879: Kevin Dutton | Are You a Psychopath (And Is That So Terrible)?

24:50Number 11, when things go wrong, it's nearly always because someone has let me down. And number 12, the final one, a lot of the time, I'm the life and soul of the party. Now, of course, a lot of these things might actually be true. But anyway, what you should have there, folks playing along at home, you should have 12 numbers on the screen or sheet. So just like the first time, add them up. Again, Jordan, not diagnosing anyone here as a narcissist. This is just general indication where you might be on the narcissistic spectrum. And also, can I just say that there are a lot of positives, just like psychopathic characteristics, there are a lot of positives to narcissistic traits.

25:27So, you know, sometimes you need to be a little bit narcissistic to get what you want in life and to be successful. I've never met one top sports person that I've ever worked with who hasn't been high on the narcissism scale. You need to have elements of narcissism to make it. So if you are scoring relatively high on this test, it's not necessarily anything to worry about. Yeah, it's like you can see the paper I'm writing on right now, and that's why you said that. But okay, fine. Well, let's go over the scoring. Let's move quickly on. Right. Right, 0 to 12. 0 to 12 is low. 0 to 12 low on the narcissism spectrum.

26:00All right. 13 to 18 is below average, 19 to 24 average, 25 to 30 high, and 31 to 36, 36 maximum score, very high. Yeah. Go on. What'd you get, Jordan? 11. So that's still low. 11. Well, you're still low. I'm surprised. I was like, oh, these are adding up pretty fast over here on my end. Yes, you're such a nice guy. I'll tell you what though, when you meet, and I'm sure you'll know, when you meet an out and out narcissist, you really know it. Most of us are kind of low to average. We've got sprinklings of it. When you meet an out-and-out narcissist, you really know it because there is absolutely nothing they do that doesn't focus on themselves.

26:40Every aspect, every topic of conversation is steered towards them. If you go out for dinner with them, they will often belittle the waiter or waitresses. They will make jokes, which a lot of people don't really find funny. There's all kinds of stuff like that going on. So if you're with an out-and-out narcissist, and also actually another interesting fact about narcissists is when you're with them, they'll always push through the door first. If you're going through a door, they'll very rarely step back and let you go first. They'll always go through first. It's a kind of a little narcissism hack or a quirk.

27:09But of course, if people are going through doors first, that doesn't mean to say they're a narcissist, of course. Yeah. I was going to say, that seems like, what if they're trying to manipulate you? They might let you go in first. Yeah. No, absolutely. In which case it might be a psychopath. Forget the door thing. People will start reading into that. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of those where it's going to be like, My boyfriend always lets me go into the door. Is he a psychopath? But then yesterday, he let me go in first. Is he a narcissist? Yeah. Yes, he's both. And he might well be. He might be. Break up now, but not because of that.

27:36We don't want to start worrying people. So we cleared two things up. There's a difference between kind of sociopath and a psychopath, and also kind of how narcissism fits in as well.

27:48You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Kevin Dutton. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by 1-800-CONTACTS. You know that last pair of contacts panic? My wife Jen knows it way too well. She's had these mornings where she's out of contacts and stuck wearing these old glasses. She's got to keep wiping clean with her sleeve. But now she makes sure to load up ahead of time because her next set is always on the way from 1-800-CONTACTS. They're the only major retailer that lets you renew your prescription online. So Jen gets her same doctor-prescribed contacts fast with free shipping without leaving the house.

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28:44Getting contacts doesn't have to be a hassle. Let 1-800-CONTACTS get you the lenses you need right now. Order online at 1-800-CONTACTS.com or download the free 1-800-CONTACTS app today. This episode is sponsored in part by Dell. Introducing your new Dell PC with the Intel Core Ultra Processor. It helps you handle a lot, even when your holiday to-do list gets to be a lot. Like organizing your holiday shopping, searching for great holiday deals, customer questions, customers requesting custom things. Luckily, you can get a PC with all-day battery life to help you get it all done. That's the power of a Dell PC with Intel inside, backed by Dell's price match guarantee.

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29:29This episode is sponsored in part by LinkedIn. If you've ever hired for your small business, you know how important it is to find the right person. That's why LinkedIn Jobs is stepping things up with their new AI assistant so you can feel comfortable you're finding top talent you can't find anywhere else. The best part is that those great candidates are already on LinkedIn. In fact, employees hired through LinkedIn, they're 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. That's a big deal when every hire counts. Think about the last time you worked with somebody who just got it.

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30:24Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash harbinger to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these amazing thinkers, creators, authors every single week, it's because of my network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. I know that I tell you to do this all the time. Just do the first couple of drills. Seriously, just do the first two. There's a happiness dividend from reconnecting with people.

