1292: Abigail Marsh | How Fear Separates Saints from Psychopaths Part 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Jordan Harbinger Show

Episode 1292: Abigail Marsh | How Fear Separates Saints from Psychopaths (Part 1)

Original Air Date: March 3, 2026
Host: Jordan Harbinger
Guest: Dr. Abigail Marsh, neuroscientist and author

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Overview

In this episode, Jordan Harbinger sits down with Dr. Abigail Marsh to explore the surprising neurological similarities and differences between psychopaths and extreme altruists. The conversation delves into what separates "saints" from psychopaths, why some people risk their lives for strangers while others cannot feel fear or remorse, and the implications for parenting, society, and even self-understanding. Jordan and Abigail also dismantle some persistent myths about human nature, including pop psychology experiments and infamous urban legends.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Paradox of Heroism and Fear (09:00–14:54)

• Heroic Behavior Isn’t About Fearlessness: Dr. Marsh retells the story of Cory Booker, who ran into a burning house to save a neighbor’s daughter. Contrary to what people often think, true heroes do feel fear.
  • Quote: “He talked about how terrified he was in every interview. All he felt was fear...they have the ability to overcome their fear because they actually care about other people.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (11:14)
• Fear vs. Bravery: Being fearless isn’t the same as being brave. Altruists feel fear, but their concern for others overrides their self-preservation instincts.
• Neurological Basis: The brain’s motivational systems compete—altruists’ empathy can be stronger than their self-preservation instinct in critical moments.

Psychopathy: Population, Traits, and Myths (22:26–29:00)

• Prevalence: About 1–2% of the population meets criteria for psychopathy, but nearly 50% of violent criminals qualify.
  • Quote: “If 1 to 2% of the population has a clinically significant level of psychopathy ... all of us know somebody with psychopathy.” — Dr. Marsh (24:29)
• Psychopathy Is a Spectrum: Not a binary diagnosis; traits vary widely, and many with psychopathy are not violent criminals. It’s more about emotional detachment, lack of fear, and instrumental behavior.
• Violence as a Tool: Not all psychopathic individuals are violent—many achieve their goals through deceit, charm, and manipulation rather than outright aggression.
• Nature & Nurture: Genetic factors account for about half to two-thirds of personality variation, including aggression and callousness. Environment shapes the expression.

Heroism, Bystander Effect, and Deconstructing Canonical Studies (14:54–22:26)

• Urban Legends and the Truth About Human Nature: Classic psychology studies like the Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram shock obedience study, and the Kitty Genovese murder narrative exaggerate or misrepresent human cruelty and inaction.
  • Quote: “Our intuitions about other people's trustworthiness and capacity for compassion tend to be way off. We're much too untrusting on average.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (22:13)
• Cooperation over Callousness: Modern research using CCTV shows bystanders intervene to help victims 90% of the time in public attacks (17:12).
• Obedience vs. Compassion: Milgram’s experiment actually shows most people are uncomfortable harming others and will resist unless under intense direct pressure.

Brain Science: Why Psychopaths Can’t Feel Fear (44:25–46:15)

• Deficit in Fear Experience: Psychopaths often literally cannot recognize fear on others’ faces or feel it themselves.
  • Quote: “I've worked with kids who are psychopathic who say they've never felt afraid. ... I have never felt fear. Hashtag never.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (46:13)
• Amygdala Differences: Brain scans of children with callous-unemotional traits (early psychopathy) often reveal a smaller amygdala, region linked to fear processing.
  • Quote: “There's a structure called the amygdala ... seems to be too small in kids who are developing psychopathic traits ... responsible for the ability to experience fear ... and to understand when others are experiencing fear.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (53:00)
• Empathy as Simulation: Psychopathy involves a kind of emotional colorblindness; not feeling fear oneself makes it nearly impossible to recognize or empathize with fear in others.

Childhood, Parenting, and “Growing” Saints or Psychopaths (41:28–44:25; 58:55–63:47)

• Parenting Practices: Permissive (all love, no limits) and authoritarian (all discipline, no love) are both bad. The key is a blend of warmth, affection, clear expectations, and consistent reinforcement/consequences.
  • Quote: “Permissive parenting ... is not going to result in good consequences. ... Authoritarian parenting ... that's bad too.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (66:33)
• Children with Psychopathic Traits: These kids require unusually high, obvious doses of warmth and clearly structured positive-reinforcement techniques, plus consistent, (primarily non-harsh) consequences.
• Parent-Child Interaction Therapy: Evidence-backed methods like PCIT can help, but parents, not kids alone, need to get the training. Therapy with the child alone is generally ineffective for these traits.
  • Quote: “Most important thing is for kids, therapy for the kid is generally not that effective ... you, the parent, need to be trained to deliver the therapy.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (63:47)

Stories from the Field: Psychopathic Children & Masked Behaviors (47:04–51:07)

• Children with Psychopathic Traits: Not all look or act scary—some are charming, likable, even funny. Their ability to win people over can mask serious behavioral issues.
  • Quote: “My experience with people who have personality disorders is if somebody with a personality disorder wants you to like them, you will.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (50:34)
• Real Life Example: A sweet, popular boy—in reality a loan shark in middle school—could charm everyone, including his teachers. Many “nice” people are effective manipulators.

Nature vs. Nurture, Epigenetics, and the Blame Game (35:31–38:50)

• Parenting Not Solely to Blame: Harsh childhoods don’t “create” psychopaths, and blaming mothers for disorders like psychopathy, schizophrenia, and autism is outdated and damaging.
  • Quote: “The reason I created the organization to help people with psychopathy and their families is because ... everybody blames me ... I'm trying to be a good parent, but everybody thinks that I caused my kid to be this way.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (38:40)
• Gene-Environment Interaction: Some people have vulnerabilities, but environment determines expression. However, most kids with harsh upbringings do not become psychopathic; most adults with psychopathy did not have abusive parents.

The Psychopathy–Altruism Spectrum (68:49–69:43)

• Everyone Is Somewhere on the Spectrum: People can move up or down between altruism and callousness. Cognitive-behavioral interventions and life choices affect our location on this spectrum at any age.
  • Quote: “We’re all on that spectrum somewhere, and you can move up and down the spectrum.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (68:57)
• Altruists Don’t See Themselves as Central: Highly altruistic individuals don’t view themselves as the most important person in the room. Empathy and compassion are teachable.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Paradox of Psychopathic Experts:
  “If he was lying, how psychopathic, right?” — Abigail Marsh (04:30)
• On Diagnosing Psychopathy:
  “You can't look at a brain scan and diagnose ... or really any psychological disorder right now.” — Dr. Marsh (05:16)
• On Myths About Human Coldness:
  “90% of the time, someone’s going to try to help you if you get attacked in public. That’s amazing.” — Jordan Harbinger (17:16)
• On Parenting Extremes:
  “Either you’re a super permissive parent ... or you go too far the opposite direction ... Both are bad.” — Dr. Abigail Marsh (66:33)
• On Emotional Colorblindness in Psychopathy:
  “Looking at the face of a person who is extremely terrified... What do you call that? I ... can’t come up with anything.” — Dr. Marsh (45:08)
• On Real-World Psychopaths:
  “People who are psychopathic are not necessarily violent. ... Many of them don’t [resort to violence]. They just sort of want to get what they want, and what happens to other people ... is not of that much concern to them.” — Dr. Marsh (26:12)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Heroism and Cory Booker’s Fire Rescue: 08:59–12:17
• Urban Legend Debunking (Bystander Effect, Milgram, Stanford Prison): 14:54–18:33
• Prevalence & Stereotypes of Psychopathy: 22:26–26:12
• Heritability and Environment: 30:35–35:31
• Parenting and Outcomes for Psychopathic Traits: 41:28–44:25; 58:55–63:47
• Emotional Processing—Psychopaths and Fear: 44:25–46:15; 53:00–54:26
• Charming Psychopathic Kids: 47:04–51:07
• The Psychopathy/Altruism Spectrum: 68:49–69:43

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Tone & Takeaways

Jordan keeps the tone witty, clinical, and approachable—using humor to lighten dark subjects and plenty of anecdotes to make neuroscience relatable. Dr. Marsh is clear, compassionate, and highly nuanced. The episode is a myth-buster for pop psychology, urging skepticism and compassion in understanding both saints and “monsters.” Most importantly, it affirms that both empathy and callousness are malleable, that parenting matters, and that no one—neither hero nor villain—fits a simple narrative.

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For listeners seeking more, the conversation continues in Part 2.

