A very warm welcome to today's UCL Lunch Hour lecture.

It is my great pleasure to introduce Essi Viding,

professor of Developmental Psychopathology

in the UCL division of Psychology

and Language Sciences.

Professor Viding's lecture for us today is entitled,

Why do some people become psychopaths?

>> Thank you.

Individuals with psychopathy tend

to capture public imagination.

People are fascinated by what makes these individuals

so different.

And there has been a tendency

to at times sensationalize the condition and the description

of the condition in the media.

And I guess one of the signs

that these individuals really do capture the public imagination

is that they have featured in a number of popular films.

So here we have a picture of Jacob,

a character from Buckham [assumed spelling] Films

and he's very impulsive and he's also entirely unconcerned

about the impact of his behavior on other people

and he seems to lack empathy.

We have Kevin who is from the movie,

We Need to Talk about Kevin.

This is a very chilling description

of a child who's not capable of forming attachment relationships

with his parents who's cruel to animals and cruel

to younger children who ends up by the end of the film

and the book that it's based on becoming a killer.

He kills family members and also people at his school.

We have Anton Chigurh who's an absolutely chilling contract

killer in the current Coen Brothers film,

No Country for Old Men.

And if anyone has seen the film, I think one of very scary things

about observing this character is when you see shots

that are focused directly at his eyes

and there really is no emotion coming back

to you from those eyes.

And then there's probably everyone's favorite psychopath

from movies, Hannibal Lecter from the Silence

of the Lamb film; and he is again, a very good example

of a psychopathic character in that he's entirely void

of empathy for other people and he's also extremely skillful

at manipulating other people to his own ends.

And in fact, if you asked members

of the general public what springs to mind

when they hear the word psychopath,

people often think about serial killers.

And real-life serial killers include characters

such as Ted Bundy who killed

at least 30 women in America in 1970s.

He was very bright and extremely handsome, and he often posed

as somebody who was in a position of authority or someone

who was very reliable to entice these women to come with him,

and then he murdered them in a very cruel way.

And people think that he actually may have committed many

more crimes than he confessed to.

His description of himself was

that he's the most cold-hearted son

of a bitch you'll ever likely to meet.

And interestingly his defense lawyer didn't have a lot

of good things to say about him either and said

that he was the very definition of heartless evil.

So this was a man who was able to be very charming,

was able to convince other people to come with him,

but he actually turned out to be somebody

who felt absolutely nothing for his victims and didn't seem

to really feel any guilt for what he had done.

But, of course, not all psychopaths are serial killers.

In fact, only a very few are.

So what are the characteristics

that define an individual with psychopathy?

Well, one of the most prominent characteristics is their lack

of remorse and guilt.

So they simply do not feel bad about the things they have done.

They may sometimes say that they do if they perceive

that as getting them something that they want

such as early release from prison.

But it's very clear from the way they behave and --

that they do not actually experience remorse

for what they have done.

They don't feel bad about what they have done.

They're very shallow affect.

Their emotions appear ingenuine and often very short lived.

They don't form typical attachment relationships.

They don't look after the people around them.

They can often have superficial charm.

So if you meet these individuals for the first time,

you may be very, very alert by them.

They may seem very gregarious, very charming, very nice.

But once you get to know them for a longer period of time

that charm tends to wear off.

They often have a grandiose sense of self worth.

They think they are better

and more deserving than other people.

They're pathological liars and they are typically very good

at manipulating other people to their own ends.

As a developmental psychologist I'm very interested

in how these characteristics develop.

It's unlikely that anybody's born a psychopath

but clearly you don't get this sort of conditions

as a birthday present when you turn 18 either.

So the research in our group has been focused

on investigating what makes some children developmentally

vulnerable to developing these sorts

of personality traits as an adult.

And you can focus on various different levels of query

when you try and understand the development of this condition.

So we can look at how children who are at risk

of becoming adult psychopaths look like behaviorally.

What differentiates these children

from typical developing children or other children

who may have behavioral problems

but who don't exhibit these cold characteristics

of lack of empathy and guilt.

We can study how these children see the world around them

so we can use experimental tasks to focus

on their psychological level analysis.

And we can see if these children's brains react

differently to information around them

which is what you would expect if their behavior

and if their way of processing information is different.

