Just as I was making this realization, thanks to a number of resources on the topic, it seemed that much of the rest of the world was beginning to make the same realization. More and more stories related to the neuroscience of moral choice were coming out everywhere I looked. And dramas and books centering on psychopaths – perhaps the most fascinating examples of the stark difference between some humans and others in how they make moral choices – were attracting large audiences.

So I started this blog in order to help amplify this awakening to a new understanding about the factors underlying moral choice and, in turn, the types of events we refer to as “evil.”

Here on the blog, I’ve featured many stories that highlight the growing knowledge base at the intersection of neuroscience and morality. And today I read a quote that sums up well my feeling about this area of knowledge:

“It’s a field that’s waiting for a big revolution sometime soon.”

The quote is from Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor in Practical Ethics at Duke University’s Department of Philosophy and Kenan Institute for Ethics. And it comes from an article by Health and Science reporter Elizabeth Landau called “How your brain makes moral judgments” posted on CNN.com today as part of its “Inside Your Brain” series.

Landau’s article features a nice selection of ideas and research studies in this area of the neuroscience of morality. It demonstrates, yet again, that we do seem to be on the cusp of the revolution in the field to which Sinnott-Armstrong refers – and which this blog exists to help, in some small measure, to bring about – and explores the implications of that revolution.

It covers a variety of studies, relating to which areas of the brain do what when people make moral decisions, by some of the top researchers in the field, such as Joshua Greene and Adrian Raine.

It specifically discusses what is different in the relevant brain circuits in psychopaths as compared with others, a topic covered extensively on this site, as well as in autism.

And in one of its more fascinating aspects, it discusses how interventions in brain processes can manipulate moral judgments. For instance, it talks about research by Rebecca Saxe, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT and associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, in which the application of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to a particular area of the brain led to a temporary shift in response when making moral judgments.

In the article, Sinnott-Armstrong is quoted regarding one of the most controversial aspects of ponerology, saying that he “thinks one day there could be treatments directly developed for the brain in extreme cases, such as criminal psychopaths.”

“‘It’s possible that if we understand the neural circuits that underlie psychopaths and their behavior, we can use medications and magnetic stimulation to change their behavior,’ he said.

Such techniques might not work as well as behavioral training programs, however, he said.”

The article also talks about how different brain areas may be involved in different kinds of moral judgments and whether there may be cross-cultural differences in moral judgment.

All in all, a very worthwhile article for those interested in these topics and yet another example of the increasing recognition of this crucial area of study.

Apparently, Saturday Night Live did too, as they led off this weekend’s episode with a sketch in which this very question is asked.

Now, I am not claiming that George Zimmerman is a psychopath or has any other specific conscience-reducing disorder. I really have no ability to make a judgment on that. However, the conversation about his romantic situation did lead me to explain to my conversation partner that those that are psychopaths or do have certain related disorders are notorious for their ability to attract many romantic and sexual relationships. I mentioned some of the fascinating research, which I cover in my foundational page about psychopathy, about just how successful some of history’s most ruthless killers have been in spreading their genes.

Well, as so often happens after a deep discussion about an intriguing topic, it wasn’t more than a couple of days before a new, highly relevant story emerged in the news.

A 25-year-old woman named Star told Rolling Stone magazine that she plans to marry the now 79-year-old infamous mastermind of numerous murders, Charles Manson, who remains locked up in prison. Apparently, Star moved near the prison 6 years ago, when she was 19, so she could spend more time with Manson.

CNN also covered this story, interviewing the woman (who says her attraction to Manson was initially sparked by his environmentalism, not his crimes, which she only really became aware of later, but which did not dissuade her from her attraction.)

Now, Manson himself denies that they will be getting married. But the interesting thing is that, whether or not the marriage actually happens, a young woman would actually want people to believe it will.

What makes this story meaningful is that it is far from an isolated case. In his heyday, Manson was often surrounded by young women drawn to his charisma and aura. And he isn’t the only person associated with mass murder or serial killing to elicit such admiration. To offer just one more example among many, Ted Bundy was viewed as extremely charming and employed his skill for attracting young women in the course of carrying out his crimes.