Transcript

[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I mean, Tick Tock and Instagram are the worst news ever for like all scientists because they're just drowning in misinformation. I hate that word. But they're bad information, especially about clinical psychology. And it's just so hard to like, get heard about the chatter. But I mean, one of the mistakes that people make is thinking that somehow, like being loving and having standards and expectations and reinforcing misbehavior with consequences are somehow like opposite ends of a spectrum. And so like, either you're a super permissive parent and you're loving and warm and your kid can do anything they want and you're like, oh, just need to give them more love. That's no good, right? That's called permissive parenting. We know 100% that that is not going to result in good consequences. Kids do end up with more behavior problems as well as more anxiety when they're raised that way. But then some parents go too far the opposite direction where they're like, I'm going to be super withholding and gruff and stern and really harsh punishment and my kid gets no autonomy. And that's called authoritarian parenting. And that's bad too, right? Kids do not turn out well when they're raised that way.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

use to impact your own life and

[Jordan Harbinger]

and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional neuroscientist, Russian chess grandmaster, cold case homicide investigator, or hostage negotiator. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today we're talking about psychopaths, extreme altruists, and the thin neurological line between donating a kidney to a stranger and maybe

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

stealing a kidney from a stranger.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We've all heard the classics Stanford Prison experiment, Milgram participants shocking someone while they scream and the whole Bystanders did nothing murders in New York. The these studies shaped how we think about human nature. The problem is, a lot of that stuff turned out to be total garbage. So if the psychology canon is shaky, what's actually true about who we are? Why are 1 to 2% of the population clinically psychopathic, but nearly 50% of criminals meet the criteria? Why do psychopaths struggle to recognize fear

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

in other people's faces like they've never seen the color red?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Why don't they report feeling fear at all, but instead curiosity? On the other extreme, what kind of brain wiring makes somebody donate a kidney to a a complete stranger? Today we're diving into the neuroscience of fear, psychopathy, extreme altruism, super face recognizers, whether nature versus nurture is the wrong question entirely. And whether someday we'll be able to predict who becomes a hero and who belongs behind bars. Here we go with Dr. Abigail Marsh.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

So I read the book and I

[Jordan Harbinger]

mean, look, you'll never get sick of

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

doing podcasts about psychopaths.

[Jordan Harbinger]

People love psychopaths.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

They do.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

They just can't get enough of it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Whether it's true crime Psychopaths murdering people.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Or it's just what's up with this person's brain. My most popular episodes are this professor studies psychopaths and found out they were a psychopath. Or something along those lines.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Oh, James Fallon. Yeah, of course.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

The late James Fallon.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And I hate to do this because I know he's no longer with us, but the older I get, and the more episodes I do about psychopaths, the more I'm like, was that true?

[Jordan Harbinger]

I don't know.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

And that's the paradox, right? If he was lying, how psychopathic, Right?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

What a weird thing to do. He must be a psychopath.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But if he's telling the truth, well,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

then he's a psychopath according to his own admission. So I don't know. The way he found out he was a psychopath. And I'm going off memory here, so you might have to correct me, since you know him, too. He said, I was studying psychopaths, and then one of my students picked a brain scan out of a pile and was like, let's work on this psychopath. And he was like, oh, cool.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Who is this person?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And they were like, it's you, right?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yes. It's a great story.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Oh, my God. That's my brain.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm a psychopath. I had no idea. And I guess the question I'm really

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

crappily formulating on the fly here is,

[Jordan Harbinger]

can you just look at a brain

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

scan and go, oh, look at this person. They're a psychopath?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

No, Definitely not.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Okay, well, that answers that, then.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

We need, like, the womp, womp sound now because. Yeah, yeah, no, you can't look at a brain scan and diagnose or really any psychological disorder right now. We just don't have that level of precision. So that definitely didn't happen. And then, in addition, he wasn't a psychopathy researcher. He was a schizophrenia researcher. So I have many questions about that origin story. There have been, unfortunately, quite a few examples in just the last year or so of people whose stories were just a little too pretty to be true. Turning out not to be true, with Oliver Sacks being the big one. All those gorgeous stories about his neuropsychology patients turn out to have been mostly fabricated.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah, I don't know the details on those. I do know that for my show, the big one for me was Frank Abagnale write the Catch Me if youf can guy. This has nothing to do with neuropsychology, I suppose. But he was the guy from the movie Catch Me if youf can Leonardo DiCaprio. It's like, oh, he did all these amazing things. He became a fake pilot and a fake lawyer and a fake doctor. Turns out he was just in prison for check fraud during the period of time that all of this was supposedly happening. There's no records of it anywhere. He never worked with the FBI on any of this. It was all just a big con. And he became, like, this fraud expert.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And what was funny to me, which

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

should have been a flag, but again, he had so much social proof to sort of make everyone believe his story, including, like, James Cameron or whoever made that movie with him, right? He had so much social proof, I ignored it. When I had him on the show and we talked about fraud, I was

[Jordan Harbinger]

like, this guy doesn't really know much about this. He's telling me the same thing that

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

was in the movie in, like, this layman's term thing.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But he's not this sort of expert other than there's all these sort of,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

like, platitudes you can say about fraud, like, make sure that you do your due diligence. Like, he didn't really have any sort of unique insight. And I was like, huh?

[Jordan Harbinger]

For a fraud expert, this guy sure

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

sounds like an amateur to me. And, you know, lo and behold, he was just a mump who got pinched for check fraud because it wasn't sophisticated and then made up this entire story and then sold it, and that was the big fraud.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Maybe you should be, you know, some sort of a profiler for the FBI or something. Very well detected.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I mean, instead of being a profiler, what you have to do is just go, this really sounds like bs And

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I don't care how many other people believe it. It still sounds like bs. But what I did was go, wow,

[Jordan Harbinger]

this sounds like bs, but geez, everybody else believes it.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

There's a movie about it. The AARP hired him as their guy for fraud. It must just be he's on an off day or, like, they made all these excuses for him and they just turned out that my instinct, slash what my initial read was, was true.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I guarantee you that if you

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

interviewed a thousand people who knew him, they'd be like, yeah, it never quite added up. But, you know, he had this job and they made it the movie. So whatever.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You know, it's like someone goes on

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Oprah and is like, selling a crappy diet that's obviously fake. And you're like, but they were on Oprah. And you're like, well, they were on Oprah, you know, and then it's like,

[Jordan Harbinger]

well, maybe Oprah makes dumbass grifters famous,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

which is actually the truth. Right. Sorry, Oprah. I know it's probably unintentional.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Anyway, what are we talking about against

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

psychopaths instead of, yeah, thanks for coming on the show.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah. I'm just gonna sit here and listen to you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I mean, that's what everybody else is

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

doing right now, but it's against their will.

[Jordan Harbinger]

They're wondering when you're gonna chime in.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I'm really enjoying it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So psychopathy is always interesting for me,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

and I have actual questions about this, and I swear I'm gonna ask them in a second.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But the book starts with this Cory Booker hero experience.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Cory Booker, not psychopathic, I should emphasize.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah, he's not a psychopath, to be clear.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But tell me about this, because, one,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I'd never heard that, and two, if

[Jordan Harbinger]

I did this and I was a

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

politician, I would never shut up about it. Which is probably good that I'm not in that field of work.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I mean, it is sort of an interesting paradox, is that, you know, people who are politicians can't be too humble.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

It's bad for business.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Well, yeah, but truly altruistic people genuinely are humble. It is a feature. And so that is what leads me to believe he really is a genuinely altruistic person, because he doesn't really talk about it as heroic people never talk about what they've done. So what happened was back when he was still the mayor of Newark, so this was well over a decade ago, he was driving home to his neighborhood, and when he pulled up in his driveway, he discovered that his neighbor's house was on fire. And I don't think anybody was there to help yet. But his neighbor was outside in the front yard screaming that I believe it was her daughter was still trapped inside in the house. And so, like many heroic people do in a situation like this, Booker later said, he just acted. He didn't think. He wasn't weighing the costs and benefits. How will this look to my constituents? None of that. He just dove in. He had to fight his bodyguard off. His bodyguard is literally pulling him back by the belt, trying to keep him from running into the building and fought him off and ran up the stairs into the building through a burning kitchen, embers raining down at his head, smoke filling his lungs. Gropes through the dark into this bedroom off the kitchen, and finds his neighbor's daughter, who was unconscious, throws her over his shoulder, and then sort of stumbles back out through the kitchen again. Embers and ashes raining down on him smoke filling his lungs and then, you know, collapses in the yard outside, having rescued a woman that he'd never met before. And I think he was eventually taken to the emergency room because he had smoke inhalation and burns. I mean, it was really incredible what he had done. And the world just erupted in admiration for him.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Bodyguard had a bad day, though. Like, I'm probably getting fired.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No pun intended.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Major fail. Yeah. From the bodyguard. Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Whoops. So my job is to keep you