30:55It's not cheesy. It's not gross. This will make you feel better. And if you don't like the first two drills, just stop doing the course. I don't care. I'm not going to take it personally. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. You won't regret it. It doesn't take a lot of time. You will be a better person for doing so. JordanHarbinger.com slash course. Now back to Kevin Dutton. Why do you think people are so fascinated by psychopaths? I mean, the episodes I do about psychopathy are always popular. And we're not even talking about murders and true crime. You know, it's not just that it's more exciting because it's about true crime.

31:28I'm literally just talking about psychopathy. It's almost like when I do episodes about depression, nobody's like, wow, that was amazing. It's just a completely different animal. Do you have any idea why this might be the case? Is it the danger element that sort of underlies the idea that these people exist and walk among us? What is it? I've done a lot of thinking, a lot of head scratching about this. And you know what? I think it's more complex than people initially think. I think there's three or four answers to it. I'll give you the first one that comes to mind. A few years ago, I did a little experiment where I basically said to people, here's a thought experiment.

32:06Imagine for the next three hours or so, you can do anything you want and there will be no legal or moral or emotional repercussions or hangovers. You can just do what you want. And at the end of that, the slate will be wiped clean, but you will have got whatever it is you wanted to do off your chest. And it's really interesting. So broadly speaking, people kind of fit into two camps. It's either the love camp or the hate camp. So the hate camp tends to be, you know what, I'd go back to that bastard and I'd show him that guy who dumbed me down a few years ago. I'd go back and teach him a lesson or two, right?

32:42That's the hate camp. And then the love camp is opposite. It's very interesting. Love camp is kind of like, there's this person who I always fancied or always loved and I never told them and I'd go back and I'd tell them and it's kind of unrequited love kind of thing. So you've got either the love camp or the hate camp. Now, what I think is really interesting is the fact that life is pretty much like that for psychopaths. They have no sense of consequence. They have no anxiety over being outside their comfort zone. They don't fear rejection. They don't fear repercussions. They live very much in the moment.

33:17They just go for it. And in a sense, what I'd almost been constructing there with that little thought experiment, although I didn't do it for that reason, is a kind of a template for what it's like to be a psychopath. Psychopaths don't have these general fears that we do. So they are much more, if you want to call it, existentially free. They can do this stuff with kind of emotional, legal, moral impunity. And I think, Jordan, I'm not right. This is just speculation. I think that we secretly envy psychopaths that exist in freedom. I think that all of us would love to be able to do things that get us outside our comfort zones with ease, but actually we can't do it.

33:56We're held back by all kinds of fears and anxieties and senses of repercussions and consequences, quite rightly in a lot of cases. But I think the first reason that we are fascinated by psychopaths is because I think we envy them their existential freedoms. Now, of course, that existential freedom also enables them to commit some pretty abominable acts. And I always use a bit of analogy of a sports car. It's all right having a really fast Lamborghini or Ferrari, but you've got to be able to use the brakes every now and again. It's no good having a car like that if you don't know how to use the brakes and your foot's always on the gas.

34:31So that's a little bit like having a psychopathic person. If you're driving a psychopathic personality car, you need to be able to use the brakes. And that's one of the differences between a good psychopath and a bad psychopath. But I think that ability to drive very fast in a car down a twisty mountain road with the wind going through your hair, I think is something that we envy in psychopaths. I think we'd all love to do it. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're fascinated. I think the second reason is the wow factor. I think the Jekyll and Hyde personality is catnip to a lot of people.

35:03Ted Bundy, an intelligent, attractive, handsome kind of guy, excellent self-presentation skills. But behind the scenes, there was this depraved personality going on. Jeffrey Dahmer, the same. I think we're also fascinated by what I call the principle of incongruity, in the sense that actually what appears really normal on the surface actually conceals something which is really very different behind the scenes. The human condition of human psychology has always been fascinated by contrasts. And that incongruity principle, I think, also taps into our fascination. Also, there's this idea of danger.

35:40We love to be scared, but we love to be scared safely. That's why we like roller coasters. If roller coasters weren't fastened onto the rails, no one would get on them, right? Yeah, yeah. If people kept flying off of them, I don't know how many I'd want to try. Exactly. No one would get on them. No one would jump out of a plane without a parachute. Parachuting is actually a very safe sport, but jumping out of a plane, nevertheless, is still pretty scary. No one would jump out of a plane in their right mind without a parachute. So we love to be scared, but we love to be scared safely. That's why we swim with sharks in cages.

36:13If we took the bars off the cage and all of a sudden there's nothing between us and the sharks, it'd be a different story altogether. So we like to be able to contain danger, but at the same time, expose ourselves to it. And I think that is also one of our fascinations, especially with scary movies and horror movies. We love to sit in a cinema in the safety of a chair and watch these kind of villains and serial killers on screen because actually we're safe in that zone of a theatre. And I think that kind of fear factor, but control fear factor as well. There's a very interesting study which looks at advertising placement in films.