This is an important topic. The ability of psychopaths and others with reduced conscience to attract mates has a number of implications and consequences:

1. It reinforces a sense of glamor about such individuals and their value systems.
2. It may increase their social standing.
3. It practically assists them in the commission of some of their crimes.
4. It leads to an increase in the proportion of their genes in the population’s overall gene pool.
5. It causes havoc for the partners and especially the children that must live with the consequences of these relationships.

I realize that there are men who are drawn to ruthless women and that is also an important topic to consider. But the Manson and Bundy examples – and, perhaps, to a lesser extent, the Zimmerman example – raise the question of why women are attracted to men of this kind.

Well, another coincidence that occurred in the wake of my conversation about this topic relates to that question. A few days after the discussion, through a completely different avenue, I ended up on the Wikipedia page for the topic hybristophilia.

Hybristophilia is described as:

“a paraphilia of the predatory type in which sexual arousal, facilitation, and attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent upon being with a partner known to have committed an outrage, cheating, lying, known infidelities or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery.”

Apparently the term stems from the Greek word hybrizein, which means “to commit an outrage against someone” (and which, itself, stems from the word hubris) and philo meaning “having a strong affinity/preference for.”

The page even mentions the many female admirers that Bundy and Manson attracted as examples.

After reading that page, I was reminded of yet another relevant example.

As a result of running this website, I was recently sent a copy of the book Survived by One: The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer, which is written, along with Robert Hanlon, a clinical neuropsychologist specialized in working with violent criminals, by a man named Tom Odle, who remains in an Illinois prison (after initially being placed on death row, before Illinois commuted all death sentences) for killing his entire immediate family – his parents and three siblings – in 1985. Odle has been diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder by one forensic psychiatrist and with Borderline Personality Disorder with Anti-social features by another.

At several points in the book, he describes how women have contacted him on death row and in prison, impressed and attracted by what he has done.

“People write me letters, especially girls and women wanting to be my friend and congratulating me on doing something that they had only thought about doing because they were mistreated and abused, also. There was also some kind of fan club for me…I liked the attention I was getting, and I even reconnected with an old friend I had a crush on for years. She wrote to me, so I wrote back, and we found each other in a new light.”

And later…

“I also responded to letters from girls who managed to find my address and wrote to tell me how cool they thought I was because I had murdered my parents. That was one thing I ate up at that time because it diminished my responsibility and guilt.”

Odle had women come visit him in person and begin relationships with him while he was on death row, as well. One of those relationships even led to a short-lived marriage.

So it was fascinating to learn that there is actually a term to describe this behavior – hybristophilia. And the Wikipedia page on that topic was also fascinating because it offers some theories about why such attractions occur.

Then, just this weekend, in the wake of the Manson girlfriend story, Yahoo featured a video by Discovery News about this very topic entitled “Why Psychopaths Turn Women On.” It even mentions the term hybristophilia and Bundy’s admirers, as well as those of other serial killers. It then speculates on some of the reasons behind this attraction or fetish.

Mate selection is a crucial driver of evolution. When a person selects another person as a mate, they are, in essence, voting for that person’s traits to become more prominent in humanity’s future. And they help make sure those traits do become more prominent in more than one way simultaneously.

Biologically, they help the person pass on their genes to their children. Developmentally, they ensure the existence of children shaped by parenting based in that person’s values – or by parental abuse or neglect as a consequence of those values. Socially, they may send a message that such traits are attractive, possibly influencing others to see an incentive in exhibiting them.

This is why, even though such relationships might seem like personal situations separate from our own lives, all of us should care when we see people with reduced empathy and conscience attracting mates. This phenomenon has, historically, had a surprisingly significant impact on the state of our world today. We must live in neighborhoods and communities with people deeply influenced by such relationships. And it may well be one of the mechanisms by which the health and sustainability of humanity continues to be threatened.

That evening, on his CNN program, Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper discussed with a number of guests the events of the hearing and Castro’s behavior during it, including his persistent shirking of responsibility. Throughout the show, the topic of psychopathy was front and center. In fact, the words “psychopath” or “psychopathy” were used 19 times during the episode. And, unlike in many cases, they were used appropriately and accurately.