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

from dying, and I just let you run into a burning building. I swear I tried to keep you. Or the story is like, yeah, I had to fight him off. He's like, look, if you go in there, you gotta make something up about how I tried to stop you, okay? Otherwise, I'm toast.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Could have imagined the bodyguard maybe would have gone with him.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, I was expecting you to say.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And then they both ran in there. And meanwhile, the bodyguard's like, oh, I tried.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I don't know.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I'm not doing that. I'm not taking a break for this guy.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Think about it. I think a bodyguard did actually help. I mean, he wasn't there the whole way, but I think he did ultimately help get the woman out of the building at some point. So he redeemed himself. But, yeah, I don't know. The whole episode revealed a couple things about heroism. One is that there's a huge difference between being fearless and being brave. And I think this is really important for just understanding the scope of human personalities. So the immediate thing people think when they hear about something like this is, oh, this person is incapable of feeling fear if they were going to do something this dangerous. But if you actually listen to what Cory Booker said after the incident. He talked about how terrified he was in every single interview. He was sure he was going to die. He was absolutely terrified. All he felt was fear. And so that suggests that there's something in very altruistic people other than just insensitivity to fear, which is not really a virtue. Rather, they have the ability to overcome their fear because they actually care about other people. So that's a really good illustration of them.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

This is not the same thing, but. Did you see Alex Honnold climb Taipei 101 last week?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yes.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Unbelievable. And it has nothing to do with altruism, obviously, but that's a guy where you're like, aren't you a little worried

[Jordan Harbinger]

because you're on the 50th floor now,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

and if you fall, you don't have any ropes. Like, that's what everybody wants to know, aren't you afraid of dying? And he's done interviews where he's like, yeah, but repeated exposure to stimulus of fear makes it go down.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Ok, that's probably true to a certain

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

extent, but I don't know.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I would like to talk to somebody

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

who's in like a Ukrainian trench right now and be like, hey, are you less scared today? And they're probably going to be like, no, not really. You know, most normal people are gonna still be as scared on day five as they are on day one or day 500, because you can still die. You might be more nonchalant sometimes, but no, when the artillery comes in, you're probably as scared, I would imagine. I don't know.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah, I mean, less scared the more exposure you have. There's no question about that. Like, the longer you've been in a particular situation that's threatening, you know, you do habituate. That's what our brains are built to do. And, and clearly lots of experiences at very tall heights without a rope has habituated Alex Hunnell to danger. We know he's not fearless because if you listen to his TED Talk, for example, he mentions how scared he's been in various climbing situations over a dozen times. And in fact, I happen to know that he was so scared before giving his own TED Talk, which is taken from me, like a terrifying experience, that he couldn't sleep the night before and ended up climbing the outside of the TED building to try to shake off his nerves.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Okay, well, so how unique is that? That's interesting. And they're like, hey, you don't have to give a talk, you just have to climb the building. He's like, oh, thank God. I was really nervous about standing in front of 85 people and having it recorded for the Internet. Yeah, that's really funny.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah. So he's not incapable of fear, but it actually is relevant to altruism because I think the thing about doing things that are brave is that we have multiple motivation systems in our brain. And so anybody can overcome their fear if the thing that's driving them forward is more powerful than the thing, the fear that's holding them back. And for him, and for other climbers like him, of whom I've known some, including, I actually know one of his videographers, is somebody I grew up with, who also is a really impressive climber. And they just love climbing. They just love it so much that their love for it overcomes their fear for it. And then in addition to that, they can't be the most Timid people in the world. And then in addition to that, they have all this experience that helps them regulate their fears. So, you know, I think that that really explains altruism, too. Like, people who are altruistic care more about the welfare of the person in danger than they do about their own safety in that moment.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

In that moment. Yeah. I suppose in that moment. The thing for me is the no ropes. Like, can't you have a fear experience? And it's like, no, I need to be threatened with actual death. Not just falling off the building, being rescued by a rope and trying again, or being embarrassed that I failed climbing a skyscraper. I have to actually die.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I would love to know about that part because it doesn't make obvious sense to me why you couldn't do that, climb with ropes. But, you know, maybe it makes you feel fettered somehow that there's ropes holding you back. I have no idea.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah, I could use a little fettering if I was climbing a skyscraper. This is why he does it. And I don't.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I guess this does come back to something.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I know people are like, what are you talking about? I thought we were talking about psychopaths. I do want to take a little circle back here, because you hear about things like the Stanford Prison Experiment, which was where I think some students became guards, and they started sort of torturing the students who volunteered to be prisoners. And then the Milgram Experiment, where there's an actor who was getting shocked and pretending that it hurt really bad. And then the students kept shocking the guy and shocking the guy, and he kept screaming more and more and more. And then on top of that, when I was in law school, we studied this murder in New York, where I think her name was, like, Kitty something. And she was running around and screaming for, like, two hours, and the guy was chasing her with the knife, and she was screaming and she got stabbed, and then she kept running and screaming, and nobody called the police.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And these kinds of experiments are all super famous in that urban legend about the murder. They're all so famous, and then you find out 20 years later that, oh, yeah, this is kind of BS, right? That murder did not happen that way.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Well, the murder happened, but lots of people tried to help. I mean, in the Kitty Genovese story, there was a person who went down there with her and was, you know, cradling her, and lots of people called the cops. But that's. For some reason, that's not a sticky narrative, right? The real narrative, the narrative people want is, is that people who live in Cities, because that was the whole point at the time that episode came out, is that cities are just hotbeds of iniquity and callousness. And so it was a sticky story that nobody helped her, when in reality, lots of people did, which is the norm. There's a huge study that came out maybe two or three years ago that pulled CCTV footage of people getting attacked in public places from three different countries. It was, I think, the uk, South Africa, and maybe Belgium. And I don't know if you have a guess as to the percentage of times where somebody was attacked in public and it was caught on CCTV camera and bystanders came to their defense.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Oh, man. 75% of the time.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Oh, pretty good. That's very close. 90.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

90. Wow. That's even more.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

So basically, almost nine out of ten times, someone's gonna try to help you if you get attacked in public. That's amazing.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Totally. Right. And the actual lesson of the Milgram study is that people are more compassionate than they are prone to obey authorities. Because if you watch that Milgram video a million times, as I have, because I teach introductory psychology, what you'll discover is that the only way they could get people to be more likely to continue shocking this innocent stranger who's crying out that his heart is bothering him, rather than obeying their compassion, which they all clearly felt, because these people who were, you know, continuing to press the shock button, were visibly suffering, Right? They're sweating. They're, like, rubbing their faces. They keep asking to stop, like they don't want to keep doing it, but when the authority figure tells them to keep going, they do, but only if the authority figure is standing right there in their face and the victim is on the other side of a wall where they can't see him and they can only intermittently hear him. If the experimenter, the authority, and the victim are equally salient. So they're both in the room or they're both out of the room. Compassion wins over obedience. The majority of people will stop administering shocks at some point during the experiment.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And the Stanford prison experiment, they finagled. They put their thumb on the scale, Right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

What didn't they say?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

There's, like, records of them being like, hey, be more this. Which is not, you know, how experiments work, unfortunately.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I think Zimbardo really wanted to sell a particular story, and so he really coached the people in the experiment, especially the people playing the prison guards who were Stanford students. He coached them on what to do. He was trying to make the case that you put people in a negative situation and will automatically elicit negative behavior from them. But it turns out that isn't what happens and so he had to tell them to act like beasts.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Psychopaths don't feel fear. I, on the other hand, feel abject terror every time I look at the Feedback Friday inbox. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. March includes international Women's Day, and it's

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

had me thinking about how much women

[Jordan Harbinger]

carry that most of us don't fully see. I look at my wife, Jen. She's the architect of fun in our house.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Birthday parties, little adventures, special outings that make life feel bright.

[Jordan Harbinger]

She's also running the behind the scenes operations, schedules, school logistics, all the moving pieces that keep everything from falling apart. There's an invisible mental load that's basically always on and because she makes it look effortless, it's easy to forget it still has weight. I think a lot of women operate like that. Capable, organized, steady, while quietly carrying more than anyone realizes. Therapy can be a space where you don't have to hold everything together. You can talk through what you're carrying, set boundaries, find some balance. Better Help connects you with licensed therapists who follow a strict professional code of conduct. You take a short questionnaire, they match you based on your needs and you can switch anytime. With over 30,000 therapists, 6 million people served and a 4.9 out of 5 rating from 1.7 million reviews and it's helped a whole lot of people.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Dig that well before you thirsty folks build relationships before you need them. I'm teaching you how to do that in our six minute networking course. It's free. There's no shenanigans. I don't need your credit card information. I'm not going to bill you for anything. It really is just a gift from us to you. And a lot of the guests on the show contribute to the course. Sixminutenetworking.com is where you can find it. Now back to Abigail Marsh.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

There's a book all about a lot of these things by Rutger Bregman. Have you read that? He came on the show and talked about this. I think it's called Humankind or something like that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And it's basically about there was a

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Lord of the Flies type situation and everybody expects it to become sort of Lord of the Flies ish. And what happened was everybody cooperated and like survived together. And he goes over in depth all these sort of narratives that humans do this and they result to this corruption and power over other. And it's like, nope.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Actually when you look at the data

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

or when you rerun this, that's not what happens at all. People are by nature more cooperative and more compassionate than you expect. And a lot of these urban legends like the murder on NYC or these experiments that were sort of fiddled with,

