Without Conscience

by Robert D. Hare

  • In the late 1980s, the lid blew off a decade’s worth of rotten investments, phony promises, fraudulent business practices, and voracious greed in the United States savings and loan (S & L) business, which President Reagan had deregulated in the early 1980s. Without the pressure to conform to the rules under strict governmental oversight, certain S & L personnel began to take freedoms with their depositors’ money that led, in a gradually building avalanche of debt, to a financial disaster of unprecedented proportions. At the time of this writing, the projected cost to U.S. taxpayers of what has become known as the S & L bail-out approaches $1 trillion—more than the entire cost of the Vietnam War.

  • Incredible at it seems, even the S & L scandals have been topped by recent revelations of a worldwide network of unbelievable greed and corruption. “Nothing in the history of modern financial scandals rivals the unfolding saga of the bank of Credit and Commerce International, the $20 billion rogue empire that regulators in 62 countries shut down in a stunning global sweep. Never has a scandal involved so much money, so many nations, and so many prominent people. Superlatives are quickly exhausted: it is the largest corporate criminal enterprise ever the most pervasive money-laundering operation and financial supermarket ever created.”20

  AT THIS WRITING, the mysterious death of publishing czar Robert Maxwell has opened an enormous can of worms. Maxwell’s business empire collapsed amid charges that hundreds of millions of dollars were illegally siphoned off. The case is relevant here as a good example of how a carefully managed public persona can conceal dark deeds and a black heart.

  Although it was widely known that he was a crook and a charlatan who was adept at moving money from one company to another, most of those who knew him, including journalists, managed to keep remarkably silent. Maxwell had a great deal of power and was able to intimidate his critics. He also benefited from the “unscrupulousness of greed” and an establishment that turns a blind eye toward “unconvicted money-making crooks.” (Quotes are from an article by Peter Jenkins, “Captain Bob Revealed: A Crook and a Conspiracy of Silence.” Independent News Service, December 7, 1991.)

  THEY’VE GOT WHAT IT TAKES

  It is not difficult to see why psychopaths are so attracted to and so successful at white-collar crime. First, lots of juicy opportunities present themselves. As one of our subjects, convicted of selling forged corporate bonds, put it, “I wouldn’t be in prison if there weren’t so many cookie jars just begging me to put my hand in.” His cookie jars were pension funds, boiler-room stock promotions, charity fund-raising drives, and shared-vacation condo schemes, only a few of the many well-furnished niches that allow those of his ilk to operate unobtrusively.

  Second, psychopaths have what it takes to defraud and bilk others: They are fast-talking, charming, self-assured, at ease in social situations, cool under pressure, unfazed by the possibility of being found out, and totally ruthless. And even when exposed, they can carry on as if nothing has happened, often leaving their accusers bewildered and uncertain about their own positions.

  Finally, white-collar crime is lucrative, the chances of getting caught are minimal, and the penalties are often trivial. Think of the insider traders, junk-bond kings, and S & L sharks whose financial depredations were so spectacularly rewarding—even when they were caught. In many cases, the rules of the game for greed and fraud carried out on a grand scale are not the same as they are for ordinary crime. Often, the players in the former form a loosely structured network to protect their mutual interests: They come from the same social strata and the same schools, belong to the same clubs, and may even be instrumental in setting up the rules in the first place. A bank robber may be sentenced to twenty years in prison, whereas a lawyer, businessperson, or politician who defrauds the public out of millions of dollars may receive a fine or a suspended sentence, usually after a trial marked by long delays, adjournments, and obscure legal maneuvers. We condemn and shun the bank robber but ask the embezzler to help us invest our money or join our tennis club.

  THE LAWYER FOR one of the individuals (Mr. X) involved in recent insider-trading scandals traveled to Vancouver to enlist my aid in defending his client, who had been “fingered” by another player in the game (Mr. Y). The lawyer proposed that I use the Psychopathy Checklist to determine if the man who had named his client was a psychopath, and, saying that “money is no object,” suggested that I might want to interview Mr. Y’s friends, business associates, former classmates, and neighbors. He also said that I could be set up in a beach house near the one Mr. Y frequently used, and that all I had to do was to get to know him well enough to complete the checklist on him. When I inquired why it would be useful for him to know whether Mr. Y was a psychopath, the attorney replied that it could be crucial to his case because, as everyone knows, psychopaths are notoriously deceitful, unreliable, and eager to save their own skin at any cost. If Mr. Y could be diagnosed as a psychopath, his testimony might be discredited and the lawyer would have a better chance of working out a reasonable plea bargain with the state. Although I might have become very wealthy—“money is no object”—I declined the offer.

