Psychopaths in NZ: The surprising things scientists are learning

We think of psychopaths as criminal masterminds and murderers - but the truth is much closer to home. Researchers have found Kiwi psychopaths are less likely to be vegetarian or vote Labour and more likely to have tattoos and study commerce. Jamie Morton explains what scientists are learning about the psychopaths among us.

Have you met a psychopath?

A nightmare boss, a twisted ex, or maybe just a politician you didn’t like.

Many of us like to think we’ve crossed paths with psychopaths - and statistically, we may have.

But it’s a personality disorder that can’t be tidily defined, nor diagnosed.

There’s no one psychopathic trait, but a group of them - falling into a few broad sets of characteristics.

“Psychopaths are glib, superficially charming, remorseless and callous,” Victoria University psychologist Professor Marc Wilson explained.

“Callous, in no small part, because they may not experience emotion in the same way that everyone else does - and they may not recognise the emotions of others.

“That’s a pretty handy attribute when you’re thinking of robbing a little old lady of her life savings.”

At the same time, he said, they could be disorganised and impulsive, leaving a string of relatively unsatisfying, short-term relationships behind them.

Rather than being a personality type, Wilson said psychopathy is a continuum - on which most of us place somewhere in the middle.

Because many people with these traits display anti-social behaviour, much of what we know about psychopaths in New Zealand stems from studies with criminals.

“We tend to run into these folks with alarming regularity in the criminal justice system, often because they don’t have strong inhibitions to their behaviour,” said Associate Professor Armon Tamatea, a clinical psychologist at Waikato University.

“These people tend to treat the world - and people - as a resource.”

Associate Professor Armon Tamatea, a psychologist at Waikato University. Photo / Alan Gibson

While varying international rates indicate up to a quarter of imprisoned offenders may show psychopathic traits, experts urge us not to conflate psychopathy with criminality.

Indeed, there’s a likely large number of Kiwis living and working among us who’d score highly for psychopathy and are just getting on with their daily lives.

“We’re a small enough country that we’re likely to know of them, hear about them, or be intimate with them some one way, shape or form.”

Capturing this hidden population in studies, as Tamatea has tried to, wasn’t easy - not just because there were various shades of psychopathy, but that psychopaths were often the last people to seek help for themselves.

What does the New Zealand psychopath look like?

We can’t paint the quintessential Kiwi psychopath but recent studies have offered some broad brushstrokes.

When Wilson surveyed around 5000 people last year, three per cent were found to show “primary” psychopathic traits, while seven per cent had secondary ones, like disorganisation.

“The psychopaths in the sample are more likely to be males, younger, earn slightly more than average, have fewer years of formal education and have tattoos,” Wilson said.

“They’re less likely to be vegetarian or vegan - a finding I’ve replicated many times in many different samples – and they’re also less likely to vote Green, Te Pāti Māori or Labour.”

Wilson and colleagues had earlier found students with higher scores for psychopathic traits tended to study commerce and, to a lesser extent, law.

Specifically, they picked jobs that boosted personal earning potential – so were less likely to work in public service – and liked hierarchical organisations, “because there’s a ladder for them to climb and more opportunities for goodies”, he said.

“They are more likely to do this through lying and cheating, backstabbing or throwing colleagues under the bus.”

The Canadian criminal psychologist Professor Robert Hare suggested as much in his famous book Snakes in Suits.

It explored how psychopaths in the corporate world applied instinctive manipulation techniques to business, to become part of a group sometimes known as the “successful psychopaths”.

Tamatea still thought of the psychopathic CEO as a somewhat misleading stereotype.

“There are lots of people who are ruthless but aren’t psychopathic – we call them assholes, and they don’t need to have a pathology to meet that criteria,” he said.

Psychopaths, he said, were better marked for being instrumental - and especially seeking occupations that enabled or indulged their behaviour.

“Working as a firefighter or joining the military – anything that involves an element of risk – might be exactly the right place for these folks.”

Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter.

Sir Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter might be Hollywood’s poster psychopath, but Jeremy Renner’s reckless and war-addicted Sergeant William James in 2008′s The Hurt Locker lay arguably closer to the truth.

In some cases, psychopaths could even be company assets: whether by showing the possibilities of work by pushing boundaries, or creating office empires for others to join.

“But if their self-interest is threatened, they can leave a lot of damage behind, if not just through horrible treatment of people.”

And workplace psychopaths weren’t always successful: one recent New Zealand study found these traits could be a hindrance, even if they did come with a sense of “fearless dominance”.

Can psychopaths be helped?

As our understanding has evolved, we’ve edged closer to answering a fascinating question: Can psychopathy be treated?

“We still don’t know enough at this point,” Victoria University psychology lecturer Associate Professor Hedwig Eisenbarth said.

To date, few treatment programmes have targeted psychopathy, and broader prison-based programmes had delivered mixed results.

More generally, there was some evidence to suggest a “multi-modal approach” focused on empathy or emotional regulation could help.

There was also potential in systemically treating what were called “callous unemotional traits” in children, which could lead to psychopathy in later life.

“There’s a real skew in research that rubber-stamps psychopathy as a criminal issue,” Tamatea said, “but if it’s treated as a health issue, it means we need to rethink our response”.

Many other giant questions waited to be solved.

One was whether psychopathy was indeed an overwhelmingly male phenomenon, with Eisenbarth pointing to some studies suggesting little gender difference in some correlative factors.

Are people born psychopaths?

Victoria University psychologist Professor Marc Wilson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

“It has also been suggested that sociopathy may be ‘acquired’, while psychopathy is often thought of being born,” Wilson said.

“Certainly, psychopathy appears to be at least partly genetic and heritable: if your father has psychopathic traits, you’re more likely to have them too.

“At the same time, like many psychological attributes, there’s likely to be a socialisation component.”

Above all sat perhaps the biggest quandary: how to properly conceptualise, and then assess, psychopathy.

“If we can solve these two issues,” Wilson said, “then the next challenge is getting a handle on how common this thing is.”

Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.