3 Things Psychopaths Can Teach You About Being a Happier Person

When psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths, we’re actually referring to a specific set of individuals with a distinct subset of personality characteristics such as: ruthlessness, fearlessness, charm, charisma, coolness under pressure, focus, and of course, those signature deficits in conscious empathy. The first conclusion you can arrive at, Eric, is that psychopathy is not an “all or nothing” construct. It’s not a case that you’re either a psychopath, or you’re not. Some people clearly are; those people who are at the high end of the spectrum.

Turn down the signals to the amygdala, of course, and, as Ahmed Karim and his colleagues at the University of Tübingen did, to the brain’s morality neighborhood, and you’re well on the way to giving someone a “psychopath makeover.”

It’s as if you’ve had a six pack of beer, but you don’t feel the tiredness and sluggishness that go with it. Your inhibitions are gone, but you’re very very alert… A lot of us drive around with a foot hovering over the brake pedal too much. Psychopaths drive around without any thought to the brake pedal at all, with their foot flooring the gas. It was a beautiful feeling, I must say. It was really really good.

In order to be successful, Eric, you need the requisite skill set, plus the right kind of personality traits to optimally operationalize that skill set. I’m not saying, as some of the media have pointed out, “Dutton is saying that psychopaths are brilliant.” I’m not. If you are a pure psychopath, say a Ted Bundy, and you’re unable to regulate those dials on your mixing desk, you are going to screw your life up, and the life of anybody you come into contact with. What I am saying is, at the right level, in the right combination, and in the right context, certain psychopathic characteristics can really benefit you.

Confidence, charisma, ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, risk taking… that is the James Bond profile, there’s no doubt about it. That is 007. In his time, amongst other things, he’s skied off the edge of a mountain. Used crocodiles as stepping stones. Killed a man in a public lavatory and hurled another into a shark pit with a suitcase containing $2 million. He is an icon of icy ingenuity, lord of the beatifically brutal. James Bond’s brain packs some of the most psychopathic neurochemistry in cinematic history, and all, of course, for Queen and country.

Back in 2010, Jonason (then at New Mexico State University) and his colleagues published a paper titled “Who Is James Bond? The Dark Triad as an Agentic Social Style,” in which they showed that men with a specific triumvirate of personality traits— the stratospheric self-esteem of narcissism; the fearlessness, ruthlessness, impulsivity, and thrill-seeking of psychopathy; and the deceitfulness and exploitativeness of Machiavellianism— can actually do pretty well for themselves out there in certain echelons of society.

In the presence of the necessary skill set, certain psychopathic characteristics actually make you better at your job. Let’s say that you’ve got a skill set to be a top surgeon. You’ve got the manual dexterity, you’ve got the spacial awareness, you’ve the medical know-how, but you cannot dispassionately disengage from the person that you are operating on. If you don’t have that last personality characteristic, then you’re not going to make it as a top surgeon. A great neurosurgeon told me, rather chillingly, “As soon as you start emotionally identifying with a person that you’re operating on, you are walking a professional tightrope.” That kind of ability to dispassionately disengage in surgery, the narcissistic self-confidence in law, the ruthless streak to fire someone in business… They’re all psychopathic personality characteristics. These are three examples of how certain psychopathic characteristics can really help you.

…Diana Falkenbach and Maria Tsoukalas, at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, have recently begun studying the incidence of so-called adaptive psychopathic characteristics in what they term “hero populations”: in front-line professions such as law enforcement, the military, and the rescue services, for example.

There are a number of similarities between the psychopathic brain state and the Buddhist brain state. Increased rationality, the idea of living in the present, and keeping cool under pressure. Psychopaths show significant greater activation in the left three frontal regions of their brains compared to non-psychopaths. There’s also cerebral symmetry in psychopaths associated with a lot of reduction of anxiety, enhanced positive effect, increased focus of attention, and also orientation to reward. There are elements in that kind of profile in elevated spiritual states as well. Richard Davis discovered the same kind of profile in Buddhist monks when they’re immersed in deep meditation.

Since going into this field, I focus on the positive a lot more. This is something that psychopaths do. People say, “I want to put in for a raise, but I’m really scared.” Why are you scared? You’re scared because you’re afraid that you’re not going to get it. You’re scared because you think that the boss is going to say “no.” You’re afraid of how embarrassing that would be, and how undervalued that would make you feel. Instead, focus on the fact that you might get it. If you think along those lines and act accordingly, you are more likely to get that thing you want.

But then, just when Wieden was about to give up and go to sleep, he started thinking about a murderer named Gary Gilmore who had been executed in 1977. “He just popped into my mind,” Wieden says. “And so it’s the middle of the night, and I’m sitting at my desk, and I’m thinking about how Gilmore died. This was in Utah, and they dragged Gilmore out in front of the firing squad. Before they put the hood over his head, the chaplain asks Gilmore if he has any last words. And he pauses and he says: ‘Let’s do it.’ And I remember thinking, ‘That is so… courageous.’ Here’s this guy calling for his own death. And then, the next thing I know, I’m thinking about my shoe commercials. And so I start playing around with the words, and I realized that I didn’t like the way it was said, actually, so I made it a little different. I wrote ‘Just Do It’ on a piece of paper and as soon as I saw it, I knew. That was my slogan.”

Psychopaths aren’t ruled by emotions. In fact, they take a step back and surgically remove emotion from the situation. When stressing over a difficult task, ask yourself: what would I do if I didn’t feel this way? What would I do if I didn’t give a damn what other people thought? What would I do if it just didn’t matter?

Next time you don’t want to do something, stop, pause, and ask yourself this, “Since when did I need to feel like doing something in order to do it?” And then just do it. It’s very very powerful. If we needed to feel like doing something in order to do it, we wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning, right? You just bear that little mantra in mind for a month, and your life really changes.

It has actually worn off, Eric, although if you talk to my wife, she might tell you otherwise.