Hannibal Lecter not cold-blooded, just inattentive, hints study
Published: 15 October, 2009, 17:46
Edited: 28 October, 2009, 02:34
TAGS: Crime, SciTech, Psychology
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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I do not think so. I think they are burnt out of feeling certain emotions and responses. In order to make them safe, you would have to restore their missing emotions or tune them. The graphic stimuli is no longer apart of them; they are detached from it. In addition, they have been loosened from societal restraints. True remorse is probably a good sign and does not come in those who are free. They aren't motivated by society or by emotion. I am not motivated by society either, and as I grow older, I lose more and more emotion and daze off longer. You can threaten me all day long, and I'll do the same things after being punished because my actions fulfill me. It does not matter how many times you punish me or what people now try to bribe me with. I am free. In fact, that just gives me a drive to do the things I do, and I have to periodically take strong, dumbing medicine for frustration that I do not seem to show, as I look blunted, or I will attack.