5 Interesting Behaviours That May Be Linked to Psychopathy

Psych2Go is a digital media organization that raises mental health awareness by presenting psychological topics in a digestible and relatable manner. Please share our content with those who need it. Hi everyone. Before we start this video, we wanted to give all of you a big thank you. Psych2Go's vision is to make psychology more accessible to everyone. Today's topic is on five interesting behaviors that may be linked to psychopathy. If you could share this video with someone who's interested in learning more about psychology, that would be a major help to the vision. Everybody is in some way familiar with the common ideas we collectively have about how a psychopath behaves or characteristics they may have. Whether through watching the depiction of psychopathic antagonists in Silence of the Lambs, The Dark Knight, Psycho, or a million other different stories based around this enigmatic topic, it's pretty safe to assume that when you imagine a psychopath, you imagine the archetypical villain as presented in such films. This is likely a nonchalant man with expensive taste, an affinity for classical music, and of course, a taste for gratuitous violence. Many behaviors that these characters in films display are inaccurate. Others, however, can be backed up by evidence provided by psychological research. There is the question of where the association between some behaviors or characteristics came from, and whether there is any truth to these. Here are five weird behaviors and characteristics that have been proven to have a possible link to psychopathy. One, music taste. An example of a characteristic very commonly associated with psychopathy in films is taste in music. If you were to watch any archetypical psychopath film, it's almost a certainty that the person in question will have an odd obsession with classical music. Where this idea comes from is unknown. But there is, however, evidence that your taste in music could reveal how psychopathic you are. A psychology study was done on this topic by researchers at New York University, including Dr. Pascal Wallisch. Within the study of 200 people who listened to 260 songs, those who scored the highest in levels of psychopathy tended to highly rate hip-hop artists such as Backstreet and Eminem. These results suggested that psychopaths are no more likely than anyone else to be obsessed with Mozart or Bach, but are in fact more likely to have a preference for Eminem. This characteristic alone obviously cannot solely be used to determine someone's degree of psychopathy. They might just like rap music. Two, sleep chronotype. The majority of people can easily identify which sleep chronotype they fall into. Whether they're an early bird who peaks in the morning, prefers to go to bed early, and get up as such, or a night owl who stays up till all hours, gets up late, and peaks in the evening. This could act as an indicator of psychopathy or other antisocial personality disorders, as evidenced by a study done by Dr. Peter Jonasson. He assesses whether 250 people were morning or evening people, and then measured their tendencies towards dark triad personality traits, which consist of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, to determine whether there was a link or not. Jonasson found that those who were awake late at night showed greater antisocial tendencies than those who went to bed earlier. Further, he suggested there was an evolutionary basis for the preference to stay up late at night, and it's linked to antisocial behavior. For example, they have predatorial advantages, as others have diminished cognitive function, or are sleeping. He also linked this to the fact that most crimes and sexual activity peak at night, suggesting such a link. This is evidence for the idea that someone's sleep chronotype, and whether they like to stay up late at night, could give an insight into if they are psychopathic or not. 3. Yawning. Among the many mysteries in life is the almost contagious nature of yawning. Psychological research has suggested that it's linked to empathy. This has been used to explain why when seeing someone else yawn, you're more likely to imitate the behavior subconsciously, if you know them or have a close relationship. You're less likely to do so with a stranger, or someone you don't like. A key aspect of psychopathy is a complete lack of empathy, making someone who is a psychopath, or a sociopath, essentially immune to this contagious behavior. As this key aspect, empathy, is missing. Researchers at Baylor University conducted a study about this, with 135 participants, who took the Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised, or PPPI-R, and then, a contagious yawn experiment. The cold-heartedness, part of the psychopathy scale, was found to have a strong correlation to whether or not the person yawned. The more cold-hearted and less empathetic a subject was, the less likely they were to yawn. Try doing a mini experiment, where you go to work or school, for example. Try and observe whether there's a difference in this behavior between people who are very kind and compassionate, and those who are more indifferent and nonchalant. Be sure to comment down below what you find. 4. Posting selfies. Using social media and posting content, such as selfies, online these days is common, and something everyone does. But we all know someone who is constantly filling your feed with countless photos of themselves. This has been suggested to be a possible indicator of how psychopathic they are. A study done at Ohio State University attempted to link the amount of selfies men posted to how psychopathic they were. They did this using a sample of 800 men aged 18 to 40. They found the expected link between how narcissistic, an antisocial trait, and self-objectifying these men were, and how many selfies they posted online. This also increased with those who edited their photos before posting. They also found that these men who posted more selfies also scored highly on their levels of psychopathy, which means the scores were above average. If you know any men, or are someone, who very frequently post selfies on Instagram or Snapchat, this could be a sign of higher levels of antisocial traits, such as narcissism, and more importantly, psychopathy. And lastly, sense of smell. A weirder characteristic that has been suggested to have a link to psychopathy is the sense of smell. Having an impaired sense of smell could be linked to psychopathy, according to a study done by Mehmet Mamut and Richard Stevenson from Sydney Maguire University. Using a sample of 79 diagnosed non-criminal psychopaths aged 19 to 21, they conducted an experiment where the participants had to identify and discriminate scents. They did this using sniffing sticks. 16 different scented pens, like orange, coffee, leather, and so on. They found that participants, who were all confirmed as psychopathic, had issues identifying scents and discriminating them from others. Those of the participants who scored highest on a standard scorecard of psychopathic traits did the worst on both measured aspects. This has been suggested to be due to abnormalities or damage in the orbifrontal cortex, an area of the brain which has been independently implicated in both antisocial disorders, including psychopathy, and having an impaired sense of smell. This telltale sign is likely a reliable indicator of possible issues in the orbifrontal cortex, which could include psychopathy. If you are a psychopath, a key characteristic may be a bad sense of smell. What are your thoughts on these five behaviors that may be linked to psychopathy listed in this video? Do you know anyone who might display any of these behaviors, or do you think you're the one who has these behaviors? Let us know in the comments below, and don't forget to subscribe to Psych2Go for more psychology content.