  Unfortunately, many people do not consider white-collar crime as serious as crimes aimed directly at people, such as robbery or rape. In the case described at the beginning of this chapter, John Grambling made the following plea to the judge who was about to sentence him:

  I have been sitting in jail now for two months and have experienced living in a cell with a poor ignorant illegal alien, a career criminal, a drug user and smuggler, and a killer. I have reached rock bottom in my emotions and esteem by having to spend time with this element of society, and yet I am here and by some logic should be considered similar to them. I can tell you without hesitation I am not at all similar. I don’t look the same, talk the same, act the same, or feel the same.21

  The judge in the case commented that, although he disagreed with Grambling, “in practice there is a difference between a crime against a person and a crime against property between someone who rapes you, or threatens to rape you, or threatens to kill or threatens to maim, and someone who may cause as much damage with a fountain pen.”22 The prosecutor noted, “The federal prisons for the wealthy and privileged have tasty food, jogging tracks, first-run movies, and libraries. The federal prisons for the rich and privileged are a national disgrace.”23

  These messages are not lost on the psychopath who has a yen for the high life.

  Chapter 8

  Words from

  an Overcoat Pocket

  A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

  —Charles Peguy, “The Honest People,” Basic Verities (1943), tr. Ann and Julian Green

  One question runs like a refrain through the stories told by the victims of psychopaths: “How could I have been so stupid? How could I have fallen for that incredible line of baloney?”

  And when victims aren’t asking themselves, somebody else is sure to pose the question. “How on earth could you have been taken in to that extent?” The characteristic answer: “You had to be there. It seemed reasonable, plausible at the time.” The clear—and largely valid—implication is that had we been there we too might have been sucked in.

  Some people are simply too trusting and gullible for their own good—ready targets for any smooth talker who comes along. But what about the rest of us? The sad fact is that we are all vulnerable. Few people are such sophisticated and perceptive judges of human nature that they cannot be taken in by the machinations of a skilled and determined psychopath. Even those who study them are not immune; as I’ve indicated in previous chapters, my students and I are sometimes conned, even when aware that we’re dealing with a probable psychopath.

  Of course, pathological lying and manipulation are not restricted to psychopaths. What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the ca
llousness with which they carry it out.

  But there is something else about the speech of psychopaths that is equally puzzling: their frequent use of contradictory and logically inconsistent statements that usually escape detection. Recent research on the language of psychopaths provides us with some important clues to this puzzle, as well as to the uncanny ability psychopaths have to move words—and people—around so easily. But first, here are some examples to illustrate the point, the first three from offenders who scored high on the Psychopathy Checklist.

  • When asked if he had ever committed a violent offense, a man serving time for theft answered, “No, but I once had to kill someone.”

  • A woman with a staggering record of fraud, deceit, lies, and broken promises concluded a letter to the parole board with, “I’ve let a lot of people down.... One is only as good as her reputation and name. My word is as good as gold.”

  • A man serving a term for armed robbery replied to the testimony of an eyewitness, “He’s lying. I wasn’t there. I should have blown his fucking head off.”

  • A tabloid television program showed a classic con man who shamelessly swindled elderly women.1 When the interviewer asked, “Where do you draw the line between right and wrong?” he replied, “I have some morals, whether you believe it or not, I have some morals.” To the interviewer’s question, “And where do you draw the line?” he replied, “That’s a good question. I’m not trying to hedge, but that’s a good question.” When asked, “Did you actually carry around in your briefcase blank power-of-attorney forms?” his reply was, “No, I didn’t carry them around, but I had them in my briefcase, yes.”

  • When Ted Bundy was asked what cocaine did to him he replied, “Cocaine? I’ve never used it.... I’ve never tried cocaine. I think I might have tried it once and got nothing out of it. Just snorted a little bit. And I just don’t mess with it. It’s too expensive. And I suppose if I was on the streets and had enough of it, I might get into it. But I’m strictly a marijuana man. All I do is ... I love to smoke a reefer. And Valiums. And of course alcohol.”2

  Think about this for a moment—not only lies but several contradictory statements in the same breath. Very perplexing. It is as if psychopaths sometimes have difficulty in monitoring their own speech, and they let loose with a convoluted barrage of poorly connected words and thoughts.

  Psychopaths also sometimes put words together in strange ways. For example, consider the following exchange between a journalist and psychopathic serial killer, Clifford Olson. “And then I had annual sex with her.” “Once a year?” “No. Annual. From behind.” “Oh. But she was dead!” “No, no. She was just unconscientious.” About his many experiences, Olson said, “I’ve got enough antidotes to fill five or six books—enough for a trilogy.” He was determined not to be an “escape goat” no matter what the “migrating facts.”3 [emphasis mine]

  Of course, words don’t simply pop out of our mouths of their own accord. They are the end products of very complicated mental activity. This raises the interesting possibility that, like much of their behavior, the mental processes of psychopaths are poorly regulated and not bound by conventional rules. This issue is discussed in the following sections, which outline evidence that psychopaths differ from others in the way their brains are organized and in the connections between words and emotion. In the next chapter I take up the related issue of why the listener often fails to notice the psychopath’s verbal quirks.

