00:03:01.980For anyone who's not familiar with you, tell everybody who are you, how are you, where you are, what's been your journey through life?
00:03:07.860Well, I'm Professor Kevin Dutton, as you say.
00:03:12.020I am a psychologist, a research psychologist, research scientist.
00:03:17.660And I originally started off studying the art of persuasion and social influence.
00:03:23.660And I wrote a book called Flipnosis, like hypnosis, but flipnosis, the art of split second persuasion.
00:03:30.800And in that book was a chapter on psychopaths, because in order to write the book, I spent the best part of a year hanging out with some of the world's top con artists.
00:03:45.600So I'm not talking about, you know, you're people that do over old ladies' gas meters, but there used to be a show called Hustle on the BBC.
00:04:04.020So my research background, PhD, was in social influence and persuasion.
00:04:09.320But I wanted to find out whether there was a kind of persuasion that was irresistible.
00:04:15.500So a lot of people, before Flipnosis came out, thought that a lot of persuasion was very much about due process and negotiation.
00:04:23.720You get it right as many times as you get it wrong.
00:04:27.440But I heard a story about Winston Churchill.
00:04:32.940Now, there's a lot of stories about Winston Churchill, a lot of which are apocryphal, but this one is true.
00:04:37.860Which got me thinking about the art of persuasion, the science of social influence, in a very different way.
00:04:45.080And the story went that one evening at the end of a lavish party for Commonwealth dignitaries in London,
00:04:51.920Winston Churchill spots a fellow guest about to steal a solid silver salt seller from the table.
00:04:56.140Now, caught on the one hand between the desire to avoid an undignified contractual and the equal and opposite desire on the other not to let the bastard get away with it.
00:05:05.780Well, what he does is he picks up the matching silver pepper pot, puts it inside his own coat pocket, wanders over to the gentleman in question, takes it out,
00:05:13.380sets it down on the table in front of them and whispers surreptitiously in his ear,
00:05:17.740I think they've seen us, we'd better put the match.
00:05:21.260Problem resolved simply elegantly and without any further ado.
00:05:24.700Now, when I heard that story, I thought to myself, I wonder if persuasion is like that in theory all the time.
00:05:34.440Is there a key to every situation that if we could somehow find it would resolve it, but 99% of the time we can't find it?
00:05:45.800So flipnosis was about my search for that key.
00:05:50.960And in order to do that, I interviewed lots and lots of different people, put together a lot of different research across social influence and persuasion.
00:06:01.020And part of that, of course, involved interviewing and spending time with what I call the evil geniuses of persuasion.
00:06:07.820So your world's top con artists who, unlike me as the boffin, have learned it all from first principles,
00:06:14.260who've learned it all from the streets, from living on their wits.
00:06:17.280And I wanted to know who knew more about persuasion.
00:06:19.920Me, the boffin, the nerd, or them, the guys that, you know, basically, as I say, derived it from first principles.
00:07:04.360But it's interesting, when people, when you hear the word psychopath, people instantly think of, in real life, serial killers like Ted Bundy.
00:07:13.300And on the silver screen, of course, your Hannibal Lectures.
00:07:16.560But actually, Constantine, when psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths,
00:07:19.840we're in fact referring to a distinct subset of individuals with a specific constellation of personality characteristics,
00:07:27.260such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, emotional detachment.
00:07:59.660So let me explain that, because this is crucial.
00:08:01.600Imagine, for example, that the qualities that I've just told you about comprise the hodgepodge of knobs and sliders on a personality mixing desk, OK?
00:08:11.680So if you twiddle them up and down in various combinations, you're going to arrive at two conclusions.
00:08:17.180The first is that there is no one-size-fits-all objectively correct setting at which those dials may be positioned,
00:08:23.160but rather it will invariably depend on timing upon a particular set of circumstances you might happen to find yourself in.
00:08:29.880The second is that, by its very nature, there are going to be certain jobs or professions are going to demand that some of those mixing desk stars be turned up just a little bit higher than average,
00:08:41.560demand what I call some precision-engineered psychopathy.
00:08:47.580Imagine you've got the skill set to be a top surgeon, right, but that you lack the ability to emotionally disengage from the person you're operating on.
