“Without Conscience”: A Book That Changed My Life

There are many more psychopaths than you imagine

See my exciting game of Spot the Psychopaths at the very end!

Years ago I had a coworker who just seemed to have it in for me. He behaved in a congenial way when others were around, but even in those circumstances I’d get a sense of his paranoia. He seemed to view me as a competitor. Our job functions were such that I couldn’t do my work without his help, but whenever I sought his assistance he always seemed to be busy with more important things. Eventually it struck me that he might be sabotaging me. It’s hard to convey a sense of how disturbing he was.

After leaving that job, my memory of his behaviors haunted me, to the point where I felt compelled to do some research. In college I’d had a one-semester “Intro to Psych” course, but my old textbook (still in my bookcase) said nothing about people exhibiting such oddness. So I started reading library books. There, I mostly found typical pop-psychology stuff - books that categorize personalities according to some simplistic model such as Type A versus Type B, or personality-type matrices (remember INTJ?), but none of these came close to describing what I’d experienced.

Then one day I came across a fascinating book called Without Conscience¹ (subtitle: the disturbing world of the psychopaths among us). It’s a fairly short paperback that reads more like a novel than a textbook. It’s also unlike any other psych book I’ve read: it presents an unabashed discussion of a deeply disturbing and fairly large subset of humanity that has, unfortunately, been the driving force behind much of human history.

Without Conscience is now on my very short list of books that profoundly changed my world view. Two of its many surprises are its revelations that 1) the clinical definition of “psychopath” applies to perhaps one percent of the entire human population, and 2) the vast majority of psychopaths, almost all in fact, are non-violent; you will never read about them in the news. But as much as you will never read about them, such people have an incredible impact on our society.

How to spot one

The core attributes of psychopaths, as I understand them, are:

• No conception of “right” or “wrong”: Psychopaths do not grasp these notions. Nothing is “right” or “wrong”; their only question on any issue is whether it seems to be in their own best interest. Psychopaths have a vague conception that people around them talk about “right” and “wrong” and “morality” and such. Higher-functioning psychopaths (which is most of them) learn to adjust their behaviors and statements to superficially conform to what they imagine are others’ expectations.

• No conscience: With no innate conception of “right” or “wrong,” psychopaths cannot feel “guilty” about having done something “wrong”; they are likely mystified that other people would be concerned about such things. In their world, the only measure of “rightness” is whether they have achieved their personal objectives (by whatever means necessary).

• Convincing liars: The absence of conscience gives psychopaths the power to lie convincingly. Since they see nothing “wrong” with lying, their position on lying is to simply to say whatever they believe will further their interests at the moment. To them, lying is just as fine as not lying. Because of this, they can lie with a complete sense of sincerity, a sincerity that makes them far more convincing than normal people.

• Discriminating: Psychopaths know who can help them and who can’t. They tend to be very friendly with those above them in the management chain. Conversely, if they have no use for you (or worse yet regard you as a competitor), they will treat you like dirt.

• Charismatic: Because they convey a total sense of sincerity when lying, normal people are attracted to them. Because they can say literally anything without a troubling conscience weighing on them, they ironically tend to inspire the highest levels of trust within their victims. It is this power that makes them so effective and so dangerous; the public is more apt to trust a lying psychopath than a truthful normal person.

Charisma: the most deadly attribute

Of all the traits listed above, the most dangerous is charisma. Psychopaths are the least trustworthy people on earth, but ironically their most amazing skill is to engender trust in the rest of us. When they’re unmasked, psychopaths are often revealed to be among the most trusted citizens of their communities and trusted employees of their companies or government agencies. Without such trust, psychopaths could not wangle their way into situations in which they can do lots of damage.

Charisma has little to do with good looks, though no doubt good looks are helpful in inspiring sympathy and interest. It is natural to assume that good-looking people have charisma and others don’t, and a lot of good-looking people are charismatic. But a lot of charismatic people are, in my opinion, not particularly attractive, and many of them, again in my opinion, are downright ghoulish (take Klaus Schwab, for example).

