Author: psychopath.whisperer@gmail.com

The University of New Mexico Newsroom wrote an article about a new study conducted by Dr. Kent Kiehl at The Mind Research Network (MRN) in Albuquerque.  They study found that youth 12 to 18 who commit homicide have very different brains than other serious juvenile offenders who have not committed a homicide.  They cite Dr. Kent Kiehl’s future outlook on decreasing crime rate from this study and how it may change the laws view on psychopathy and psychosis.  READ MORE

CNN did an article (03.26.14) on moral decision-making – citing a few of our favorite scientists in the field of psychopathy. Link to CNN article

The article raises a number of important issues, but one central to our field is:

“Are psychopaths impaired in their ability to make moral decisions?”

The short answer to this question is:

It depends.

There is ample evidence that psychopaths, compared to the rest of us, commit more moral wrongs in all domains of life. Psychopaths are more likely than the rest of us to commit criminal behavior, to be unfaithful to our wives, to cheat on taxes, to not pay bills, to borrow money from friends and family and never pay it back, to cheat on tests in school, and to steal from employers – all moral wrongs. Thus, to an observer, psychopaths have serious problems making appropriate moral decisions and it makes sense then that psychopath’s moral abilities must be impaired.

However, when you get a psychopath into the laboratory (always be careful with them in such settings J) they appear to pass moral decision-making tasks that scientists give them.   That is, when you ask a psychopath if a picture depicts a moral wrong, they get the answer right most of the time.   When you ask a psychopath to decide if a vignette depicts a moral violation – they get it right.

Thus, psychopaths present with a conundrum: They appear to know how to act morally, but they just don’t act that way in the real world.

How might we resolve this problem?

The answer may lie in some of the latest neuroscience of moral decision-making.  Studies using brain imaging show that moral decision-making includes both cognitive AND emotional regions of the brain.

Studies have shown that when most of us are faced with making an important moral decision, the decision process activates emotional systems in the brain in addition to cognitive systems.  These emotional brain systems help to make sure we are paying attention to the importance of the decision before us.

Recent forensic studies show that these emotional brain regions are not working properly in psychopaths.  Some scientists have said that psychopaths ‘know the words but not the music’.  That is, psychopaths understand that they are making a decision, but the emotion associated with making that moral decision is lost upon them.

A study from my laboratory, lead by Dr. Carla Harenski, found that criminal psychopaths had deficits in the amygdala and orbital frontal cortex when processing moral pictures. The amygdala and orbital frontal cortex are critical brain regions associated with emotional processing.  Link to Aberrant neural processing of moral violations in criminal psychopaths. Harenski, CL, et al.

So, whereas psychopaths appear to be able to make moral decisions in the laboratory, the emotional systems that help govern behavior in the real world are impaired.  For more details on this issue, read ‘The Psychopath Whisperer:  The science of those without conscience,” a book available for pre-order on Amazon today (delivery 4/22/14).

A compelling journey into the science and behavior of psychopaths, written by the leading scientist in the field of criminal psychopathy.

We know of psychopaths from chilling headlines and stories in the news and movies—from Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, to Hannibal Lecter and Dexter Morgan. As Dr. Kent Kiehl shows, psychopaths can be identified by a checklist of symptoms that includes pathological lying; lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse; grandiose sense of self-worth; manipulation; and failure to accept one’s actions. But why do psychopaths behave the way they do? Is it the result of their environment— how they were raised—or is there a genetic compo­nent to their lack of conscience?

This is the question Kiehl, a protégé of famed psychopath researcher Dr. Robert Hare, was deter­mined to answer as he began his career twenty years ago. To aid in his quest to unravel the psy­chopathic mind, Kiehl created the first mobile functional MRI scanner to study psychopaths in prison populations. The brains of more than five hundred psychopaths and three thousand other offenders have been scanned by Kiehl’s labora­tory—the world’s largest forensic neuroscience repository of its kind. Over the course of The Psy­chopath Whisperer, we follow the scientific bread crumbs that Kiehl uncovered to show that the key brain structures that correspond with emotional engagement and reactions are diminished in psy­chopaths, offering new clues to how to predict and treat the disorder.

In The Psychopath Whisperer, Kiehl describes in fascinating detail his years working with psy­chopaths and studying their thought processes— from the remorseless serial killers he meets with behind bars to children whose behavior and per­sonality traits exhibit the early warning signs of psychopathy.

Less than 1 percent of the general population meets the criteria for psychopathy. But psycho­paths account for a vastly outsized proportion of violent crimes. And as Kiehl shows, many who aren’t psychopaths exhibit some of the behaviors and traits associated with the condition. What do you do if you discover your roommate, or boss, or the person you are dating has traits that define a psy­chopath? And what does having a diminished limbic region of the brain mean for how the legal system approaches crimes committed by psychopaths?

A compelling narrative of cutting-edge science, The Psychopath Whisperer will open your eyes on a fascinating but little understood world, with startling implications for society, the law, and our personal lives.

“A renowned neuroscientist provides us with a fascinating account of his personal journey into the mind of the psychopath.” 

Robert D. Hare, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, author of Without Conscience