36:50and if you look at adverts that work very well in scary horror movies basically appeal to what we call social proof so the choice of millions promote products that a lot of people use choice of millions those kinds of ad slogans really works if they're placed within horror movies because of course when we're scared we like to cling closer to the group oh interesting yeah The opposite works in romantic movies. If you go to a romantic movie on a date, you want to enhance your USP, your unique selling point. Ads that then appeal to the scarcity principle, forgetting this product can make you somehow unique.

37:29That works very well in romantic movies. So this kind of safety kind of dangerous stuff and being scared safe isn't lost on people who work in the advertising industry either. So when you look at different kinds of films, the ads that are placed in them, there's a lot more thought gone into that. you might think. I had no idea that there was anything having to do with context in advertising. That might sound a little naive, but I really thought they just made commercials and they played them and then they changed it up when they got old. I didn't think they were like, oh, this is going to play on primetime movies on this channel that are rom-coms or that are scary.

38:07And then this other version of a different commercial for the same product is going to play during the daytime when people are watching Jerry Springer talk shows, whatever. No, there's a lot of science goes into advertising placement. The other really interesting thing is there's a phenomenon called murderabilia. Murderabilia? Serial killer memorabilia. That's what I was going to guess. Yeah. Here's the actual bloody whatever from this crime scene. Absolutely. And there's internet sites where we sell this stuff. So, you know, everything for a lock of Charlie Manson's hair. That's kind of creepy.

38:37I think Ted Bundy's Volkswagen Beetle went up for sale. Oh, man, that's dark. Can you imagine picking someone up, going out for a date and picking them up? Hey, what an opening line. This is Ted Bundy's Volkswagen. Hey, you know who used to own this car? The guy who used to murder women he used to pick up with on dates. Exactly. Yeah. Guess who's going home alone? But John Wayne Gacy paintings by John Wayne Gacy, Pogo the Clown, that he used to pose as at children's parties. John Wayne Gacy paintings. Dorothy Puente, who was a killer landlady in her 70s, late 60s and 70s, killed all her tenants.

39:12claimed their pensions, and she then buried them in the backyard of the boarding house. If you want a lump of dirt, a little bag of dirt from her back garden, I think that retails about $25 on some sites. So if Undie's Volkswagen Beetle is a bit too expensive, you can get a bag of dirt from Dorothy Puente's back garden. Murderabilia. When people say to me, why are we fascinated by psychopaths and serial killers? Murderabilia is a really interesting kind of phenomenon. What's going on with murderability? There seems to be two things. In psychology, it's known as what's called the talisman effect.

39:43And it's almost like if you possess something which was owned by a serial killer, you somehow retain their essence and it has a kind of a protective quality about it. Forget murderability. This is the kind of psychology that works behind celebrity auctions in general. Kurt Cobain's manky old sweater that he wore on the famous MTV performance, actually in itself, it's probably worth nothing. The fact it was worn by Kurt Cobain on that iconic appearance means it's imbued with some kind of essence of Kurt Cobain, or at least we think. And that's why it retails. I think it went for something like$50 ,000 or something like that.

40:19We're talking about stuff which is right on the borders between psychology and philosophy here, a topic called ascensionism. And that is the articles or items that are once owned by people retain a kind of an essence or a sense of who they are. And this is the psychology behind murder of Billia. So if we possess an item that was somehow owned by a serial killer or produced by a serial killer, like in Gacy's paintings, we somehow retain an essence of them. And that's almost like a protective talisman. Similar thing a few years ago in the States, they used to have serial killer trading cards. Serial killer trading cards?

40:56Trading cards. Yeah, like little cigarette cards people could swap and collect. And it's pretty, very controversial. It's about 10 years ago, I think. People say, well, this is glamorizing serial killers and crime. etc. But actually, when people started digging into what was going on here, it was complete opposite. People that were collecting these kind of serial killer trading cards were actually getting a lot of anxiety reduction by the idea of having these serial killers nicely lined up in cornrows in a box, which they could put the lid on. I know, it's completely counterintuitive. It goes against common sense.

41:29That is weird. It's like a Jewish person collecting Nazi memorabilia or something like that. It's literally to put it in a box, put the lid on it. This kind of prevents you from maybe, inoculates you against real world danger and what have you. I think the reason we're fascinated by psychopaths runs very deep and is complex. Another really interesting angle, why people befriend serial killers, sometimes marry them. I was just going to bring this topic up. It reminds me of, and I just looked it up while you were talking. I think it's called hybristophilia or hybristophilia. I don't know exactly how you pronounce it.

42:02Yeah, absolutely. Is that what you're talking about? Well, I'll take your word for it. I didn't actually know the scientific term. That's all right. You're just a PhD having to do with this exact topic. I don't expect you to know these things. I'm a fraud. I'm a fraud. Like you say, you caught me. Fraudulent Dr. Kepp. Yeah, it's called Hybristophilia. And it has to do with people that write to people in prison who are murderers and send them locks of hair and money and write them letters. And they usually have a traumatic past. And people are saying, what's going on here? And there's theories like maybe the person was victimized.

