Why some don’t think of the long term damage
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Dear friends,
It is helpful to understand the various types of minds and how people think. There are people who are ‘wired’ differently than ourselves and they can look for short term results and immediate gratification instead of long term benefit. In fact they consistently get themselves into trouble and difficulties because they always make decisions based on short term benefit and forego long term problems that might arise from their decisions. In fact you can logically point out to them the detriment of their decisions and show them many examples and logically they comprehend. They understand and acknowledge, but come the next day, their choices again are short term bringing damage to themselves and others around them. They do this over and repeatedly to the bafflement of those around them. I find that both interesting and yet disturbing. I’ve come across a few persons like that and it prompted me to read more about this type of mindset.
Psychopathy is a fairly common mental disorder that is often associated with serial killers and a lack of empathy for fellow human beings but it also includes many types of people who do not kill. Yet, the causes of psychopathy are not well understood. The workings of the minds of serial killers, for instance, have been a mystery for some time. Instant gratification without fearing long term consequences is a key factor in this.
New research from a Harvard University-led team has recently come to light that could possibly help us better understand how psychopaths make their decisions. It turns out that psychopaths are born with inherently different brain “wiring”, which is the key to their behaviour. This type of psychopathic behaviour includes all types of people and personalities.
It’s interesting how the human body can affect our behaviour so deeply. Many people suffer from psychopathy at many different levels. Not all are killers; some are also thieves, conmen, gamblers, and so on. Their strongest trait is perhaps their lack of conscience and distress at another sentient being’s suffering. It is also difficult to get a straight answer out of them. They will never answer straight and you dance in circles with them. Do you know anyone who could be suffering from psychopathy?
Do read this article and I hope we can learn something about this.
Tsem Rinpoche
The Brains of Psychopaths Have Been Found to Have “Dysfunctional Wiring”
By Robin Andrew 06/07/2017, 18:08
Defining what a psychopath is no easy feat. Franki’s/Shutterstock
Psychopaths are a misunderstood bunch. Some are evil, some are not – but to most, they seem to essentially be peculiar humans with unintelligible motives.
A new study by a Harvard University-led team has shed some light on the underlying causes of psychopathy. Explaining their findings in the journal Neuron, these researchers describe how they uncovered the neurological “wiring” that makes psychopaths so impulsive and sometimes dangerously reckless.
Although it’s previously been assumed that it’s their lack of empathy that engenders reckless choices and actions, this team have concluded that it’s the appeal of the short-term reward that’s really motivating their decisions.
“Because it’s the choices of psychopaths that cause so much trouble, we’ve been trying to understand what goes on in their brains when they make decisions that involve trade-offs between the costs and benefits of action,” senior author Josh Buckholtz, an associate professor of psychology, said in a statement.
In order to achieve this, his team took a mobile brain scanner to 50 incarcerated prison inmates that had shown psychopathic tendencies in the past. While hooked up to the MRI machine, the prisoners were then given a “delayed gratification” test, wherein they had to decide whether to take less money from a pile sooner, or wait and get more money hours down the line.
The more impulsive and thus more psychopathic individuals required gratification far sooner, as expected. Individuals with high psychopathy scores showed greater activity in the region of the brain associated with immediate reward.
This study aims to give “psychopathy” a more rigid definition. Frankie’s/Shutterstock
As they pondered on their decisions, the MRI scanners were looking at two key regions of the brain – one that is associated with “mental time travel”, which allows us to think about the future consequences of our actions, and one that is associated with more immediate decision-making.
The team found that the wiring between these two sections of the brain was far weaker in the more psychopathic inmates. Remarkably, the correlation between the strength of the wiring and the tendency towards impulsivity was so strong that they could use the brain scans alone to correctly predict how many times the inmates had been convicted of crimes.
Psychopathy is a poorly defined “condition”.
