Recently, the article by Rasmus Rosenberg Larsen has made waves, attempting a complete refutation of the concept of psychopathy and its designation as a “zombie idea.” The author suggests that psychopathy does not exist in principle, and that the scientific community’s interest in this idea is fueled only by the concept’s cultural popularity. But are such claims actually valid, or is this just another attempt to ride the hype by denying the obvious? Let’s look at everything in order.
First of all, the author refers to his own meta-analysis, in which he finds that, according to research data, psychopathic personalities perform no worse than ordinary people on empathy tests. However, it is extremely important to note that modern science does not claim an absolute inability of psychopaths to empathize. Often, the discussion is merely about a deficit in affective empathy (the ability to feel the emotions of others when observing them) to varying degrees, while simultaneously noting the frequent complete preservation of cognitive empathy (simply the ability to read others’ emotions without feeling them). The author of the article primarily uses empathy as a monolithic construct, which is fundamentally incorrect.
Furthermore, such results may have a rather interesting explanation: psychopathy may consist not in the absence of empathy itself, but merely in the absence of its automatic activation. For instance, in one experiment, psychopaths were found to have the same level of mirror neuron activation (which is typically associated with empathy) as ordinary people. But this only occurred when they were tasked with demonstrating it intentionally! As for spontaneous empathy, in that case, they demonstrated a clear deficit in neural activity. Another experiment similarly proved the ability of psychopaths to take the perspective of others (understand their state and thoughts), but only when it is an intentional task. At the same time, automatic (reflexive) perspective-taking occurs only in low-psychopathic personalities.
The author also uses psychopathy itself as a monolithic construct, without paying particular attention to its individual traits and the connections between them. This is also an extremely incorrect approach, since in modern research, results and conclusions are often presented within the framework of multifactorial models of psychopathy, which are quite functional.
There are also moments where the author has outright lied. He claims that the frequently cited studies in favor of the concept of psychopathy—for example, neurobiologist James Blair’s paper on the mechanism of violence inhibition, which normally deters a person from harming others, the presence of moral and psychological impairments in psychopaths, as well as certain neurophysiological studies—are merely isolated pieces of evidence that, because of this, cannot be taken seriously. However, Blair’s main positions and his violence inhibitor model, such as the reduced ability of violent and psychopathic personalities to perceive distress signals (sadness, fear, etc.) from others, have been reproduced by dozens of studies! Furthermore, there is already a vast amount of evidence regarding the link between structural brain dysfunction and psychopathy.
Finally, the author decided not to mention at all the strongest argument in favor of the concept of psychopathy, namely its extremely high predictive power regarding violent crime, and especially murder. This, for example, is confirmed by numerous studies and meta-analyses by criminologist Matt DeLisi. Moreover, so far, there is not a single study that refutes such a connection. As forensic psychologist John Marshall notes in one of his articles, psychopathy is the strongest indicator of violence, it is difficult to ignore in the matter of predicting such behavior, and the fact that the “average” criminal who commits a murder demonstrates moderate manifestations of psychopathy emphasizes that this is not just a rare subtype of killers, but a general trend for all cases of lethal violence.
