Are people with high IQs sociopaths by definition?

[CraigD]

:confused: I applaud TZK for his willingness to restate his premises when presented with compelling objections and conventional definitions, as he has done in post #1:

If

1) a sociopath is a person who deviates from "normal" behavior,

and

2) having an IQ of say even just 140 means that there is only one person as intelligent as you in about every 200 people... or higher iqs meaning even more people are needed to find someone as smart as you

and

3) IQ is measurable because it creates a difference in reaction to your environment when compared to people with different IQ's

Then

Isn't it the case that all people with high IQ's are sociopaths?

If

1) a sociopath is a person who is "characterized by a lack of normal empathy, conscience, and self-control"

and

2) Normal empathy, conscience and self-control arise from normal belief's and understanding of one's environment (A policeman doesn't feel remorse for giving a speeder a ticket because he feels it is the right thing to do)

and

3) having an IQ of say even just 140 means that there is only one person as intelligent as you in about every 200 people... or higher iqs meaning even more people are needed to find someone as smart as you

and

4) IQ is measurable because it creates a difference in reaction to your environment when compared to people with different IQ's

Then

C) Isn't it the case that all people with high IQ's are sociopaths?

(By way of a constructive critical comment on posting style, I recommend using the “reason for edit” field, and, for edits as substantial as the above, which defy description in a short field, including “edit:” or similar markup in the text of the post. The strikethrough tag can also be useful when substantially altering a post. Failure to follow these posting practices can result in reader confusion due to subsequent comments and reader recollection not matching the latest contents of a post.)

 

:naughty: Although TZK’s edits have addressed much of the criticism concerning “stereotypes, confusions, and inaccuracies due to unusual use of common terms” I offered in post #23, I believe his premises still contain substantial misconceptions.

2) Normal empathy, conscience and self-control arise from normal belief's and understanding of one's environment

Although seemingly an obvious statement of “common sense fact”, strong evidence and theory exists suggesting that this statement is less than fully accurate. “Understanding of one’s environment”, and to a lesser extent “beliefs”, describe primarily cognitive results – conclusions reached through more or less logical chains of conscious reasoning. Empathy and related traits characteristically lacking in sociopathy, however, are not ordinarily considered cognitive, but rather emotional phenomena. One does not have to (and, in the case of most people most of the time, few do) follow a chain of reason, such as

Killing the bunny is wrong because the purpose of life is life itself. The bunny brings you and others joy and does not harm you, therefore it should not be killed.

to empathically reject cute bunny killing.

 

I’ve noticed a trend in the literature of “hard”, neurology-based psychology toward favoring an increased role of non-cognitive vs. cognitive mental processes in determining behavior, and a recognition of a past bias in psychology toward assuming human behavior to be dominated by concrete, conscious reasoning processes. The result is an interesting trend to consider psychology and sociology to more appropriately branches of “behavioral zoology” than completely distinct disciplines.

4) IQ is measurable because it creates a difference in reaction to your environment when compared to people with different IQ's

This premise is unchanged from its original, and I retain my original objection to it. The term “IQ” refers to a very specific sort of intelligence measurement applicable to only a narrow range of reactions – those a person exhibits when taking an intelligence test – and is a poor (or at least indirect) predictor of how a person will react to the empathy-related situations definitive of sociopathy, so much so that many psychologists favor measurements such as “EQ” and “Emotional Intelligence (EI)” as predictors of these kinds of behavior.

C) Isn't it the case that all people with high IQ's are sociopaths?

Ignoring the ”all” qualifier, and the logical consequence that a single counter example – one person with a high IQ who is not a sociopath – is sufficient to disprove this proposition, the answer to this question remains, IMHO, “no”.

 

More, there’s a compelling body of theory and evidence that nearly the opposite is true: high intelligence correlates with a significantly lower incidence of dis-social behavior. Although this position suffered something of a tarnished reputation due to highly publicized support of it in Herrnstein and Murray’s controversial 1994 book “The Bell Curve”, many well-controlled studies have shown that dissocial behavior occurs most frequently in people with low intelligence. Most conclude that this is due to low-intelligence people having less of an ability to perceive, understand, and follow social rules.