00:09:01.320Imagine you've got the skill set to be a top lawyer, but you lack the almost pathological self-confidence to be the centre of attention in the middle of a packed courtroom,
00:09:09.160that narcissism to be the big shot in front of a jury.
00:09:14.680Imagine you've got the strategic and financial smarts to be a top business person,
00:09:20.480but that you lack the ruthlessness to fire someone if they're underperforming or the coolness under pressure to ride out a storm or the sheer balls necessary to take a calculated risk when appropriate.
00:09:31.740Now, those characteristics I've just outlined here, ruthlessness, fearlessness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure and emotional detachment, as you rightly say, Constantine, comprise five core characteristics of the psychopathic personality.
00:09:44.360I certainly wouldn't say they were dysfunctional in those contexts.
00:09:49.040I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't.
00:09:53.020When flipnosis came out about the conmen, about the rules of persuasion, was there a DNA of persuasion that would make examples like the Churchill kind of story available to all of us?
00:10:08.500Were we all capable of doing that kind of thing?
00:10:12.280When that book came out, obviously, I was, you know, talking to a lot of the top con artists, and they were all psychopaths.
00:10:19.300And there was a chapter in that book called Natural Born Persuaders, which was all about how psychopaths are better at persuading in general than the rest of us.
00:10:30.660They've got that charm, that charisma, but also they're not caught up in the emotion of persuasion.
00:10:36.260They're not caught up in that heat and light.
00:10:37.740You know, they're not involved in it, which enables them to be able to stand back dispassionately and kind of almost move you around the court of social influence like a top tennis player.
00:10:49.720And it was that chapter when the book came out for review that all the reviewers kind of zoned in on.
00:10:58.640And they said, well, if psychopaths are better at persuasion than the rest of us, then what else are they good at?
00:11:04.740And it was then that that chapter then I didn't actually think there was enough for a book on psychopaths.
00:11:11.940But it was my agent that said, I think there may well be a book on psychopaths here because of the work I was doing at the time.
00:11:19.080And I, as a writer, you know, you have to sometimes when you get an idea, you have to work out, is this a full book or is it like a 5,000 word Sunday supplement article?
00:11:28.600And I actually thought it was a 5,000 word Sunday supplement article, but he persuaded me, I think there might be more in it than that.
00:11:34.860And it turned out there was, there was a heck of a lot more in it than that.
00:11:39.620And it turns out the psychopaths are very good at a lot of things.
00:11:44.240But when the book came out, of course, a lot of people at the time thought it was very controversial.
00:11:50.160And that's because they didn't know what a psychopath really was.
00:11:53.340They'd looked at Hannibal Lecter, they'd seen it all on the media, and they thought all psychopaths were rapists, serial killers and suicide bombers.
00:11:58.820So that was the first reason the book was controversial.
00:12:02.620The general public didn't really know what a psychopath was.
00:12:05.320And secondly, the clinicians, the medical experts, couldn't countenance the possibility that there could possibly be benefits to psychopathic characteristics at large.
00:12:20.540You know, the only psychopaths they had seen were the bad ones that had been referred to them from forensic or clinical settings.
00:12:26.640So, you know, by the very nature of their job, they weren't going to meet the top surgeons or the special forces soldiers or the CEOs or the people that I'd met.
00:12:37.540I'd met the bad ones, but I'd also met the good ones.
00:12:40.800So when that book came out, that's when I think it's still, to my knowledge, the only book that argues that actually there are benefits to psychopathic characteristics.
00:12:52.860And I think it took a while, but I think most people now would agree that I've won the argument.
00:13:00.740I think most of my peers, there's always going to be some disagreement, but at the time it was very much like a punk theory with like a Mohican and spiky hair and, you know, ripped jeans and all the like, you know, all that kind of thing.
00:13:11.320Now I say it's like, it's a theory that's settled into the comfortable middle age with pipe and slippers and sitting by the fire.
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00:14:08.660Now, if we're looking at it in terms of bad psychopaths, you could say, yes, no remorse can be used, obviously, to inflict great harm.
00:14:16.520And we can see it, you know, we don't need to look very far to see that in society on both the local and the world stage.
