Presented By: Department of Psychology
Clinical Science Brown Bag: Inside the Mind of a Psychopath
Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Assistant Professor, Yale University
Psychopaths have long captured the imagination. The names of famous psychopaths, like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, evoke a morbid curiosity. The crimes committed by these men are so vicious, so unfathomably cruel that it’s impossible to imagine how someone could do such a thing. The severed heads kept as mementos in Bundy’s apartment or the partially eaten corpses stowed away in Dahmer’s refrigerator are the result of simply inexplicable personalities. So, it makes sense that the psychopath is often portrayed as cold-blooded and fearless, and most of all, as a predator incapable of human emotion. However, recent research suggests that this may not be totally accurate. There now is substantial evidence that psychopaths can experience emotions under the right circumstances. During today’s talk, I will present a series of studies that highlight the role of attention in moderating the fearless of psychopathic individuals, as well as, a translation of this new perspective for the treatment of psychopathic offenders.
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