The Pyshco … ahem … Psychopath Test

(Updated same day with extra photo; corrected for typos)

SOME parts of this post will disturb, so grow up.

(adapted from The People Group)

There’s a pop culture psychopath ‘test’ making the rounds lately (or so I’m led to believe) that’s been billed as having some ‘science’ behind it.

There are several versions of it, all with similar phraseology, but the content are the same. This is one version of it:—

Read this question, come up with the answer, and scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads. No one I know has got it right.

A woman was at her own mother’s funeral and met a guy there. She didn’t know the guy but thought he was amazing. She believed this guy was her Dream Guy, so much so that she fell in love with him there and then. But she never got round to asking him for his number, and then couldn’t find him. A few days later, she killed her own sister.

Why did she kill her own sister?

The ‘correct’ answer (it seems) is this:—

She’s hoping the guy would appear again, this time for her sister’s funeral.

If you had answered correctly, you think like a psychopath.

Apparently, this scenario was one of several questions contained in a real psychopath test designed by a famous psychologist for testing out psychopathic tendencies.

The storyline that came with this particular scenario has it that many real-life serial killers (who took part in the real psychopath test after their arrest) had also answered correctly.

How did you do?

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Under 5 effing seconds

(via Sovereign Independent UK)

I posed the scenario to my people. None even came near the given answer.

(Some of my people needed a Chinese-language translation.)

Predictably, there’s always that one person who’s in a complete haze: “Huh? I thought the guy was going to have sex with the sister instead of her.”

*Eyeroll*

Well, I’m glad that my friends are no psychopaths. Unfortunately, quite a few of them needed an explanation, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, I don’t think.

But I answered correctly. And in under five seconds.

No. I’m no psychopath.

I do, however, have a reasonably good idea of how a psychopath think (as well as how a psychologist thinks, for that matter). One learns this fantastically useful skill of psychopathic thinking — including its equally useful byproduct known as the killer instinct — by dint of long working with psychopaths the likes of bankers, lawyers, accountants and sundry government regulatory officials.

An extremely good example of how to think like a silent psychopath comes from real-life news a day or two ago:—

An Israeli Defence Force spokesman tweeted about Israeli warplanes bombed Iranian oil installations (or the like) during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Oil trading desks around the world immediately took that 40-year-old news as RECENT bombings and jacked up the oil prices by at least 6% worldwide in less than an hour.

Muahahaha! Drinks all round for likeminded financial suits!

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Just an idiot, not psycho enough
(via Dan’s Data)

There IS a simpler method.

Why go through the rigmorole of bumping off your favourite sibling or nibling, the body disposal, etc, to know if you’re psycho or not?

Why bother with the hard legwork of preliminary research, the experimental design, the sampling, the data collation, the statistical calculations, the peer reviews, etc, to test if a person is psycho?

My discovery:—

Just look at an angry person’s NOSTRILS.

Nostrils flare open in high emotional state, such as anger or fear.

If the nostrils remain UNFLARED even in such a state, that person most probably will have psychopathic tendencies.

It works. No kidding
(via HealthCentral)

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Freedom of choice

(via c4c)

If I were that woman in the scenario, I’d rather do this instead:—

SET THE PERSON ON FIRE. A normal person will fear for his life and be satisfyingly terrorised fartless. A psychopath will simply get angry instead.

If neither, then just haul the person’s arse down into some basement cubby hole and torture the daylights out of him for a confession of his faults for not reacting with fear or anger. Or inability to understand enough English in a place like Hong Kong that’s officially billed as a trilingual and biliterate society.

Your gulps are almost palpable, if not already audible.

(In space, no one can hear you scream. In my 15th floor basement, you won’t be able to scream. Period.)

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The 6% Human Wrecking Ball

You may be the 99%, but they’re the 6%
(via Sott.net)

If you must know, the Intarwebz is a great source of unchallengeable facts and tips about psychopaths.

Dan’s Data has an 18-point checklist on how to spot a psychopath. Check out your favourite family member (e.g. mother-in-law) with it — but you probably know her too well already.

The Symbolist constructively asks whether money really is the root of psychopathic behaviour — which of course it IS, and I could tell you in not so many words.

And for those overly constructive types who love to ‘define’ the discussion parameters prior to going outdoors just to have a fart, try Learus Ohnine‘s non-fart article on the differences between a psychopath and a sociopath. On a practical, everyday-life level, take it from me that there’s precious little effing difference — especially when it’s YOU who is on the receiving end.

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Muscle rankings

“If you’re not going to cooperate with me, I might as well not be here.”
— Robot and Frank (2012)

The hierarchy of (psychopathic) oppression
(via c4c)

More interestingly, here’s a muscle ranking of the most psychopathic to the least:—

(via Eater.com)

No brownie points for getting the No. 1 Psychopath.

Note carefully that the soldier, sailor and airman are absent in the rankings — which sadly means that our war-crazed, baby-killing, jungle-napalming, mercenary military types are kittehs compared with your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-man Police Officer. Warner Bros? Warn A Bro, mate.

Although different everywhere else, in the USA the policeman is definitely No. 2 or No. 3, closely followed by the clergyman (“Jesus Saves! But if you believe in Him on your own or without payment to me, I’ll skin you alive with glee”).

Holy mackerel in bearnaise sauce, even chefs are more vicious than anybody else:—

“No shit, Sherlock!! We work the hardest, in the most danger, in the worst conditions for the least money in the hospitality business, we’d have to be nuts to make a career of it … yet we do … and they give us knives to play with, and we serve your food…”
— Chef Mike B. about psychopaths who are chefs | via Eater.com

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Enjoyment for the stupid and the insane

(via Robert Bloch — Biography)

I’ve also discovered something else in my one long emergency of a life working with psychotics and psychopaths in the financial printing sector.

Contrary to the research of many clinical psychologists (as well as my own training in psychology and statistics for my first degree):—

A psychopath DOESN’T enjoy killing or abusing others — only a stupid or an insane person would ‘enjoy’ (e.g. Roman emperor Heliogabalus).

If there is any element of enjoyment, the pleasure for the psychopath (or sociopath, whichever) comes from the confirmation to his own self that he has the capability to kill or abuse in that specified way.

Now go out, and enjoy your small pleasures…

Mike Myers … no psychopath, just a hyperactive child with a mask fetish

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© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2013. Updated with extra photo and typo fixes. (B13342)