Psychopaths understand where opportunity lies, and so it should not surprise us that many of them gravitate to the financial world. Several small-business owners I’ve known have disclosed to me that their former company bookkeepers were crooks who had been swindling them, undetected, for years. They were undetected because they were so implicitly trusted; they were not merely trusted employees but also personal friends of the owners’ families, people who were among the guests at family social events.

Perhaps the most famous “crooked bookkeeper” story is a public one: In 2012, Rita Crundwell, the comptroller of the small town of Dixon, Illinois, was convicted of stealing a fortune (estimated at $54 million) from the city over the course of 20 years. According to reports, she had been “well liked,” and obviously she had also been well trusted. How does a bookkeeper survive multiple independent audits and also evade constant scrutiny from her victims, who are certainly noticing that the city never seems to have any money?

It is charisma that gives psychopaths their power over us. Nobody really understands charisma; it’s one of those things that you recognize when you see it. The visible aspect is the tendency of people to trust and follow people who have it. But how exactly does this work?

My theory is that psychopaths, when speaking, seem more sincere than sincere people. Normal people have scruples, and with scruples come doubts. Even when speaking on subjects in which they are experts, there is always the nagging possibility that they might be wrong. Even the most sincere person, speaking on seemingly indisputable subjects, may not convey a 100% sense of certainty. But this fear of possibly being wrong is not a problem for psychopaths. The psychopath has no conception of wanting or needing to be “right”; truth is a mere inconvenience. When speaking, the psychopath has no concern and perhaps even no notion about being correct. There is neither a need nor a desire to be correct. The only thing of concern to the psychopath is that the message and the delivery be self-serving, and on this topic the psychopath is quite certain - more certain, even, than normal subject experts speaking on their own topics.

The next time you are listening to someone who’s looking straight at you (or into the camera) with a disturbing laser focus, who is speaking with an unnatural sense of certainty and indisputable authority, take a pause and think about it, especially if that person is trying to get you to believe or do something. How could any normal person be so certain, so emphatic, so compelling, so insistent, about anything?

Psychopath Strategies

Lie Big

Psychopaths spend much of their time lying, which creates a problem for them because it’s impossible to prevent all their lies from eventually being exposed. As Mark Twain said,

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

So how do psychopaths do it? Why do they retain their credibility, even after it has been indisputably demonstrated that they’ve been lying?

Part of it, I believe, is the charisma thing. Each psychopath’s associates have a long history of investing their trust in the psychopath. By acknowledging the psychopath’s lies, they almost become co-conspirators. How could anyone who felt so positively about this liar not be guilty himself? And if not guilty, then how could he not be a fool?

It comes back to the concept of the Big Lie, as described by Hitler in Mein Kampf:

In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

Psychopaths lie big and they lie constantly. Once their friends and associates fall for their lies, those people become complicit, and it becomes hard for them to extricate themselves.

Use Logical Fallacies

Psychopaths use logical fallacies to argue their way out of accusations, and they seem to do this intuitively without any training. I’ll review a few of the most prevalent logical fallacies here:

• Ad hominem attack: the psychopath attacks whoever or whatever is providing the evidence of the lie, rather than addressing the evidence itself. A clever variant is the preemptive attack, where, prior to being contradicted, the psychopath demonizes anyone who might contradict him/her in the future.
  

• Projection: the psychopath accuses his opponent or  accuser of doing precisely what the liar did or saying what the liar said; this is a special form of ad hominem attack.
  

• Bandwagon: the psychopath cites his credentials, his position, his many friends, etc., as a proof of innocence, rather than addressing the evidence itself.

Double Down

When the above strategies fail and the psychopath is finally cornered, he pulls out his magic bullet: he doubles down on his lies. And incredibly, this seems to work. It’s the Big Lie on steroids: when your Big Lie is exposed, respond by repeating it more emphatically! To most people, it seems, the psychopath’s appearance of deep sincerity overrides any and all rational analysis; the emotional effect of the sincerity is so powerful that it defeats the listener’s reasoning powers. Which doesn’t say much for most people’s reasoning powers.

