The Wisdom of Psychopaths

The Wisdom of Psychopaths Plot Summary

Introduction

The day I discovered my father was a psychopath began like any other. I was ten years old, helping him sell datebooks at a market in London's East End. These weren't ordinary datebooks, though - they only had eleven months. "You can't sell these," I protested. "There's no January!" He smiled and turned to the crowd: "Unique opportunity to get your hands on an eleven-month diary... sign up for a special two-for-one offer and get an extra month thrown in next year for free!" To my astonishment, we sold every single one. That childhood memory captures the essence of what psychopathy truly represents - not just the darkness portrayed in media, but a complex constellation of traits that, in the right measure, can be surprisingly beneficial. Fearlessness, charm, focus, mental toughness, and an uncanny ability to remain cool under pressure - these qualities exist on a spectrum within all of us. While we rightfully fear those at the extreme end, what if moderate levels of these traits could help us navigate life's challenges more effectively? This journey explores how certain psychopathic characteristics, when properly understood and carefully modulated, might offer unexpected wisdom for our everyday lives - helping us speak up when necessary, stay focused under pressure, and face our fears with greater composure.

Chapter 1: The Psychopathic Spectrum: From Danger to Advantage

The joke is that it's harder to get into Broadmoor Hospital than to get out. But it isn't. A joke, that is. After passing through multiple security airlocks in this high-security psychiatric hospital, I find myself sitting with a group of diagnosed psychopaths playing video games. "We are the evil elite," says Danny as he scores another goal in his soccer game. "Don't glamorize us. But don't dehumanize us either." I'm here conducting research, exploring the idea that psychopathic traits exist on a spectrum, with most of us somewhere in the middle. Before my visit, I'd launched the Great British Psychopath Survey, the first study assessing psychopathic traits across an entire national workforce. The results were fascinating. CEOs, lawyers, media professionals, salespeople, and surgeons topped the list of professions with the highest psychopathic traits. At the bottom? Care aides, nurses, therapists, and charity workers. This wasn't about labeling entire professions as "psychopathic" - rather, it illustrated how certain environments might select for particular traits. Jamie, another patient at Broadmoor, offers an unexpected perspective when I present him with a real-life problem about an unwanted tenant. "Pose as someone from the council," he suggests. "Tell him there's dangerous asbestos levels in the building that need urgent attention. Before you can say 'slow, tortuous death from lung cancer,' he'll be out the door." His solution is ruthlessly effective, if ethically questionable. "Why not turf the bastard out?" Jamie continues, challenging my reluctance. "What's worse from a moral perspective? Beating someone up who deserves it? Or beating yourself up, who doesn't?" His point, though jarring, contains a kernel of wisdom: sometimes what we consider virtues (like excessive patience) might actually be vices in disguise, enabling situations that harm us. The psychopathic perspective cuts through social niceties to focus on effective solutions, reminding us that occasionally, a more direct approach might be necessary.

Chapter 2: The Fearless Mind: How Psychopaths Navigate Life

Andy McNab, the former British Special Forces soldier who led the infamous Bravo Two Zero patrol behind enemy lines in Iraq, and I are wired to monitoring equipment in a psychology lab. We're about to watch a series of violent, disturbing images while our physiological responses are measured. As the peaceful lake scene on the screen suddenly shifts to graphic images of mutilation and death, something remarkable happens. While my heart rate, skin conductance, and brain activity spike dramatically, Andy's readings do the exact opposite - they drop below his baseline. "It's almost as if he was gearing himself up for the challenge," the researcher comments afterward, "and then, when the challenge presented itself, his brain suddenly responded by injecting liquid nitrogen into his veins." This remarkable emotional control is precisely what makes Special Forces soldiers so effective in life-threatening situations. When I later ask Andy about his apparent immunity to fear, he explains: "The thing about fear, or the way I understand fear - because, to be honest, I don't think I've ever really felt it - is that most of the time it's completely unwarranted anyway. What is it they say? Ninety-nine percent of the things people worry about never happen." Fascinated by this fearless mindset, I undergo an experimental procedure called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which temporarily alters brain activity. The researcher positions electromagnetic coils over specific regions of my brain related to moral reasoning and fear processing. Within fifteen minutes, I experience a profound shift in consciousness - an easy, airy confidence and strange moral detachment combined with heightened awareness. "I know the guy before me found these images nauseating," I hear myself saying when shown the disturbing footage again, "but actually, to be honest, this time round I'm finding it hard to suppress a smile." The experience reveals how our conscience functions as both protector and limiter. When properly calibrated, fear keeps us safe. But excessive fear - worrying about unlikely scenarios or being overly concerned with others' judgments - can paralyze us. The psychopathic mind shows us that sometimes, turning down the volume on fear, even temporarily, allows us to act decisively when necessary rather than remaining frozen in anxious deliberation.

