SOCIAL SCIENCE
New Studies On The Ignoble Traits Of Narcissists & Psychopaths
IN THE NEWS, TWO STUDIES ABOUT THE IGNOBLE TRAITS OF PSYCHOPATHS AND NARCISSISTS.
In the first, scientists at Cornell University interviewed 52 convicted murderers to discern speech patterns that might reveal who among them were psychopaths. Using a computer program, they analyzed the killers’ comments and found that those who scored as psychopaths lacked emotion and expressed a preoccupation with basic needs such as food, drink and money. They also tended to speak in the past tense and use more “ums and “uhs” to preface their statements.
“We think the ‘uhs’ and ‘ums’ are about putting the mask of sanity on,” the study’s lead researcher Jeffrey Hancock told LiveScience. “The beautiful thing about them is they are unconsciously produced.”
Researchers plan to apply their findings to Facebook and other social media to see if psychopaths are identifiable by what they write. If so, these patterns could be used to develop text analysis software to help law enforcement identify the one percent of us who act without conscience.
In the second study, researchers discovered that narcissists aren’t as clueless as psychology originally thought: these self-absorbed folks recognize that other people find them obnoxious — they just think they’re special anyway.
In experiments with students led by psychologist Erika Carlson at Washington University in St. Louis, researchers found that narcissists had awareness of other people’s dissatisfaction with them. They know people find them obnoxious, but they dismiss those views in favor of their own self-prescribed charms.
“Narcissists were aware that close others saw them in more negative ways than new acquaintances,” researchers wrote, even though they “seemed to have limited insight into the ways their reputations differed.”
The research gives new hope to the possibility of treating narcissists, albeit in a small way. As Time’s Jeffery Kluger reports it: “Since narcissism is fueled by a greater need to be admired than to be liked, psychologists might use that fact as a therapeutic lever — stressing to patients that being known as a narcissist will actually cause them to lose the respect and social status they crave.”
Via LiveScience and Time.