 

The widespread popular stereotype of the “brilliant psychopath” is, I suspect, due in part to general public distrust of intellectuals, and sampling bias due to the relative over-reporting of cases of high-intelligence sociopaths. A sociopath with an IQ of 130 is more frightening, and hence more newsworthy, that one with an IQ of 70, although there exist more of the latter than the former. Also, many psychiatric diagnostic protocols explicitly exclude low-intelligence patients from diagnoses in the “sociopath family” of diagnoses, even when a characteristic lack of empathy, conscience and self-control otherwise indicates it.

[Pyrotex]

:( I applaud TZK for his willingness to restate his premises when presented with compelling objections and conventional definitions,....

I don't. Not in the slightest.

The compelling objections to his original definitions, assumptions and logic should have been obvious to anyone of, say, an IQ of 90. Just judging from TZK's vocabulary and voluminous syntax, I am persuaded he has an IQ well over 110.

 

Therefore, TZK knew from the very outset that his original position was bogus. As each of the compelling objections have been forced into the open, he has begrudgingly retreated to a position where his definitions, assumptions and logic are only SLIGHTLY LESS bogus and objectionable.

 

Sorry, Craig, but your conclusion that somehow TZK is "learning" how to "do logic" in baby steps, struggling so valiantly against his gargantuan intellectual challenges just doesn't hold any water.

 

We've seen TZK's ilk before. One could easily conclude that he is a full-blown Troll, totally aware of his tactics and strategies. He wastes your time just to prove that he can waste your time. He finds this entertaining. You should encourage this behavior of his ONLY if YOU also find it entertaining.

 

I don't.

[TZK]

It at least seems from the discussion that the proposition posed here is strained at the very least, so I'll pose a more likely and supportable association, that similarly can be supported purely by logic.

 

Are all sociopaths pedophiles by definition?

 

I think if you agree with the intent of this thread you would have to agree that it is quite likely. The inverse of the implication is provably true, and since the original proposition posits that implication is equivalence, then this is true by definition.

 

So, since the purpose of this thread is clearly to show that sociopathy is acceptable behavior, it would seem that the argument posed would make pedophilia similarly acceptable behavior.

 

Would you advocate in support of acceptance of pedophilia, TZK?

 

Logically true,

Buffy

 

What on earth are you talking about?

 

That's quite presumptive, no?

How would you classify an inteligent person that does not disregard social norms?

Or are you trying to say that such a person does not exist? Where do you draw the line?

 

Not really depending on your definitions of agreeing with social norms. There are several different types which I think should be separated.

 

I think a person can just give into social norms mostly because of social pressure. However people who do this do not realize it is what they are doing. Rather they simply fail to carefully investigate any arguments or information that might contradict whatever potentially seriously flawed argument they have heard to support a given social norm. The social pressure is what really convinces them that investigating it is a lost cause. Intelligent people are bound to shrug off the idea of assigning any logical value to social pressure.

 

Second a person might agree with a social norm, but only by coincidence. In other words they have decided upon the value of the social norm on their own, with arguments for it far surpassing and obsoleting arguments used by others who support the social norm. These people might completely reject the norm just based on the typical arguments for it. If you want to call this being in agreement with a social norm, then you might be right if it weren't for the fact that by the very nature of this type of "agreement" it wouldn't happen regarding EVERY social norm.

 

Third a society might be so advanced that you could ask a street tough for an argument justifying a social norm and he would give you the same argument as the most profound philosopher. This type of scenario doesn't happen on a large scale for the time being...

 

Today many social norms have been arrived upon haphazardly and intelligence allows people to overcome that. If you are picturing a woman with a 180 iq but a hatred of so much as changing a light bulb or dealing with anything remotely mechanical or logical, but who can get her boss fired at her job because of her ability to sway the opinions of others, then I would categorize that as the traditional sociopath. The kind that quietly dissents against social norms by manipulating them every which way.

[Buffy]

What on earth are you talking about?

 

It uses exactly the same logic as your original post, and makes about as much sense.

 

I'm glad you agree with me that your argument has enough holes to drive a tank through!

 

Trolls are sucky,

Buffy

[TZK]

It uses exactly the same logic as your original post, and makes about as much sense.

 

I'm glad you agree with me that your argument has enough holes to drive a tank through!

 

Trolls are sucky,

Buffy

 

No. Your argument doesn't even just have holes. There is nothing there for there to be holes in.. I repeat... What on earth are you talking about? What made you think that had any connection to my argument whatsoever?