Chapter 3: Emotional Control: The Power of Psychological Distance

"When I was a kid at school, I tended to avoid fisticuffs," explains Leslie, another Broadmoor patient with impeccable diction and carefully groomed blond hair. "You see, I figured out pretty early on that the reason why people don't get their own way is because they often don't know themselves where that way leads. They get too caught up in the heat of the moment and temporarily go off track." Leslie's observation touches on something profound about emotional regulation. He continues by drawing a parallel to boxing: "I once heard a great quote from one of the top trainers. He said that if you climb into the ring hell-bent on knocking the other chap into the middle of next week, chances are you're going to come unstuck. But if, on the other hand, you concentrate on winning the fight, simply focus on doing your job, well, you might just knock him into the middle of next week anyway." This ability to detach emotionally from high-pressure situations isn't limited to psychopaths. In a study conducted by Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Iowa, researchers discovered something startling: people with damage to emotion-processing areas of the brain made better financial decisions in a gambling task than those with intact emotional centers. As Baba Shiv, a professor at Stanford, explains: "Logically, the right thing to do is to invest in every round." Yet people with normal emotional responses became increasingly cautious after experiencing losses, ultimately earning less money than their emotionally detached counterparts. Don Novick, a successful trader for sixteen years who also scores high on psychopathic traits, confirms this phenomenon: "Trading is a profession that, if you're the least bit vulnerable mentally, can completely undo you. I've seen traders crying and being physically sick at the end of a hard session. But what you find with the guys at the very top is that at the end of the day, when they're heading out the door, you just don't know. You can't tell by looking at them whether they've raked in a couple of billion or whether their entire portfolio has just gone down the tubes." The wisdom here isn't about becoming emotionally dead, but rather developing the ability to regulate emotions strategically - to maintain psychological distance when getting swept up in feelings would cloud judgment and lead to poor decisions. Sometimes success depends not on feeling more, but on temporarily feeling less.

Chapter 4: Focus Under Pressure: Psychopathic Clarity in Chaos

James Geraghty, one of the UK's top neurosurgeons, describes the mental state he enters before difficult operations: "I have no compassion for those whom I operate on. That is a luxury I simply cannot afford. In the theater I am reborn: as a cold, heartless machine, totally at one with scalpel, drill and saw. When you're cutting loose and cheating death high above the snowline of the brain, feelings aren't fit for purpose. Emotion is entropy, and seriously bad for business." His words might sound chilling, but they reveal a crucial truth about performance under extreme pressure. When lives hang in the balance, the ability to narrow one's focus and screen out distractions - even emotional ones - becomes essential. This same mental clarity appears in studies of psychopaths' brain activity. Research by Joseph Newman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that psychopaths aren't necessarily incapable of feeling emotions like fear or empathy - rather, they have an extraordinary ability to filter out information they deem irrelevant to their current task. In a cleverly designed experiment, Newman presented both psychopaths and non-psychopaths with a picture-word Stroop task - images labeled with incongruent words, like a picture of a dog labeled "cat." Most people struggle with this test because they can't help processing both the image and the word simultaneously. Psychopaths, however, excelled by focusing exclusively on the task at hand (naming the picture) while filtering out the distracting word. This selective attention manifests in even more surprising ways. Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist who studies psychopaths' brains using a mobile fMRI scanner he drives between prisons, found that when faced with moral dilemmas requiring difficult choices - like whether to smother a crying baby to save a group hiding from enemy soldiers - psychopaths made decisions faster and with less emotional conflict than non-psychopaths. Their brains showed reduced activity in regions associated with emotional processing and conflict monitoring. What this teaches us isn't to discard our moral compass, but rather to recognize how overwhelming emotions can sometimes paralyze us when decisive action is needed. The psychopathic mind demonstrates an extreme version of focus that, in moderation, can help us navigate crises by temporarily setting aside emotional static and seeing clearly what needs to be done.