It’s not identifiable or describable by a sole characteristic; rather, it’s the tendency of a person to show a range of related traits and behaviours. These include a lack of empathy, an ability to become emotionally detached, a poor sense of self-preservation, has anti-authority proclivities, a lack of fear, and unconscientiousness.
Psychopaths are also more likely than others to be exhibit narcissism, just as they’re more likely to be Machiavellian (manipulative). When you think about it, capitalism is an ideal playground for ambitious psychopaths – climbing the social or career ladders without a thought to those pushed out of the way.
Still, none of these traits automatically make psychopaths “crazy” or “evil”, and in fact, although it does make those with high psychopathic tendencies appear to be somewhat ruthless and perhaps cold.
Violent psychopaths can be both good and evil, so to speak – the example of James Bond and Dr. No are often cited in this case. Non-violent psychopaths have incredibly useful roles in society for the most part. Think negotiators, surgeons, spies, astronauts, mountaineers and, funnily enough, journalists.
As you can see, it’s complicated. Ultimately then, this study is something of a game-changer.
The team hope that by finding one clearly defined neurological driver of psychopathy, the definition of the condition becomes more scientifically rigorous and tangible.
It helps to highlights the fact that the brains of psychopaths aren’t unsolvable, impenetrable enigmas. They’re just wired differently, and that in itself doesn’t necessarily make them evil or monsters – it just makes them different.
“They’re not aliens,” Buckholtz concludes. “They’re people who make bad decisions.”
Source: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/brains-psychopaths-dysfunctional-wiring/all/
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Thank you for sharing this interesting article.Psychopathy is a fairly common mental disorder that is often associated with serial killers and lack of empathy for fellow human beings but it also includes many type of people who do not kill
Many people suffer from psychopathy at different level.By reading this article we can learn something and understanding about Psychopathy.
Every human is unique in their own way. It’s an interesting article to learn about human behaviour and how our mind function. Psychopath is apparently inherent brain. If so I wonder can drugs help them? While psychopath can be good or evil then how can we help those who are evil? I believe we some how we inherited certain behaviour from our previous imprint and therefore portraying it in this life. I guess it about understanding ourselves better, accept and keep transforming to be better.
It’s a very interesting article about human behavior. We are unaware that there are some people around us who suffer from psychopathy from many levels. Though these people might not be killers, but they treat others without conscience. The new research explained that psychopaths are born with different brain “wiring” which causes them to be very impulsive, want short term gratification and make bad decision without conscience. We then can understand better that certain people with this trait are born with this wiring and understand that these people aren’t evil or monstrous, but just their bodies making them different. Since the working of the mind of the psychopaths no longer a mystery now, then hopefully in future there will be more medical breakthrough to remedy the “wiring” and minimize the suffering caused by psychopaths in the community.
I think this article is nice and interesting. I feel we must help the psychopaths, showing care and help, because they won’t hurt others or themselves
Psychopath is started since birth, when we are born, we already inherited these mind set, then where does we inherited it from? Before we are born, where are we? Who are we? And how does this mind form? It does explained this when Buddha Shakyamuni talk about reincarnation and we bring forward our mind of this life to the next, so that means our Psychopath mind are actually inherited from our past life. It became our habituation.
I found this online:
The traditional view on the treatment of psychopaths is that treatment just doesn’t work. Study after study has shown that the behaviors of the psychopath do not change in response to psychoanalysis, group therapy, client-centered therapy, psychodrama, psychosurgery, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or drug therapy.
So it seems like there is no 100% cure for Psychopath yet, hopefully soon the medical team will find the cure to Psychopath so that it reduces the criminal cases and harming to other lives.
Watching those horror movie the serial killer kill many people without conscious just to satify their own desire and power are they mental disorder. It raise many question to know why they become psychopathy and can they be getting well by medical help?
I heard about those serial killer before the get dead pushiment, the prists or monk will come to prison to counser those prisoner. Religion are social with the mind, through the meditation process, it might able to claim the mind for those have mental disorder beside to get help from medical. Thank you rinpoche sharing this article and let people how they suffer from the psychopathy.