[Jordan Harbinger]

they're just not true.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

This is not the way that most humans actually behave when they are put under pressure.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

100%. I couldn't have said it better. Yes, that's exactly. Our intuitions about other people's trustworthiness and capacity for compassion tend to be way off. We're much too untrusting on average.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Although, back to psychopathy, because I did tease that in the beginning here.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What percentage of the population are psychopaths?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

It's a larger number than I sort of hope to hear, I think.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Well, the official statistic is about 1 to 2%. Numbers may be a little higher in the US than they are, for example, in Europe.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Why?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

That's a great question. We don't know. Right. There's a lot of cultural differences. I think one possibility which has never been officially tested, but this is the prediction I would want to test, is that there's something about founder populations of people who immigrate, who leave their family and friends behind and take a huge risk to seek out a new life and a new place that takes, you know, a certain amount of insensitivity to risk and a certain amount of willingness to break ties with the people that you care about the most. And I'm not saying that the people creator psychopath immigrants are psychopaths.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

You heard it here first.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Someone call ice. No, that is not okay.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

But.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Oh God.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

But they have just enough more of the traits that if you have them in huge quantities, create psychopathy that it might shift the population mean over just a hair and could end us up with a lot of people who don't care about their loved ones at all and who are completely insensitive to hormone punishment, which is people with psychopathy. So anyways, it's about 1 to 2%. But here's the big problem is it's really hard to say where to draw the line because it's. Psychopathy is not like a natural group. It's a set of traits that varies in the population. So sort of where you decide to draw the cutoff is a little bit arbitrary.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah, I'm thinking that it has to be right because I know a lot of founders. I guess I am one. This is a media company at the end of the day. And I moved away from my family in Michigan and I went abroad and lived there for a. But I'm pretty sure that I'm not a psychopath. Like I have high degree of confidence that I care a lot about other people. I'm not totally insensitive to their feelings, things like that. But so 1 to 2%, that's much higher, I think, than most people would like. I was kind of hoping for one

[Jordan Harbinger]

in a thousand, but two in 100, one in 50. You're running into these people just day

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

to day at that rate.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Oh yeah, you know somebody with psychopathy already. So if 1 to 2% of the population has a clinically significant level of psychopathy, and most people's social networks include a hundred to 150 people. All of us know somebody with psychopathy. So that's the bad news. But the good news is that the stereotypes people have about psychopathy are usually a little off. And so the person with psychopathy you already know, you may just not have recognized that that's what their behavior Adds up to.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

The more I do shows like this, the more I'm like, you know what? Because they're not a violent killer at all. Of course, this is not my friend who went to prison. I mean, I have those too, but I have friends who just didn't do any work in college. And they were like, we're going to kick you out. And then he sort of just schmoozed his way past academic probation and then went abroad and did a Fulbright.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And it's like you were the guy

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

that the teachers had written off as, like, not caring, and then you went and did a Fulbright. And it's not like this person's a quiet genius. They were just really, really willing to lie. There was one guy who got a Fulbright and. And he's actually quite well known now as, like, founded a company, and then they got in trouble for something. You know, I remember I was like,

[Jordan Harbinger]

how are you going to do that?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And he's like, oh, I'm giving talks on Africa. And I was like, have you been to Africa?

[Jordan Harbinger]

And he goes, jordan, you just have

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

to tell people you're an expert in something and they will believe you. And I was like, yeah, that's called lying. But you do you, bro. And that was his strategy, and he wrote a book, and it was like,

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

okay, sounds like Frank Abagnelle a little bit.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And I remember thinking, like, there's no way you're gonna get away with this.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And, like, hundreds of millions of dollars in his startup that's, like, quite successful. Later, I'm like, nope, you are definitely getting away with this. Like, that is what you have done so far.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

People can absolutely get away with that stuff. And, you know, this person may not hit the level of, like, clinical levels of psychopathy, but he sounds just from a, you know, brief description, like, he could very much be in that direction. And that's much more prototypically psychopathic. A certain disregard for rules, right? A belief that you are more important than other people and that it is okay to do things that exploit or use or harm other people because you matter and they don't really. People who are psychopathic are not necessarily violent. I know lots of people with psychopathy who are not violent at all, because violence is, at the end of the day, in many cases, sort of a tool that people use to get what they want. And, you know, people who are psychopathic may use that tool, but many of them don't. They really just sort of want to get what they want. And what happens to other people as a result of Their behavior is not of that much concern to them.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

This is interesting, right? Because I know some people I suspect are psychopaths. None of them are violent. Well, with the exceptions of the ones that landed in prison. But I really think the reason that

[Jordan Harbinger]

most of them are not violent is

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

they're like, I don't need to be violent to do this. All I have to do is lie my face off. It's going to be way more effective. Violence wouldn't even reach the goal that I want. Right. Like you can't be violent and get venture capitalists to invest in your company. That's the opposite of what you would do.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right. But I think, would they be violent

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

if they could get their results that they needed that way?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Possibly.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And like my childhood friend who murdered his girlfriend and cut her into little pieces and is now spending life in prison, like, that guy used violence to get what he wanted.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

What did he want?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah, well, it was an impulsive reaction. I think that his girlfriend like broke up with her or something and he killed her and then he panicked and hid the body in like a really gruesome way. So I don't know if that's psychopathic, but it sure sounds like it. I don't know the violence part anyway,

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

definitely highly antisocial problem with people who are with, especially young men, but to some extent young women in their late teens, early 20s, is that that is a time when a lot of different psychological disorders are emerging for the first time, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which can lead people to engage in really bad behavior, including in some cases, really violent behavior, especially purposeless violent behavior. So a lot of the time when you see, for example, people in that age range who were spree killers, so they go out and just shoot a bunch of strangers, that's completely purposeless behavior. It's serving no goal. It's not benefiting the person who's doing it in any way. And so it does turn out a lot of the time people who do that kind of thing are not. They're becoming psychotic, they're in the early stages of that. It's not a rational choice. Whereas people who are, who are psychopathic, almost always their behavior is to serve some goal that they've got for themselves. And luckily, for the most part, society is set up that you actually get what you want more often than not. When you are pro social, when you do the right thing, and that's the kind of society we want to live in, better things happen to you when you do pro social things than when you do antisocial things. If you're a jerk, right. If you're obviously manipulating people, if you're, you know, beating them up, if you're threatening them, people won't like you and they won't want to have a relationship with you. They won't want to help you. You'll get punished. You know, whether legally or just some other sanction. That's good, right? We want a society like that. And so most of the time, even people who are psychopathic actually will behave in pro social ways because it's beneficial for them to. And, you know, it just makes the most sense and it's the most practical.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Do we know what percentage of criminals are psychopathic? Is that something you can measure easily?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah. So if you use the most commonly used measurement of psychopathy in prisons, which is called the Psychopathy Checklist Revised or PCLR, the estimate is that about 50 to 60%, I think, of violent criminals. So people in prison who were violent are psychopathic, and maybe 25 or so percent of people in prison overall are psychopathic.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Okay, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense, right. I mean, there's the people who decide to just murder the other drug dealers so they can have their business. It's like, okay, there's more than one screw loose if that's your business plan, right. And you're executing that. I was actually surprised to read that a lot of aggression is actually inherited. I didn't know that there was a heritability factor to aggression. I mean, I suppose it makes sense. You can inherit other personality traits as well and aggression just happens to be one of those.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Absolutely, yeah. There is no psychological outcome that doesn't have any heritability. Right. That has no genetic basis whatsoever. And the average personality trait, we think, is about 50% heritable. So half the variation is due to genetic differences. And that seems to be true with psychopathy and aggression as well. Half to maybe even two thirds of variation in these traits is heritable.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Some people are aggressive depending on the context of their life. Right. So like, my dad grew up in a bad neighborhood, but then he was like, hey, I should go to college and make something of myself. So he did. But a lot of the people he grew up with, they didn't do that. You know, they joined like a gang or something. Right. And they didn't make it. So it's not that my dad, just by example, doesn't have an aggression switch. It's just that it's remained off his whole life because he doesn't use that. Right. But My dad, given that another set of circumstances, like he was actually unable to go to college or something like that and had to continue working on the Ford assembly line, maybe he does get into bar fights or he does pick up an alcohol problem and then beats people up.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

My great grandfather, or great grandfather, whatever, uncle, aunt, whatever, he was like a gang enforcer for the Jewish mafia.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And the reason he did that was.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah, I know.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The reason he did that was because I think this might have been my

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

mom's grandfather or something. I got to ask her.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The reason he did that was he tried to get a job at Ford

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

and they were like, we don't hire Jews. And he was like, dang it. So then when they were making unions, the union busters were like, hey, we hire Jews.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Your job is to go beat up people who are trying to start unions.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And he was like, all right, well, I need a job. So he did that. And the only photo we have of