 

I hope you do realize, that if you do not understand someones argument, that does not mean the person's argument consists of your lack of understanding of it. Arguments exist from a third person perspective, apart from you. If you see an argument and it doesn't make sense to you, it probably means you don't understand it the way it was meant to be understood.

 

So basically, this is the crux of the issue. Let's disregard all the side-line discussions about IQ and such.

 

To paraphrase, 'All intelligent people either openly disagree with social norms or do so when no one is looking'.

 

I disagree. Many intelligent people follow and believe in many if not all social norms of the society they are a part of.

Please note, I am not saying All intelligent people always agree with all social norms. I am saying that it is NOT TRUE that all intelligent people always disagree with all social norms.

 

Is you position that intelligent people disagree with some social norms, or all social norms?

How intelligent are the people that fit in this category?

 

My last post could just as easily be directed at you and respond to this save your last 2 questions...

 

I am saying they don't agree with all social norms. That is part of what makes the idea of norms so silly. You can't say it is bad to deviate from any norms because that would mean watching hockey instead of football is bad. So then you have to value some norms over others, which means you are back to philosophical discussions of morality and the fact that behavior deviates is meaningless. Once again you are just dealing with people who disagree with your moral code instead of some kind of deviant psychopath. "Criminals" can no longer be dehumanized the way they were under the absurd notion of sociopath.

 

How intelligent? Well the more intelligent you are talking about the more solid the argument. The brainpower, processing time, whatever you want to call it is going to be used to figure something out above and beyond what most people figure out. Either the person is going to step back and become logically inclined, or they are going to use it to accomplish any goal they want or they are going to use it to manipulate their surroundings to accomplish their goals.

[Buffy]

No. Your argument doesn't even just have holes. There is nothing there for there to be holes in.. I repeat... What on earth are you talking about? What made you think that had any connection to my argument whatsoever?

 

I hope you do realize, that if you do not understand someones argument, that does not mean the person's argument consists of your lack of understanding of it. Arguments exist from a third person perspective, apart from you. If you see an argument and it doesn't make sense to you, it probably means you don't understand it the way it was meant to be understood.

No. Your argument doesn't even just have holes. There is nothing there for there to be holes in.. I repeat... What on earth are you talking about? What made you think that had any connection to my argument whatsoever?

 

I hope you do realize, that if you do not understand someones argument, that does not mean the person's argument consists of your lack of understanding of it. Arguments exist from a third person perspective, apart from you. If you see an argument and it doesn't make sense to you, it probably means you don't understand it the way it was meant to be understood.

 

Need a mirror,

Buffy

[TZK]

:D I applaud TZK for his willingness to restate his premises when presented with compelling objections and conventional definitions, as he has done in post #1:(By way of a constructive critical comment on posting style, I recommend using the “reason for edit” field, and, for edits as substantial as the above, which defy description in a short field, including “edit:” or similar markup in the text of the post. The strikethrough tag can also be useful when substantially altering a post. Failure to follow these posting practices can result in reader confusion due to subsequent comments and reader recollection not matching the latest contents of a post.)

 

:D Although TZK’s edits have addressed much of the criticism concerning “stereotypes, confusions, and inaccuracies due to unusual use of common terms” I offered in post #23, I believe his premises still contain substantial misconceptions.Although seemingly an obvious statement of “common sense fact”, strong evidence and theory exists suggesting that this statement is less than fully accurate. “Understanding of one’s environment”, and to a lesser extent “beliefs”, describe primarily cognitive results – conclusions reached through more or less logical chains of conscious reasoning. Empathy and related traits characteristically lacking in sociopathy, however, are not ordinarily considered cognitive, but rather emotional phenomena. One does not have to (and, in the case of most people most of the time, few do) follow a chain of reason, such as to empathically reject cute bunny killing.

 

I’ve noticed a trend in the literature of “hard”, neurology-based psychology toward favoring an increased role of non-cognitive vs. cognitive mental processes in determining behavior, and a recognition of a past bias in psychology toward assuming human behavior to be dominated by concrete, conscious reasoning processes. The result is an interesting trend to consider psychology and sociology to more appropriately branches of “behavioral zoology” than completely distinct disciplines.This premise is unchanged from its original, and I retain my original objection to it. The term “IQ” refers to a very specific sort of intelligence measurement applicable to only a narrow range of reactions – those a person exhibits when taking an intelligence test – and is a poor (or at least indirect) predictor of how a person will react to the empathy-related situations definitive of sociopathy, so much so that many psychologists favor measurements such as “EQ” and “Emotional Intelligence (EI)” as predictors of these kinds of behavior.Ignoring the ”all” qualifier, and the logical consequence that a single counter example – one person with a high IQ who is not a sociopath – is sufficient to disprove this proposition, the answer to this question remains, IMHO, “no”.