What was most heartening was that Cooper, as well as several of his guests, exhibited a genuine understanding of how important it is to expose the public to and educate them about the true nature of psychopaths. A number of important lessons about them were conveyed during the episode.

The focus on psychopathy was evident right from the get-go. At the beginning of the show, before playing the first footage from the hearing, Cooper prefaced it by saying:

“Now it’s very rare to see someone who may be a true psychopath justify their crimes. Today in court on live television, we saw just that.”

After the footage played, Cooper first spoke with reporter Pamela Brown and started the interview by asking her:

“What struck you the most in the court today? Because watching this, I just found it — don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this, hearing this man who — we’re going to hear more from experts ahead, but I mean, his — I mean, he seems to be a psychopath that he actually believes these things that he was saying.”

After the segment with Brown ended, Cooper played a clip from the hearing where Castro appears to blame his victims even while denying doing so.

He then asked former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole about the clip. She responded (watch  :38-1:11 in above video):

“He’s absolutely blaming the three survivors. He’s taking no responsibility for his behavior. And that’s very classic psychopathy. We were – all of us – witnessing, in my opinion, a classic psychopath today…He’s not out of touch with reality, he knows right from wrong, the rules don’t apply for him and the hallmark again is this inability to empathize or feel guilt. It was all about him today. All about him.”

Cooper then asked O’Toole to explain why the prosecution’s forensic psychiatrist stated that Castro has no mental illness. O’Toole explained that this is accurate since Castro is not delusional or psychotic and knew right from wrong. (watch 1:11-2:15 in above video)

“Psychopath is not a mental illness. Psychopath is a personality disorder, it’s not a mental illness. We sometimes confuse those two, but someone who’s mentally ill may not understand the nature or the consequences of their actions. Not the case with Ariel Castro.”

Cooper then turned to Dr. Drew Pinsky, who agreed fully with O’Toole, stating that Castro is a “full-fledged psychopath.” Dr. Drew said (watch 3:47-4:03 in above video ):

“When you listen to this guy your brain just goes out of kilt, like how could he possibly be this way. I see the astonishment on your face, Anderson. And it is astonishing when you hear how a psychopath thinks and then you see what they have done to other people and don’t seem to be able to understand that.”

Cooper’s response:

“Well, that — I mean, that’s why I do think it’s important to — you know, as hard as it was, important to actually listen and see this guy’s face because it’s rare to actually see a psychopath — you know, you see them in movies and stuff and they’re kind of — you know, an actor kind of make — this is apparently, it seems like a true psychopath and just the coldness of it, it was — just stunning to watch. And you found it hard to watch.”

Later in the episode, attorney Mark Geragos called into question the value of Castro’s sentencing hearing for the public, referring to it, from a legal perspective, as “a parade of lunacy.” But Cooper stood his ground:

“I found — I mean, maybe just because I work in television I’m interested in people’s stories and try to understand people, and Mary Ellen, I want to talk to you about this, but I do find it valuable to look into the face of a psychopath…And to actually identify and say you know what? There are psychopaths among them — among us, this is what it looks like.”

At this point, while very glad to see some public education on the issue, I worried that perhaps Cooper was misleading people a bit into thinking that psychopaths generally are violent abductors like Castro. But he soon assuaged that concern.

O’Toole spoke further about how stunning the psychopath’s bald-faced lying and manipulation is.

Dr. Drew agreed with Cooper’s response to Geragos, saying:

“I think they have done a public service by taking a good, hard look at this guy. These people tend to be manipulative, charming. They are in many of our lives. If you — you cannot believe what many people say and if you see any evidence that someone is behaving inappropriately you must act no matter what they say and really be suspicious.

A lot of people lie in our country, a lot of people have sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies and you’re looking quite squarely in the face of it tonight. There it is. That’s how they think. They don’t understand emotions. They only act as if they had emotions because they have none.”

And then Cooper made the point I was hoping he’d make and, in light of the book Snakes in Suits, made it very appropriately:

“And I — you know, I think that’s a good point, Dr. Drew, because you put that guy in a suit, and he could be — look, I mean, he could be a college professor. He could be anybody that you run across at any point of the day.”

