The Sociopath Next Door

I first read about The Sociopath Next Door on (where else?) a Salon article/interview with the author (I also read the letters to Salon in part criticizing the author’s work). The book didn’t contribute much more than the interview. The essential point is that about sociopaths are people who do not have a conscience and are unable to feel guilt or remorse about anything. They can do whatever they want without feeling bad about it. They are also unable to feel any of the higher emotions: love, empathy, happiness and instead are consumed by lower emotions such as anger and jealousy. Because they can’t feel the thrill of engaging in normal human relationships, they are often left to look for stimulation in other ways. These include alcohol and drugs but also human games.
What I hadn’t realized before is that sociopaths have very different motivations, some want wealth or power, while others are just motivated by playing mind games with others. What unites them is their ability to kill and hurt without any psychological repercussions. though the author only hints at it, I wouldn’t be surprised if people like Rumsfeld and Cheney were classic sociopaths. Oftentimes, by the way, they are able to seem quite charming and enthrall people.
The author presents several ways of identifying a sociopath, the one that seemed most interesting is that sociopaths often play the “pity game”, making others feel sorry for them and thus excuse their behavior. Yep, that might describe Bush as well.
According to the author about 4% of Americans are sociopaths (her methodology in arriving at that number is disputed by one of the Salon’s correspondents) which of course prompted me to look back into my friends and acquaintances and try to identify those who seem to meet the profile. Interestingly, I could only think of one person whom the sociopath criteria may apply to. She was a very charming and intelligent woman, a social activist of sorts and someone whom I’m sure everyone saw (sees) as an idealist. And yet, when pushed came to shove I found her ethics problematic, her behavior not quite in sinc with what she portrayed herself to be. I broke my relationship with her over an ethical issue, something which I’ve rarely done, but looking back it was more a question of my not really trusting her. I’m not a particularly good judge of character in most instances, but perhaps my insticts with sociopaths are not bad 🙂
The author goes into the advantages of being a sociopath, and she does touch the issue of genetics and evolution, but she didn’t do a good job linking the issues together. It’s clear that sociopathy has a strong genetic component (over 50% according to some tests), and also that it has adaptive advantages. Sociopaths are risk takers par excellence, which is often associated with reproductive success – at least as long as the frequency of the extreme-risk takers is low. Indeed, it seems quite clear (though the author didn’t explore this issue) that sociopathy is a frequency dependent balanced polymorphism. It would make sense that in less complex societies their ratio would be lower, as sociopaths seem to be at an advantage in large societies where reciprocal relationships are less important. The author does quote studies that show a much lower ratio of sociopath in the far east, but those figures have been questioned.
The author spends way too much time dealing with the issue of whether it’s better to be a sociopath, or rather, whether a normal person would chose to not have a conscience if they could. That seems such a non-issue to anyone with a conscience – of course you wouldn’t chose to not have one, your conscience is part of what makes you who you are – that it’s a waste of time reading through her (poor) reasoning on the subject.
In all, I very much enjoyed the book and I’d recommend it as an interesting and fairly quick reading.