Dean A. Haycock, is a science and medical writer who earned a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Brown University and a fellowship at The Rockefeller University. He is the author of several books including:
His book we discussed in this episode is titled Murderous Minds: Exploring the Criminal Psychopathic Brain: Neurological Imaging and the Manifestation of Evil.
Some of the topics we discussed include the wide range of tools used to measure psychopathy and the problem defining it. What is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCLR) test and why have some academics been critical of it? Could you develop psychopathic traits? Or could your child be psychopathic? The limitations of judging psychopathy through brain activity via FMRI scanning. Can a highly psychopathic person control themselves not to commit a crime/ take advantage of people, or are they acting in response to the brain differences that we believe have been identified?
The Book and Audiobook: Murderous Minds: Exploring the Criminal Psychopathic Brain: Neurological Imaging and the Manifestation of Evil is out now.
As of now, my podcast is biweekly and prior to an episode I’ll let you know what book/audiobook I’ll be listening to before the next show so we can delve into it together!
Please don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you’re in the loop whenever a new episode comes out… and also connect with me on Instagram or email so we can keep the conversation going and share with each other fascinating content.
www.instagram.com/SoundsAboutPod
I am now on goodreads!
www.goodreads.com/SoundsAboutPod
Are you an author that will like to be on the next episode of the podcast?
Listeners: Did I cover a book you read or listened to? Did I discuss the things which also stuck out to you? Or did I miss it out?..... get in touch, and let me know what your experience was or to give me audiobook recommendations: soundsaboutpod@gmail.com
Dean A. Haycock, is a science and medical writer who earned a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Brown University and a fellowship at The Rockefeller University. He is the author of several books including:
His book we discussed in this episode is titled Murderous Minds: Exploring the Criminal Psychopathic Brain: Neurological Imaging and the Manifestation of Evil.
Some of the topics we discussed include the wide range of tools used to measure psychopathy and the problem defining it. What is the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCLR) test and why have some academics been critical of it? Could you develop psychopathic traits? Or could your child be psychopathic? The limitations of judging psychopathy through brain activity via FMRI scanning. Can a highly psychopathic person control themselves not to commit a crime/ take advantage of people, or are they acting in response to the brain differences that we believe have been identified?
The Book and Audiobook: Murderous Minds: Exploring the Criminal Psychopathic Brain: Neurological Imaging and the Manifestation of Evil is out now.
As of now, my podcast is biweekly and prior to an episode I’ll let you know what book/audiobook I’ll be listening to before the next show so we can delve into it together!
Please don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you’re in the loop whenever a new episode comes out… and also connect with me on Instagram or email so we can keep the conversation going and share with each other fascinating content.
www.instagram.com/SoundsAboutPod
I am now on goodreads!
www.goodreads.com/SoundsAboutPod
Are you an author that will like to be on the next episode of the podcast?
Listeners: Did I cover a book you read or listened to? Did I discuss the things which also stuck out to you? Or did I miss it out?..... get in touch, and let me know what your experience was or to give me audiobook recommendations: soundsaboutpod@gmail.com
ng (00:03.466)
Well, first and foremost, Dean, thank you for coming on the podcast.
dean_haycock (00:08.151)
Oh, you're welcome. My pleasure.
So how important was it for you to make this book and topic digestible for anyone who has an interest in this subject area and also for someone who is learning about it for the first time?
dean_haycock (00:49.515)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's fine.
dean_haycock (00:56.731)
Okay, that's fine. Yeah, go ahead.
dean_haycock (01:13.227)
I think for me it was very important because I traced my interest in it back to when I was like 10 or 11. I was reading a book like a lot of kids at that age I was interested in you know war and soldiers and things and I was looking at a book called the Pictorial History of the Third Reich and for most of the book I was looking at tanks and soldiers I was very young I
dean_haycock (01:42.883)
the weapons, and nothing was registering me as far as the horrors of war until I got to the end of this book where it showed evidence of the Holocaust. And it just blew my mind that this man whose picture was Hitler, showed up early in the book, was capable of this along with his followers. And at that age I just could not understand how anyone could do this. It just...
rattled me. I could not understand how this could happen. So I think, and I couldn't find answers, and I think for years that was in the back of my mind. How could this happen? So I'd always pick up whatever, you know, books I could find that would try to explain that. None of them did it very well. And then after I went to college, I went to graduate school. I studied neuroscience and
ng (02:34.915)
Mm-hmm.
dean_haycock (02:38.419)
Then I started to see hints and so I saw a way to try to understand how someone could behave like this. That led eventually to the recognition that gosh, people were using brain scanning techniques and they were using psychological testing and actually getting some insight into how people can behave in this way that was totally...
remarkable to a 10 or 11 year old person who had never seen anything like this. So it was kind of fulfilling actually to get some answers. And it's interesting, you know, there's a book I believe it's called Explaining Hitler, where the author set out to explain Hitler, but he really assumed that he couldn't do it. And it's a very good book, I recommend it. And what he ended up doing was recounting how people have tried to explain Hitler.