42:33And so they feel like if they're dating or in love with or friends with a serial killer, they have that person's protection somehow, even though I would imagine statistically they're just more likely to get killed by that person unless the person's in prison, in which case they sort of have their foot in both worlds, right? They're friends with the serial killer, but the serial killer is behind bars. And they know that they're there because they just got a letter from them last week in a response to their letter that they sent the week before. I think you pretty much nailed it. Again, there's that kind of preventative, protective talisman effect going on there.

43:03I think also it's slightly more complex than that. There's a number of reasons, psychological reasons why people befriend serial killers. I think low self-esteem is one of them. So studies have looked at the kinds of people that do befriend serial killers. Low self-esteem seems to be a common factor. And it's almost your self-esteem is getting a little kind of push up the ladder, goes up a few rungs by seemingly getting the attention of someone who has control, as it were, over life and death. So self-esteem is a factor. Funnily enough, narcissism also comes into the equation. It is a bit more ghoulish than the self-esteem.

43:38So some people think that by getting close to serial killers, they can somehow get a little bit more information about the crime that other people might not have. So they're part of that serial killer's inner circle. They might be a confidant that serial killers might confide in. And of course, serial killers are often very manipulative and that's something which isn't lost on them. So self-esteem is one thing. Narcissism is another. And absolutely, you just put your finger on it, anxiety issues as well. It's almost like you are at the eye of the storm. If you're at the eye of the hurricane, that's the safest place to be.

44:14So it can't harm you. So if you're up close and personal with a serial killer, you're not going to be harmed in any way. Of course, that's like people that kiss crocodile. Sometimes it's the very last thing you do. I think when you talk to people and say, oh, you know, we're fascinated by psychopaths, that's because of X and Y. It's actually a lot more complex. There's a lot of psychology behind our fascination with psychopaths and serial killers. Says a lot about us. Yeah, I would say so. What about kids? If it's a brain makeup type of thing, then it would be present in children. Obviously, we've seen some horrific things done by children, but how does it manifest in children?

44:48You don't see serial killer kids. I'm sure there's examples, but it's probably extremely rare. How does psychopathy manifest in kids or does it? Yeah. Psychopathy in kids is a really interesting topic, Jordan. The first thing that you've got to bear in mind is that actually you're not allowed to call a child a psychopath, certainly here in the UK anyway, because of the kind of the pejorative sense of that label. Instead, believe it or not, you have to refer to them as callous and unemotional. which I think is a little bit Monty Python. If I was a parent and I went into a clinician's consulting room and I was worried about my kid's behavior and the clinical psychologist or psychiatrist said to me, I think your child has got callous and unemotional traits.

45:35I think I'd be more pissed off than if they said your kid's a psychopath. So I think this idea of swapping callous and unemotional traits for psychopathy is an interesting debate in itself. So the first thing is you can't really call kids psychopaths. The second thing is there's no silver bullet test. to say, yeah, this kid is a psychopath. In a sense, there's no silver bullet test for adults like that either. Even if you look at brain patterns, yeah, there's some kind of patterns which are similar, but not identical, and they don't hold true across all people who are psychopathic. So there's general trends, but there's no silver bullet test to say, yes, kid is a psychopath.

46:09However, as you rightly point out, there are quite a few examples of kids that have committed crimes which actually mirror the kinds of crime that an adult psychopath would commit. I think there was a case in the States a few years ago of a nine-year-old boy that pushed a three-year-old toddler into a swimming pool and literally just sat and watched the child drown, observing them almost in a scientific kind of detached way to see what would happen and then calmly walked off. And when they were arrested later on, they showed absolutely no remorse, no fear of the consequences, and in fact, rather like being the center of attention.

46:42There are certain horrible cases of kids acting in what looks very much like a psychopathic way. Now, it's interesting that studies have been done which have looked at differences in kids at formative stages of their development and whether that predicts whether they will eventually grow up to be adult psychopaths. And there is evidence to suggest that it does. So kids as young as one year old, 12-month-old children, babies. There was one study which attached little electrodes to the soles of the baby's feet to measure galvanic skin response, which is basically how much they sweat, which is an index of anxiety and fear.

47:23When they were confronted with a scary robot that made very loud noises and had flashing lights and all this kind of stuff, what the researchers found was that those 12-month-old babies that showed less sweat response to that scary robot were more likely to go on and develop psychopathy in adulthood than kids who showed the normal sweat response. So fear and anxiety to that robot. Differences can show up as young as 12 months old. Now, moving forward, looking at adolescents, I think the age bracket that this particular study looked at was 11 to 16. They had three groups of adolescents. They had a control group, which is what you might call neurotypical kids.