 

More, there’s a compelling body of theory and evidence that nearly the opposite is true: high intelligence correlates with a significantly lower incidence of dis-social behavior. Although this position suffered something of a tarnished reputation due to highly publicized support of it in Herrnstein and Murray’s controversial 1994 book “The Bell Curve”, many well-controlled studies have shown that dissocial behavior occurs most frequently in people with low intelligence. Most conclude that this is due to low-intelligence people having less of an ability to perceive, understand, and follow social rules.

 

The widespread popular stereotype of the “brilliant psychopath” is, I suspect, due in part to general public distrust of intellectuals, and sampling bias due to the relative over-reporting of cases of high-intelligence sociopaths. A sociopath with an IQ of 130 is more frightening, and hence more newsworthy, that one with an IQ of 70, although there exist more of the latter than the former. Also, many psychiatric diagnostic protocols explicitly exclude low-intelligence patients from diagnoses in the “sociopath family” of diagnoses, even when a characteristic lack of empathy, conscience and self-control otherwise indicates it.

 

Perhaps if I didn't respond to but one person it should be you since you at least respond to counters by changing to your own counter argument. (or maybe cause I changed the first page instead of counter arguing in further posts?)

 

I did not mean to imply that "understanding of environment" and "beliefs" imply conscious chains of reasoning. To preface, I would instead include past experience, which I would equate to both emotional response and inductive reasoning. Should I edit more premises to be clear to anyone who might have different interpretations of what I say or just explain to each person separately in further posts what I mean?

 

I believe that a major factor in people's understanding of their environments and in their beliefs is their past experiences. I believe and have alluded to the idea that there is a common human brain that would group people with no remorse response and people that do have it as one and the same but with different past experiences.

 

I believe that a person's past experiences govern the emotions they feel to some degree in various situations. For example if you were made fun of the last time you were on a stage in front of many people, you might be scared the next time. If you lost a major source of stress relief the last time someone you knew died, then you might greatly fear the loss of something else you knew. However this one seems to have been preprogrammed into us by evolution (for understandable reasons). That does not necessarily mean however that it can not be deprogrammed from us if we see that some lost people don't really effect us that much long term or perhaps even worse may benefit us.

 

Here I draw a parallel to a similar emotion a child may have in relation to his "blanky". The blanky is warm and makes the child feel good. It relieves stress. But when older kids see the child with it, they make fun of him. The child's parents suggest he should part with his blanky for good, but the child feels anticipated remorse at the loss of the blanky. However his parents take it away and later the child feels he is better off since he no longer makes a bad impression on other children when he meets them. He makes a new friend that provides more stress relief than the blanky did. In the future the child must choose between staying in the small town he grew up in or moving to a big city to start a career. He has learned to either overcome his anticipated remorse, or better even feels none subconsciously believing that the new city will bring more good than harm.

 

It is no less feasible that this person might be tested to have no anticipated remorse response to doing something that he feels from experience will bring him more good than harm, whereas someone else may feel that it will harm him. But he is not different in some way, but rather his experiences were different. But most importantly, in order for him to have had experiences that overrode his remorse response, the world must have proven the lack of anticipated remorse good with regard to his ability to achieve his goals

 

Well. When I changed the premises, I hope you realized that intended net result was that the argument that sociopathy measures deviance stands. Therefore, it is implied that high IQ persons are sociopaths by virtue of the fact that they may deviate from normal behavior in any situation rather than just in situations relating to morality. The example I used before was of someone having a different political argument, perhaps believing that social security should be privatized. This would, according to the people who wanted social security to remain, disregard the feelings and rights blah blah (whatever other propaganda bs is in the typical sociopath definition) of those who might suffer because they did not want that or who may suffer due to their own or others inability to manage a retirement fund.

 

So if some average IQ people might have average EQ's because they spent their time doing something else, it is implied by my argument that whatever their greater intelligence was spent doing would cause them to differ in behavior from other people and that this difference would affect others.