[Jordan Harbinger]

him is him beating some dude in

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

the street wearing, you know, fancy clothes from 1903 or whatever era. It was like beating someone up. I guess they probably weren't fancy clothes, but they look old timey and fancy.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And it's like him kicking some dude in the street.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And it's like, yeah, this guy, you know, along with the other purple gang guys or whatever their gang was like, beat up these union organizers. And here's a black and white photo that's all fuzzy.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Wow, what a legacy.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, like, but he, what he wanted to do was build cars on an assembly line.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I don't think he was like, how can I get paid for beating people up? He just wanted a job.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

That's a really good example of the fact that, you know, most people have the capacity to be aggressive. Most of us exercised it when we were maybe two or three years old, which is statistically the most violent period of a person's life. For anybody who's had a toddler, they will know this. But even as we're older, we all have the capacity for aggression. It's just that different people have different capacities. So, you know, for example, men are on average definitely more aggressive than women across context, across cultures. Doesn't matter where you look. However, within any context, only a small fraction of people are responsible for most of the aggression. But almost anybody will be aggressive if that is the only way that they have to get what they need. Right. So you're great grandfather. It wasn't that he was particularly interested in being violent, but there was no other way for him to support himself. And so if that was the only tool that he was left with, he's like, okay. Whereas some people might have gravitated toward a tool like that, even if there were other options.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah. By the way, this was not like a good guy. He had, like, two families and stuff. You know, he was one of those guys.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Oh. The intrigue grows. He was not a good guy.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

No, no.

[Jordan Harbinger]

He wasn't like a good dude who

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

just fell on hard time like he was a piece of crap. He just maybe wasn't always a violent piece of crap until he needed to be, because he needed money. Not a good.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Okay. But this was somebody who didn't care a lot about other people's welfare.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Definitely did not. No.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah. And I mean, this is the best way to understand people who are psychopathic is It's. They're just very instrumental. And I. And I will say this. First of all, as far as I know, I'm one of the only people in the world who set up a website, an organization aimed at helping people who have disorders of aggression and psychopathy, because I fully recognize how many people out there have psychopathy or have a close family member with it, and they really want them to get treatment. Right. Many people who are psychopathic themselves are like, I don't want to be this way. I just don't know how to behave differently. No differently from somebody with any other disorder. It's just they can't find anybody who will help them. Because I really take great pains not to use psychopathy as, like, a smear, a slur. It's a disorder. And I also have colleagues and people who I've worked with who have been diagnosed as psychopathic. And I really have valued them and their contributions, and I fully recognize that people with psychopathy are totally capable of. Of coming up with sort of a code for how they want to live, including a code that dictates, like, what it means to be a good person, even if they don't have the same emotions and drives and motivations as other people do. So I think that's really important to clarify. However, in that context, my colleagues who were psychopathic will agree with this, is that people who are psychopathic just don't intrinsically value other people's welfare that much. And so they are just much more instrumental on their social interactions. And every interaction is about, like, what can I get? What can I get out of this person? What can I get out of this situation? So that's why there's so much manipulating and lying and exploitation is. It's because people most of the time are just sort of tools to get whatever the ultimate goal is.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Do psychopaths sometimes arise because of troubled or abusive upbringings? I feel like I read a long time ago. And you can debunk this now if needed. Let's say you have the gene or whatever it is, but you grow up in a supportive, loving family, maybe that switch doesn't get flipped. But if you grow up and you're surrounded by gang members in Guatemala or something like that, it's like, oh, okay, this is how I operate. So not only are you a product of your environment, but you're a product of your environment plus genes. So it's like, what is the epigenetics? Right. Is that a thing?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Absolutely, yeah. Or certainly gene environment interaction. Absolutely right. So anybody who has siblings, right, you grew up in the same home, but it doesn't mean you're identical. And that's true of people with psychopathy, too. They're different from the get go. All babies, all children are different from the get go. But then the environment that they get put into sort of changes what opportunities they have, what behavioral habits they develop, how their emotions develop. And so 100% the environment that you're born into shapes the way that whatever sort of initial potential you have ultimately gets expressed. So, yes, if you grew up in a more violent sort of life environments, for example, your family, home or your neighborhood, you're definitely more likely to end up engaging in violent behavior yourself. But it varies a lot across people. What I always want to reinforce is that it's not normative if you experience harsh treatment as a child to become violent yourself. That's actually atypical because otherwise we're just going to end up stigmatizing everybody who had a violent childhood. Oh, I should be careful about you now. You're a danger to me. And that's actually not true. Thank goodness, right? Atypical. Yeah, right. And the other thing that happens a lot is that many people sort of reason backwards. They think, oh, well, if a harsh upbringing is the cause of psychopathy, which it's not, P.S. it's a much more complicated interaction, then that means if there's an adult who's psychopathic, it must be because they were abused as a child, it's their mom's fault. That way of thinking has a long, sordid history in psychology and psychiatry, thanks to Freud, most of whose ideas also PS Were completely cooked up out of whole cloth. So many of the stories he's best known for are completely fictional. But, you know, he had this idea that everything about your adult personality, any sort of maladaptive emotions and behaviors you had, were a result of early childhood. You know, he didn't use the word trauma, but trauma. And it's just not true. And unfortunately, that reasoning got applied for a long time to people with schizophrenia. Right. The idea was the reason that people develop schizophrenia is because they had schizophrenogenic mothers.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Oh, geez.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Who made them that way? They're bad mother. Yeah. And then it was autistic children. You know, there was the whole idea that the refrigerator mothers. A cold, withholding mother is what causes children to develop autism. Mom gets blamed every time. That's terrible.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

That's really bad.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Right? It's terrible. And so these poor parents, like, in addition to the fact that they already are struggling to raise a child who has a lot of extra challenges and needs, are getting blamed and shamed by everybody for causing the behavior. And often the parents are like, I know I didn't, because I've got these other kids and they're not like this. And so I really don't think I could have caused it. But everybody thinks you do. We're still there when it comes to kids who have psychopathy, which, PS is also a neurodevelopmental disorder, just like autism, just like adhd, just like lots of conditions. It's not just, like, caused by bad parenting in any simple way, but. Oh, my God. I mean, this is what. The reason I created the organization to help people with psychopathy and their families is because I've talked to so many parents over the years who were like, I don't know what to do. Like, everybody blames me. I really don't think that I caused this. I'm trying to be a good parent, but everybody thinks that I caused my kid to be this way.

[Jordan Harbinger]

About half of criminals meet the criteria for psychopathy. The other half just made really bad decisions. Speaking of bad decisions, let's hear a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Deleteme. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over on the website at jordanharbinger.com deals if a code's not working for you, you can't find something you're not sure if it ever existed. Go ahead and email us jordanordanharbinger.com we're happy to dig up codes for you. It really is that important that you support those who support the show. Now back to Abigail Marsh.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I would imagine parenting could enhance or reduce the appearance or potentially the expression of psychopathy. Right. If you do something violent and your parents are like, this is not acceptable. We don't tolerate this. This is how you behave, maybe it tunes it down a little bit. But if your parents are like, yeah, you beat that kid bloody who took your lunch money and then break his jaw next time, it's like, that's not gonna help.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Oh, yeah. So, I mean, there are families that reward kids for being violent. They explicitly reward violence. It's more than that, though. There's also variables that I don't think get enough attention. For example, household chaos. And there's a lot of literature now about how household chaos, and this includes, like, literal volume chaos, like television's on all the time, a lot of noise, you know, household composition chaos, different people coming in and out all the time, makes learning harder, you know, as basic to what we know about learning as anything. Right. To learn anything, whether it's language or math or how to behave, you have to pick out patterns from the noise, from the chaos. And it's a lot harder to do when there's a lot more noise and chaos there. And so homes that are literally noisier children tend to be slower to learn language, in part because it's just a lot harder to pick out the patterns, the language patterns, from all the ambient noise.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

That is interesting and makes complete sense. Right? You grow up in apartment with eight kids in an area where you have to keep the windows open to city noise to get airflow. And you have three TVs that you can hear at any given time and three radios and the street and your siblings. It's like, good luck reading War and Peace for your book report.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah. And so this is also true when it comes to learning behavior in general. And this sort of comes back to the idea that a good society is one where you get rewarded when you do the right thing, and you don't get rewarded when you do the wrong thing. That's sort of good parenting too, right? You make sure that the children get what they want when they do the right behavior consistently, and they don't get what they want when they do the wrong behavior. Right? Your kid wants the iPad and they hit you. You don't give them the iPad. And because if you give them the iPad, when they hit you, they just Learn. Oh, hitting is a good tool for getting what I want. If I throw a tantrum at the grocery store when I don't get candy, God, I can't tell you how many times I've seen parents do this, right? The kid wants candy, they start complaining, then they start getting mad, and then they throw a tantrum, and the parent gives in. It's like, okay, candy. And I'm like, do you understand what you just did? You just reinforced the tantrum. Now you're guaranteed to get a tantrum the next time you're at the store. And some people are like, oh, that seems really manipulative. I'm like, well, you know, parenting is shaping. Kids aren't born knowing how to behave. You really have to help them learn. And learning is about reinforcement. So, yeah. So if you're in a household where there's a lot of different people with a lot of different expectations and rules, and you can't pick out a signal like, what is it I'm supposed to do to get the things I need and want? It just makes it a lot harder to learn behavior. So, like, it's funny, when people think about the kinds of home environments that create challenges for kids learning behavior, they often think about, like, being abused, which is obviously terrible, and parents should not abuse their children. But there's subtler things in that, too, that can actually make it really hard for kids to learn.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