48:09You then had a group which were antisocial kids. And then you had a third group, which was antisocial kids with psychopathic tendencies. and what the researchers did, they played canned laughter, recorded laughter to each of these groups and they looked at which of the kids would be more likely to laugh back, laugh along. It's a natural response if you hear other people laughing. It's how comedy sitcoms work. Obviously, back in the day, you'd play a load of canned laughter to a live audience and it would make the audience more likely to laugh along. And what they found was extraordinary. The neurotypical kids laughed along with the canned laughter.

48:47The antisocial kids laughed along. It was only the antisocial adolescents with psychopathic tendencies that didn't. And this was mirrored in their brains when you looked at what was going on in their brains, the premotor and motor areas of the brain which prepare you to laugh and then get you to laugh. There was much less activity in the brains of those antisocial kids with psychopathic tendencies than there was in the other two groups. there are certainly predispositions in the way brains work in kids as young as 12 months, also in adolescents aged 11 to 16. So there's enough evidence to suggest that there's something going on here.

49:26The other side of the coin, Jordan, is I think that although I do believe psychopathy is present in the younger age group, we need to be careful that we don't medicalise behaviour that is actually normal at those ages. This is The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Kevin Dutton. We'll be right back. The wait is over. Dive into Audible's most anticipated collection, The Best of 2025, featuring top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals across all genres. Our editors have carefully curated this year's must-listens, from brilliant hidden gems to the buzziest new releases. Every title in this collection has earned its spot.

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50:49Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Kevin Dutton. I look back at my childhood and I think I would absolutely have been the kid where they're like, that guy's going to shoot up the school. He's crazy. because I was a punk. I got in trouble. I was always on the internet looking at stuff. And this is in the early days when nobody had internet. I help people do bad stuff. I'm not talking about lighting cats on fire. I'm talking about doing something to a local person's door. Not even anything really bad looking back, but just crappy teenager stuff.

51:22But also being lonely and quiet and brooding and dark. And I'm thinking, man, if they pathologized me back then, And I would have been in the school with the police guard at the door. So I can imagine it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say these are the bad kids, he's a psychopath. A kid who's just having a bad couple of years because of hormones and parenting and grades, it might end up in a much worse situation than they would be if we just let them get over their shit. Absolutely right. And I think that's the key that you just said there. I mean, when you look at kids and you start saying, OK, this kid might be a psychopath because they've done X, Y and Z.

51:59Kids' brains are still developing. So when we diagnose adult psychopaths, the brains, they're fully developed. And OK, that's the end of that development. And this is where we've got to be really careful in medicalizing behaviors in kids. The brains are still in a developmental stage. So if you take stuff like risk-taking, sensation-seeking, even in younger kids, just being mean, telling lies, these are just normal behaviors that actually we need to be very careful not to medicalize them. So I think we've got to look at both sides. But also, I think there's a bit of common sense here. There's a difference in someone who's setting cats on fire, torturing animals, and doing kind of stuff like that.

52:38All kids are naughty, all kids are risk takers, all kids are impulsive and do mean things. We've got to be really careful that we don't medicalize normal behavior too quickly. On the other hand, though, yeah, I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that psychopathy does manifest itself at a formative age as well. How old do you think that age is? Because I've seen little kids do stuff like my son wanted to squash a butterfly or something like that. And I was like, no, that's not for squashing. It's for looking at. And I remember my mom yelling at me when I squashed a butterfly when I was a really little kid.

53:11And she's like, don't do that. You don't have to do that. They're for looking at. They're pretty. Don't squash them. But I didn't grow up to be somebody who squashes cats or even bugs, unless they're cockroaches, which are frigging disgusting. I don't do that anymore. And Jen, my wife, was a little worried. And I was like, no, it's a boy thing. It's a kid slash boy thing to try and squash something that's alive and not think about it when they're three years old. Yeah, it's really interesting you said that. Actually, there are differences between boys and girls in terms of psychopathy, how common it is.

53:41And that's, of course, to do with the way kids are brought up. But it's interesting what you said there. We find it very easy to squash a cockroach or a wasp or something like that, but not very easy to squash a butterfly. So we're okay squashing stuff that we don't like, but actually stuff that seems to be pretty, we have a problem with. At the end of the day, we're still extinguishing life. Well, okay. But to be fair, when's the last time you got bitten or stung by a butterfly? Never. But if a spider's there, it's going to either get lifted outside on a paper or squashed. And a wasp, I'm either getting away from it, and if I can't do that, I'm going after it.

54:16Those are the two choices, right? It's a little bit different, right? It's almost like a survival thing. What was it? Sting like a butterfly, float like a bee? That was the other way around, wasn't it? But at what age, Jordan? It really is not a cop-out, this, mate. It is how long is a piece of string, really? If I was going to just come out with a non-scientific answer, I'd probably say about the age of 13 or 14. But I'm sure people have got other ideas. But I would say when you start entering your teenage years, if you're still squashing butterflies at that age, maybe it's time to look in the mirror if you're a narcissist.