A fun game: Spot the Psychopaths!

Here’s an entertaining game that I call Spot the Psychopaths. Watch the four relatively brief, entertaining videos in the numbered list of links below. There are many characters in the videos, and you may be at a loss to know which ones are behaving like psychopaths.

Since you’re a beginner, I’ll “prep” you by taking a look at just two of the many characters you’ll see; one is clearly a psychopath and the other is not:

• Both characters were or are presidents of the United States. To disguise which is which, I’ll cleverly call them President B and President T.
  

• In the first video, President T talks somewhat hesitantly about his concept of the COVID death rate. He’s hesitant because he’s not sure whether he’s correct, and because his opponents are using their bandwagon strategy to demonize him. Even so, he is courageous enough to speak his opinion in the face of fantastic opposition and possible future humiliation. Plus, he ends up being right.
  

• In contrast, President B looks straight into the camera and speaks with indisputable confidence, as if he couldn’t possibly be wrong (or, more to the point, as if he couldn’t care less whether he is wrong). President B demonizes those who disagree with him. Afterwards, when he is almost comically proven wrong via his own personal public experience, he doubles down.

So here’s the Rosetta stone: Let’s see whether you can figure out which president is which! And after that, you can guess which of the other people in these videos (newscasters, medical professionals, comedians, etc.) seem to match the behaviors of President B! Won’t that be fun?

OK time to play! Here are the four videos:

1. The COVID Lie That Started It All

2. THE UNVACCINATED | "Nobody is Safe!"

3. Peter Hotez - Vaccine Expert

4. Children of the COVID!

Watch carefully for the Psychopath Strategies I described above. This is a big part of the fun! For example, video #3 consists almost entirely of the ever-popular Double Down strategy.

If you found this game of Spot the Psychopaths entertaining, you can get even more practice by searching for the Climate Change hucksters in this article!

Be Prepared

According to Without Conscience, about one percent of all people are psychopaths. At this writing there are about eight billion people, putting the psychopath count at 80 million. In the USA alone, with a population of 330 million, even before all of Biden’s illegal immigration, there would be 3.3 million psychopaths, so you’re probably going to bump into a few during your lifetime. For your sake, let’s hope it’s just a short bump. But for the most part, it won’t matter whether you ever meet a psychopath in person. There are so many of them in the top echelons of government, the media, business, medicine, and academia that you don’t need personal contact with any to wreck your life.

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NOTES

1. Please ignore the book’s liner notes. They seem to be completely deceptive clickbait written by some PR guy who likely never read the book. The notes would have you expect that the book is about serial killers, mass murderers, and such. No doubt the book’s promoters realized that there is a larger market for salacious gore than for psychological truth. The real message of the book is that almost all psychopaths are not violent and will never end up in the news; they represent about one percent of the entire human population. Worldwide there are tens of millions of them, and as such you will probably encounter several of them in your life, which is why it is in your best interest to read the book, preferably before you encounter one.

2. Nothing in this article should be construed as being medically accurate. I am not a psychologist, and I am not qualified to diagnose anyone with any psychological condition. Psychopathy is a formal clinical distinction within the field of psychology. Psychopaths are diagnosed through the administration of specific tests. It is not my intent to suggest that anyone depicted or mentioned in this article has been clinically determined to be a psychopath.

3. Sociopaths vs. Psychopaths: in both pop culture and common usage, the term psychopath is used to denote a severely mentally disturbed person who commits violent crimes, especially murders; in contrast, the word sociopath generally denotes a non-violent person with disturbing anti-social tendencies. I feel that that the term psychopath as used in Without Conscience is more in keeping with the common usage of sociopath. Despite that, I use the two words interchangeably, and in this article I tend to use psychopath because that’s the word used in the book.