Learning to Understand Ourselves
Dr. Jennifer E. Vitale, Elliott Assistant Professor of Psychology
 Professor Jennifer E. Vitale with Todd A. Harrell '09 and Peter D. Crowe '09 I CAN NEVER HELP THINKING THAT LEARNING PSYCHOLOGY might best be described as learning that you do not know what you thought you knew. Certainly, in any area of inquiry individuals may have pre-existing ideas, but these ideas are often amplified in the psychology classroom. A student will readily admit that he is no expert on gravity or mitochondria or iridium. Less readily available is the student who is willing to admit that he is not an expert on himself. Not that I can blame him. We all tend to believe that we understand ourselves—our motivations and desires and goals—and to be confronted with the possibility that our perceptions of our “selves” as we understand them are not always accurate, is an uncomfortable experience, at best.
It is this challenge—of confronting students every day with ideas that directly contradict their understanding of themselves, of their friends and family, and of their larger social world—that, in my opinion, that all psychology teachers engage actively in psychology research. I believe that to distance yourself from the ongoing process of research—from the precise thinking needed to formulate operational definitions of concepts such as “love” or “anger” or “want,” from the slow, often frustrating process of data collection, from the cold realization after completing an analysis that the data clearly and powerfully refute your hypothesis—is to risk sinking back into that dangerous place where you, in your role as teacher, begin to explain events and people based on what you think you “know.”
My own research on psychopathic violence is a crucial component of who I am and what I do in the classroom. And one of the things that my research allows me to do, ironically enough, is to (initially) kill some of my students’ interest in my field.
Allow me to explain.
“The 10 signs that your child may be a psychopath.”
“Inside the minds of the criminally insane.”
“The predator next door.”
My research interests reside, somewhat uncomfortably at times, at the intersection of scholarship and sensationalism. On the one hand, there is the almost insatiable interest in the topic of psychopathy and violence; from books and films to television newsmagazines and special reports, it seems that the general public never tires of the opportunity to hear the goriest details. It was no surprise, then, that when I offered a Freshman Seminar on “The Psychology of Murder,” we were turning students away. On the other hand, however, there are the misconceptions fueled by all that sensational media attention. Among the most common: That all psychopaths are serial killers; that they are well above average in intelligence; that they are wily game players dancing just out of the grasp of law
enforcement; that they are “evil.”
I learned that psychopaths were not defined by sensational acts of violence; that they were not geniuses; and that... they were not masterminds of deception.
Jennifer E. Vitale
Elliott Assistant Professor of Psychology
Those are powerful misconceptions, ones that I shared myself as an undergraduate when I first developed an interest in the topic. I can remember very clearly my first week of graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My advisor, Joseph Newman, had suggested I read Hervey Cleckley’s The Mask of Sanity, originally published in 1941 and reprinted in 1988, and considered to be the clearest, most comprehensive clinical description of the psychopathic personality. I read. And then I stopped. Cleckley (1988) had written:
[M]any persons showing the characteristics of those described here do commit major crimes
and sometimes crimes of maximal violence. There are so many, however, who do not, that such
tendencies should be regarded as the exception rather than as the rule. (p. 262)
So I learned that psychopaths were not defined by sensational acts of violence; that they were not geniuses (the average IQ is 100—the same as that of the general population); and that, although manipulative, they were not masterminds of deception, always one step ahead of the police. In fact, psychopaths comprise a large percentage of incarcerated populations (approximately 25%) because their impulsivity and failure to learn from experiences can make them easy to catch.
Psychopaths are not Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter. Instead, they are individuals characterized by a specific set of behavioral and emotional criteria, originally set out by Cleckley, and reaffirmed by researchers and clinicians over the course of the intervening years.
First, Cleckley (1988) described the psychopath as “lacking in remorse or shame” (p. 337). The psychopath does not express genuine contrition for the antisocial acts he or she commits, and often cannot even appreciate the purpose of feeling such remorse. As Cleckley writes:
[O]ften he will go through an idle ritual of saying that much of his trouble is his own fault….
More detailed questioning about just what he blames himself for and why may show that a
serious attitude is not only absent but altogether inconceivable to him. (p. 343)
Second, the psychopath shows “poor judgment and failure to learn by experience” (Cleckley 1988, p. 337). Despite the fact that these individuals are characterized by average intelligence, they nevertheless repeatedly make poor choices and evidence poor judgment in their attempts at goal attainment. Further, although the psychopath will be able to explain “what went wrong” in a particular situation (i.e., what he did that may have led to the poor outcome), he seems incapable of using this knowledge in future situations.
Third, the psychopath “exhibits general poverty in major affective reactions.” Although the psychopath may express himself in ways that suggest that he is experiencing affective reactions (e.g., a short temper, a declaration of affection), these expressions do not convey a sense of long-lasting, deep emotional experience. There is no “mature, wholehearted anger, true or consistent indignation, honest, solid grief, sustaining pride, deep joy, and genuine despair” (Cleckley 1988, p. 348).
With these characteristics well understood, it was not long before my psychopathy vocabulary was transformed. Gone were the Dateline NBC-inspired adjectives—“twisted,” “evil,” “incomprehensible,” “depraved.” They were replaced by a vocabulary born of psychological science: “response perseveration,” “deficient passive avoidance learning,” and “response modulation.” This last term is at the heart of my research. And although it sounds a lot less sensational than the adjectives that had defined psychopathy for me in the past, it is infinitely more satisfying.
Next The Response Modulation Hypothesis (RMH)
BEYOND THE Classroom FOR THE Classroom
Hampden-Sydney College Faculty Scholarship 2005-2008
A report by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty
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