Chapter 5: Charm and Persuasion: The Manipulative Arts

Greg Morant is one of America's most successful con men - and among the top five most ruthless psychopaths I've ever encountered. Meeting him in a luxury hotel in New Orleans, I'm simultaneously captivated and unsettled as he reveals the secrets of his craft while casually sipping $400 champagne purchased with my credit card - which he'd pickpocketed and then returned to me without my noticing. "One of the most important things a grifter must have is a good vulnerability radar," Morant explains, echoing research showing psychopaths are better at identifying potential victims. "Most folk pay no attention to what they say when talking to you. But a grifter zones in on everything. The devil's in the detail. You get them to open up, usually by telling them something about yourself first. Then immediately change the subject randomly to interrupt the flow. Nine times out of ten, the person completely forgets what they've just said." This manipulative technique has scientific backing. Studies show self-disclosure encourages reciprocity - when someone shares personal information, we're inclined to do the same. Research also demonstrates that sudden distraction disrupts memory formation. Morant is exploiting established psychological principles with ruthless efficiency. Yet charm and persuasion aren't inherently sinister. In more benign contexts, the same skills help doctors establish rapport with patients, executives inspire their teams, or negotiators find common ground. Leslie, whom we met earlier at Broadmoor, describes charm as "the ability to roll out a red carpet for those you cannot stand in order to fast-track them, as smoothly and efficiently as possible, in the direction you want them to go." A police officer I interviewed named Dai Griffiths demonstrated how creative charm could solve problems without resorting to force. Dealing with a troublesome drunk who repeatedly faked mental illness to avoid consequences, Griffiths donned a clown costume, entered the man's cell, and solicitously asked what he'd like for breakfast. When the psychiatrist arrived later, the drunk insisted the officer had been wearing a clown outfit - which of course sounded delusional. Rather than using physical intimidation, Griffiths employed psychological insight and theatrical flair to expose the man's deception. The lesson isn't to manipulate others for personal gain, but to recognize how understanding human psychology and communicating persuasively can help navigate social challenges effectively. Strategic charm, deployed ethically, creates paths of least resistance toward constructive outcomes.

Chapter 6: Self-Interest vs. Empathy: The Ethical Balance

In a surprising experiment, psychologist Mem Mahmut discovered something counterintuitive about psychopaths and altruism. He conducted a study with three scenarios: a person directly asking for directions, someone who had dropped papers needing help picking them up, and a researcher with a broken arm struggling with simple tasks but not explicitly requesting assistance. Predictably, psychopaths offered less help than non-psychopaths when directly asked for directions. But remarkably, when the person with the broken arm struggled without verbally requesting help, psychopaths were significantly more likely to step forward than their supposedly more empathic counterparts. This finding challenges our assumptions about psychopathic callousness. Some researchers suggest psychopaths might be more attentive to physical vulnerability - their predatory instincts making them more alert to signs of weakness. Others propose a simpler explanation: without the social pressure of responding to a direct request, psychopaths might actually be more pragmatic in their assistance, unburdened by the overthinking that can paralyze normal people. This connects to another counterintuitive discovery by FBI profiler James Beasley: "This idea that serial killers lack empathy is a little bit misleading. For sadistic serial killers, the presence of enhanced empathy serves two important purposes. First, they need cognitive empathy to manipulate victims effectively. Second, they need emotional empathy to derive pleasure from suffering - otherwise, how would they enjoy watching their victims' pain? The difference between them and us is that they commute that pain to their own subjective pleasure." In a different context, Yawei Cheng at Taiwan's National Yang-Ming University discovered that experienced doctors show significantly reduced neural activation in pain-processing regions when watching needles being inserted into patients' bodies compared to non-medical professionals. Instead, their brains activate regions involved in emotion regulation and perspective-taking. What makes experienced surgeons effective isn't absence of empathy but regulated empathy - the ability to understand patients' suffering without becoming incapacitated by it. The psychopathic perspective reveals that self-interest and empathy aren't always opposed. Sometimes excessive empathy paralyzes action, while moderate emotional detachment enables effective assistance. The wisdom lies in finding the ethical balance: enough emotional connection to care about others' welfare, but enough psychological distance to act decisively when necessary rather than becoming overwhelmed by emotional contagion.