One thing from your book that made me more compassionate was, let's say a psychopathic child is just as mentally ill as a teenager with bipolar or severe depression, and they are unable to understand what they're looking at. A lot of the time, they have trouble identifying emotions on faces. I thought that was really interesting because when you think psychopath, you're like, oh, they're loving the fact that they're hurting this person. It seems like from these tests, they don't see in the moment, like, this person is terrified. There was an example you gave where it's like, what is this? And you're like, the guy says, I

[Jordan Harbinger]

don't know, but that's the face people

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

make before I stab them. And you're like, that's fear. That's fear. And they got it wrong every time. They're just like, yeah, that's the pre stab face. I don't know what that is. That was terrifying, right?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

And I feel like it's such a good example because it makes it such a compelling case that there's a real deficit. Like, if you are looking at the face of a person who is Extremely terrified. And you look at that face and you're like, I don't know you. What do you would you call that? I. I can't come up with anything, even though I know that when I'm about to stab somebody and they think they're about to die, that's how they look and what we think the issue is. I wouldn't say everybody thinks this, but this is certainly the data that makes the most sense, is that people who are psychopathic, we know one of the differences with them is that they have very early emerging deficits in the experience of fear. They don't respond to danger or the potential of being hurt or punished as strongly as other people do. They don't learn to avoid things that result in punishment very well. They don't have a strong physiological reaction to the possibility of being hurt. And I've worked with kids who are psychopathic who say they've never felt afraid. I had one kid even fill in on a questionnaire asking, you know, about experiences of fear. They just didn't think that my questionnaire was asking the questions. Right. And so they wrote in underneath, they're like, I have never felt fear. Hashtag never. Okay.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Hashtag never.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Never felt it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What do they feel instead, though?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Nothing. Or something else.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Sometimes they feel something more like excitement. Right. So that is a good way to account for the thrill seeking behavior we see in people who are psychopathic, because it's not. They don't feel nothing. And it's one of the reasons that, for example, people with psychopathy are really risky drivers. In a recent study we did, we asked about all different kinds of antisocial behaviors. And the most common forms of antisocial behavior that very psychopathic adults in the community engage in are substance use issues, which is a form of thrill seeking, often. And reckless and risky driving behaviors, which is definitely a form of thrill seeking.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Some of the psychopathic kids, I've never heard anything like this. Tell me about these kids. There's three. There's Amber, the Little Seducer, the boy who was a loan shark, and Heather the Amazing Lion. I'd love to hear about this. We never think about psychopathic kids.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yes. And I will say that, of course, these are pseudonyms, and I've, you know, done as much as I could to conceal their identities. So, yeah, none of these kids are what most people think of when I talk about kids who are psychopathic. And in fact, one of the kids who I do think fits many people's mental image of a psychopathic kid. When we finished Testing him, we realized he wasn't psychopathic at all. He had just been putting on a big front to sort of seem tough. And this was a boy who came from a really challenged family that I think the mom had a lot of mental illness problems. The neighborhood he grew up in was pretty impoverished and high crime, and he had been involved in a lot of criminal behavior. And he seemed really tough. Like, people sort of veered out of his way. When we would walk him through the NIH hallways, he was tall and, you know, he sort of walked with, like, this tough guy sort of swagger. And all the questions we asked him were about a gun falling out of the guy into his lap. And, you know, he'd been shot, he'd shot other people, all sorts of theft and all kinds of delinquency. But then when it came time to actually scan his brain for the brain imaging studies we were doing, he started asking a lot of questions, which is generally a sign that somebody's nervous. And I was like, this isn't right. What's going on? And he just. He wouldn't get up out of his chair when it was time to start going toward the magnet. And finally he's like, guys, I just want my mom. I don't think I can do it. And he was so sweet. Like, the mask came off, the tough guy demeanor came off. He apologized to us. I was like, I'm so sorry. I really wanted to do. I really thought I could. And he gave us this, like, big hug with his little skinny arms. And I just remember thinking, like, huh? Like, this is a lot of people's mental image of a kid who's psychopathic. He's really not. He had a horrible life, I'm sure not in every way, but in a lot of ways. And he had adopted this real tough kid demeanor to make up for it. Whereas the psychopathic kids we worked with, who were, you know, all the questions we asked them completely confirmed the high psychopathy personality. I don't think fit people's stereotypes nearly as closely. So the loan shark that you're asking about was a boy who was just the cutest, most likable kid. He was 13 or 14. We first met him. He came from, you know, one of the wealthy suburbs around D.C. really sweet dad who brought this kid in. And the dad just clearly just really was trying to do everything he could for his son, to the point of even writing this long rhyming poem that he would give to the boys teachers on the first day of every school year, because he knew Every year was going to be a bad year because this kid got in so much trouble at school and he just wanted so much for the teachers to see the good things about his kid, which was that he was very fun, he was funny, he was quite bright, good athlete, but he had a knack for getting in trouble. And he really liked money. And so, you know, he would do dares. I think a lot of the time it was for money. He like, you know, rode his bicycle off the roof of the school and I think, you know, broke his arm doing back flips. But in addition, he ran a little loan shark operation out of his bedroom. And he was in middle school at the time, I think, and he was charging high school students, you know, including high school seniors, a dollar a day interest a day interest on loans that he would give them. And he would threaten them with these highly illegal fireworks if they didn't pay up on time. It was impressive in its way, but. And the thing is, you just couldn't not like him. I mean, he just. The way he told these stories. And this is one of the things about psychopathy that I think often fools people is that they confuse whether they personally like somebody with whether they're psychopathic. And my experience with people who have personality disorders is if somebody with a personality disorder wants you to like them, you will.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Huh, that's scary.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

It's very hard not to. And in fact, you know, all the people that I've worked with and known who are psychopathic, I genuinely enjoy working with them, talking to them. They're just really interesting, enjoyable people. And I think this makes it difficult for sometimes people to realize that somebody that they personally have liked is living a whole different life in some other context and has been doing really terrible things behind the scenes. And you hear this all the time, that people are like, I can't believe this person could do this, because I really like them. And it's like, well, that's because they wanted you to like them.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Well, this is probably not the most apt example, but my childhood friend Amir, my mom loved him and he was so sweet and teachers loved him and he was so kind. And I remember he had this computer game that he really liked. And I would go over there and we'd play it just all day and then play it in the morning. And his parents would feed me and stuff like that. And I loved this game. I loved it, loved it, loved it. And the next time he came to my house, he had bought this for me. His parents, of course, had bought this for me. We were probably in first grade, and he just gave it to me. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And he's like, yeah, you like it so much that I told my mom to go buy it for you.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Wow. You were love bombed.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Well, maybe. But then he never did anything to

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

me, ever, other than be an amazing friend. And then when he got older, he murdered his girlfriend Cutter into little pieces.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Ah.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Wow.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And it was like. And my mom is like, I don't know how that is possible. What happened between when we knew him and this event that made this boy like that? And my mom has, like, all these crackpot theories, like, maybe he was too spoiled. And I'm like, a lot of kids who get too many gifts or whatever don't murder people in gruesome fashions and then try to hide the body. Like, that's probably not it well.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

And, you know, I don't want to draw too many conclusions yet about what happened to Rob Reiner and exactly what the problem is with his son.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Rob Reiner, I see. Yeah.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Obviously, he and his wife were just murdered by their son, who, my guess is there's gonna be a lot of evidence about personality disorder stuff coming out. But, you know, we're still waiting. In any case, a lot of people have been pointing to, oh, him being so spoiled. I'm like, he had siblings. There are multiple children in the household who were all raised by the same parents, and the other ones seemed to be doing great. And this kid was just different and had behavior problems and struggled to, like, control his temper from the very beginning, is what I've read.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