00:14:22.980But if we look at it in terms of, say, good psychopathy, we can see that in utilitarianism.
00:14:30.200So the ability to make really tough decisions, which not a lot of people might be able to make.
00:14:36.660But actually, the people who are able to dial those dials up and down on the mixing desk are able to handle.
00:14:45.600So when the wisdom of psychopaths came out, people, you know, who were, you know, the haters, as it were, were saying, Dutton's trying to, you know, glamorize psychopaths.
00:14:56.820Actually, I wasn't trying to glamorize psychopaths at all.
00:14:59.640What I was saying is that there are certain psychopathic characteristics that in the right context, in the right combinations, at the right levels, and, Constantine, to answer your question, with the right intentions, can predispose you to success and also benefit society.
00:15:16.480And so rather than trying to glamorize psychopaths, where the argument started to turn was when I turned it around on people and said, I'm not trying to glamorize psychopaths at all.
00:15:25.840But perhaps what you're trying to do is stigmatize them.
00:15:30.200Because actually, you know, the way, if you start from the premise that psychopathy is a psychological or psychiatric disorder, how many other disorders would you talk about like that?
00:15:42.940You wouldn't talk about people with depression like that, or anxiety like that, or Asperger's like that, or ASPD, attentional hyper deficit disorder like that, or schizophrenia like that.
00:15:56.360ADD, that's what I was trying to think of, or ASPD is antisocial personality disorder, which is, people often confuse that with psychopaths.
00:16:02.920You wouldn't talk about any other psychological condition like that.
00:16:08.000So why are you talking about psychopaths like that?
00:16:11.120Why are you saying that they are all bad?
00:16:13.700You are, in a sense, stigmatizing the surgeon that might well save your life.
00:16:18.280He might not be the most empathic person you've ever met in your life.
00:16:21.520He may be an arrogant narcissist, but actually he might just be the guy that's cool enough under pressure, and he's able to take the risk to remove that, the appropriate risk to remove that life-threatening tumor.
00:16:34.080So when people started saying, I'm glamorizing psychopaths, I kind of subtly changed and said, I think what you're doing is stigmatizing them.
00:16:43.640And that was the kind of pivot where the argument started to change a little bit, I think.
00:16:48.360In order to reach an elite level at any profession, whether it's sport, whether it's performing, politics, medicine, do you need to be a psychopath or have very high psychopathic traits?
00:17:05.880So I brought along a few years ago when I was writing Wisdom of Psychopaths, I did a survey called the Great British Psychopath Survey.
00:17:13.700And the survey was unique in the sense that what I wanted to find out was what were the most psychopathic professions in the UK.
00:17:23.140So I was on a radio show, and we decided to launch this on a radio show.
00:17:26.460Now, the survey wasn't done very scientifically because I didn't actually think it was going to be that big, but it turned out it was quite big indeed.
00:17:34.040And so what I did, I said to people, right, here's a little test, and we might do this test on you guys.
00:27:17.040So, obviously, spending years at University of Oxford and Cambridge, I was surrounded by some of the world's top biographers of famous historical personages.
00:27:25.600And I've often been fascinated by psychopaths in history and wondered how, you know, famous historical personages might fare on the psychopathic spectrum.
00:27:36.780So, it dawned on me that actually biographers of famous people, famous historical people, obviously know these people almost, well, I would say virtually better than they know themselves.
00:27:49.920So, I thought if I gave them a specially validated psychometric questionnaire, which is developed to detect psychopathy, not in forensic populations, but in members of the general public, there's different tests for that, and got them to fill it out on behalf of their subjects, not on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of their subjects, we'd probably get a very accurate portrayal of where certain people featured on the psychopathic spectrum.
00:28:16.420And St. Paul was actually quite high on the psychopathic spectrum, the founder of Western Christianity.
00:28:25.000Before he turned into stained glass, St. Paul was a ruthless bastard.
00:28:30.040I mean, he basically was guilty of genocide, of course, you know, he was, before the road to Damascus, he was persecuting Christians in large numbers.
00:28:39.700So, St. Paul himself, the founder of Western Christianity, is very high on the psychopathic spectrum.