  A CONVICTED SERIAL killer, Elmer Wayne Henley, now asking for parole, says that he was the victim of an older serial killer he worked with, and that he would not have done anything wrong on his own. Together, they killed at least twenty-seven young men and boys. “I’m passive,” he offered. “I don’t want to be no psychopath, I don’t want to be no killer. I just want to be decent people.”

  Consider the following exchange between the interviewer and Henley. The interviewer says, “You make it out that you’re the victim of a serial killer, but if you look at the record you’re a serial killer.” Henley replies, “I’m not.” “You’re not a serial killer?” the interviewer asks in disbelief, to which Henley replies, “I’m not a serial killer.” The interviewer then says, “You’re saying you’re not a serial killer now, but you’ve serially killed.” Henley replies, with some exasperation and condescension, “Well, yeah, that’s semantics.”

  —From the May 8, 1991, episode of 48 Hours

  WHO’S IN CHARGE?

  In most people the two sides of the brain have different, specialized functions. The left cerebral hemisphere is skilled at processing information analytically and sequentially, and it plays a crucial role in the understanding and use of language. The right hemisphere processes information simultaneously, as a whole; it plays an important role in the perception of spatial relations, imagery, emotional experience, and the processing of music.

  Nature probably “arranged” for each side of the brain to have different functions for the sake of efficiency.4 For example, it is clearly more effective for all the complex mental operations required to use and understand language to take place in one side of the brain than if they were distributed over both sides. In the latter case, information would have to be sent back and forth between the two hemispheres, which would slow down the processing rate and increase the chances of error.

  Further, some part of the brain has to have primary control over the task; if the two sides of the brain were competing for this control, the conflict would reduce the efficiency of processing. Some forms of dyslexia and stuttering, for example, are associated with just such a condition: Language centers are bilateral—located in both hemispheres. Competition between the two hemispheres makes for a variety of difficulties in the understanding and production of language.

  New experimental evidence suggests that bilateral language processes are also characteristic of psychopathy.5 This leads me to speculate that part of the tendency for psychopaths to make contradictory statements is related to an inefficient “line of authority”—each hemisphere tries to run the show, with the result that speech is poorly integrated and monitored.

  Of course, others with bilateral language—some stutterers, dyslexics, and left-handers—do not lie and contradict themselves the way psychopaths do. Clearly, something else must be involved.

  HOLLOW WORDS

  Most people who have had extensive experience with psychopaths have an intuitive sense of what that difference might be. “He was always telling me how much he loved me, and at first I believed him, even after I caught him fooling around with my sister,” said the estranged wife of one of our psychopathic subjects. “It took me a long time to realize that he didn’t care for me at all. Every time he beat up on me he would say, ‘I’m really sorry, pigeon. You know I love you.’ Right out of a cheap movie!”

  This would come as no surprise to clinicians, long aware that psychopaths seem to know the dictionary meanings of words but fail to comprehend or appreciate their emotional value or significance. Consider the following quotes from the clinical literature on psychopathy:

  • “He knows the words but not the music.”6

  • “Ideas of mutuality of sharing and understanding are beyond his understanding in an emotional sense; he knows only the book meaning of words.”7

  • “[He] exhibits a facility with words that mean little to him, form without substance.... His seemingly good judgment and social sense are only word deep.”8

  These clinical observations get right to the heart of the mystery of psychopathy: language that is two-dimensional, lacking in emotional depth.

  A simple analogy here will help. The psychopath is like a color-blind person who sees the world in shades of gray but who has learned how to function in a colored world. He has learned that the light signal for “stop” is at the top of the traffic signal. When the color-blind person tells you he stopped at the red light, he really means he stopped at the top light. He has difficulty in discussing the color of things but may have learned al
l sorts of ways to compensate for this problem, and in some cases even those who know him well may not know that he cannot see colors.

  Like the color-blind person, the psychopath lacks an important element of experience—in this case, emotional experience—but may have learned the words that others use to describe or mimic experiences that he cannot really understand. As Cleckley put it, “He can learn to use ordinary words... [and] will also learn to reproduce appropriately all the pantomime of feeling... but the feeling itself does not come to pass.”9

  Recent laboratory research provides convincing support for these clinical observations. This research is based on evidence that, for normal people, neutral words generally convey less information than do emotional words: A word such as PAPER has dictionary meaning, whereas a word such as DEATH has dictionary meaning plus emotional meaning and unpleasant connotations. Emotional words have more “punch” than do other words.

  Picture yourself sitting before a computer screen on which groups of letters are flashed for a fraction of a second. Electrodes for recording brain responses have been attached to your scalp and connected to an EEG machine, which draws a graph of the electrical activity of the brain. Some of the groups of letters flashed on the screen form common words found in the dictionary; other strings form no words, only nonsense syllables. For example, TREE forms a word but RETE does not. Your task is to push a button as quickly as possible whenever you have decided that a true word appeared on the screen. The computer measures the time it takes you to make your decision; it also analyzes your brain responses during the task.