He had addiction issues that he was trying to medicate or whatever. I mean, whatever causes addiction. Right. In certain cases.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Is psychopathy a form of brain damage,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

or is it just like you made a left turn where everybody else doesn't?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Your brain just develops differently. And we don't know all the details yet, but a huge study just came out looking at. It's the biggest one yet, I think, of thousands of kids who have very serious behavior problems. And some of them also have early psychopathic traits or what are called callous and emotional traits in kids. And there are differences in the structure of the brain as it's developing all over. And so something is happening different in the development of the brain. I don't know if I'd call it the brain damage necessarily, but it's certainly not functioning the same. So, for example, there's a structure called the amygdala that this big study, as well as lots of my studies and other studies have shown, seems to be too small in kids who are developing psychopathic traits. And it's a structure that's responsible for a lot of different outcomes. But one of them is the ability to experience fear and coordinate that experience of fear. And then in addition to that, the other one is the ability to understand when other people are experiencing fear, because that is really what empathy is, is simulating somebody else's experience. And so this comes back to the example of the guy who couldn't recognize the fearful face. It's sort of an emotional blindness. Like it is very difficult to understand an emotion other people that you don't feel yourself. So because people with psychopathy are developing this relatively fearless temperament, they don't respond to punishment. They don't particularly care about getting hurt. They also don't understand what other people are afraid. They don't really understand why it's bad to make somebody feel afraid because they don't really experience that emotion themselves. And so it's definitely, you know, deficits in the brain.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So is psychopathy brain damage? I don't know. But if you've ever taken a peek at our YouTube comments, it's really tempting to run some diagnostics. If you'd like to upgrade your operating system, here are some great ways to do just that. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Progressive. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money. When you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes. It could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Don't forget about our newsletter. We bit wiser. It is specific and practical.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

It'll have an immediate impact on your

[Jordan Harbinger]

decisions, psychology relationships in under two minutes. And if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com News is where you can find it. Now for the rest of Part One with Abigail Marsh.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

So is this like a colorblind person? And you're like, this is blue. And they go, I. I don't really know what that is. I've been told about it. I can sort of make a guess as to what that is when I see this weird shade of whatever that is. Sometimes it's blue. It's often Green or orange. But they're just guessing, right? They're just guessing that that's what that is.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah. Yeah. So Emmy Thomas wrote a bestselling book about her own experiences having psychopathy from a very early age. We talked at length about her experiences of emotions like fear and guilt and love. And she's just like, I just have never had a feeling like you're describing. Like, I just. I don't feel that emotion. After quite a bit of therapy, and there are forms of psychotherapy that do seem to be able to really improve the symptoms of people who are psychopathic, she says, although she doesn't feel love, which from a scientific perspective is intrinsically valuing somebody else's welfare. So what happens to that person matters to you, regardless of how it affects you. Right?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

So. So even if they have a kid, they're just like, they don't love their kid in the way other people do.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Some people who are psychopathic, I do think, have a very narrow circle of people who they genuinely care about. So. Patrick Gangney also wrote a bestselling memoir about her experiences having psychopathy that came out just last year. I cannot say how appreciative I am about the fact that she has been so open about her own experiences and what it's like being psychopathic. I mean, to the point that many people have asked me, is she really psychopathic? To which I say, yes, she was definitely assessed as having all the relevant traits by a responsible clinician. But she's not what you think of when you think of psychopathy. So that's why you don't get it.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

It would be so weird being married to somebody like that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Can you imagine?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

She's like, you know what we should do? We should volunteer for the bake sale and steal all the money. And the husband's like, no, we should not do that. Oh, you're right. You're right. Sorry. My bad. I already volunteered for the bake sale, though. So we're bacon, some pies, and just. Yeah, Obviously she's probably not really like

[Jordan Harbinger]

this, but if I'm married to a

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

psychopath and I'm the husband, I gotta

[Jordan Harbinger]

be like, has she done any weird shit lately? I better check. I better make sure that she's not doing anything weird.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Because I'm in the inner circle, I'm

[Jordan Harbinger]

not worried about me.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I'm worried about the neighbor who just, like, uses a leaf blower. And after she said, please don't do that while I'm doing my podcast. And it's like, are you out there?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Dismantling this guy's leaf blower or putting

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

an M80 in it so it explodes next time he turns it on. Like, you're not doing that, are you?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I don't know about M80's but I would gladly dismantle any neighbor's leaf blower.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Frankly, I think leaf blowers should be outlawed. Don't get me started.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

They've been outlawed in Washington D.C. and bunch of counties in Maryland and things.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The whole thing is, this is your problem now. That's all it does. It blows all of the leaves off

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

the lawn and into the road and then somebody else has to clean it up.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Or it blows all the leaves off

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

the neighbor's lawn and then into my yard. And like, what? I hire the same guy to blow the leaves off my yard and into the road where they just blow around the whole neighborhood.

[Jordan Harbinger]

If you want that gone so bad, rake it right. Don't just blast it somewhere else.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I think the leaf blower is the psychopath of the appliance world.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It absolutely is.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

And there's an obvious solution to these things. And like, I'm walking through the neighborhood and it's like, oh, I can't make this phone call because there's all this noise.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Also, I can't breathe because all the

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

dirt from this person's driveway is now in the air. It was fine on the ground, but nope, it's gotta be blasted into the air. This is a whole podcast nobody wants to hear on leaf blowers anyway. So you kind of answered my next question. Which are there effective interventions or therapies for helping people with psychopathic traits develop empathy or pro social behaviors? And it sounds like there is, but God, that's gotta be really an uphill battle. Like, hey, I've never felt love.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Well, strap yourself in and sit on

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

this couch because we're gonna make you feel cared for and care for other people. That's a heavy lift, man.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah, yeah, it is a heavy lift. And I will say, you're never gonna move somebody from one end of the personality spectrum all the way to the other. Like, that's not gonna happen. So, for example, Emmy Thomas will say that she still doesn't feel what we would call love, but she does feel something like loyalty now. Like she feels like she owes it to people to treat them well. You know, people who have treated her well, who were close to her, she feels an obligation to them, which is like huge progress. You can go a long way with that kind of emotion. So it's easiest to treat these problems when People are young, right? The brain is the most plastic. You don't have as many sort of habits and things ingrained. So the problem with kids who develop psychopathy is that you sort of get this upward or guess, downward spiral, depending how you want to think about it, where you have this really fearless temperament. You don't respond to punishment. And you also tend to be a little bit sort of insensitive to affection and not that interested in sort of warmth and love from other people. You don't really respond to it. And that sets most parents up for failure because most parents are just ordinary people trying to do their best, right? And so the regular little punishments like timeout don't seem to be working at all, right? You give the kid timeout, and they do exactly the same thing the next time. Whereas most kids will respond pretty quickly to consistent punishments like time out. And then, in addition, they don't really seem to want hugs. They don't seem to want affection. And so you kind of back off of those things. You think you're being respectful. Well, it turns out this is exactly the opposite of what you should do. And then also because the kid doesn't respond to timeouts, you start ramping up the punishment. You're like, well, the timeout didn't work. Let's get a little harsher the next time. And unfortunately, these kind of natural inclinations that a lot of parents have send the kid in exactly the wrong direction, right? So the punishments keep getting harsher, and you back off on the love and affection. And P.S. because your kid is behaving badly, because they don't respond to punishment, you actually are really grumpy with them a lot of the time. And so you have this really negative, hostile cycle, it's called the coercive cycle that gets set up, causes the kid to believe that other people are just jerks, right? Why is everybody being so mean to me? Right? They're not getting much warmth, they're not getting that much affection. They are getting harsher punishments. And so they act out more and more, get even worse treatment from other people, and up you go until the kid starts developing really serious behavior problems and callous on emotional traits. And so what truly effective parent management training programs do is basically teaches parents to override your kind of automatic inclinations, which would probably be okay for most kids, but for this subset of kids just doesn't work with different behaviors. So you are basically instructed to overwhelm this kid to a sort of a ridiculous degree with love and affection. You have to show warmth and love and positive emotion to a way bigger degree than you think you need to, because they don't really respond to the low levels of it. So, like, it has to be kind of overkill, right?

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

Their detector, it's not as sensitive, right? So you really have to make it obvious.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

This is.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

It's like dating, right? When women are like, I gave him a signal. I looked generally over in his direction and then looked away. And it's like, no, no, no.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You have to walk over there and sit on that man's lap.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

That's what you need to do to get it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Turn it up.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Turn up the volume.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Eleven.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

That's it. And it feels, like, disrespectful to a lot of parents. Like, oh, but like, this isn't what my child seems to want. It's like, you know what? There's a reason. You're the parent and they're the child. They don't always know what's good for them. Right? You don't let them dictate whether they wear a seatbelt or not. You know, you also need to, like, be the one who makes the decisions when it comes to this. In addition, you have to have a really strong system in place to reward the child for doing the good things and not the bad things. That takes a lot of training because it is hard to learn how to do and really minimally rely on punishment. I mean, timeouts are very effective for all kids because in addition to being annoying, which is effective, it removes reinforcement. So if that kid is really getting enjoyment out of getting a rise out of other people from their bad behavior, by putting them in timeout, you're eliminating that source of reinforcement for the bad behavior. And so that's helpful anyway. So there's therapies called, like, parent child interaction therapy or PCIT that are demonstrated to truly work, even with kids who are pretty tough nuts to crack when they're young. So, you know, three to six or seven or eight years old, with older kids, there are other forms of what are called parent management training therapy that also works. I will tell you that you have to search for the stuff that works because there are lots of therapists who will be like, oh, let's do horse therapy, let's do art therapy. And like, yeah, people like that stuff, but it doesn't work. The most important thing is that, like, for kids, therapy for the kid is generally not that effective, because what is therapy? It's like teaching skills to then apply to daily life. And I'm sorry, if you're five, you can't do that. Parents want to do it, like dog training. Like, I'm just going to send the kid to the trainer and they're going to come back trained. And I'm sorry, it just doesn't work. You, the parent, need to be trained to deliver the therapy and that. I mean, for anything, for anxiety, for autism, for adhd, like, it's all the same.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