ng (03:16.11)
Hmm.
ng (03:31.127)
Wow.
dean_haycock (03:37.923)
It's a very interesting book. So I think this is a step towards listing some of the factors that can contribute to that kind of behavior.
ng (03:54.526)
Brilliant, thanks Dean. And what I caught from the book early on is that there's a wide range of tools to measure psychopathy. Do you mind elaborating on this and how this will remain being a problem if it isn't resolved?
dean_haycock (03:55.995)
Okay, sure.
dean_haycock (04:10.807)
Yeah, it's a very good point, a very good question.
dean_haycock (04:18.908)
The problem begins with the very nature of psychology, I think. We can't do a blood test, you know, you can't do other kind of medical tests to diagnose someone so it's often it has to be diagnosed using indirect methods. And so scientists or psychologists have come up with some indirect methods.
methods for describing people with psychopathic traits. And historically, one of the most popular, some people have called it the gorilla in the room was the hair psychopathy checklist.
dean_haycock (05:08.451)
However, other scientists began using some other diagnostic tools, surveys to describe psychopathy. And I can talk about the reasons of this. It's very difficult to study the hardcore psychopathic individuals, the criminals. One, there's not that many of them, and they're in prison. And so for other psychologists to study...
this concept of psychopathy, they have to use other people. And they use other kinds of tools to diagnose them. And the question is, it's a question I have and Robert Hare has, and I'm sure some other people have, is when people publish and when people discuss psychopathic personalities, are they discussing, are they studying the exact
same thing in these different populations. Now some studies have done show that well, this particular diagnostic tool correlates with say the psychopathy checklist, but then there's still some questions. We know that there are different levels, different degrees of psychopathy. So is it the same if you are in a college and you
give a bunch of students or subjects multiple choice test or rather survey to look for psychopathic traits. Is that the same when you pick out people with high scores on those surveys? Is that the same as studying someone who's much more psychopathic with different behavior patterns? So it is a problem and this has been going on for decades.
ng (06:39.775)
Mm.
ng (06:58.434)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (07:01.951)
literally decades. It's a problem. So when I wrote this book I specifically chose to study and report on criminal psychopathic individuals. And most of them were tested with a hair psychopathy checklist. But that's controversial too because some researchers have problems with that. They suggested it too much emphasized criminal behavior.
ng (07:04.402)
Mm.
ng (07:17.463)
Mm-hmm.
dean_haycock (07:32.291)
And of course, not all people with psychopathic traits are criminals. Or haven't been caught. So it has always been a controversial subject because it's psychology and it's hard to get a handle on that question.
ng (07:45.369)
Hmm.
ng (07:52.142)
And when we add to it that there's the labelling situation with words being disused and you mention how experts and amateurs use a lot of different types of words to highlight the subtypes of personalities with psychopathic traits. Does that add to the general public, let alone experts not having a good and fair understanding of what psychopathy is?
dean_haycock (08:14.871)
Psychopathy, yeah. I think it does. That in combination with movies and media and books, it does lead to a great deal of misunderstanding. And that's one of the things I always try to bring up when people ask about psychopathy. One of the problems is the name.
ng (08:24.878)
Hmm
dean_haycock (08:43.803)
psychopathy and psychosis. Both can be shortened to psycho. And so there you have a problem because somebody who is psychotic is mentally ill. They're out of touch with reality. They see or hear and or hear things that aren't there. But a person with psychopathic traits, considerably strong psychopathic traits, they're in touch with reality. They're not considered insane.
ng (08:45.687)
Yes.
dean_haycock (09:13.955)
and they know the difference between right and wrong. And it is considered by some a mental disorder, or rather a personality disorder, and by others not. Dr. Hare, for instance, told me he did not see psychopathy as a disorder in that regard, because they knew the difference between right and wrong. And in fact,
ng (09:43.075)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (09:43.179)
they can, they try to avoid getting caught. So it's quite a conundrum. We can talk about that later when we talk, if we talk about neuro law, which is really interesting, which that's the introduction of neuroscience and into the courtroom to try to exonerate or clear or help a suspect who has been diagnosed with psychopathy.
ng (09:54.338)
Yeah.
ng (10:03.057)
Hmm.
ng (10:11.602)
Mm-hmm. No, absolutely, Dean. I think we should touch on that later as well, actually. And what is a PCLR test and why have some academics been critical of it?
dean_haycock (10:25.879)
PCLR? Oh, the um, right, okay, right, the Sock Ops checks, right, yeah, right, right. Sorry, um, no, when you said that I, well, I should know that, but when you said that for something about my mind went to a DNA test, which is, which is
ng (10:29.526)
Yeah, the psychopathy checklist revised. Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Abbreviations, isn't it? Sorry.