Short term benefit or long term benefit, which one to choose? In the end we need to think of what is the outcome. Depending on our karma we will be drawn more to one or the other and when we are lucky to know Buddha’s teachings, we can find a way out.
Karma builds up and we don’t know which karma we have collected in previous lifes so it is best to engage in purification practices to help us to go into the right direction and be able to engage in more beneficial actions and practices for ourselves and for others. Here is a link to the Vajrasattva purification practice. https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/prayers-and-sadhanas/an-important-purification-practice.html
May all be safe from engaging in negative and selfish actions and falling into the three lower realms.
I have the same question with Pastor Henry that “what horrible deeds such people did in their previous lives for them to have the karma to take rebirth as psychopaths and socialpath”. In addition even the person take rebirth as a human, they still continue doing the negative action and continue create negative Karma. This is scary!
But I do believe that we should just accepted who they are and they might suffer and experience dissatisfaction too. With this, we need to extend compassionate to them, hoping one of the days they can open the seed of compassionate too and help them in their next life.
Scientists have yet to discover the full potential of human brains, through examinations, they found that the active area in human brain is less than 15%, which mean that there are another 85% left unused. Amazing!
There are factors that will make a person become a psychopath, etc., in-born, confronted trauma events in the past and living environment. As a Buddhist I’ll add in Karma which is the main cause that linked every other factors. What we get is what we did.
Human’s mind is the most complicating thing to analyze. Whatever problem with the brain will cause much harm to the person. I think that, psychopath victims are getting more common in this society. We can read on papers, social medias of people or kids being slaughtered for organs and some are more horrifying like baby been cook as dish! It’s so barbaric.
It’s really pitiful to see people fall into these syndrome and the healing chances were very mild. I’m wondering what make this people so inhuman and heartless. Maybe was it their consciousness of their negative action from their previous life?
Is Anggulima consider a psychopaths? What about Devadatta? They are born like that due to the brain system is off. But, non-violent psychopaths have incredibly useful roles in society for the most part. Think negotiators, surgeons, spies, astronauts, mountaineers and, funnily enough, journalists. They need to make immediate decision, need to be very sharp and quick. To me they are very brave but emotionally cold.
What karma was created in the pass to take rebirth as a violent psychopaths?
It is already scary enough to know how one’s mind operates let alone psychopathic ones. What I am more intrigued about this topic is how can someone go out of their mind till the extent of killing brings no feelings to their mind. I mean it’s a human life… Then we have people who does everything in order to get what they want or feel like getting. People go out of their way to do something extreme in order to fulfil their wants. Isn’t this a result of development of a selfish mind? I see from social media these days witnessing a lot of things people who do out of norm like for example torturing a cat by setting it up on fire… or videos of someone beating someone up, movies showing someone being kept inside a cage. I start to think how crazy things are these days but then again, we have heard of people do nasty things in the past do we. I reckon this is result of over attachment to one’s greed that causes this. For people in born, I reckon this is imprints of previous life.
The first thing that came into my mind while reading this article was the character Norman Bates in the thriller movie ‘Psycho’ by Alfred Hitchcock. The shower scene was a classic back in those days, and some say it still is. Another famous convicted cult leader, Charles Manson, is a psychopath even though he was not physically involved in the murders. Ted Bundy was also a violent psychopath who derived pleasure from killing, making him think he was God.
I wonder what horrible deeds such people did in their previous lives for them to have the karma to take rebirth as psychopaths and socialpaths and not able to have feelings for others.
Personally I have never really read about psychopath and through this article it really give me some understanding. Traditionally, the research done on psychopathy has really focused on the idea that psychopaths behave the way they do because they don’t feel the same things that we feel. And that has trickled down into media representations of psychopaths as cold-blooded, almost alien predators.
