They treat these horrific pictures as if they were neutral pictures, no difference whatsoever between them. He found that for most prisoners, the emotional pictures prompted a very different reaction than the pictures of a table or chair.ĭ: But with psychopaths there's no difference.
A picture of a rape, say, versus the picture of a table, and again measured their physical response. SPIEGEL: In another experiment, Hare showed prisoners both highly emotional and totally neutral pictures. U: (Singing) Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland. And he found that the behavior of the psychopaths was different.ĭ: Most people show lots of emotional arousal - anticipatory fear, anxiety - while they're waiting for the shock to occur psychopaths, hardly any. Then he measured their heart rate to see if that information bothered them. For example, he recruited dozens of prisoners, put them in chairs and told them that in 30 seconds he was going to zap them with an electrical shock. SPIEGEL: Now, Hare didn't just interview prisoners in order to understand psychopathic personality. U: Remorse for me is a very distant word, because - me and remorse is more like a kick-myself-in-the-stomach word, where I've been there and done that and didn't like it.ĭ: He's trying to make sense out of something he really doesn't understand. For example, as we watched one of the videos he'd recorded, he pointed out how the prisoner was talking about his own capacity for remorse. SPIEGEL: And so, Hare set out to dissect the personality traits that might predispose people to criminality. As, you know, we have individual differences in intelligence, well, we should have individual differences in the personality traits that are responsible or related to crime. He says, as a psychologist, when he looked at people he just saw these incredible differences in temperament.ĭ: Differences in impulsivity, differences in the capacity for empathy, for feeling guilt. He thought inborn personality was important. SPIEGEL: But Hare didn't really buy this. When you're born, just a blank - you're a blank slate and I can train you to be anything you want.
Criminals were made, not born.ĭ: In those days, social factors, environmental factors were the explanation for all crime. You see, at that point, Hare says, there was a very clear consensus about where crime came from. SPIEGEL: Hare began collecting these interviews in the 1960s, at a time when research on psychopaths was considered both obscure and basically irrelevant to understanding crime. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for I pack a. If he doesn't, you know, that's just the way it goes. Someone rapes your wife, molests your kid, and then a guy's got to do that. U: Anyway, I was going on about justifiable murder. And many, like this man, were eventually judged to be psychopaths. All of the interviews are with prisoners. SPIEGEL: This is one of more than a thousand videos recorded by psychologist Robert Hare over the course of his research. I checked out the boots to see if they're black and shiny, but then that would be too easy. How does the prisoner know that the student is a real student? He could be a cop. The student is there to conduct an interview but suddenly the prisoner starts to grill him. SPIEGEL: The prisoner in this video sits in a bare room. SPIEGEL: For decades, the Canadian psychologist Robert Hare worked to understand psychopathic personalities.
He says he's now worried the test is not being used properly. Today, NPR's Alix Spiegel introduces us to the psychologist who created the test. NORRIS: Yesterday, we heard Robert Dixon's story. NORRIS: How do I convince somebody that I'm not a psychopath? I don't know. Dixon points out, that's a hard label to get rid of. He's been denied parole in large part because he took a test. There's a man in prison in California named Robert Dixon.
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