Item four: Why are we fascinated by psychopathy?
Different people different theories. One woman who had a penchant for falling in love with psychopathic rapist/murderers hypothesized that we are fascinated by those who carry out our own never spoken, never acted upon desires and fantasies to kill. Another hypothesis is that they are simply so different from us.
There are lots of theories out there, so let me share mine. It might not be as valid as those backed up by statistics and evidence, but it is certainly just as valid as the armchair psychology hypotheses I've mentioned above. This is just as much armchair psychology, with a bit of Lay-Z-Boi evolutionary biology thrown in.
There is a ponderous amount of human variation that shows up repeatedly in all societies, but shows little indication of being "heritable", or naturally selected for in individuals. One example of this is homosexuality. Clearly it is not passed on directly from parents to children: that would require heterosexual reproduction. But perhaps tribes that produced homosexuals were more successful and so the randomized possibility for it to arise in a tribe was group-selected for. I believe that this can be true for a lot of "personality types". The risk-taker is more clearly one of these. They are, as individuals, much more likely to get themselves offed and not reproduce, but as members of the group they are highly advantageous for discovering new shelter or water sources, taking down dangerous prey, etc. Homosexuals might fit in by reducing the intra-sex competition for mates and the number of children in the tribe competing for food, thus improving the success of the tribe overall. Fewer men being killed in competition for female mates means more men to hunt, or conversely big strong "women" to stay home and protect the other women.
Why not also psychopaths? This evolutionary biology theory approaches psychopathy from multiple directions, many of which do not agree with each other, but bear with me.
The most popular evolutionary theory of psychopathy is that people who are uncompromisingly willing to take advantage of others are more successful. By stealing and adulterating without reservation, they gather more food and may produce more children. This theory is very straightforward and doesn't much account for the intricacies of a society. For example, how many women are actually willing to mate with a psychopath? Isn't the evolutionary theory of women centered around finding a mate that will support them and their offspring? Do psychopaths care for their own children? It probably varies, I couldn't tell you. But this theory does seem to center on the psychopath without giving due credence to how the tribe would react to such an individual.
Here's a theory, it has holes but nonetheless accounts for a group advantage to having a psychopath in the ranks. Let's assume for a second that a psychopath is capable of having loyalty, especially to their friends, group, or tribe. That tribe has an advantage when going to war with other tribes for territory or resources because they can sick this guy on the other team. Even warriors in costume will have reservations regarding some tactics. A psychopath will have no reservations. He will win by whatever means necessary and without any hesitation at the pain he might inflict upon the way. The tribe that has a psychopath wins the war, and propagates.
And now for a theory that is completely counter, that addresses more of "why are we so fascinated by psychopaths" rather than "why do psychopaths exist." This is applicable most to "advanced" civilizations, both of the East and West, with broad and exceptionless laws against harming others in certain ways (esp. murder). Because this is very different from the social structure we evolved in. Before, if there was a person that the tribe did not like, they were banished or killed. Now, we have to tolerate them. Presumably, a psychopath would be the type of person that a tribe would identify and banish or kill for the benefit of the tribe as a whole, although that circumspection would probably not be part of the thought process.
My theory is, we are fascinated by rapists, murderers and psychopaths because we want to kill them, and can't. It is our instinct to annihilate these threats to ourselves, our women, our children, our tribe, and when we can't act on this, it bothers us. And so we keep a very close eye on these people, tracking them, almost stalking, waiting for them to take a wrong step and give us that opportunity to act on our instinctual impulse to kill the deviant.
Now, when I say us, do I mean to theorize that every single human being has these thoughts? Absolutely not. The umbrella statement of my philosophy of people is that people are different. Just as there is room for homosexuals and psychopaths, so is there room for the warrior-protector, the type that wishes to kill the threat, the minister-patriarch, who wishes to teach the deviant the ways of right or at least aims to level something resembling justice (the system we operate under today), and the healer-matriarch, those who wish to care for those who are deviant, thinking that perhaps some TLC is all they need to stop being deviants. Clearly this is not an exhaustive list of personality types, and any given individual cannot be boiled down to such a simplistic description, I only mean to say that these are all valid viewpoints that can account each in part for our fascination with psychopaths. Since that was the original question.
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