Psychopaths Have a Poor Sense of Smell

[Octafish]

Psychopaths Have Poor Sense of Smell, Study Finds

Megan Gannon, News Editor
LiveScience.com Date: 20 September 2012 Time: 01:50 PM ET

New research suggests we may be able to sniff out psychopaths by their poor scores on a smell test.

In the study, psychologists at Macquarie University in Australia tested the noses of more than 70 college-age participants, all without criminal records. The researchers had the subjects try to identify common odors (like orange, coffee and leather) and distinguish between different scents.

The participants then were given personality tests to check for their level of empathy and psychopathic tendencies. For example, the subjects were asked to rate on a 5-point scale how much they agreed with statements such as: "I purposely flatter people to get them on my side;" "People sometimes say that I'm cold-hearted;" and "I have broken into a building or vehicle in order to steal something or vandalize."

Psycopathy is a personality disorder marked by superficial charm, a lack of empathy and impulsive tendencies.

SNIP...

Criminal psychopaths' speech patterns can also give them away, according to research presented in 2011. When speaking of their crimes, psychopaths use less emotion and focus more on their basic needs than non-psychopaths, that research found.

CONTINUED... http://www.livescience.com/23350-psychopaths-have-poor-sense-of-smell-study-finds.html

Explains a lot, actually. May it prove useful in United States Federal Court, sooner, rather than later.

[formercia]

1. Junior enjoyed farting to watch peoples' reaction.

They didn't call him Caligula for nothing.

[Octafish]

2. That is psychotic.

A fart is one's own personal germ warfare system. Certainly, not much is released. But, in some cases, the effect can be very effective.

Something else about Bush farts: It was the subject of the only book on the shelves at their vacation home. From The Guardian:

But, as one of W's Yalie frat brothers tells Kelley, it's not the substance abuse in Bush's past that's disturbing, it's the "lack of substance ... Georgie, as we called him, had absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn't interested in ideas or in books or causes. He didn't travel; he didn't read the newspapers; he didn't watch the news; he didn't even go to the movies. How anyone got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me." New Yorker writer Brendan Gill recalls roaming the Kennebunkport compound one night while staying there looking for a book to read - the only title he could find was The Fart Book.

According to Kelley, the Bushes aggressively maintain their all-American family image by scrubbing government files of embarrassing facts, stonewalling journalists, and terrorising critics. "Some people felt that George's past did not seep out and embarrass him and his family," she writes of the White House's current Bush, "because he was protected by a coterie of former CIA men with an allegiance to his father." An Austin, Texas political consultant named Peck Young told Kelley that when a woman claiming to have been a call girl from Midland showed up in Austin with "intimate knowledge" of W during his oil wildcatting days, she was approached by what she described as "intelligence types" and left town abruptly. According to Young, the men "made her realise that it was better to turn tricks in Midland than to stop breathing".

Tragic for the nation and planet. On a personal level, sad, too.

[Systematic Chaos]

4. The FART BOOK?

Sweet Jesus and Mary.

[yardwork]

5. We need to remember all this in 2016 when they may try running JEB.

Maybe by then the CIA will have other loyalties.

[Systematic Chaos]

3. Well, consider me highly reassured.

My smell and hearing are both so acute that it even freaks me out at times.

Makes up for my horrible vision, I guess.

[HangOnKids]

9. As a SEVERE Myopic

-9.25 and -8.75 I can relate. My hearing always freaks other people out!

[jsr]

6. No wonder they think their shit is perfume

[flamingdem]

12. You mean Republicans? nt

[Iggo]

7. So do smokers.

[Zalatix]

8. I call bullshit on this test.

WTF kind of idiot would respond to statements like that by agreeing? Surely the people who made this study are joking. If you were a psychopath with even a drop of smarts, you would say "hell no" to AT LEAST ONE of the statements, particularly "I have broken into a building or vehicle in order to steal something or vandalize."

IMO the key to sniffing (LOL) out the most important part of psychopathy is testing their empathy. You can do that by showing empathy-generating scenarios and gauging their nonverbal reactions.

Much as I despise reading nonverbal communication, their body's nonverbal responses are the biggest indicator. Someone with empathy will have different heart rate and brain neuron reactions to the sight of a poor kid begging for money, than someone without empathy.

Psychopathy means several things but if you see an empathetic nonverbal response to seeing a hungry kid begging, you've got empathy... and a "diagnosis" (or whatever you call it) of psychopathy is right out.

As I said... I call bullshit on this test.

[Skidmore]

10. It is true. Used to work with

a neuropsychologist and one of the symptoms they looked for for frontal lobe damage with head injury was a damaged sense of smell. They actually look at a whole collection behavior, verbal and nonverbal, in diagnosing. It is not as simplistic as you would posit.

[Zalatix]

13. Does that invariably or almost invariably coincide with a lack of compassion?

I'm not at all claiming to be a neuropsychologist because frankly I was too cool for that school. (I am kidding about part of I just said. )

[Snotcicles]

11. My fathers fart joke

"It doesn't smell so bad, but it smarts the eyes"

He's been dead twenty years and he still cracks me up.

"My father, when he went, made my childhood a gift of half century" Antonio Porchia