 

Your argument that "the opposite is true" is deceptive IMO. You are referring to the idea that people of particularly low intelligence are likely to be sociopaths, and that people with higher intelligence than that are less likely. That means people of average intelligence, not high intelligence. I suggest that perhaps any correlation between intelligence and social deviance is not linear. Your argument and associated evidence does not reference statistical geniuses...

 

High intelligence sociopaths are more scary because deep down people know that a lot of social norms don't make much sense if you think about them carefully... and that maybe that high intelligence sociopath really just knows something we do not. For the same reason deep and intellectual villains are more entertaining, although when they are used for entertainment they are almost always defeated by a less complex hero who perhaps ignorantly embodies the argument that the purpose of life is life itself.

[Zythryn]

Ok, thank you for the clarification.

So, since you further explained your stance with:

I am saying they [inteligent people] don't agree with all social norms.

Are you then defining sociopaths as people that don't agree with every social norm?

[CraigD]

Is you position that intelligent people disagree with some social norms, or all social norms?

I am saying they don't agree with all social norms. That is part of what makes the idea of norms so silly. You can't say it is bad to deviate from any norms because that would mean watching hockey instead of football is bad. So then you have to value some norms over others, which means you are back to philosophical discussions of morality and the fact that behavior deviates is meaningless. Once again you are just dealing with people who disagree with your moral code instead of some kind of deviant psychopath. "Criminals" can no longer be dehumanized the way they were under the absurd notion of sociopath.

TZK is ignoring the wider clinical context of the diagnosis of soiciopathy, preferring as he has tended to throughout this thread to substitute his own, unusual definition.

 

According to the usual definition, a sociopath is not someone who does not share the cultural norm of preferring football to hockey, but someone who lacks the more common, cross-cultural norm of recognizing other humans and animals as being like him, and thus feels little negative emotional reaction when considering or after actually committing acts against others that most formal and informal social sanction systems oppose.

 

The diagnosis of sociopath, though it may be incorrectly made, is not absurd (contrary to reason or propriety). It is not synonymous with the sociological and legal label “criminal”. Most criminals are not sociopaths. Not all sociopaths will commit serious crimes.

So then you have to value some norms over others, which means you are back to philosophical discussions of morality and the fact that behavior deviates is meaningless.

Yes. Commonly and legally, some norms are more highly valued than others. Although how all and parts of society determine which are more or less valuable varies between cultures and time periods, and often involve discussions of philosophy and morality, I don’t see how one could label this process as “meaningless”, especially when its outcome can decide between in a particular individual and/or act being rewarded or punished.

Once again you are just dealing with people who disagree with your moral code instead of some kind of deviant psychopath.

Not precisely. A deviant – ignoring the term psychopath, which is not synonomous with “deviant” – is by definition one who exhibits behavior in specific designates high-importance areas different than the statistical social norm. That this “community standard” social norm agrees with the religious or secular moral code of many or most of the society, while not coincidental, is not what defines it as a social norm. Rather, it is a norm because it is common and ordinary.

"Criminals" can no longer be dehumanized the way they were under the absurd notion of sociopath.

As I noted above, only a small fraction of people accused or convicted of crimes are diagnosed as sociopaths, so the idea that a high proportion of criminals are dehumanized by this label is not factually supported.

 

Because society places a high value on empathy and compassion, traits in which sociopaths are by definition deficient, and because the clinical histories of such people rarely reveal that therapeutic efforts to correct these deficiencies are rarely successful, it is, IMHO, fair to say that sociopaths are commonly considered “less than human” – that is to say, dehumanized. There appears to me to be little possibility of most individuals believing otherwise, until improvements in neurophysiology provide therapies that are effective in treating the condition.

 

PS: TZK, you appear to have abandoned your implied claim that “all people with high IQ's are sociopaths”. In order to avoid possible confusion, can you confirm or deny that you have done so?

[robnibg]

Isn't a sociopath someone who can restrain their savage nature if they feel like it, but usually waits longer....more calculating....

[CraigD]

Isn't a sociopath someone who can restrain their savage nature if they feel like it, but usually waits longer....more calculating....

Although some older diagnostic criteria suggest this, I think the characterization more closely matches common fictional stereotypes than the real disorder and current diagnostic criteria, which usually include “poor impulse control”. (source: wikipedia article “psychopathy”). The diagnosis covers a wide range of personalities, however, and some people matching it are very careful and calculating, while others are almost completely without self-control.