I feel sympathy on them as they don’t or can’t feel how one should felt. They are living in world of feelingless and this behavior directly cause harm to others. Of course this can’t be an excuse for they wrong doing. Hope they are method to help this people and able to change their karma for future.
it’s so scary and the killers are what they doing ( that’s the most scary parts ) to everyone of us.!
That’s i wanted to highlight : Still, none of these traits automatically make psychopaths “crazy” or “evil”, and in fact, although it does make those with high psychopathic tendencies appear to be somewhat ruthless and perhaps cold.
Can’t they be controls themselves? Or high psychopathic tendencies carrying on from their previous KARMA?
Petty of them.
OM Mani Padme Hum
I actually feel sad for those people with dysfunctional wiring. My guess its from their enforced negative habituation led them to this from many lifetimes. I know some people who are like that. They are not the ‘physically violent’ type but their decisions do hurt others. And most of them do it and they know its wrong, yet they continue to do it. Hence, they are continuing to collect more negativities when they do that. And nowadays, what I read and see on social media, people are becoming more like psychopaths. For example, they know that stealing, lying or killing have consequences yet they still do it because they don’t think of what happens during and after it. They continue doing it till they become immune to it. I do hope that scientifically, they can come up with treatment to help those people one day.
Thank You Rinpoche for sharing this interesting scientific article of Psychopathy. I used to think the serial killers are just behavior issue or due to bad experience they had gone through affected their decision to act in this destructive way. It seems like this character is inherent from the day they were born. It sounds to be like karma too which is the result of the act or behavior from past life.
In fact, they are different types of psychopathy behavior, however, it is getting common nowadays and it has become our society issue. A lot of people are self centered and only look for short term benefits and lack of sympathy. I wonder even these is due to their brain wiring pattern, can education or practice such as Dharma teaching and meditation will help to “correct” these wiring pattern in their brain. In my humble opinion, I would strong think it is possible. The brain can be changed from the training, however, it is tough and make you feel uncomfortable initially. I think that is why Rinpoche said if you feel uncomfortable, that is good. I strongly believe that. I do wish one day we can bring Dharma to prison to help those prisoners (even death row inmates) to change their brain wiring which will help them in this life or even next life.
Thank You Rinpoche for sharing this valuable article and I can see the urgency of Dharma teaching and practice in this life.
So much to contemplate and realise what is truly a psychopath. Sounds like they are people who possess a deprived state of being. As such, short term gratification are their choices without thoughts of consequences nor empathy for others.
Therefore psychopaths are very self indulging people and also narcissistic, and basically trends of human nature that will contribute to criminal activities during circumstances that pushes them to act in self interests over anything else. For this same reason many convicts convicted of gruesome murders are psychopaths.
On a milder level of these kind of behavioural trends, there are moments that many of us, certified “normal” are psychopathic too. It is the ability to check and rebalance that the spiral towards confirmed psychopath is averted. Thank goodness.
This is a very interesting article, there person who chooses to take the short term gratification could have arrived at his state from habituation, perhaps even a lifetime of not getting what they want and not getting the guidance or break to achieve what they want in a wholesome way.
I do wonder, would the practice of contentment help such persons to delay their gratification? I would think, having thinking that promotes compassion and having regard for other also helps for a person to think much more before acting it out. Perhaps having a better imagination also is helpful, as people who have better imagination can think further and plan further ahead.
No wonder there are so many violent crimes nowadays. Everything that is introduced to this world and how the modern generation functions, promotes instant gratification. It’s a very self-centered society.
Science itself does not really acknowledge that psychiatry/psychology is a science but rather, is pseudo-science. But, this is interesting all the same, that there is direct evidence of dysfunctional wiring of their brains. Just like the old Chinese saying of “short-circuit of the brain”. Did the Chinese know of this aspect of psychology for them to come u with that phrase?