00:30:27.620You're going to score it as we go along, right?
00:30:29.420Number one, I rarely plan ahead, I'm a spur-of-the-moment kind of person.
00:30:36.780I rarely plan ahead, I'm a spur-of-the-moment kind of person.
00:30:40.680So, zero strongly disagree, just to recap.
00:30:43.080One disagree, two agree, three strongly agree.
00:30:46.100Number two, cheating on your partner is okay so long as you don't get caught.
00:30:51.440Now, whenever I do this with students in universities in large numbers, this is always the one where people are looking over their shoulders, seeing what the other person says.
00:31:00.860Cheating on your partner is okay so long as you don't get caught.
00:31:02.700Number three, if something better comes along, it's okay to cancel a long-standing appointment.
00:31:10.940If something better comes along, it's okay to cancel a long-standing appointment.
00:31:13.600Number four, seeing an animal injured or in pain doesn't bother me in the slightest.
00:31:23.920Number five, driving fast cars, riding roller coasters and skydiving appeal to me.
00:31:34.560Number six, it doesn't matter to me if I have to step on others to get what I want.
01:09:03.180But as I say, he was absolutely a brilliant salesman.
01:09:09.720And he said something to me, which in all my years in academia, I don't think I've ever heard a more profound statement about the art of persuasion.
01:09:30.400And just as he's about to pay the bill, he turns around to me and says, Kev, if there's one thing I want you to remember in life, son, it's this.
01:09:37.520Persuasion isn't about getting people to do what they don't want to do.
01:09:41.540It's about giving them a reason to do what they do want to do.
01:11:13.200And I think a question that a lot of people want to ask, and my sense is women more than men, but both probably sexist, is how do you know if your partner is a psychopath, if you're not going to get them to do an 11-point test?
01:11:27.080Like, what are the red flags for someone who is psychopathic, particularly in a way that you'd want to avoid, really?
01:11:33.280Yeah, if your partner's a psychopath, your boss is a psychopath.
01:11:35.880There are, I mean, you know, we're not talking about serial killing psychopaths.
01:11:39.940We're talking about, like, you know, your common or garden, people who are on the psychopathic spectrum.
01:18:11.240Because you're aggregating the pain, right?
01:18:13.760Actually, if you just get it over with in one go, you actually experience an aggregate less pain than if you're kind of like prolonging it.
01:18:23.460So what impact does that have on real life?
01:18:25.820Well, next time you've got to do something which you don't want to do, let's say you've got to pick the phone up and give something bad news, or you've got to do a chore that you don't want to do.
01:19:00.300Just knowing that fact will help you kind of just turn that dial up a little bit.
01:19:05.760And another way of doing it would be like, well, how many times do you get people to ask you to do something, let's say, in three months' time?
01:19:14.420And you say, yeah, I'll do that in three months.
01:20:23.800So in order to get away from that gray zone of deciding whether you want to do something, rate stuff you want to do on a rating scale, but miss out 7, just go from 6 to 8.
01:20:41.220Again, you'll find that you start becoming a lot more selfish, perhaps is the word, but maybe, you know, just caring a little bit more about yourself.
01:20:50.360Again, it forces you into a more binary decision.
01:20:53.420And again, if you're true to yourself, then you'll be honest and you'll find yourself, you know, just doing a few more things that you might like.
01:21:00.160So very simple tips and techniques to sometimes it's okay to put yourself first, you know?
01:21:06.560You see, it's okay, and I think that's, you know, if people that aren't as assertive, people who are a little more anxious, tend not to do that.
01:21:58.980So, when people have trouble saying no, it's often an inverted form of narcissism that you over-inflate your sense of importance to that person.
01:22:09.860So, actually, a lot of the time, saying no won't have that effect on the person at all.
01:22:58.700And it's only when we started doing this and there was a team of people to manage and whatever I've ever actually had to care about what the people around me think and feel, right?
01:23:07.860And to me, that doesn't come naturally.
01:23:10.100And to this day, I'm almost like I feel like I am mechanistically getting there.
01:23:17.340Like I know I need to care about the people who work here because that's how we get the results we want.
