In recent decades, psychopathy is something that’s captured the
attention of both academics and the mainstream. Psychopaths play big
roles in movies and even occasionally on public radio, and there’s evidence that a few of them may be in your company’s boardroom right this minute.
But
emerging research is changing how experts understand the condition.
“There was a time when people thought of psychopaths as this sort of
unique group of individuals — as in, there were normal people, and there
were psychopaths,” said Georgetown University psychologist Abigail
Marsh. “But now we’re finding that psychopathic traits work the same as
other mental-illness symptoms. So with psychopathy, like almost anything
else, people will have more or fewer of those traits, and so you have
people at one end and most people in the middle.” Marsh calls this the
“caring continuum,” and its existence, she said, “begs the question:
What’s at the other end of the curve?”
New research she just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests
an answer: If the dark, scary end of the caring continuum is inhabited
by psychopaths, way down at the other end is a group of what she calls
“anti-psychopaths” — ultra-do-gooders who are extraordinarily
compassionate, prosocial, and empathetic. MORE
