How to become a psychopatic personality!

[Jan-Sverre Syvertsen]

Yo!

I think I have read somewhere that there can be a conection
between a high pain threshold (an ability not to feel pain
at rather high levels) and a later diagnosis of a psychopatic
personality (antisocial personality).

Have anyone heard of similar theories? Research and results?

Jan-Sverre
p...@oslonett.no

[David Longley]

In article <3o04nj$b...@hasle.oslonett.no>
p...@oslonett.no "Jan-Sverre Syvertsen" writes:

Yes, I have heard this too and I think the place to look is in Hare's book on
Psychopathy. This is a classic study which lists a series of empirical studies
on psychopaths' behaviour (resistance to extinction etc etc). Interestingly,
some of the characteristics listed have something in common with rats which
have had their dorsal noradrenergic bundles lesioned with 6-OHDA. It would
also be interesting if psychopaths had higher levels of circulating endogenous
opioid peptides (reducing their sensitivity generally - but especially to the
aversive qualities).

I put up an abstract entitled 'Naloxone enhances neophobia' a week or so ago,
which may heave a bearing on the degree to which some people are less condit-
ionable than others (through being less sensitive to noxious stimuli). This
is of course a classic Hullian position, and also has more than a passing
relationship to Eysencks 3 Three Factor Theory of Personality and criminality.

--
David Longley

[M.A....@massey.ac.nz]

>I think I have read somewhere that there can be a conection
>between a high pain threshold (an ability not to feel pain
>at rather high levels) and a later diagnosis of a psychopatic
>personality (antisocial personality).

I would not take this theory too seriously, although if you are interested
in this, then follow up the work by Eysenck on psycoticism.

Remember, *on average*, women have higher pain thresholds than men, and I
have yet to see a study that shows a link between being a woman and being
a psychopath.

:-)

Cheers`