Confessions of a prosocial psychopath

[ksmith]

This is really interesting. It’s 15 minutes long, but it’s worth listening to.

If you learned something like this about yourself, how do you think you’d react?

About This Video

Neuroscientist James Fallon is a self-styled “hobbit scientist.” The rules are simple: Don’t talk to the press and don’t go out of your area of expertise. But when a fascinating new brain scanner enters the lab, Fallon can’t resist. He ends up breaking both rules, and learns a lot more about himself than he bargained for. WSF teams up with what The Wall Street Journal calls “New York’s hottest and hippest literary ticket,” The Moth, for an innovative series of unpredictable storytelling.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Maybe one reason Fallon cleaved so to the Catholic Church is because the rules, rules, rules gave him an external framework, guidelines for behavior that at some level he realized he needed.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Richard and I had a long discussion about that. I suspect that he had the rules inculcated before he *could* be aware he "needed" that kind of rigid support. I wonder if there are more pro-social sociopaths among those brought up in very clearly-defined rule sets than in looser ones. Kinda doubt it, since rigid religions tend to be tolerant of violent methods of pedagogy and that's been implicated in the development of violent criminals too.

It's a very interesting puzzle.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there are more pro-social sociopaths among those brought up in very clearly-defined rule sets than in looser ones.

Are you saying that nurture played the major role in developing the psychopathy (as opposed to nature)? Or that the rules-based upbringing taught the self-control that prevented more psychopaths from flipping to antisocial? Or am I misreading?

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

Well...if further research shows a population of people having "sociopath" PET scans and "violence" genes who are NOT antisocial sociopaths...then the determinant can't be entirely "nature".

I suspect it's both nature and nurture: humans have the longest period of maturation of any animal we know, and nurture affects a lot of behavior (what language you learn, what culture you're part of, etc.) Nurture modifies the basic individual nature to a degree...privileging certain personality and behavior and physical appearance in a culture results in both genetic selection for it and pressure on those who are less like that by nature to conform.

Nurture is perceived differently depending on the individual's nature--the sensory input as received and interpreted varies with the neurology that comes in contact with it. Super-tasters of the basic flavors react differently to the same foods. Other biochemical differences affect metabolism and weight gain or loss, the relative numbers of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, the innate cardiovascular limits. So autists have markedly different sensory responses than average, and this is neurologically, not culturally, based.

For any given innate neurology, the expression of it is somewhat modified by nurture--by the entire external environment, human-designed as well as temperature/terrain/weather/etc. So both are involved. The "nature rules" folks have been leaping on brain scans, studies of autopsied brains, and the search for determinant genes for at least a decade, convinced that if you could find the "autism gene" or "sociopath gene" or "emotionally explosive" gene you could then do some kind of gene therapy to turn those genes off--or you could intervene at the level of the brain to correct a badly-wired (so to speak) brain.

But because they studied mostly pathology, people identified as having depression, schizophrenia, autism, or criminal behavior, and not the same range or number of people who exhibited no startling pathology, we do not know how many people have all the markers for, say, autism or sociopathy and are not *outwardly* autistic or serial killers. Without looking for the "pathological" brain and genes among the normal population--and, when found, looking very closely at the details of their infant and childhood environment--we won't be able to say how much nurture can possibly affect nature. And without knowing that, we don't know what to try in childhood when there's some evidence a kid is turning really, really sour. I read one psychologist's analysis awhile back that basically said if they're tormenting animals when they're five, it's already too late. They're doomed. But when is early enough and what are the signs? Most toddlers show some aggression. Most of them hit someone without provocation at least once. Which two-year-old who bashes another with a toy truck in an argument over who gets to play with it is going to be the serial killer?

We know a little. We know that kids brought up in seriously abusive and toxic conditions exhibit more pathology than those brought up in nonabusive, nontoxic conditions. We know it's possible to create pathology with extremes of abuse and that kids who have less than extreme (but still significant) abuse are still more likely to exhibit pathology. But that's too coarse-grained a look at the situation to pick out what's important for this child here in a neonatal nursery. Even with a brain scan (if the differences show up in the neonatal period...we don't know that; we don't do PET scans of all the infants born) that's diagnostic of "sociopathic tendencies"...as a neonate or later...right now we have no solid data to say "OK, this kid is at risk and needs *this* kind of upbringing." We don't have it for kids who are born with autism, either.

The only person I know of known to have the "sociopath" PET scan and the "strongly at risk for violence" genes who is NOT like that is this one professor. All I know about his background is what he said on that one video: a good Catholic boy. Something aimed him away from crime and toward a pro-social attitude. Richard and I thought of reasons why that might be protective...but we're also aware that there have been serial killers raised Catholic.

Part 2 of comment

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

LJ's annoying character limit on comments cut me off (I wish the system would *show* how many characters are left before I've written marvelously phrased brilliant longer comments...and that's partly a joke.)

The rest of it:

On the home front, our son is definitely autistic, but does not fit (now) the level of disability or the picture of the adult we were told to expect. A heckuva lot of nurture went into changing the prognosis we were given...nurture individually tailored to what he needed. I know I could have done a better job if I had known to start with what I learned by making all the mistakes I made (and no, I don't want to adopt another autistic kid at at this point--I no longer have the physical stamina to deal with the lack of sleep and the stress.)

Personally, I don't think it's EVER just one thing that brings a particular adult individual suite of behaviors from the fertilized egg. It's nature in the genes, and nurture in the womb, and nature in how the fetus responds to conditions in the womb, and nurture by the culture of the pregnant woman (the effects of famine on pregnant women can be traced in their *grandchildren*!) and the two together all the way up.