The point was then made that, in her speech at the sentencing hearing, one of Castro’s victims, Michelle Knight, mentioned how Castro would go to church each week before coming home to his captives chained up in his house…

– an incredible example of the double life that people like Castro can pull off for years.

In a later segment, Cooper interviewed Rebecca Bailey, the personal therapist of Jaycee Dugard, another woman who was abducted as a child and whose rescue, after 18 years of captivity, made headlines in 2009. Bailey made some key points about the psychopath’s remorselessness, stating:

“I was saying earlier that’s a psychopath in there, they never have to say they’re sorry. They never feel it. They never have to experience it. That’s part of the seduction of being a psychopath in my mind.”

Cooper then reinforced the crucial lesson of how difficult psychopaths can be to detect, asking her:

“And Rebecca, you’ve written about what parents can tell their kids and how to keep kids safe. Do you think there’s value? Because, I mean, I found there value today in looking in this man’s eyes, seeing this man’s face, and seeing that you know what, this is what a psychopath looks like and it’s not necessarily on the face of it someone you would pick out of a lineup as being a monster.”

Bailey responded:

“I agree. Absolutely. That’s why we say the notion of stranger danger doesn’t really work because there is no absolute prototype of what they look like.”

Kudos to Anderson Cooper and his staff for using this high-profile event to shed some light on the realities of psychopathy. In under an hour, he and his guests managed to get across several of the most important lessons about psychopaths that the public should know, including that:

• Most psychopaths do not resemble the sensationalized psychopaths of the movies, such as Hannibal Lecter. There is no particular look that can allow us to easily detect them. They could truly look like anybody and, often, they are the people you’d least suspect from appearances. We need to be aware that they are simply around us in our everyday lives. They are also in positions where you might not expect to find them, including, frighteningly, powerful positions.

  To quote Cooper speaking about Ariel Castro again, because I think the quote’s message is so crucial:

  “…you put that guy in a suit, and he could be — look, I mean, he could be a college professor. He could be anybody that you run across at any point of the day.”

  Professor, indeed. Or CEO, lawyer, surgeon, police officer or even religious leader. Check out the top 10 jobs that attract psychopaths according to Kevin Dutton in The Wisdom of Psychopaths.

• They can lead double (or even more) lives, fooling people by presenting different personas in different social circles. In some of their “lives,” they may even pretend to be highly moral, engaging in religious or charitable (think Jerry Sandusky) endeavors.
• They are fully in touch with reality and aware of what is considered right and wrong – in other words, not “mentally ill” – but simply choose to ignore this distinction in pursuit of that which, due to their personality disorder, they value.
• They simply do not experience and cannot relate with the normal range of human emotions. They will, however, mimic the outward expressions of many emotions to trick others into believing that they experience and understand them.
• They feel no remorse for their actions or negligence no matter how much harm is consequently incurred by others.
• They often manage to evade being confronted regarding their actions at all.
• When they are confronted regarding their actions, they are skilled at employing “patho-semantics,” the clever, manipulative use of language, in order to avoid responsibility and sometimes to frame others, including their victims themselves.
• Even when lying, they can appear extremely convincing because of their ability to project strong belief in their own stories.
• The psychopath’s evasions and manipulations can have a powerful befuddling – or to use, once again, the word that Anderson Cooper used – stunning effect on the average person. As Dr. Drew put it, engaging what I believe are some highly technical terms, “your brain just goes out of kilt” watching and listening to them.

The entire transcript of this episode of AC360 is available here.

More clips from the episode are available here on the AC360 Blog.

Our last post focused on Raine’s essay “The Criminal Mind,” featured in the April 27, 2013 Wall Street Journal, in which he discussed how advances in our understanding of the genetic, neurological and environmental bases of violence are influencing our view of and approach to crime.

Now another large media outlet, CNN, has run not one, but two segments featuring Raine’s work.

In a segment entitled “The Anatomy of Violence: A look inside the minds of killers,” CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta talked to Raine and discussed his work’s possible relevance in understanding why the Boston Marathon bombings occurred.

