From Aeon: “Virtually everything you think you know about psychopathy has been thoroughly debunked. Why does this zombie idea live on?
In modern science, psychopaths are typically described with reference to concrete symptoms, like a lack of empathy, remorse and conscience, or more explicit behavioural signs, like predatory violence, pathological lying and impaired impulse control.
However, there’s a problem with this idea of psychopathy. While it has been researched across hundreds of empirical studies – especially since the explosion of research in the late-1990s – there is still remarkably little evidence that corroborates popularised claims about the diagnosis. Despite enthusiasm among researchers in the 1990s and 2000s, when a few studies seemed to validate theories about psychopathy, the past two decades have been sobering. Today, virtually every single claim about psychopathy has been either thoroughly refuted or failed to find empirical support in experimental settings. Psychopathy may not exist at all.”
