PonerologyNews.com

Could the way you walk be a tip-off to a violent person that you are an easy target?

A new study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence reinforces the fact that, under certain conditions, this might be the case.

The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), the current gold standard test for psychopathy, assesses a person on a variety of elements that are classified into two main categories called “factors.” The first, Factor 1, consists of the person’s interpersonal or affective traits, basically measuring the extent to which they have an aggressive narcissistic personality. The second, Factor 2, consists of the person’s actual behavior and measures the extent to which they exhibit an antisocial or socially deviant lifestyle.

Previous research has shown that certain aspects of body language, including walking style, are characteristic of victims and that those scoring high on the Factor 1 measures of the PCL-R are more accurate than others in judging someone’s vulnerability simply from watching them walk.

Now, in “Psychopathy and Victim Selection: The Use of Gait as a Cue to Vulnerability,” researchers Angela Book, Kimberly Costello and Joseph A. Camilleri studied 47 inmates at a maximum security penitentiary in Ontario, Canada and found that not only, as expected, do the inmates scoring high on PCL-R Factor 1 more accurately than others judge people’s vulnerability by observing their gait, but they are also more likely to actually explicitly mention the victim’s gait in explaining why they perceived them as vulnerable. (more…)

One of the most important aspects of ponerology – a crucial one in seeking answers regarding why people act (or fail to act) in ways that do harm to others – is investigation into what goes on in the brain when people relate with each other in various ways. We might term such investigation “social neuroscience.”

Well there is actually a research journal by that very name. And that journal, Social Neuroscience, has recently honed in on topics at the very heart of ponerology. Its latest issue – Volume 8, Issue 2 – is a special issue focusing on aggression and violence.

It features an editorial entitled “The social cognitive neuroscience of aggression, violence, and psychopathy” followed by six studies that consider the links between neurological markers and responses and harmful behavior.

Here is a summary of the six studies in this special issue. (more…)

Clients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are notoriously difficult to treat. This is so much the case that many therapists are loathe to even attempt the feat since their methods have such frustratingly poor success rates.

However, in the many years I’ve spent considering and researching BPD, I have come across two therapeutic approaches that seem to offer a glimmer of hope.

• Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
• Schema Therapy

Well, now one professor is using the latter method, Schema Therapy, to treat some of the only clients considered even more complex and resistant than those with BPD – psychopaths. (more…)

One of the most pressing and controversial questions in ponerology is this:

Are there any biological markers by which we can identify people likely to harm others?

For example, as Dylan Stableford of Yahoo News puts it:

Can you spot evil in an X-ray?

Stableford’s article, entitled “‘Dark Patch’ Visible in Brain Scans of Killers and Rapists, Neurologist Claims,” tells of University of Bremen neurologist Dr. Gerhard Roth’s claim that, indeed, we can.

In fact, Roth claims to have identified “the region of the brain where evil is formed and where it lurks.” (more…)