[paigetheoracle]

Although some older diagnostic criteria suggest this, I think the characterization more closely matches common fictional stereotypes than the real disorder and current diagnostic criteria, which usually include “poor impulse control”. (source: wikipedia article “psychopathy”). The diagnosis covers a wide range of personalities, however, and some people matching it are very careful and calculating, while others are almost completely without self-control.

 

Wouldn't it be more accurate then to say that the more intelligent are calculating (The brains of the organisation) and the more obviously violent are just reactive? Both are sociopaths but one is more obvious (honest) in their behaviour whereas the other is more hidden? (One guy is arrested every Saturday night for getting into a fight and the other is the serial killer or mob boss, who either covers his tracks or incites other less savvy sociopaths to do their dirty work? Think Hitler and the brown shirts or any violent gang society).

[paigetheoracle]

Isn't a sociopath someone who can restrain their savage nature if they feel like it, but usually waits longer....more calculating....

 

Yes, thanks for coming in with that - now I can get my revenge!;):hihi::lol:

[CraigD]

Wouldn't it be more accurate then to say that the more intelligent are calculating (The brains of the organisation) and the more obviously violent are just reactive?

I’m confident there’s a correlation between impulse control and intelligence. However, there are serious problems with the use of intelligence as a psychiatric diagnostic criterion, stemming mostly from the misimpression that intelligence can be described with a single number – a “single-axial” rather than “multi-axial” or “multi-phasic” characteristic. Very impulsive people – sociopaths or others – may get high scores on various intelligence tests, while very un-impulsive, calculating people may get low ones.

 

Paige’s speculation seems to me to hint at this thread’s original claim: in short, that sociopathy usually, or even unavoidable, accompanies the characteristic measured by a Stanford-Binet IQ test or similar intelligence test. However, data appears to me to indicates something more the opposite: that people with better than average academic skills – what the SB and similar test primarily measures – are likely to have average or better social and emotional skills.

 

Psychopathy, sociopathy, Antisocial Personality Disorders – all terms used at various times to refer to the same range of psychiatric disorders – are characterized primarily by a near total deficit of one category of emotional responses, the one including empathy and remorse. It’s important, IMHO, to note several things about this profound and very dangerous disorder:

• It’s rare, but not very rare, occurring in about 2.1% of people in the US, and likely at about the same rate worldwide (source: Prevalence and Incidence of Anti-Social Personality Disorder - WrongDiagnosis.com)
  
• It’s not caused by reaching a intellectual ethical conclusion. Rather, like many profound personality disorders, it is strongly suspected to have an underlying neurophysical cause – possibly some sort of perinatal or early childhood brain trauma. Investigations searching for such a cause remain, however, inconclusive.
  
• Most people who commits acts commonly considered “psychopathic” – in particular unprovoked murder – are not sociopaths.
  
• Soldiers, members of genocidal groups, gang members, and other people who have occasion to kill people, sometimes many people, are not necessarily sociopaths, even though they may experience little empathy for those they kill, or remorse for those killings. The absence of these emotions in some circumstances is not a diagnostic indication of sociopathy – the absence of them in all circumstances, is.
  

(One guy is arrested every Saturday night for getting into a fight and the other is the serial killer or mob boss, who either covers his tracks or incites other less savvy sociopaths to do their dirty work? Think Hitler and the brown shirts or any violent gang society).

Noting the above, and from personal acquaintances with many people who frequently get into fights, a single serial killer, and reading about Hitler, brown shirts, and organized crime bosses and “soldiers”, my guess would be that, while the incidence of sociopathy in these groups is likely much higher than in the general population, not all such people are sociopaths.

[paigetheoracle]

I’m confident there’s a correlation between impulse control and intelligence. However, there are serious problems with the use of intelligence as a psychiatric diagnostic criterion, stemming mostly from the misimpression that intelligence can be described with a single number – a “single-axial” rather than “multi-axial” or “multi-phasic” characteristic. Very impulsive people – sociopaths or others – may get high scores on various intelligence tests, while very un-impulsive, calculating people may get low ones.

 

Paige’s speculation seems to me to hint at this thread’s original claim: in short, that sociopathy usually, or even unavoidable, accompanies the characteristic measured by a Stanford-Binet IQ test or similar intelligence test. However, data appears to me to indicates something more the opposite: that people with better than average academic skills – what the SB and similar test primarily measures – are likely to have average or better social and emotional skills.

