PSYCHOPATHY-SRGN, NON -PSYCOPATHY- DR

There are core traits—a lack of moral reasoning or sense of guilt, pathological lying, a lack of emotion, using and manipulating people—but so many people think that these traits always involve murder, rape, and sadism,” he says. “But violence or sadism is not a necessary component of psychopathy. In fact, there are plenty of psychopaths who you’ll find out in the world leading regular lives.

Individuals with psychopathy are much more likely to have issues with substance abuse. Their onset of criminal behavior is much earlier than others, which is why psychopaths are overrepresented in prisons. They account for the vast majority of costs for treatment in prisons—despite the fact that we think of them as untreatable. We are now starting to move away from the old model that people with psychopathy are fundamentally evil people who should not be interacting with anyone in society and can’t be treated or helped,” says Baskin-Sommers. “With more studies with better experimental design and larger data sets with more representative samples, we should be able to define, refine, and specify the types of dysfunctions operating in these people. That will not only give us a clearer idea of why psychopaths do what they do. It may also help us develop better programs and treatments to help them make better decisions about what’s right and wrong.”