01:23:23.940But if I could switch that off and everything just got done without me thinking about the emotions, I would take that option any day of the week.
01:24:11.580So, if that was – if it gets the result and you were able to, like, do that coldly and dispassionately, it's interesting that you felt the need to actually kind of change and become – you wanted to feel it yourself rather than anyone else feeling it, which is kind of interesting, I think.
01:25:01.900And actually, personally, I don't think there's much wrong with that, to be honest.
01:25:05.860I mean, actually, to be honest, but there's a much more in-depth answer to your questions.
01:25:10.460And actually, psychopaths, when you look at empathy in psychopaths, it's very, very interesting because there's cold empathy and there's warm empathy, right?
01:25:23.380Cold empathy is the ability to calmly and dispassionately gauge what another person might be feeling.
01:25:31.400That sounds like something that you're very, very good at.
01:25:34.560Hot empathy is actually feeling what another person is feeling.
01:25:38.060And that is something that psychopaths aren't very good at, but they're better than average at coldly and dispassionately gauging.
01:25:45.860Coming back to the traffic lights, don't need to see the colors.
01:25:48.840You just need to know what bits are lit up.
01:25:50.820That's you describing yourself, I think, there to a certain extent.
01:25:53.680You just need to know what bits are lit up.
01:25:55.980But actually, that doesn't make you a worse driver.
01:25:58.760Actually, but what you're saying is, ah, it'd be kind of nice to see the colors.
01:26:01.900But actually, you don't need to see the colors necessarily.
01:26:05.580I mean, you've got a great setup going here, so you've done pretty well.
01:26:09.240However, the interesting thing here is it touches onto the question of treatment.
01:26:15.700Now, I know you're talking about people in everyday life, but whether psychopaths are actually treatable or not in forensic and clinical settings.
01:26:24.700Now, for a long time, it's been thought that they haven't been treatable because of the very nature of who they are.
01:26:32.540Psychopaths kind of touches on a point you made earlier, Francis, which I never actually got around to answering.
01:26:38.500Psychopaths have, especially when you're right up the high end of the spectrum, they tend to have very little self-insight into their condition.
01:26:46.020And that was, if you remember the quiz that we did, number 11 was when most of the time when things go wrong, it's never my fault.
01:27:13.400You know, they frame it so that there's no responsibility from them and all the responsibilities on the victim.
01:27:19.180That's, and again, when we were talking about, you know, in everyday life, in, say, office politics or in relationships, whether you can spot a psychopath.
01:27:26.860That's, again, we talked about that victimization.
01:27:30.480You know, they make themselves a victim, you know, where actually, you know, it's, you know, it's not your fault at all.
01:27:36.700So traditionally, it's been thought that psychopaths are untreatable because they're very good at passing things off as, well, they're not responsible.
01:27:48.120They were actually behaving in the right way, and it's just the situation that made them, or you that made them behave that way, and they were justified in doing that.
01:27:56.820And also, remember, they're very good actors and actresses, so, you know, parole boards or, you know, tribunals, they're very, very good at telling you what you want to hear, putting on that good face, you know, it won't happen again or whatever, whatever.
01:28:11.540And as soon as they're out, they're back to their old ways or whatever, as soon as they're out the other side of the tribunal.
01:28:16.480So for a long time, it's been thought that psychopaths are not treatable.
01:28:23.660However, there's a lovely story, which I heard, it almost goes back to flipnosis, the art of persuasion, you know, split-second persuasion.
01:28:32.280There's a wonderful story I heard about the prisoner, one of Britain's most violent men, Charlie Bronson, who you might be aware of.
01:28:38.340So Charlie Bronson is notorious, he's been in loads of prisons, and there's a film by him, Tom Hardy, played the role of Bronson a few years ago.
01:28:48.440And Charlie takes a lot of hostages, or used to, and makes outrageous demands.
01:28:57.600So there was one time he took a hostage, which was a prison guard, and the story went something like, Charlie had him captive,
01:29:05.540and he said, if you do one thing wrong, or you say one thing wrong, I'm going to cut your fucking ear off.
01:29:13.140And this prison guard said, oh, don't do that, Charlie, my glasses will be all wonky.