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing your thoughts about psychopathy and the article written by Robin Andrew, which scientifically explains about the behavior and cause of psychopathy. Upon reading and understanding the article, we should no longer portray psychopaths as evil doers or persons who react violently as not every psychopath will commit crimes or other negativity that cause the disruption to the . This research is worth to be further explored as once we have identified and categorized the different types of psychopathy, there will be opportunities for us to come out with solutions and ways to handle those psychopaths who commit crime and go against the law. By thinking out loud, I personally believe that through meditations applied by psychopaths to focus on the positive aspects such as compassion, kindness, forgiveness and generosity, there could be chances for the psychopaths to control their way of thinking from negative to positive states although it has been scientifically proven that the physical cause of psychopathy is mainly due to the dysfunctional wiring of their brains.
An interesting read on the working of the minds of the psychopaths. I used to think that psychopaths are just wired differently but this article offers scientific proof.
It would be interesting to see how the mind of serial killers like Ted Bundy works through the series of tests like the ones conducted on the 50 inmates. I wonder if there will come a day when there will be methods to rehabilitate these psychopaths by using the findings of the studies on how their minds are wired.
In Buddhism we believe in karma. So these psychopaths with ‘dysfunctional wiring’ must have done something in the past to have this type of karma in this life. But Buddhism also believes that karma is not fixed. Things change depending on the causes and immediate conditions. So can hard core criminals change? Can psychopaths with ‘dysfunctional wiring’ change for the better? I suppose it depends on the individual and his/her karma.
Oh wow! This short article does point a few useful traits in identifying psychopathic individuals – their reckless pursuit of short-term gratification and goals along with their lack of empathy.
I find this pretty much sums up some of the psychopathic individuals I have encountered. But on the other hand, I do notice they are almost always very charming and almost convincing in their ability to persuade one to think they have realized their mistake. This article is really short and does not explain enough but it does offer pretty insightful definitions and ideas about them. I also like the fact, that it introduces the daredevil good side of psychopathic individuals that pursue challenging careers and hobbies. This is something i have not thought of before. All in all, it is a fascinating read into an aspect of the human psyche.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this short yet informative article about Psychopaths. It is good to read and know about the behaviour of the Psychopaths have so that we know how to handle these type of people when we come across one.
With folded palms,
Vivian
An interesting article. Thank you Rinpoche for published this article. I had learned about what is psychopathy and about the mind that matter which lead to the decision making as result of short term or long term. I am attracted about this statement too: “They’re not aliens,” Buckholtz concludes. “They’re people who make bad decisions.”
It is interesting to read scientific findings that indicate the composition of our body affects our behavior. While it is not conclusive in the report that the behavior is acceptable, but the message “(psychopath) are just wired differently, and that in itself doesn’t necessarily make them evil or monsters – it just makes them different” somewhat gives an impression that their behavior is justified. It may be a break through to see more findings that decipher psychopath’s mind, but it is important for the researcher to maintain an impartial point of view. Afterall, there are irreparable damages done by psychopath whether they are wired differently or not.
Psychopaths are people with a mental disorder. Studies show that their brains are wired differently/dysfunctionally. They appear to focus on short term gains and gratification, and ignore or overlook long term consequences.This attitude and outlook have been deeply habituated inside them. Their decisions are generally impulsive and reckless. The stronger the pull of short term gratification, the more reckless or impulsive they became. They appear to have no regard for self-preservation and give little thought to long term consequences of their actions. Their common traits are – a lack of empathy, emotionally detached, lack of conscience or distress over others’ suffering!
There is in most of them a narcissistic attitude or frame of mind. They are mostly absorbed in themselves and their appearance . THey are extremely selfish and craving for admiration and attention. If you were their competitor in business, they don’t mind driving you to bankruptcy! However, the non-violent ones can be deployed to play incredibly useful roles in society – as surgeons,negotiators, spies , astronauts and the like.
The thing is to train them to make good rather than bad decisions which bring more problems in the long run. The question is -how do we awaken compassion in them?