ng (10:50.536)
Mm-hmm
dean_haycock (10:50.643)
Sounds similar to that. But now that's on the psychopathy checklist which was developed by Robert Hare And he had an interesting story. I'll just go quickly into this to Introduce how he got to this. He was a he got his PhD and he went to work in a prison in Canada and There he was introduced to these prisoners
And he was naive at the time, he was just out of graduate school. And one of his introductions was, the prisoners had a auto shop and they fixed his car before he went off on vacation. And as he was with his family, his wife I think, and as he was driving away the brakes failed. And it was pretty clear that the people working in the shop had...
sabotaged his breaks. And with talking to these people, he began to really appreciate what this type of personality could do. And he began studying it very, very carefully. And he came up with a list of 20 different features. I can't remember them all, but I can tell you some of them. 20 different...
ng (12:14.763)
Mm-hmm.
dean_haycock (12:15.779)
characteristics, personality traits, that he then would judge based on interviews with the person with an exact close examination of their past, of their record, hopefully interviews with people who knew them. And it's more than just a checklist, although some people have been known to
cut corners and diagnose people with it. They shouldn't. They should be trained in how to do this. And with this list, he gives a score of 0, 1 to 2 based on some of the features, say superficial charm. And with a score of 2, you could, if all of the traits
rated a score of 2 you would get a score 40 on the hair psychopathy checklist and that would be the maximum amount of psychopathic traits in a person. In the US a score of 30 has long been considered the cutoff and in Europe it's often 25. Most people who aren't particularly
ng (13:20.6)
Hmm.
ng (13:38.358)
Mm.
dean_haycock (13:42.975)
it's been said have scores of around four or so. So I have some of the lists, I can remember some of them, but I'm gonna read some if you wanna hear them because I do forget some of them. But the first 10 are a glib and superficial charm. We've got grandiose estimation of self-worth, which is a feature of narcissism, as you know, a need for stimulation.
ng (13:55.79)
Sure. Yeah.
dean_haycock (14:13.131)
pathological lying. And I just want to interrupt here, this sounds a lot like some American politics that I've been living through for a while. Cunning manipulation, manipulativeness, seriously, a lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, superficial emotional responses, callousness and lack of empathy, a parasitic lifestyle and poor behavioral control. So they...
ng (14:23.694)
Ha ha ha!
ng (14:30.242)
Heh.
dean_haycock (14:42.899)
what someone who's trained to administer this test would go through each of these things, and that's just half of them, and as I said, would rate them and judge them, and hopefully based on a really rigorous attention to detail, to come up, because one of the reasons is, if you make this diagnosis, you can affect someone's life in a very, very serious way.
And I know in Great Britain, there are people who are not let out of prison when some people feel they should be, because they've had this diagnosis. I imagine that's happened. That's been a source of controversy. And it's also been raised, of course, in the United States. So it's a very serious exercise. And
ng (15:12.916)
Mm-hmm.
ng (15:33.019)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (15:39.443)
one of my concerns is that the term is thrown around so easily. I mean, gosh, if you look at media, you just see, you know, if somebody disagrees with you, they're psychopaths sometimes. It gets silly. And so it's very important to realize the seriousness of this.
ng (15:55.403)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (16:04.611)
problem of not taking this seriously and not realizing it's a difficult construct and you really need to define the population you're talking about.
ng (16:20.398)
Absolutely, the simplification of neuroscience in the media has led to a poor understanding of it hasn't it?
dean_haycock (16:29.067)
Sometimes, yes, sometimes it has. My book has done fairly well, it's fairly popular, but some criticisms are, I always try to list the difficulties with understanding things. Everything is not black and white. You can't oversimplify sometimes. And I think, as a former scientist, it's very important to say it could be this or it could be that.
ng (16:34.338)
Hmm
ng (16:47.566)
이들
dean_haycock (16:58.887)
and to let the reader decide. And that doesn't work very well in click bait kind of reporting. And so it's difficult to get that across. A lot of readers want, well, I shouldn't say a lot of readers because I don't find that some readers want black and white answers. But I've been lucky to have a lot of readers who
appreciate not getting that kind of thing.
ng (17:32.65)
Absolutely. Like for instance, in the later chapters, you ask very interesting questions such as could you become a psychopath or could your child be a budding psychopath? And what I wanted to ask you is how difficult of a question is that to answer without being simplistic, especially since on one hand experts don't like to label a child a psychopath before
dean_haycock (18:01.347)
Sure.
ng (18:02.174)
A lot of research, which I learned from your book, is done on subjects, well people who are already convicted criminals as their subjects.
dean_haycock (18:18.429)
Um.
Tell me again exactly what the question was. I was listening, sorry, I lost it. Oh, no, but you said the difficulty, it was the difficulty of, yeah, okay.
ng (18:26.394)
Oh no worries, sorry, it was a bit long-winded wasn't it? Sorry. So, um... How difficult... yeah. Mmm... the difficulty, yeah, yeah. To answer both, yeah.