54:48Yeah, sure. You'll enjoy it at that rate. Yeah. How did we end up with psychopathy evolving as a trait? And I think we talked about this last time we did a show. It survived because those people are useful to society. soldiers, leaders, now surgeons, lawyers, whatever, business folks. I get why it hasn't been bred out, but how did it come about initially? Do you have any evidence for it other than evolution? Yeah, I mean, if you look at game theorists have modeled theories of psychopathy evolution in computer simulations, and they've pretty much come out with the 1 % scenario, which is thought to be representative of psychopaths in everyday life, pure psychopaths, that is.

55:29I would also argue, though, that actually, and I've said this a lot, people say what percent of psychopaths are out of 1 %? They're only the psychopaths that we've caught. So we don't actually know what the true incidence of psychopaths is out there. We know how many psychopaths have been caught because a lot of these tests are conducted in prison. But actually, there may be way more out there who have eluded detection, eluded capture, who might inflate that figure. So we don't know. So, yeah, game theorists have looked at evolution of psychopathy in computer simulations. They've pretty much found the same kind of incidents as you find in everyday life.

56:03One of the obvious things, Jordan, is that psychopaths are charismatic. They are promiscuous as well. They have a lot of sexual partners. And so I call that the kind of James Bond profile, charismatic and promiscuous. By the very definition of those characteristics, those genes are going to get out more. They're going to get around more. There's one very simple reason why psychopathy is sticking around. But also if you go back to the days of our ancient ancestors and you look at those groups, there's always going to be a need for predators. There's always going to be a need for warriors. There's always going to be a need for risk takers.

56:43If you just think about it, who's the first person that decided to eat a pomegranate? Who's going to put their finger in there and eat that stuff? Actually, it turned out it was quite good. Yeah, I don't know. But you need to be a bit of a risk. I always assume they watch animals do it first. That's the only theory I have for that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I think you're probably right. Yeah, absolutely. But we need people like that. We need boundary pushes. We need risk takers. We need warriors. We need predators. Because that's the kind of way in which we got here by pushing boundaries. Now, here's a really interesting theory.

57:14It's a theory which a former mentor of mine came up with called rivalrous cohesion. And if you look at what the kinds of psychological forces that make groups more cohesive and bring groups together, what you find is that one of them is if a group comes under attack from an external source, the group that's under attack becomes more cohesive. It unites. Very simple example. If you remember the United States after the 9-11 attacks, everyone became more cohesive. Society became more unified against this kind of abominable, atrocious act. So this has been replicated in laboratory studies, internet chat rooms, for example, when members of an internet chat room are exposed to an outside threat, the vibe, the atmosphere in that internet chat room becomes more cohesive.

58:03So external threat makes groups more cohesive and also attacking another group makes the attacking group more cohesive. So here's a very controversial theory. It may well be that societal conflict evolved to keep society together, to keep groups together. We need a little bit of conflict because conflict is one of those things that actually keeps groups cohesive every now and again. And so who are the people that are most likely to stir up conflict, who are those warriors? Who are those predators? It's people who are higher on the psychopathic spectrum. There's a theory which you don't hear too often, that perhaps actually one of the reasons why psychopathy evolved is actually not to split society up and ruin it, but actually to keep it together and make it more cohesive.

58:51That is interesting. And you're right. I have not heard that. I was going to ask if there's such thing as a good psychopath, which is not a great question, but it is answered by that exact line of thinking. And of course, there are benefits that psychopaths bring to society. Again, the surgery and the leadership things, regardless of the damage that they might do in their personal lives. There's a very sort of distinct line. We see this all the time, right? People who have terrible, disastrous personal lives, but have done really good things for society because they are the leader of a large enterprise or a country, or they've invented something, or they've worked really hard, even in artistic pursuits, right?

59:26The cliche is that the best, most talented people in Hollywood, their lives are just an absolute disaster and they're on their fifth divorce. It's a cliche for a reason, I suppose. I wonder, as a scientist who does occasionally deal with some very, I guess, air quotes, bad people, do you believe in the evil element of it or do you look at this more clinically? I have to say, Jordan, that as a scientist, I have a problem with using that term evil. But it's a word which I myself have used unashamedly to describe, for want of a better word, sometimes even as a scientist, scientists are human beings.

1:00:05And sometimes you've just got to look at something and say, especially if you're talking to everyday people, it's just an evil act. It's just something that's evil. But let me talk about it logically if I can. If we start off with the premise that often what you might describe as an evil act is generally underpinned by a deficit in moral code. Now, one of the things that we know from laboratory studies, scientific studies in psychology, is the fact that moral behaviors and judgments are often underwritten by random fluctuations in the external environment over which we often have no control at all.

1:00:50And there's a great area in psychology called embodied cognition, which looks at this. So for example, if you wash your hands, you are more likely to judge a person harshly in terms of if they've done a misdemeanor or something. So let's say you're in a what's called a mock jury study where you've got to give someone a sentence for some wrong they've done. If you get two groups of people, one of which have washed their hands and another group of people have got dirty hands, the people that have washed their hands are more likely to give stricter sentences than the people that haven't washed their hands, got dirty hands.