And you can also use genetically informative designs

to study the relevant importance of genetic

and environmental factors

in developing this type of condition.

And you can also try and look for specific risk genes

and risk environmental factors

that in concert might promote the development of the disorder.

Now we'll first tell you a little bit

about what makes these children behaviorally different

from their typically developing peers but also

from other children who have behavioral problems.

So there are several early behavioral warning signs

of children who are at risk for psychopathy

and these look very different from the kinds

of characteristics we see in adult psychopaths.

The person who first formally downward extended this

psychopathic criteria to children was Paul Frick

and this was work that started 20 years ago

in the United States and now several different research

groups across the globe have studied these behavioral

characteristics in children and in young people.

These children lack remorse and guilt so they don't express

that they're sorry for what they've done.

They lack empathy and this can be often manifested

by them behaving cruelly amongst other children, bullying,

being very physically aggressive in a way

that is really showing no concern

over developing of the other person.

They are also sometimes cruel to animals

such as pets in the family.

They have shallow affects so many of the parents report

that they don't feel like they can connect with this child.

They may have a perfectly nice relationship

with their other children and if anyone has read the book,

We Need to Talk About Kevin, I think that's a very good example

of a mother who was able to form an attachment relationship

with one of her children, but really felt

like there was nothing coming back from the child who went

on to develop psychopathy.

These children can manipulate other people for their own gain.

And they have a sense of being more important

and more deserving than other people.

And in combination this constellation of traits

in children is called callous-unemotional traits.

So clearly we don't want to label children as psychopaths

but this constellation of traits gives you a warning sign

that the child who scores very high on these traits may be

at risk for developing psychopathy in the adulthood.

They're kind of like the warning sign.

You want to start thinking about doing something

to help this child if they display this constellation

of characteristics.

There's now quite a bit of good longitudinal research showing

that these sorts of traits are predictive of persistent,

violent and severe antisocial behavior and psychopathy

in adolescents and adulthood.

They don't predict that every child who's score high

on these sorts of traits will inevitably become an antisocial

adult but they do index that that child is

at a significantly increased risk

of developing the antisocial presentation in adulthood.

Antisocial behavior in children is called conduct problems.

And if you think about this circle that I'm showing to you

as representing all the children with conduct problems

and the blue circles as representing the minority

who also has high levels of callous-unemotional traits

and you get an idea that they are a minority

but they are a sizable minority.

So people estimate that somewhere between 25 to as high

as 50 percent of the children who are diagnosed

with conduct problems also have this presentation

of high callous-unemotional traits.

And what sets them apart from other children

with conduct problems is that they often engage in proactive

or planned acts of aggression.

So while the aggression in other children

with conduct problems is typically quite impulsive

and in reaction to something external that happened,

for instance, a perceived threat or slight to the child,

these children can engage in aggression

if they think it's going to get them something they want.

It might get them status among peers.

It might get them some goods that they desire.

As I've already said they lack guilt.

They don't worry about hurting other people

to get what they want and they often have low levels

of anxiety.

And this is in contrast with the remainder of children

with conduct problems who have low levels

of callous-unemotional traits and who often aggress

when they feel under threat

and whose aggression is often impulsive.

It's not premeditated.

And when these children have had a chance to reflect

on what they have done, they actually often feel bad

and guilty about having hurt other people

or having done something that has caused their parents

or their teachers to feel sad.

And this presentation can also occur

with high levels of anxiety.

So you already are beginning to see from this behavioral data

that the reactivity, emotional reactivity profile

of these two types of children

with conduct problems is quite different.

You have a group that seems to be more cold and calculated

and unemphatic, and then you have another group who seems

to be more hot headed, reactive, and impulsive

but who also has the capacity to empathize with other people.

So these different behavioral profiles have got psychologists

interested in how these children may see the world

around them differently from typically developing children

but also their peers with conduct problems.

And we can focus on the study of the psychological level

of analysis by giving children experimental tasks

which we often present on a computer, for instance,

and these tasks can give us an idea

of how they process information such as facial,

emotional expressions.

So I want you to have a go at doing one of the tasks

that we do with the children.

Here's a face that is starting

with a neutral rather calm expression and I'm going

to press a button and it's going

to start slowly developing an emotional expression.

And when you think you know what the expression is,

please shout it out loud and don't be shy.

Okay.