “Psychopaths have long captured the public imagination. Painted as charismatic, violent predators lacking in all empathy, they provide intrigue and horror in equal measure”. I am tempted to say I do not agree with the description of psychopaths here but I will definitely say there is more to people’s intrigue than horror. I do agree with the use of the word ‘painted’ as psychopaths are significantly utilised and, to a certain extent, glamorised in broadcast media; examples include Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty, Gregory House, Arya Stark, Joffrey Baratheon and more. (I am not distinguishing between psychopath and sociopath because I do not feel this discrimination affects levels of curiosity). Film and television cleverly exploit our curiosity in these abstract characters and draw in the views.
One of the things I believe explains why we are interested in psychopathy is our concealed dark sides, the devils on our shoulders whispering in our ears, the monsters trapped inside, our evil advisories. As a species we agree that we are all responsible for the monsters inside of us and for what they do when we let them out. There is no denying that we all have an antagonistic side but suppress it out of respect for our conscience instilled in us from a young age. I think we are simply curious about what would happen if we chose to ignore that nagging voice of morality telling us what is wrong and what is less wrong and what would happen if we did not suppress the demon. Psychopaths simply provide an answer to this question and we are interested in the answer to our speculation.
Another theory I have is, because we are smart we do not need to rely on emotions as much. What are referred to as less intelligent animals need to rely on others for protection and do this by forming emotional bonds; but humans are smarter, we monopolise this planet, we have no predators and we are safe when cradled in our digitally alarmed homes, so why do we need emotions, like empathy and remorse, when we do not need to connect with other humans for protection. Emotions are the foundations of connection and, so, perhaps becoming redundant for people who believe they are smarter and can take care of themselves. Likewise, with no connections a person has less responsibility, less to worry about, less weight to carry on their shoulders and everyone prefers not being at risk of accountability. We could be mistaking interest in psychopaths for admiration, perceiving them as smarter Homos with less obligational restraint as they believe they are above others and do not require human connection.
Another factor that may entice some people more than others into the enigma of psychopathic life is logic. Some psychopaths run on pure logic because when emotions are taken out of the equation all that remains is reasoning. I value logic very highly as it enables me to understand how and sometimes why things work. Naturally, I am inquisitive to see what raw unleashed logic leads to. Also, the potential of plain rationale is huge. For thousands of years organised religion stifled science: Galileo was threatened with torture and death for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, the study of human anatomy was forbidden and there was even a ban on the number Zero. God(s) supposedly give us each a conscience; our sense of right and wrong. This gift from God(s) is why religious people determined that scientific investigation was wrong and put a stop to it. So, if you like, from an atheist point of view, religion stifling scientific advancement was actually the fault of our consciences, and, whom supposedly do not have consciences or choose to ignore them: psychopaths. If we were all psychopaths lacking consciences (overlooking the probability for mutual destruction) we could be a thousand years ahead of where we are now having embraced discovery instead of persecuting scientists and other innovative thinkers. Maybe every major disease would have been vanquished centuries ago, maybe we would have travelled to other planets by now, relieving the strain on our asphyxiating Earth, and maybe we would have solved all problems we are now dreading, such as mass starvation. These are, of course, all hypotheticals about the past and the most likely outcome, as mentioned, would be an extravagant extermination of, well, possibly everything. The important thing is the potential that lacking a conscience has for an individual. A psychopath can ignore/not experience moral dilemmas and many claim to do things solely because of the desire to observe outcomes, a trait that would make them ruthlessly effective scientists.
As a very abstract way of putting this into modern context, if a psychopath was presented with two full syringes and two people and was asked to determine the function of each syringe’s contents with the knowledge that one of them was lethal, they would not hesitate to administer the contents to each person. This is the most logical way to determine which syringe contained the lethal liquid and the two people are viewed as nothing more than utensils at disposal. A normal human would be fortunate (or unfortunate) to be able to understand the moral dilemma of inevitably killing one of the two people and either refuse to act or attempt to find another way of determining the lethality of each syringe. The psychopath route is the most efficient being uninhibited by morality and to others may seem callous, but it is exactly this unemotional predisposition that enables psychopaths to live a life based on pure, unadulterated logic. Some of us may be intrigued as to what this distilled logic looks like and could lead to. Also, a life lead by logic alone would be completely disparate from our own, so maybe we are interested in psychopaths for the same reason we are interested in different cultures: because they stray from the norm.
I wonder what would happen if the syringe holder was threatened with death if they did not administer the syringes. Logically, refusing to administer the syringes would result in the lowest number of deaths, only that of the refuser. Here, however, this is not the logical route for a psychopath because self-preservation trumps all and the two people in front are just viewed as obstacles to overcome. A non-psychopath would have a very difficult decision to make. This highlights another potential reason for why we are interested in psychopaths. We all wish to be carefree and a forefront characteristic of a psychopath is indifference; they do not care, therefore, they appear carefree. In only dealing with their own agenda, psychopaths seem untroubled and perhaps this is something other humans resent about psychopaths. I am certainly not suggesting that we all secretly desire to be psychopathic but perhaps some of their qualities are shamefully enviable and maybe we are interested in psychopaths because we want to observe how they attain a carefree state of mind. Of course, we still do not know what makes a psychopath, so being interested in psychopaths will not give direction on how to achieve carefree status. Also, in a paradoxical way, we know not to envy blatant psychopaths because we logically understand that if we were all psychopathic we would bring our own demise.
Another hypothesis is that people are not simply either a sweeping psychopath or not psychopathic at all. I think, to a certain extent, there is a spectrum to psychopathy. Despite being a generation that largely resists labels and rejects categories, many people obsessively read horoscopes and take personality tests to determine where they fit in society. We constantly want to know where we stand in pecking orders to plan our next moves, so, maybe people are interested in deciphering where they lie on the psychopathic spectrum. If we give psychopaths the attributes of being logical, carefree, intelligent, etc. then why would we not want to be on the psychopathic spectrum. It is proven that many high-power, world leaders display psychopathic traits, some may have even been high-functioning psychopaths* and, when TV psychopaths become as revered as Dr. House and Sherlock Holmes, why not envy the admiration they receive. The representation of high-functioning psychopaths in the media could be falsely leading us to think a psychopathic life is better.
All of these are just guesses (no research involved) but maybe the fact that we do not understand psychopaths at all is also why we are interested in them. They are one heck of a puzzle to crack.
*high-functioning psychopathy does seem quite desirable. High-functioning psychopaths have identical traits to regular psychopaths but they tend to be more intelligent and, therefore, better at integrating with society. They use their intelligence to study human behaviour and learn the appropriate times to replicate certain emotions – appearing as a normal human. They do have the capacity to become violent criminals just like regular psychopaths do (it is important to mention that most violent criminals are not psychopaths) but they think of the consequences and usually realise that the risk of committing a crime outweighs any potential benefits. Nevertheless, if a high-functioning psychopath believes, without a doubt, they can get away with murder, they will murder someone.
Learning in Parallel 