1:01:24So we've got this phrase in the English language, wash my hands of you. It's actually mirrored in scientific truth. Also, there's another really weird study that you're more likely if you're on the street and you're asking for money, you've got your bask in front of you and you want some cash, and you're begging for money, you're more likely to get it at the top of a set of stairs than at the bottom. Again, studies show it's exactly this kind of moral high ground, exactly that phrase in English language. So you're going to be more generous at the top of a flight of stairs than you are at the bottom.

1:01:51Now, I know this sounds crazy, but these studies have actually been done. So if we start off with the premise that evil acts tend to be underpinned by a deficit in moral code, And we then look at the next line down, which looks at moral behaviors and judgments are often underwritten by random fluctuations in the environment under which we've got no control. then calling someone evil because they do something tends to be a bit of a cop-out because we can see that actually there's all kinds of influences on the brain which makes us behave right or wrong over which a lot of us have got no control over we don't act because things are happening in our elbows or our armpits we act because something's happening in our brain And we know that obviously the brain is instrumental in underpinning moral behavior and deficits in moral behavior are often called evil.

1:02:47So I think if we go against that kind of logic, which I've just outlined, we invoke a kind of a dualism, which is a very dangerous path to go down where there's some kind of separation between the mind and the body. And as a scientist, I can't do that. But that's the logical answer. It's really interesting, actually, going back to the good psychopath question. If we go back to the mixing desk dial, you've got ruthlessness, fearlessness, no conscience, no empathy, and they're all those kind of knobs and sliders on the mixing desk dial. I think the key here, the difference between a good and a bad psychopath is how you dial those up.

1:03:23It's exactly like mixing a soundtrack in a studio, right? It depends on the context in which you dial those characteristics up. It depends on the combination in which you dial those traits up. It depends on the level, and it also depends on the intention that you're going to use them for. If you've got ruthlessness, fearlessness, no conscience, no empathy, all turned up to max, and it's stuck there, you're likely going to be a bad psychopath. However, if you can twiddle those dials in various combinations, depending on the circumstances that you might happen to find yourself in, then you're going to be what I call a good psychopath.

1:03:58There was a guy who I once dealt with. People often ask me whether Hannibal Lecter actually exists, these kinds of genius psychopaths. They don't, although I have met psychopaths with very high IQs, and I'm going to tell you about one right now. But generally speaking, intelligence within the psychopath population is exactly the same as intelligence within the general population. You've got really stupid psychopaths and you've got highly intelligent psychopaths. But here's an interesting moral dilemma, which I gave a psychopath who'd done some pretty horrible things, which I can't go into. But he had an IQ of 160.

1:04:32He was a guy in his mid-20s. He was in a secure unit. I was very interested to see what his response would be. I read him out, A Moral Dilemma. I'm going to read it to you now by the British moral philosopher, Philippa Foote. And it goes back to our discussion about medicine, actually. What I'm going to do, I'll read the moral dilemma out, and then I'm going to read out the response of this guy who is a psychopath with an IQ of 160, very high. Dilemma goes like this. Brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients. Each of the patients is in need of a different organ and each of them will die without that organ.

1:05:07Unfortunately, there are no organs currently available to perform any of the transplants. A healthy young traveler just passing through comes into the doctor's surgery for a routine checkup. While performing the checkup, the doctor discovers that his organs are compatible with all five of his dying patients, right? Suppose further that were the young man to disappear, no one would suspect the doctor. Would the doctor be right to kill the young man to save his five patients? So This is very similar to another moral dilemma called the trolley problem, which will be familiar to a lot of your listeners, Jordan.

1:05:47And in fact, it's by the same moral philosopher, Philip of Foot. So it's a variation on this. Now, obviously, what we're looking at here is we're looking at all kinds of dichotomies here. There's problems with these dilemmas, of course, but we're looking at dichotomies here between emotion and non-emotion, utilitarianism, et cetera, et cetera. Now, most people would say, no, it's not right for the doctor to kill the patient. However, here's what the psychopath was telling you about a young guy with an IQ of 160 said. His exact words were, I can see where the problem lies. If all you're doing is simply playing the numbers game, it's a fucking no-brainer, isn't it?

1:06:24You kill the guy and save the other five. It's utilitarianism on crack. The trick's not to think about it too much. If I was the doctor, I wouldn't give it a second thought. It's five for the price of one, isn't it? Five bits of good news. And here's where it gets manipulative, right? What about the families of these guys against one piece of bad? That's got to be a bargain, hasn't it? That is the verdict of a high IQ, IQ 160. That's probably top half a percent in terms of IQ of a pure psychopath. So I'll leave it up to your listeners to kind of work out whether he's onto something there or not.