Or to answer the question in general, how difficult is it to answer that type of question in general?
dean_haycock (18:41.431)
So.
dean_haycock (18:48.058)
Um, and the two, the two, I'm sorry, the two that you asked about were, um, children being related, being, yeah, right.
ng (18:55.518)
So, yeah, so children, could your child be a budding psychopath or could you be a psychopath? But these are just the interesting questions that you've asked, Dean. So it's just more or less how difficult it is to answer those type of questions, you know. Yeah. Is that a fair question? Is that clear?
dean_haycock (19:04.363)
Right, right. Right, okay, sorry. Yeah, dude. Sure, yeah.
dean_haycock (19:16.415)
I don't think it's, it's an excellent question. I'm sorry, I got lost in your, it's my fault. I got lost in you. No, no, no. They're excellent questions. I think they're a good, that's why I put them in the book because I think they're good questions. But as far, there's a lot to learn, I think, from the question, could you become a psychic? And the answer, which I tried to give was,
ng (19:22.042)
Oh, sorry. Oh. No worries.
ng (19:29.105)
Okay.
Ha ha
ng (19:38.005)
Mmm.
dean_haycock (19:43.975)
it is possible to experience changes in your brain through stroke or if anyone was doing psychosurgery, you could do it that way, to change a person's answers into certain questions regarding morality. Let me give you an example. Some researchers looked at stroke victims who had a stroke that affected their frontal lobes.
ng (19:51.319)
Yes.
dean_haycock (20:13.979)
And they gave them the famous moral test where a person is standing above train tracks that are dividing. And if you, they have the ability to change the direction of the train. This is a classic moral conundrum given to people. And if they do nothing, the train will continue on its path and kill one person whose back is to the train.
ng (20:33.486)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (20:44.259)
I'm sorry, it'll kill five people. If however they pull the switch, they have the ability to divert the train and kill just one person. And now most of us, I think, say, well that's a horrible choice. You know, I really don't like that. My wife, for instance, won't answer the question. That's good. However, people with considerable psychopathic traits,
ng (20:48.226)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (21:09.483)
will say, oh yeah, pull the switch and kill one person, that's less than five. And people who have had this certain population, people who had strokes in their frontal lobe, will do the same thing. And one, according to the researchers, one of the people who had the stroke and said, oh, you just pull the switch and kill one, that's no problem. He said, oh my God, I've become psychopathic. Before that change in the part of his brain,
ng (21:16.449)
Hmm.
ng (21:34.112)
I'm sorry.
dean_haycock (21:37.755)
which helps regulate emotion and the frontal lobes and helps in executive functions thinking about the future, you know, responding to emotional stimuli. He just didn't have it. It wasn't there and that's consistent with the changes people see in the brains of psychopathic individuals. A decreased activity in areas that affect emotion, regulation.
ng (21:49.122)
Hmm.
ng (21:55.842)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (22:08.003)
stimulation, emotional stimulation. So there are other examples. You've probably heard of Cage, an American who had a brain injury when he was tamping down some explosive devices. This bar went through his head and it went through his frontal lobe on the left side.
ng (22:11.683)
Hmm.
ng (22:31.032)
Yes
dean_haycock (22:33.607)
And that is a classic instance of a person whose brain was affected by an injury. And supposedly it changed his personality significantly. So these people are not exactly psychopathic in the sense of someone who was born with great psychopathic traits, or developed rather, I should say developed great psychopathic traits.
ng (22:46.475)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (23:01.707)
But there are similarities and there is a consistency there with damage to certain areas can result in different moral outlooks. Now the second question was with children and you're absolutely right here, there's some very interesting data. So far, although people are trying, it's very difficult to change the behavior or treat hardcore people with psych.
ng (23:04.046)
Hmm.
ng (23:09.738)
Hmm.
ng (23:12.994)
Mm-hmm.
dean_haycock (23:30.699)
people with hardcore psychopathic traits. With children, it's a little bit different. There's been several studies where children who have something called conduct disorder, which is a condition where children are, they behave in a way that's very disturbing and it has some similarities to psychopathic or antisocial personality traits. But if they're given really intense therapy with
with nurses on hands, psychologists on hand, counselors on hand, people to help them. It's very intense and unfortunately it's impractical in many situations because of the cost. But if these young people are given this kind of help, their recidivism rate goes down significantly when they leave these programs. So this is a...
an indication and some findings that suggest it really is possible to help people if you get to them early. And the same thing is true with people who experience psychotic events. If someone has a psychotic break and they get a lot of treatment early, it can affect the course of their mental illness.
ng (24:25.876)
Mm-hmm.
ng (24:36.738)
Hmm.
ng (24:51.482)
Hmm.
ng (24:57.274)
Brilliant. Thanks for asking that Dean. Really appreciate it honestly. And what I also went into Arx as well are what are the limitations of judging psychopathy through brain activity through things such as an fMRI scan?
dean_haycock (24:59.947)
Yeah, sure. No problem.
dean_haycock (25:19.379)
That's a really good question. There's a couple of good points there. One is there's overlap. If you take a lot of individuals, you're going to find people who have no significant psychopathic traits and you'll see their brains are similar to people whose brains
ng (25:29.731)
Mm-hmm.