 

Psychopathy, sociopathy, Antisocial Personality Disorders – all terms used at various times to refer to the same range of psychiatric disorders – are characterized primarily by a near total deficit of one category of emotional responses, the one including empathy and remorse. It’s important, IMHO, to note several things about this profound and very dangerous disorder:

• It’s rare, but not very rare, occurring in about 2.1% of people in the US, and likely at about the same rate worldwide (source: Prevalence and Incidence of Anti-Social Personality Disorder - WrongDiagnosis.com)
  
• It’s not caused by reaching a intellectual ethical conclusion. Rather, like many profound personality disorders, it is strongly suspected to have an underlying neurophysical cause – possibly some sort of perinatal or early childhood brain trauma. Investigations searching for such a cause remain, however, inconclusive.
  
• Most people who commits acts commonly considered “psychopathic” – in particular unprovoked murder – are not sociopaths.
  
• Soldiers, members of genocidal groups, gang members, and other people who have occasion to kill people, sometimes many people, are not necessarily sociopaths, even though they may experience little empathy for those they kill, or remorse for those killings. The absence of these emotions in some circumstances is not a diagnostic indication of sociopathy – the absence of them in all circumstances, is.
  

Noting the above, and from personal acquaintances with many people who frequently get into fights, a single serial killer, and reading about Hitler, brown shirts, and organized crime bosses and “soldiers”, my guess would be that, while the incidence of sociopathy in these groups is likely much higher than in the general population, not all such people are sociopaths.

 

You may be right about it clinically (chronic states) but I think the original poster and I are on about 'behaviour traits', which would include soldiers as quoted above at least in my opinion. I would agree that in reality such people are not the most intelligent because such behaviour works against their survival in the long run and destroys the quality of their lives but they don't have the insight to see this. As for brain trauma - what about people who go the opposite way and display prodigious talent instead? (Alzheimer patients who lose verbal skills but gain visual ones as compensation or brain injury patients who do the same?).

 

I personally think it's a question of orientation i.e. trying to compensate for limitations or fighting against them (refusal to accept barriers (change) versus working round them (seeing them as challenges)).

[Pyrotex]

Isn't a sociopath someone who can restrain their savage nature if they feel like it, but usually waits longer....more calculating....

Well, if you want, you can make up any definition you want. TZK seems to think this is valid.

 

However, if you reference medical literature, you find that a sociopath does NOT necessarily have a "savage nature". What defines a sociopath is (using my own words):

 

a lack of what we would call, "conscience";

a total disregard for social norms of "right" and "wrong";

a lack of compassion for other people's pain and discomfort;

a casual willingness to manipulate others by unethical means;

a tendency to think of other people as merely animated objects.

 

What makes these add up to "sociopathy" rather than "retardation" or "brain damage" is that the sociopath is typically of normal intelligence, and is quite aware of "right", "wrong" and morality. The sociopath, may in fact, pretend to be moral if it furthers his goals. One might say that any moral behavior on the part of the sociopath is always a calculated pretense, or social camoflage.

[paigetheoracle]

Well, if you want, you can make up any definition you want. TZK seems to think this is valid.

 

However, if you reference medical literature, you find that a sociopath does NOT necessarily have a "savage nature". What defines a sociopath is (using my own words):

 

a lack of what we would call, "conscience";

a total disregard for social norms of "right" and "wrong";

a lack of compassion for other people's pain and discomfort;

a casual willingness to manipulate others by unethical means;

a tendency to think of other people as merely animated objects.

 

What makes these add up to "sociopathy" rather than "retardation" or "brain damage" is that the sociopath is typically of normal intelligence, and is quite aware of "right", "wrong" and morality. The sociopath, may in fact, pretend to be moral if it furthers his goals. One might say that any moral behavior on the part of the sociopath is always a calculated pretense, or social camoflage.

 

So it's mental behaviour not physical action that makes a sociopath what they are? That means I could be a compassionate mass murderer, like Dr Shipman in the UK, who killed people to relieve them of their suffering and only later to relieve them of the burden of their money.

 

From what few sociopaths I've read about or the one I've met, that would seem to be a pretty fair definition. By the way a shared definition doesn't stop people arguing about how they personally define something in reality (inclusive/exclusive grouping). In my thread in Linguistics this is what I'm trying to get at - at least in part.