I noticed there's this whole sort of, I'm probably overusing this word, but there's this whole sort of grift now where there's therapists that will tell parents what they already believe. So I saw this, this video. There was a kid and he was

[Jordan Harbinger]

screaming and he's like, you took my video game.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

This kid's like 4 or 5 and he had smashed their big screen TV and the mother was filming it or the father was filming it and the kid was having like this insane meltdown and he was so angry. And this therapist is like, yeah, so what you have to do here is you can't be soft with somebody like this and blah, blah, blah, blah. And the top comment was, hey, I'm a therapist. This is like a neurodivergent autism meltdown. This is not normal behavior. You can't just like be tough with this kid. That's not gonna work. These parents are not caving. This is not a kid being bad. He literally can't control himself right now. He's four or whatever years old. He smashed the tv, doesn't understand the consequences of this. But all the other comments are like, yeah, back in my day, my I would have gotten my ass beat for something like this. And it's like, yeah, that's why you turned out crappy, Uncle Bob. Like, this wasn't working for you. It wouldn't have worked. This is not just a bad kid if it was a 13 year old doing that. Okay, maybe you've got something.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This is a kid that's so small,

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

he doesn't understand that throwing the remote at the TV is gonna break it and cost a lot of money. He just wants to play his video game and he like, can't regulate the emotions.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But there's this whole tier of therapists

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

that are just like, oh, do you have a bad kid? I will reinforce you're just not being a tough enough parent. You just had to pay me to do that. And then I'll tell you, like, there's this strict dads movement where it's like, I'm a dad and I'm just not gonna let my kids do anything. Especially if they're a girl. There's a whole club for guys like this, and it just looks really frustrating for a therapist. It's gotta be the worst news ever, right? Cause you're like, oh, a whole group

[Jordan Harbinger]

of people that are just doing the

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

opposite of what you do to get successful results when you're parenting. Cool.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

I mean, TikTok and Instagram are the worst news ever for, like, all scientists because they're just drowning in misinformation. I hate that word. But they're bad information, especially about clinical psychology. And it's just so hard to, like, get hurt about the chatter. But I mean, one of the mistakes that people make is thinking that somehow, like, being loving and having standards and expectations and reinforcing misbehavior with consequences are somehow, like opposite ends of a spectrum. And so, like, either you're a super permissive parent and you're loving and warm and your kid can do anything they want, and you're like, oh, just need to give them more love. That's no good, right? That's called permissive parenting. We know 100% that that is not gonna result in good consequences. Kids do end up with more behavior problems as well as more anxiety when they're raised that way. But then some parents go too far the opposite direction where they're like, I'm gonna be super withholding and gruff and stern and really harsh punishment, and my kid gets no autonomy. And that's called authoritarian parenting. And that's bad too, right? Kids do not turn out well when they're raised that way. There's this happy medium.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

We all met those kids in college and it was like, hey, what's up with the kid who does drugs all day? And it's like, oh, yeah, he grew up in this crazy strict family. And you're like, paul is out of control. Or like, I remember this is back in college, remember Different Jordan. I remember my friends being like, oh, you gotta meet Judy and her friends. They all grew up in this weird church thing. And it is wild. And you're like, yeah, what are they doing tonight?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because you just know they are going

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

to be unhinged and have no inhibitions whatsoever, because they are just, like, pulling a George Costanza. I'm going to do the opposite of everything I did in my whole young life, which was like, come home before nightfall and, like, do whatever with my church group. And now they're like, crazy, right? Just off the hook fun in a bad way.

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Yeah. I mean, the culture that we're in is a little Bit weird right now where, as a rule, parents are giving their kids less and less autonomy every generation. So it's pretty common now for the average kid going to college, which roughly half of kids go to some sort of residential college when they turn 18, and they have very little experience being autonomous and making decisions for themselves. And that's like a recipe for disaster. Like, you have to give kids the experience of making decisions independently and having autonomy before you send them out in the world. But my own personal milieu is, I would say, full of parents who go too far the opposite direction of being much too permissive and not understanding that, you know, love and warmth and care are, like, a really important ingredient for being a good parent. Like, your kid has to know you love them. Like, that's so important. And it's the essential foundation for good parenting. But it's not the only part of good parenting that, like, if on top of that, you let your kid get away with anything they want to do, that tells them that they're the most important person in the world. Their needs matter and other people's don't. And that is a recipe for narcissism. Unfortunately, what we've seen in the really altruistic populations that I work with, which is also part of my research, is that the key to them, and it's quite the opposite of people with psychopathy, is they don't think they're the most important person in the world. They don't think they're more important than anybody else. They think everybody's sort of equally important. And, like, everybody's needs matter. And people who are psychopathic think the opposite. They think their needs matter and other people's don't. So if the way you're parenting your child conveys the message that your child's needs are the only needs that matter, and everybody else's needs are secondary to the child, I promise you, you're giving them the wrong message. If you want your child to develop sort of a compassionate and caring core

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

in your view, are we all somewhere on the same spectrum between psychopathy and altruism, or are they fundamentally different pathways?

[Dr. Abigail Marsh]

Oh, no. I mean, we're all on that spectrum somewhere, and you can move up and down the spectrum, you know, So I talked about ways that you can help kids improve their capacity to care about other people through these certain kinds of therapy. But adults can do it, too. There isn't enough research being done on this, certainly not in the United States, and, you know, less and less every year, but there's lots of research being done showing that certain kinds of cognitive and behavioral therapy, even in adults, can teach them new ways to think about their relationships with other people, how their own behaviors are eliciting negative behaviors from other people. And if they change their behavior and their expectations about other people, better things will result. And that can really have durable effects on people's certainly their behavior, but also even their emotions and personality. Over time, it can work.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We're more connected than ever and somehow more vulnerable than we've ever been. Cyber crisis author Eric Kohl explains how AI driven attackers, corporate scales, scam operations, and aging systems have turned everyday tech into an open door.

[Eric Cole]

Do you want to be 100% secure? You want your family to be 100% secure? It's easy. Pack up your bags, sell everything, move to Pennsylvania and become Amish. Because I'll tell you, I hacked a lot of things in my life. I have not been able to hack a candle and a horse and buggy. If you have no functionality or no benefit, you can be 100% secure. And to give you a more realist example, my smartphone. As soon as you add any functionality, functionality, you're decreasing security. Security and functionality are inverse. 100% security is zero functionality. What is the value and benefit? What is the risk and exposure? Is the value worth the risk? If the value of benefit is worth the risk, do it. If the value and benefit is not worth the risk, don't do it. And the reality is, and I always tell people, the most dangerous word on the Internet is the F word, and it's not what you're thinking. The F word is free. Free is not free. Because all the times when you have a free app, you're basically allowing them to access your microphone or your camera or your pictures. If they ask you and you say yes and you give them permission, that's actually an authorized app and it's allowed. And the reality is, most people don't even realize when they install these apps, they're hitting yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and allowing access. If I want to make my smartphone a whole 100% secure, smash it, burn it, throw it in a ditch, turn it off, and it'll be 100% secure. It's actually freaking scary of how much you're being monitored and tracked with your phones that you don't even realize it,

[Jordan Harbinger]

Check out episode 1247 of the Jordan Harbinger show with Eric Cole, and you'll start looking at your phone, your home, and even the power grid very differently. That's it for part one. Part two, out in just a few days if it's not already. All things Abigail Miguel Marsh will be in the show. Notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, [e-mail] deals Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about six minute networking as well. It's over at sixminutenetworking.com I'm ordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

[Jordan Harbinger (co-host or guest host)]

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in psychopathy, altruism, psychology in general, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. Quick break and if you like this show, there's another podcast you should check out. If you want to stay informed about what's happening around the world without drowning in noise, check out the President's Daily Brief. It's built for people who want the big stories fast and clear. Think 20 minutes in the morning, then a quick 10 minute update in the afternoon. Just focused coverage of the developments shaping the world right now, from the Middle east and Venezuela to China, Russia and beyond, with an emphasis on what actually has real world consequences for the United States. The show's hosted by Mike Baker, a veteran of the CIA with decades of first hand experience. So you're getting smart analysis from somebody who's been inside the system. You get straightforward context to help you understand what's happening and why it matters. Follow the President's Daily Brief wherever you get your podcasts and stay ahead of the curve.