dean_haycock (25:43.555)
have these changes of low activity in parts of the frontal lobe and in parts of the limbic system, which is a group of neurons clustered more in the center of the brain that influence emotion. And there'll be overlap between the two. So you really need a lot of numbers to get a good picture.
ng (26:03.234)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (26:07.627)
And this is true in many kinds of studies. You'll find an example of the Alzheimer's disease. There are people who have brain pathology, which would suggest significant cognitive deficits, and they're fine. And then other people have these same, you know, like plaques and tangles, and they are seriously have serious dementia. So there's this overlap. You have to do a lot, a lot of studies. The other thing is the...
the problem with analyzing fMRI images. That's been going on for a while.
dean_haycock (26:45.047)
There is a study where some researchers wanted to show you had to be very careful with how you analyzed the information that comes from brain scans. What they did is they went out and they brought a dead fish at the supermarket and they put it in an fMRI machine. Sure enough, they were able to spot an area that suggested activity. In the book I referred to John Cleese's...
ng (26:57.954)
Hmm.
ng (27:12.98)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (27:13.331)
and Monty Python's about the dead parrot, only a dead fish. But the point, it was a very good point because it showed the scientists that you have to be super careful in analyzing this data. And that was the point of that experiment. And the most recent, well, some of it was...
ng (27:21.407)
It was.
dean_haycock (27:35.131)
analyzing the data. They had to adjust how they, it's you know pretty complex mathematics and computer programming to turn these signals in the brain into images and they had to adjust that. They had to improve that and they've done that now. And the other thing is you need as I said a good number of studies in order to draw a conclusion and they are
heading in that way too. It's very difficult. I talked to one graduate student who was working with psychopathic people and he said, just imagine getting these people to show up on time because this isn't a concern of theirs, their impulsiveness, you know, and this poor guy's thesis was based on getting data. So it is a challenge to get it. It's easier in prisons.
and people have been doing that. But the reason I went ahead with the book, I still agree with these findings, is that this has been going on for decades now, and lab after lab has seen these changes in the brain. And that's what science really is too. One study,
ng (28:46.35)
Hmm.
ng (28:53.859)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (28:54.135)
to me doesn't mean very much. It's very interesting, it's great, I wanna read about it, but it's gotta be reproduced. And the more it's reproduced, the better. But we tend to think that, oh, there's a finding, there's truth. It doesn't work that way in science. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule, he said, the way science works is, you'll get eight labs saying one thing, and two labs say just the opposite. And you go with the eight labs.
ng (29:04.045)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (29:22.699)
That's just the nature of science. I think the public doesn't know that too much and they get very upset when they find out it doesn't work. But with these studies of fMRI, I think there's been enough replication to convince me and others. But you do have to be careful. So it's a good point that you raised.
ng (29:27.19)
Yeah.
ng (29:46.422)
Thank you Dean and also what I did like about the book is that even with the questions that you did raise you was always going beyond the surface of answering the question or highlighting how complex it was to answer the question for instance intelligence or being a great writer not being incompatible with criminal or psychopathic behaviors I thought that was a very good
Chats that you mentioned especially because I feel as though there is a bit of a misconception around it that people wouldn't usually associate Someone that's intelligent being psychopathic. Would you mind talking on this Dean?
dean_haycock (30:27.107)
No, yes, that's an interesting point. I think, again, we're back to which population are you studying. So if you go to prison and you measure the intelligence, well, there you're getting the people who got caught. And if you don't say this population of psychopathic individuals.
ng (30:40.95)
Hmm
ng (30:49.759)
Yes.
dean_haycock (30:56.263)
If you say psychopathic individuals have lower IQ or inability to reason in a certain way, you're missing the people who are, I don't know, maybe one estimate was 4% of the CEOs in the world who have psychopathic traits. And interesting, you know, Dr. Hare told me someone who's a quote, they call them quote successful psychopath people.
ng (31:14.902)
Hmm
dean_haycock (31:24.623)
if they had to do something like murder or something for themselves, they would do it. But they don't have to with their intelligence and they're able to get by and it's a lot easier not to get involved in that. But morally that would not be a problem for them according to Dr. Hare's opinion. So it's very important to know which population you're talking about. So
ng (31:46.68)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (31:53.699)
There are examples of very intelligent people with definite psychopathic traits who were literally murderers and they wrote very well. William F. Buckley got in trouble by befriending one of them. Norman Mailer got in trouble. And these very intelligent people, Buckley was a famous conservative journalist.
ng (32:14.227)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (32:21.487)
and commentator and a mailer was a famous liberal writer. They were fooled by the thought that if you could write really well, then there must be something good about you. But that's not necessarily true. You can be very intelligent and you can write very well. And if you have this lack of...
ng (32:37.676)
Mm-hmm.
dean_haycock (32:47.867)
emotional connectedness to others. If you have this lack of empathy, you can still write well. Lack of remorse, you can still write well and still be a psychopathic individual. Other people have claimed that, as I said, most or many psychopathic people have...
less below average intelligence, but I don't really buy that. I think it depends on what population you're looking at.
ng (33:21.838)
Thanks for watching!
ng (33:26.366)
Absolutely. And Dean, what would you like the reader or listener to take away from the book?
dean_haycock (33:35.227)
I would like a number of things. One is to realize that science is a very human activity. And that scientists are just like everybody else as far as their careerism and their ambitions. And that affects the way research is done.
