Scientists have identified five key personality traits characteristic of famous psychopaths, including serial killer Ted Bundy, disgraced con man Bernie Madoff and robber Clyde Barrow.
American scientists looked for common features in six men – Ted Bundy, Bernie Madoff, Clyde Barrow, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Chuck Yeager, who were previously identified as psychopaths.
They discovered that Bundy, Madoff, and Barrow were psychopaths guilty of callousness, manipulativeness, dishonesty, arrogance, and cruelty.
However, Bond, Holmes and Yeager are most likely not psychopaths and may have been misidentified in the past due to their fearlessness and boldness, experts say.
The psychopathic traits common to serial killer Ted Bundy, mugger Clyde Barrow, and con artist Bernie Madoff were callousness, manipulativeness, dishonesty, and cruelty.
PSYCHOPATHS OR JUST FEARLESS? CHALLENGERS
REAL PEOPLE
Ted Bundy (1946-1989): Ted Bundy was one of the most prolific serial killers. He confessed to 36 murders, but in fact there may be more. He said of himself, “I’m the most heartless son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.”
Clyde Barrow (1910-1934): Together with Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow committed crimes that spanned several US states for almost two years. Bonnie and Clyde were shot and killed by ambush officers near Siles, Bienville County, Louisiana on May 23, 1934.
Bernie Madoff (1938–2021): Madoff, referred to as the “Money Ted Bundy”, was a US con artist who ran the largest Ponzi scheme worth around $64.8 billion. He died in prison last year.
Chuck Yeager (1923–2020): “fearless” USAF pilot who, in 1947, became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.
IMAGINATE PEOPLE
– James Bond: Ian Fleming’s legendary British secret agent licensed to kill (but not to break traffic laws).
– Sherlock Holmes: a fictional detective story created by British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The study was conducted by Christina Krego of Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, and Thomas Widiger of the University of Kentucky.
“There is still a serious debate about what are the main features of psychopathy,” they write in their article published in Personality Disorders: Theory, Research and Treatment.
“One approach to addressing this issue is to identify traits that are present in people who are said to be real or even prototypical examples of psychopathy.”
According to the team, Ted Bundy, Clyde Barrow, Bernie Madoff, pilot Chuck Yeager and two fictional people – James Bond and Sherlock Holmes – were previously considered psychopaths.
Ted Bundy was a serial killer, rapist, and necrophile who attacked and killed scores of young women in the 1970s, while Madoff is one of the most notorious “snakes in costume” who carried out what many consider to be the largest Ponzi scheme and financial fraud in the USA. history.
As for Barrow, he committed over 100 robberies, many of which were committed recklessly and impulsively, along with his partner Bonnie Parker.
“He ruthlessly killed police officers, guards and a cellmate, as well as law-abiding citizens,” the authors say. “He was said to be charming and attractive, and at the time he was considered a folk hero in some newspapers and in several subsequent ‘Hollywood’ films.”
For the study, the team prepared three to five page case histories for each of the six men.
The researchers then recruited volunteers to read these case histories and rate each of the men on a wide range of traits, which were listed on the various psychopathy scales used in previous studies.
Eight traits were found to be common to all six men: low vulnerability, low shyness, low anxiety, fearlessness, boldness, assertiveness, dominance, and thrill seeking.
However, these traits can also be used to describe people who are not considered psychopaths, suggesting that past studies that have used them as measures of psychopathy may not be reliable.
NOT A PSYCHOPAT: British secret agent James Bond is portrayed by Daniel Craig in a still from the 2006 film Casino Royale.
NOT A PSYCHOPAT: Chuck Yeager (pictured) was a “fearless” US Air Force pilot who learned to fly faster than the speed of sound in 1947. Here Yeager sits on an Air Force plane in 1948.
NOT PSYCHOPATIC: Pictured Benedict Cumberbatch portrays Sherlock Holmes for the BBC
Meanwhile, five undeniably psychopathic traits were associated with antagonism – callousness, manipulativeness, dishonesty, arrogance, and cruelty.
Yeager, Bond, and Holmes did not display these antagonistic traits, so they cannot be called psychopaths in the team’s opinion.
These three men may have been misidentified as psychopaths in the past simply because of their fearlessness, courage, assertiveness, and dominance—traits that are common to psychopaths, but not exceptional.
Today, Yeager, Bond and Holmes are also considered heroes, although “the hero and the psychopath are branches of the same branch,” the authors note.
“From this point of view, the hero and the psychopath may not be branches of the same branch, but completely independent branches,” say the team.
PSYCHOPAT: Clyde Barrow (1909-1934) sits on the front fender of a car with a machine gun in his hands.
PSYCHOPAT: Bernard Madoff leaves US Federal Court after his bail hearing January 14, 2009 in New York.
PSYCHOPAT: Ted Bundy (pictured) was a serial killer, rapist and necrophiliac who attacked and killed numerous young women in the 1970s.
Yeager was the least psychopathic of the six, showing only thrill seeking and low anxiety (traits that are not exclusive to psychopaths).
Interestingly, Madoff also scored high on many aspects of integrity, including commitment to achievement and competence.
Madoff robbed 37,000 victims in 136 countries of $64.8 billion, taking money from some to pay others, over the course of two decades before finally being arrested in 2008 after his two adult sons turned in his.
Many of his victims were from the Jewish community, where Madoff was a major philanthropist.
DECODING THE PSYCHOPATIC LOOK: AI CAN DETECT SIGNS OF PSYCHOPATHY BASED ON YOUR HEAD MOVEMENTS, RESEARCH FINDS
Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can detect signs of psychopathy based on head movements.
Using head tracking algorithms, New Mexico found evidence that male prisoners with higher levels of psychopathy held their heads more still during police interrogations.
The algorithms measured the head movements of 507 prisoners during recorded conversations lasting between one and two hours.
To estimate the head pose, all video frames were extracted as separate images, which allowed the algorithm to work with the face in each frame of the video stream.
To determine levels of psychopathy, the team used a general assessment called the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), originally developed in the 1970s by Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare.
Using a 20-item checklist, the PCL-R rates a person from one to 40. Anyone who scores 25 or more in the UK is considered a psychopath.
The panel claims that the PCL-R is reliable for male offenders, male forensic psychiatric patients, and female offenders.
“As expected, latency indicates that people with higher levels of psychopathic traits have a more fixed head position focused directly on the camera/interviewer than people with low levels of psychopathic traits,” the experts say in their paper.
More: AI can detect psychopathy based on head movements, study says