1:07:03But it's certainly food for thought, isn't it? Yeah, of course. That's the difference, right? that illustrates it really well, because most people listening would never kill some innocent guy to save other people because they know that it's wrong. This guy's just able to go, yeah, I'm saving five people for one guy that nobody's going to miss. He's completely not hung up on it at all. He's just playing the numbers game. Yeah, he didn't seem to hesitate. It was just like the immediate and obvious answer to him, which is must be really nice because you can just view the world in this very obviously easy way that the rest of us don't do.

1:07:36Yeah, exactly. And there are times, Jordan, where actually that kind of thinking is genuinely going to save lives, could even save the planet. But in the great vast majority of cases, it's going to land you in a lot of trouble. And I think that's the real paradox. That's the dilemma that we face with psychopaths. So yeah, good psychopaths do exist, but it all depends on those dials. They've got to be dialed up in the right combinations, in the right context, used for the right intentions and dialed up at the right levels. And you've got to be able to dial them back down again as well. Kev, thank you very much for coming back on the show.

1:08:13I really appreciate it. This psychopath stuff, always so interesting. And I'm sure there's more we can talk about. And I think there's a lot of people right now who are probably wanting to rewind and retake those tests because their scores were a little high. I'm curious what those folks end up posting on social or if they just email it to me privately and don't want to be public. If the results were really high, I don't know if I would have shared with you. I might've been like, I'll take it later. I suppose it all depends. In a sense, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn't it, Jordan? You're high on the risk-taking spectrum.

1:08:40You're going to put it out. But again, it's all pretty anonymous, isn't it, in a lot of cases. But folks, if you do feel minded to put it out, do put it out and say what your occupation is and tag me in. So Jordan, you've got my Twitter handle. Tag me in on when you put out of social media at TheRealDrKev, D-R-K-E-V. Tag me in because I'd love to see how your occupation matches up to your scores on those particular tests, especially at the extreme ends. It'd be a great bit of scientific data to get hold of. And maybe at some future point, Jordan, we can have a chat about that and I'll put a few graphs together and we can have a look at it.

1:09:14Perfect. Sounds good to me. Listen, I always enjoy talking to you. It's great. It really is. It's just your style is just so suited to this topic. It's just the perfect tone. Thank you. A little bit of humor in there. We're not eulogizing psychopaths. We're not glamorizing them. But I think the difference between our first chat and also this chat and the way other people talk about psychopaths is a lot of people just talk about psychopaths and it's they killed this guy, they killed psychopaths, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You've heard the old phrase in journalism, dog bites man, page seven, man bites dog, front page.

1:09:48And I think what we did in the first show and we did initially said yeah okay look ted bundy jeffrey darmer okay yeah they're out there but actually there's an argument that without psychopaths we wouldn't even have got it we wouldn't be here yeah so that's a fundamental paradox which i think fascinates people i think that's why the first show went well i think so i think things get bred out if they're not useful right i mean for the most part and yeah there's got to be a use for it and it's just better than oh there's these dangerous people out there and you never know who they could be and they're going going to chop you up with a chainsaw.

1:10:20You're more likely to deal with one who's a dentist than you are to deal with any sort of serial killer, for sure. Absolutely. Like you say, there still exist, the ones we know about anyway, the ones who've been caught, 1 % of the population. So that figure pretty much speaks for itself. Thank you so much. All right, Jordan. Thanks very much, mate. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's a trailer of my interview with Thomas Erickson on how to spot a psychopath. Some people tell me, do they have to be psychopaths? Couldn't it just be they are evil? But hey, for me, same thing.

1:10:56They are out there regardless that we are talking about it or not. The stupid psychopath, he would go up to you on the street and see, hey, you got a nice watch, and then he will bang you in the head and take the watch. The intelligent psychopath, he will see your beautiful watch and he'll say, that's a nice watch and then he will talk you into giving him the watch. That's the difference. All narcissists are not psychopaths, but every psychopath is a narcissist. They think it is their right. They are entitled to act in this way. It is their birthright to use you and me and anybody else. The more you present yourself to the psychopath, the more understanding he has about you and the more dangerous he becomes.

1:11:40Love bombing is one of the most dangerous manipulation techniques that he can use. If you haven't experienced, let's say, true love, let's call it, and then you think you have it within your reach, you're done. I get shivers down my spine. Psychopathy is not an illness. It's a personality disorder. It starts at the moment in the woman's womb, actually, you can never change a psychopath. How much value would you put in yourself? How much do you think you deserve in life? Do you deserve a good relationship? For more on how to protect yourself from psychopaths, check out episode 465 with Thomas Erickson on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

1:12:29For those looking for the previous episodes with Kevin, that's episode 776 and 777, lucky number seven, with psychopath quizzes and much more discussion on the topic of psychopaths and psychopathy. All things Kevin Dutton will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com or ask the AI chatbot on the website. That includes transcripts, which are linked in the show notes, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. We've also got the newsletter and every week the team and I dig into an older episode of the show and dissect the lessons and takeaways from that episode.

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