The other thing I would like to take away is that these people are out there. The estimate, the usual estimate is 1% of the population have significant psychopathic traits. And just be aware of that and to listen to your gut. If you're dealing with anybody who makes you feel uneasy in any way, there's no reason you have to keep dealing with them.
That's very important. And finally, I would want people to realize the steps, the slow steps we're making to understanding human behavior. We've got a long way to go. But work like this is making progress. It's slow progress. But we are, neuroscientists are getting some
really cool insights into our humanity, how we behave and why we behave that way.
ng (35:13.59)
Thanks Dean. And lastly, regarding the chapter explaining psychopath, well psychopath and the criminal justice system and explaining it to Darwinists and etc. You've raised a very good question, well you made a good point actually, and you mentioned certain things that science can't answer when it comes to psychopathy. Do you mind elaborating on that a bit Dean?
dean_haycock (35:44.975)
Are you referring to what we mentioned before about applying these findings to the court? Yeah, I can see that. What I'd like to do is ask your listeners to think now what they would answer this. This is something I always like to do. The points are we know that the highly psychopathic individuals are not legally insane.
ng (35:51.978)
Yeah, before, yeah.
ng (35:57.15)
Mm-hmm.
ng (36:05.87)
Oh, that's good.
dean_haycock (36:12.075)
They know the difference between right and wrong. If they do something wrong, they'll endeavor not to get caught, which suggests they're pretty aware of what is right and wrong. But there's very strong evidence as outlined in my books and by other researchers that there are brain, there are differences in the brains and chemistry and structure of the brain, the way they respond to stress, for instance.
They don't respond as much to a stressful situation as the rest of us do. So the question is, we know they know the difference between right and wrong, but we also know that there are differences, we strongly suspect there's great evidence that there are differences in their brains. So are the differences in their brains, do they constitute mitigating factors? So the question is, can...
A highly psychopathic person control themselves to eventually not commit a crime or if they're criminal psychopath or to take advantage of people or are they acting in response to the brain differences that we believe have been identified? So how do you answer that question?
dean_haycock (37:41.519)
When there have been several cases where lawyers have said, well, my client has been diagnosed with psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder, it's a slightly different diagnosis, somewhat perhaps related. And therefore that's a mitigating factor. He should not get, in a few cases it has affected the judge's decision and in others not. So.
I always ask my audience when I talk, what would they say, given that question? And there is no particular answer to that. It's something that we have to discuss and argue about.
ng (38:25.464)
Mmm.
dean_haycock (38:29.748)
That's the problem of neuro law, which is being developed. It's a very, Phyllisa, yeah.
ng (38:32.028)
Brilliant.
dean_haycock (38:38.259)
It's a philosophical question. Sure, no problem.
ng (38:39.319)
Brilliant. Thank you so much Dean.
ng (38:45.377)
It is. No, definitely. It's a brilliant way to end it as well. Honestly, like that's a, that's a big one.
dean_haycock (38:50.015)
Yeah, you gotta cook. Yeah, see, what's your answer? You know, Dr. Hare has an answer to that and I don't know. All right, well, I'm sorry. He thinks they are responsible. Hare does not think it's a disorder. He thinks, and I'm not sure I agree with him, but he, the last time I spoke to him a few years ago, he did not think it was a mental disorder.
ng (38:58.306)
Wow.
ng (39:03.372)
What was Dr. Hare's answer?
ng (39:16.362)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (39:21.448)
He thought that they were responsible for their actions.
ng (39:27.662)
I'm sorry, I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here, but I got from your book that there's not one easy way to answer the question. So even with that question being raised, I'm going to start thinking about how they was as a child, the environment that they grew up in, how their brain might come across. There's so many different things that I'd considered now, which I probably wouldn't have considered had I not listened to your book.
dean_haycock (39:32.299)
No problem.
dean_haycock (39:48.191)
Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Good question.
dean_haycock (39:56.023)
Alright.
dean_haycock (39:59.507)
That's good. It's a very good point about how they were raised. That's a whole other issue. So many people with these traits suffered abuse as a child. The suggestion is that there's a predisposition, a genetic predisposition to this. If these people born with this predisposition
ng (40:01.282)
You know?
Yeah, exactly.
ng (40:15.15)
Mmm.
dean_haycock (40:28.135)
It's been shown that can affect the brain, particularly in animal studies that show it can affect the brain. And then it allows the manifestation of this predisposition or tendency. Now there are some individuals, rare individuals, who come from good homes and they have done terrible things like the Columbine murders. There was one of those people. And he came from, that came from a very normal home. His brother served honorably in the military. No problem.
ng (40:40.531)
exactly.
ng (40:48.735)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (40:57.211)
And yet here was this 17-year-old at the time. He was very close to 18. And there was no abuse there that anyone knows about. So perhaps that person got a big dose of genes, which contribute to psychopathy. There is no one gene that causes this. But so many behaviors are influenced by multiple genes, many genes. It can be 100 genes.
ng (40:58.242)
Hmm.
ng (41:05.122)
Hmm.
ng (41:16.991)
Yes.
