How Many Psychopaths Walk Among Us?

The general view of the term ‘mental disorder’ is often refers to extremes like schizophrenia and Alzheimer's Disease, but when it comes to personality disorders the definitions are a bit more vague. Personality disorders that are characterized by anxiety, depression, and social handicap act more like a spectrum than a clearly defined line. It should come as no surprise then, that everybody falls somewhere on that spectrum and holds these traits to some degree. This begs the question: so where does the average person fall?

Actually, it might not be where you think it is. The very interesting answer to this lies in this article. According to a study by UWM psychology professor David Osmon, the average person has quite the interesting set of mental characters. His study aimed to define the relationship between Machiavellianism and psychopathy. The results turned back something a little discomforting.

“It’s important to remember – these are college students we’re studying. These are not psychopaths in jail,” Osmon says.

Osmon surveyed 254 students, testing them on three specific measures of empathy, one measure of psychopathy, and one measure of Machiavellianism. The goal was to see how each of them related to each other. The two important categories of empathy are as follows:

• Cognitive Empathy – the drive to understand another person’s emotional point of view. People with high cognitive empathy are good at consoling others who are hurt.

• Emotional Empathy – those with high emotional empathy feel others’ feelings as their own. They share happiness and sadness with whoever shares it with them. Emotional empathy is considered an unconscious drive.

Of the 254 students, the participants could be statistically grouped into four clusters, sorted by how high each group ranked on various measures. The first group we’ll talk about is the average group. This group totaled 64 people in Osmon’s study. They rank either second or third in each of the categories and do not deviate too far from an average ranking. Probably very nice people, but all the interesting people are a little messed up, right?

The second group is the “superempaths.” Superempaths score the lowest on the Machiavellian psychopathy scale and the highest on the empathy scale. These are the people who care simply because they care, with no manipulative motivations. Sounds like a good group of people, right? The bummer is that only 48 of the 254 studied were in this group. Being a superempath has its downsides, though.

“Superempaths are people who are concerned about what you’re feeling, even to the point of losing ground themselves. They often do too much giving and not taking enough for them,” Osmon says.

Superempaths ranked highest on personal distress of the four groups. Because they care a great deal about many different things, they often find themselves stressing over abstract or non-immediate problems. It comes from a good place, but this way of thinking can be exhausting.

The third group is the Machiavellians, coming in with 41 people in their group. These are an interesting bit of people in this study. It was established in the previous article that Machiavellians are always striving to manipulate people to achieve their goals, so you could reasonably assume that these people are not the best at seeing others’ point of view. Oddly enough, however, Machiavellians were only a small margin behind the superempaths on all three measures of empathy. This is likely what makes them such great manipulators – they know what you want to hear and they know what scares you, which makes for a very potent string-puller.

“They’re good at organizing and planning, so they can build to the top of the social hierarchy,” Osmon says. “They can do it very well because they’re good empathizers.”

The Machiavellian group had a fairly high level of psychopathy, but the psychopaths are a truly fascinating – and maybe disturbing – group of people.

Psychopaths turned in extreme results in four of the five measures. The psychopathic category rated the lowest by a statistically significant amount in each of the empathy categories, meaning this category of people have no idea of how you feel, and no idea how to handle it even if they did. They also rated the highest on the psychopathy scale by a long shot. This is, of course to be expected considering the group’s name, but the interesting part is this measure paired with the disturbing lack of empathy. Psychopaths are people who do not know – or care – how you feel and have very little self-control. You can see now how a Jeffrey Dahmer develops.

For those of you that made it this far – without further ado: the kicker, ladies and gentlemen. Mathematicians out there may have noticed that the count is only at 153 out of 254 students. That’s because a whopping 101 students (40 percent) weighed in as having above average psychopathic tendencies.

“These people aren’t psychopaths, but they do have psychopathic tendencies. But, there are twice as many psychopaths as empaths; that’s a little disconcerting!” Osmon says with a laugh.

Imagine that 40 percent of all of the people that you know are perfectly recognizable as psychopaths. That doesn’t mean that all of them are dangerous murderers, but it’s a little spine tingling to know that lots of people have little genuine care for you.

While this was an interesting find, Osmon originally set out to find out the relationship between psychopathy and Machiavellianism. The psychopath category scored fairly on the Machiavellian measure, but nowhere near the winners of that group. Osmon believes that the things that separate Machiavellians from psychopaths is that Machiavellianism actually has a solid amount of empathetic nature, which allows them to be master manipulators, while the psychopathy has no desire to have control over people in a Machiavellian way.

“Psychopaths don’t have the wherewithal to plan and set the situation up that in the long-run they can get what they need,” Osmon says. “They’re all about the pleasures of the moment.”

The cause of Machiavellians is not as much known as narcissism and psychopathy may be. It is a multi-factored dynamic, but it’s possible that Machiavellian types are those who desire to be leaders but don’t quite have the strong jawline or towering structure to ease that idea into reality.

The point of this article is not to make you wary of other people and their intentions. It is merely a closer look at the mechanics of certain styles of behavior. Good and bad people come from each of these categories, and it can be an interesting way to look at the actions of people.

Stay tuned for the next articles in this series to find out how Osmon hacked the human brain to see the difference in how people perceive themselves to be and how they actually are.

Happy Monday. Cheers, nerds.