Hannibal Lecter not cold-blooded, just inattentive, hints study
Published 15 October, 2009, 17:46
Edited 28 October, 2009, 02:34
Psychopaths are believed to have pathological problems with emotions. Feeling no fear or compassion, they kill in cold blood, but a new study suggests their asocial behavior may be due to attention problems.
A team headed by Joseph Newman, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recruited 125 male inmates convicted of serious crimes and screened them to select those who could be described as psychopaths. Then all the prisoners were tested for fear response, reports New Scientist magazine.
They were shown series of colored letters flashing on the screen while a special device was used to measure how strongly they blinked. Blinking is an indicator of fear felt by a person. They were also warned that an electric shock may follow a red letter, but not a green one.
Prisoners were asked to pass reaction tests. In one they were to press a button when a red button appeared. In another one they had to distinguish between upper and lower case.
Non-psychopathic inmates showed similar strength of fear in both cases, while psychopaths showed fear only when telling red and green letters – the same that determined whether they risked receiving shock or not.
This suggests that psychopaths can feel fear just like any other person, which could be a key to making them safe for society. They need to be reminded constantly of the punishment they will suffer if committing a crime again, believes Donald Hands, director of psychology at the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, who is working with Newman.
“I think this shows that there's some humanity there,” Hands says. “It challenges the belief that they are robots.”
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