No.
dean_haycock (41:26.399)
And so this is how it's often looked at now, that people are born with a predisposition and so many cases they experience physical, emotional, sexual abuse and that helps lead them to develop the manifestation of these traits.
ng (41:42.754)
Hmm.
ng (41:52.498)
Maybe I'm pointing out one thing very simply, because I do remember at one point you did mention how there was a prisoner who showed less signs of psychopathic behaviours the longer they spent in prison, because he wasn't in an environment which will kind of spark that kind of behaviour. You know? So that once again brings a question to me.
Could it be one's environment? Could it? There's just so many different factors. I don't think it's an answer that you can give as an absolute, is it?
dean_haycock (42:27.511)
Yeah, no, I agree with you. Yeah, related to your point there is there were claims early on that put into a very regimented environment, people with these traits were able to work within that environment. But one suggestion was because of the low activity in parts of the brain, the limbic system, some of the...
ng (42:42.86)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (42:56.331)
neocortex, low activity. The suggestion was that people out in society may be looking for some stimulus, some stimulation, and that's why they do, or that's one of the factors that influence their outrageous behavior, things to get a response, to do something, to give them a thrift, so they can feel something because there is a lack of emotional feeling.
lack of emotionality in people with extreme psychopathic traits. Oh, there's one thing I'd like to add. When I was talking about this book early on, a psychiatrist contacted me and said, you know, when I was writing this, the literature used the term psychopath all the time. And so I did. So my book is full of the word psychopath. And the psychiatrist said,
ng (43:37.431)
Yes.
dean_haycock (43:54.431)
you should not equate a person with their disorder. So evidently he saw psychopathy as a disorder. And I realized, my gosh, he's right. So I wrote a book about caring for families, caring for people who deal with schizophrenia. And in that book I said, you shouldn't call someone a schizophrenic any more than you should call someone a heart attack or a heart disease if they had.
ng (44:04.407)
Hmm.
dean_haycock (44:21.527)
heart disease because a person is not their illness. And so here I go and I write the book, yeah. And so here I go and I write the book and the scientific literature is filled with the term psychopath. And so, but now I'm always careful to say somebody with psychopathic traits or features or personality, so I'm trying to be a better person in that regard and I always try to pass that on to people.
ng (44:24.878)
fin après.
ng (44:35.812)
Hehehehe
ng (44:44.801)
Mm-hmm.
dean_haycock (44:50.268)
People are not their diagnosis.
ng (44:55.702)
You know what, it's good that you mention that because with all the murders and everything that you mentioned in the book, which I'm sure will be of interest to a lot of people that listen to your book or read it as well, like because once again you're going beyond, you're going beyond the words and you're going beyond the incident that happened, you're trying to look beyond the surface, it does make one not think about just the word, you know, psychopath. Okay, they're a psychopath because they've done that.
dean_haycock (45:08.82)
Yes.
ng (45:25.174)
You know, we're looking a lot more deeper into it. So I think you've achieved it, definitely in the book by that, yeah.
dean_haycock (45:25.952)
Right.
dean_haycock (45:30.695)
Yes. Oh, good. That's good to hear. Thank you. Good to hear.
ng (45:36.135)
No worries. Yeah Dean, I think this one's going to be a long episode. It's probably my longest one because honestly it was a great book so I've really enjoyed asking you these questions about it.
dean_haycock (45:40.847)
Oh, well, okay. Well, you can, oh good. I'm glad. You can edit as much as you want. I'm sorry about the, I lost the thread of one of your questions. I'm sorry, I messed that up.
ng (45:56.718)
Oh no, no worries, no worries. Yeah, no, listen, the edit makes me sound better, it makes both of us sound better, trust me. Yeah.
dean_haycock (45:58.374)
You can edit that. Okay.
dean_haycock (46:03.063)
Oh good, okay excellent. One thing, I love editing, I love editing. There's one thing that you might be interested in. My latest book is called Tyrannical Minds and that's about psychological profiling of, so in the future you might be interested in that if you take a look at it. I think given your interest in so many things it...
ng (46:06.133)
Yeah, yeah, we'll be fine, honestly.
ng (46:10.878)
Hahahaha
ng (46:19.337)
Okay.
dean_haycock (46:29.595)
I think it's just coming out sometime. But if you're interested, it's about the features that dictators have, the psychological features that dictators have and how intelligence agencies profile these people. Because the CIA is profiling Putin.
ng (46:41.174)
Oh, oh Dean, that's right up my street.
dean_haycock (46:58.039)
The FSB is profiling Biden and Trump and all these people. And so from your interest, you might be interested. If you ever need another book, not that there's a shortage of books that you need to do.
