You know lots of sociopaths right?
It could be anyone from your ex-spouse to the guy who cut you off on your drive to work today. It's a term we throw around loosely to refer to anyone whoever lied to us or didn't follow the rules.
But, if we use it that way, it's not a very useful term. A sociopath is not the same thing as a jerk. In fact, the person you know who strikes you as a jerk is probably not a sociopath because it's not in the best interests of sociopaths to let you know what kind of people they are and sociopaths are usually pretty good about acting in their own best interests.
So, what does this term mean?
This hour, we meet a writer and self-proclaimed sociopath and a researcher who studies the mechanisms behind psychopathic behavior.
GUESTS:
- Arielle Baskin-Sommers - Assistant professor of psychology at Yale
- M. E. Thomas - Author of Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Hiding in Plain Sight, and she runs the blog Sociopath World
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Colin McEnroe, Greg Hill, Betsy Kaplan, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which has previously aired on August 14 and November 13, 2014.