The segment opens with footage of the bombings, over which Gupta says:

“In the wake of tragedy come the inevitable questions. What makes a killer? Is there a switch that turns on a rampage? And why? Why would someone do this?”

Adrian Raine then appears on the screen and says that to simply label a person that commits such acts “evil” is “13th-century thinking.” Gupta introduces Raine, explaining that Raine believes there are “biological explanations for violence” and Raine then explains why he believes that brain dysfunction may partly explain the Boston Marathon bombings.

One interesting condition that Raine mentions that he found relevant, given that the older of the two brothers charged with the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was a very skilled boxer, is a recognized brain abnormality called Cavum Septum Pellucidum. Raine says that this condition, in which a maldeveloped limbic system fails to normally put pressure on and thus fuse the leaflets of the Septum Pellucidum, predisposes to a psychopathic personality marked by fearlessness and the ability to commit remorseless violence. For whatever it is worth, he says it has also been found in boxers.

In fact, in reading Wikipedia’s page about Cavum Septum Pellucidum, I became aware that perhaps the most famous fictional boxer of all time, Rocky Balboa, was specifically told in Rocky V that he had this very condition.

I could only find video of the scene in which Rocky receives this diagnosis online in Italian. And the translation has “pellucidum” apparently incorrectly transformed into “pelliculum,” which may be why the poster put a question mark at the end of the video’s title of “Cavum Septum Pelliculum?” You can see an English translation here. But here is the clip.

Gupta then shows us, using imagery from a psychopath’s brain, the smaller amygdalae found in psychopaths in Raine’s research, which also contribute to the fearlessness and disinhibition that could enable one to commit harmful acts like the Boston bombings.

Gupta also discussed the possible link between Raine’s work and the Boston Marathon bombings in another segment on the CNN program The Lead with Jake Tapper.

During the segment, which begins with the lower third title again saying “The Anatomy of Violence: A look inside the minds of killers,” host Tapper says, in reference to those bombings, that we are trying to “understand this unmitigated evil.” In that spirit, he asks Gupta about the bombers, Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev themselves, as well as about the three men later arrested for having attempted to help Dzhokar cover up his involvement. Gupta mentions having spoken to Adrian Raine about this topic and says it may be relevant to understand that Dzhokar and the three arrested later, all being just 19 years old, may have had a combination of fully developed and fueled emotional brain centers along with not-yet-fully-developed judgment centers in their frontal lobes.

The title in the lower third then changes to “The Mind of a Terror Suspect: Could brain chemistry have played role in bombings?”

Tapper raises the issue of whether defense attorneys will use our increased insight into the genetic and neurological underpinnings of harmful behavior to argue that their clients’ actions should be excused. Gupta calls our advancing understanding of the biological roots of crime and violence “an emerging science” and then offers two examples that really highlight the difficulty of assigning appropriate levels of blame to those that commit harmful acts while suffering from certain biological conditions.

• First, Gupta mentions that Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, in which a mother’s drinking during pregnancy harms the developing fetus’ brain, leads that baby in later life to have a much higher likelihood of committing crimes and a nineteen times greater chance than otherwise of ending up in prison.
• Gupta also mentions how a brain tumor can drastically change an otherwise normally-functioning person’s behavior.

This is one of the first times I have seen ponerologic material discussed so explicitly on CNN. However, it isn’t the first. For instance:

• In the wake of the Newtown school shootings, I saw Erin Burnett interview Dr. James Fallon about the biological markers of psychopathy and whether he expected them to be discovered post-mortem in shooter Adam Lanza.

• I also saw a recent segment in which anchor Don Lemon intereviewed criminal profiler Jim Clemente and forensic psychiatrist Helen Morrison about the prevalence of sociopathy. (I tried to find video of this latter segment to share on this site but it seems it was never posted online. However, the transcript of the segment can be found about 1/4 of the way down the page of this transcript of Lemon’s entire show that night.)

But it was really nice to see Sanjay Gupta, who I believe is deservedly highly regarded as a physician, scientist and journalist, covering this topic from a professional and medical perspective. This is the type of coverage I would love to see more of on CNN and similar networks. And I’m glad that I have seen a lot more of it in the past few months than I can remember ever seeing before.