Chapter 7: The Seven Deadly Wins: Applying Psychopathic Traits Wisely

After my visits to Broadmoor and conversations with various psychopaths, I developed what I call the "Seven Deadly Wins" - core principles derived from psychopathic traits that, when applied judiciously, can help anyone navigate life's challenges more effectively without crossing ethical boundaries. The first is ruthlessness - not cruelty, but rather the ability to make difficult decisions without excessive agonizing when the situation demands it. Jamie from Broadmoor pointed out that what seems like virtue might sometimes be vice in disguise: "The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It's much easier to convince yourself that you're reasonable and civilized than soft and weak, isn't it?" Sometimes direct action, even when uncomfortable, is necessary to resolve situations that harm us. Charm is the second principle - the ability to create rapport and influence others positively. As Leslie explained, it's about "rolling out the red carpet" to guide people in the desired direction. Third is focus - the capacity to screen out distractions and concentrate fully on the task at hand, like Dr. Geraghty entering his surgical "zone" or Andy McNab maintaining clarity amid chaos. Mental toughness constitutes the fourth principle - resilience in the face of setbacks. Research by James Rilling at Emory University showed that psychopaths display reduced neural activity in their emotional centers when facing rejection or betrayal. While most people become preoccupied with emotional wounds, those with psychopathic traits simply move forward. As Jamie put it, "Give rejection the finger and rejection gives it back." The fifth principle is fearlessness - not recklessness, but the willingness to act despite uncertainty. "Most of the time it's completely unwarranted anyway," Leslie pointed out about fear. "Ninety-nine percent of the things people worry about never happen." The sixth is mindfulness - staying present rather than ruminating on past failures or catastrophizing about the future. As Buddhist-like as it sounds, psychopaths naturally excel at this, experiencing each moment fully without emotional baggage. Finally, there's action - the readiness to move forward rather than procrastinate. "Feeling good is an emergency for me," Danny explained. "I like to ride the roller coaster of life, spin the roulette wheel of fortune." Larry, another Broadmoor resident, offered this metaphor: "When I was a kid, we used to go on holiday to Hastings. I watched my sister playing in the sea when a big wave hit her. She ran out crying and never went in again. I remember thinking to myself: 'If you stand where the waves break, you're going to get hurt. So you've got two choices. You can either stay on the shore and not go in at all. Or you can go out further so the waves lift you up and then crash and break behind you.'" The secret, as Jamie noted before I left, is moderation: "The secret, of course, is not to go out too far. Otherwise you wash up in this place."

Summary

The journey through the psychopathic mind reveals a paradoxical truth: the same traits that make some individuals dangerous can, in moderation, enhance our lives. The seven principles - ruthlessness, charm, focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness, and action - represent a psychological toolkit for navigating modern challenges. These aren't about becoming callous or manipulative, but rather about strategic emotional regulation - knowing when to dial certain traits up or down depending on the situation. What makes this wisdom particularly valuable is its counterintuitive nature. Society teaches us that emotions should always guide our decisions, that we should care deeply about others' opinions, and that fear keeps us safe. Yet sometimes these seemingly virtuous instincts trap us in patterns of indecision, people-pleasing, and avoidance. The functional psychopath shows us another way - one where selective emotional detachment creates space for clarity and decisive action. As one neurosurgeon described his state of mind during surgery: "an intoxication that sharpens rather than dulls the senses." Perhaps "supersanity" is a better term than psychopathy for this condition of heightened awareness and regulated emotion. The wisdom isn't about becoming someone else, but rather accessing different modes of thought when circumstances demand it - like having an additional gear in our psychological transmission that we can shift into when the terrain requires it.

About Author

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Kevin Dutton

Dr Kevin Dutton is a researcher at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and a member of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN) research group. He regularly publishes in leading international scientific journals and speaks at conferences around the world.

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