What is A Psychopath?

Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.

Instead, psychopathy is characterised by an extreme lack of empathy. Psychopaths may also be manipulative, charming and exploitative, and behave in an impulsive and risky manner. They may lack conscience or guilt, and refuse to accept responsibility for their actions.

Signs of psychopathy

• behavior that conflicts with social norms.
• disregarding or violating the rights of others.
• inability to distinguish between right and wrong.
• difficulty with showing remorse or empathy.
• tendency to lie often.
• manipulating and hurting others.
• recurring problems with the law.

A person who is manipulative, dishonest, narcissistic, unremorseful, non-empathetic, and exploitative may be a psychopath. Criminality, promiscuity, and lack of responsibility are also common traits associated with psychopathy.

Showing sympathy for them plays into their hand, so keep discussions centered on facts only. Pointing out a psychopath's flaws can be the best way to disarm them. So when a psychopath blames someone else, turn the conversation back on them. Say something like, "Are you doing OK today?

Someone with this kind of personality disorder typically experiences four (4) or more of the following symptoms: failure to conform to social norms; deceitfulness; impulsivity; irritability and aggressiveness; a reckless disregard for other people's safety; consistent irresponsibility; and a lack of remorse.

Disgust of Older Adults

According to a series of three studies, there is a stronger negative emotional and avoidance reaction toward unfamiliar – compared to familiar – older adults, confirming source effects of disgust toward this population. However, there were no moderating effects of filial piety – i.e., the virtue of respect towards elders. This research was published in Evolutionary Psychology.

Disgust is an important factor that links the behavioural immune system – “a defense system selected under the persistent disease pressures in an evolutionary environment” – with ageism. This system overgeneralizes at times, with people often perceiving abnormal body shape, movements, or behaviours as cueing the existence of pathogens. Aging is accompanied by physiological changes, including in appearance, posture, or movement (e.g., wrinkles, tremors). These changes could signal unhealthiness and prompt disgust toward older adults.

Some studies suggest disgust is stronger toward unfamiliar (vs. familiar) individuals, a phenomenon referred to as the “source effect of disgust.” Thus, it appears that the disgust experience can change, depending on the source of the disgust. In this work, Quan Cao and colleagues examined the source effect of disgust and avoidance responses toward older adults specifically. An important consideration is filial piety, a virtue in eastern cultures, which could be a moderating variable in the source effect of disgust.      READ MORE...

Explaining Consciousness

Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ, consisting of almost 100 billion cells – known as neurons – each connected to 10,000 others, yielding some ten trillion nerve connections.

We have made a great deal of progress in understanding brain activity, and how it contributes to human behaviour. But what no one has so far managed to explain is how all of this results in feelings, emotions and experiences. How does the passing around of electrical and chemical signals between neurons result in a feeling of pain or an experience of red?

There is growing suspicion that conventional scientific methods will never be able answer these questions. Luckily, there is an alternative approach that may ultimately be able to crack the mystery.

For much of the 20th century, there was a great taboo against querying the mysterious inner world of consciousness – it was not taken to be a fitting topic for “serious science”. Things have changed a lot, and there is now broad agreement that the problem of consciousness is a serious scientific issue. But many consciousness researchers underestimate the depth of the challenge, believing that we just need to continue examining the physical structures of the brain to work out how they produce consciousness.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...