ng (47:00.076)
Mm-hmm.
ng (47:04.003)
Hmm.
ng (47:12.974)
What was I going to say? Dean, the voice actor that you had was, well the narrator rather a voice actor, you might be a voice actor, was very good by the way, he brought your book into life I'd say. So just to give a bit of feedback if you wanted it, he was very good and do you plan on... I chose him. Oh no go on Dean, go on sorry.
dean_haycock (47:16.451)
Okay.
dean_haycock (47:25.423)
Oh good. Oh, I'll let him know. I do, I do. I chose him, but yeah.
dean_haycock (47:39.077)
No, I just said I chose him, but that's the only credit I can get for the reading of the book. He did it all, yeah.
ng (47:45.841)
Hehehe
ng (47:50.83)
Brilliant. So with Tyrannical Minds, are you gonna release it as an audiobook as well? Because even if it's not, I'll read the hardback copy if you're not going to.
dean_haycock (47:57.703)
Yeah, yeah, um, I-I-I-I-I-uh, yes, it has-
I've got the same reader and the question is, I have to find out whether he's done yet. But I'll let you know. I'll let you know. There are, unfortunately, there are typos in the written book which embarrass me because of problems with publications. So I hope the audiobook comes out so it won't embarrass me as much if you listen to that. But, may I ask you a question? What's your background?
ng (48:12.334)
Hmm.
ng (48:17.346)
Okay. Brilliant. Yeah.
ng (48:28.666)
Yeah.
ng (48:35.223)
Sure.
dean_haycock (48:37.587)
How did you get interested in so many interesting books and doing a podcast like this?
ng (48:38.308)
Absolutely.
ng (48:44.454)
Yeah, so funnily enough, I studied law at university and graduated with that, but I didn't go into it. I now work as a project manager within development, so housing delivery essentially. And I've, I don't know, like I used to be a bit of an avid reader, but I think just before COVID and everything, I started listening to podcasts and then that moved on to audiobooks and has always been around like social science and...
that kind of field, you know, as opposed to like novels. And I don't know, for some reason, I just decided to take the leap of faith and start the podcast. And I'm a one-man band, it's just me doing it. But what's funny is that my day to day doesn't allow me to have a bit of a creative outlet, whereas now I'm doing the podcast and I'm speaking to, you know, authors such as yourself.
of work that I'd listen to anyway. So it's like a double, it's like I'm double winning, you know what I mean? Because yeah, I'd be listening to this, I'd genuinely listen to your audio book anyway, and I now have the opportunity to talk to you about it, which is amazing.
dean_haycock (49:46.246)
I see. Sure. Yeah, yeah. No, you're... Yeah.
dean_haycock (49:57.123)
Sure, yeah, that's good, that's good. Well, what you're doing, I hope a lot more people get to hear it, because it's one of the more intelligent efforts on podcasts. You know, so many podcasts I listen to, and there's a lot of chatter. They talk, small talk for a long time. I don't know why they do that. It's very informal, and I don't.
ng (50:12.2)
Oh.
ng (50:17.678)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (50:23.359)
I don't waste my time. I don't mean to be stupid, but it just goes on and on. I guess they want to be very informal or something, but I really appreciate just getting to the meat of the subject, it's great. So I follow you on Audible now. That's where I get a lot of my.
ng (50:27.431)
Hehehehe
ng (50:33.621)
Exactly.
ng (50:39.379)
Yeah, that's what, you know, that's what... Oh, perfect. No, thank you, Dean. You know, that's one compliment someone said to me recently is what they said, you just go straight into it. And I'm like, yeah, well, it's about, it's not about me, it's about you, you know? So yeah, no, I appreciate it. That's very nice of you to say as well.
dean_haycock (50:48.214)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (50:52.586)
Yeah.
dean_haycock (50:56.439)
Yes, yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. So like I said, I follow you on Audible. I get podcasts on Audible. And yeah, so I'll be listening to more of those. So thank you. Okay.
ng (51:05.358)
Thank you.
ng (51:09.387)
Lovely, thank you.
ng (51:13.91)
Thanks Dean. So I have them I recorded on Tuesday So I have one that I'll probably release before yours and then I'll release yours as soon as But yeah now once again, honestly, I'm very appreciative of you coming on and if you don't mind once Tyrannical minds is out. I'll probably listen to that and ask you to come on again and we can discuss it if that's okay with you, maybe
dean_haycock (51:14.979)
Alright, yep.
dean_haycock (51:36.567)
Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, no, I really enjoyed writing that book too. It's sort of a follow-up on this one. Yeah, that'd be great. I'll look forward to that. And I'll, I follow you so I'll see when things are released. I should see when things are released as the new ones come out, like I get a notice of your podcast. Yeah. All right, well, it was great meeting you. All right. All right, bye.
ng (51:40.235)
No, brilliant. Perfect.
ng (51:55.414)
Perfect. Great. OK, lovely. Thank you so much, Dean. Really appreciate it.