Quotes from Kevin Dutton

Sadistic serial killers feel their victims' pain in exactly the same way that you or I might feel it. They feel it cognitively and objectively. And they feel it emotionally and subjectively, too. But the difference between them and us is that they commute that pain to their own subjective pleasure.

He said that if you climb into the ring hell-bent on knocking the other chap into the middle of next week, chances are you're going to come unstuck. But if, on the other hand, you concentrate on winning the fight, simply focus on doing your job, well, you might just knock him into the middle of next week anyway.

College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of twenty or thirty years ago," Konrath reports.

Reading a book carves brand-new neural pathways into the ancient cortical bedrock of our brains. It transforms the way we see the world. Makes us, as Nicholas Carr puts it in his recent essay 'The Dreams of Readers', 'more alert to the inner lives of others'. We become vampires without being bitten. In other words, more empathic. Books make us see in a way that casual immersion in the Internet, and the quickfire virtual world it offers, doesn't.

The results were extraordinary. Over 70 percent of those who scored high on the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale correctly picked out the handkerchief-smuggling associate, compared to just 30 percent of the low scorers. Zeroing in on weakness may well be part of a serial killer's toolkit. But it may also come in handy at the airport.

Their analysis revealed that a number of psychopathic attributes were actually more common in business leaders than in so-called disturbed criminals--attributes such as superficial charm, egocentricity, persuasiveness, lack of empathy, independence, and focus--and the main difference between the groups was in the more "antisocial" aspects of the syndrome: the criminals' lawbreaking, physical aggression, and impulsivity dials were cranked up higher.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is defined as "a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.

The volunteers displaying high levels of psychopathic traits released almost four times as much dopamine in response to the stimulant as did their non-psychopathic counterparts.

Without doubt, there's a greater proportion of psychopathic big-hitters in the corporate world than there are in the general population. You'll find them in any organisation where your position and status afford you power and control over others, and the chance of material gain.

The goal was to center his mind on playing the shot at hand, rather than obsessing, at exactly the wrong moment, about the consequences.

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. —HERMAN MELVILLE

It's easy to forget that anything is possible with these guys. That there really are no limits.

Nu ai voie s? la?i frica s? te domine, dac? ceva nu merge cum trebuie. Nu e loc de panic? în toiul luptei.

One of the most important things that a grifter must have in his possession is a good … 'vulnerability' radar," Morant illuminated, in a comment reminiscent of the work of psychologist Angela Book. (If you recall from chapter 1, Book found that psychopaths were better than non-psychopaths at discerning the victims of a previous violent assault simply from the way they walked.)

Sentiment is a chemical aberration found on the losing side. – Sherlock Holmes

Da wir heute jedoch in einer zunehmend säkularisierten Gesellschaft leben und das virtuelle Universum sich immer weiter ausdehnt, haben wir es mit einer völlig anderen Spezies zu tun: mit Popstars und Schauspielern sowie Medien- und Videospielmonguln, die statt Würde auszustrahlen, diese nun auf dem Altar der kreativen Schizophrenie opfern.

Leer un libro va tallando senderos neuronales totalmente nuevos en el antiguo lecho de roca cortical de nuestro cerebro. Transforma la manera que tenemos de ver el mundo. Nos hace más alerta a la vida interior de los demás.

Some 300 years earlier, in Leviathan, Hobbes had anticipated precisely such a notion16 with his concept of 'force and fraud': the idea that violence and cunning constitute the primary, indeed the sole, instigators of outcomes. And that the only analgesic for 'continual fear, and the danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short' is to be found in the sanctuary of agreement. The formation of alliances with others.

The secret of TIT FOR TAT's success lay as much in its ruthless dark side as it did in its default sunny side; in the fact that when the going got tough it was able to step up to the plate and mix it with the best of them.

If we need to press creases in reality to make sense of the world around us - turn grey into black and white - then how, precisely, do we know where to run our irons?

Jamie's eyes narrow. 'I ain't pulling over for no one.' he shoots back. 'But if you fancy a ride, hop in.

Polemical, conflicting, attention-grabbing headlines like these are the mainstay of the media. And with good reason. It isn't truth that grabs our brains. It is certainty. It isn't balanced, considered analysis that captures our attention. It is bold and confident assertion.

Often, problems arise and dangers accrue not too fast for us to notice, but too slow. So we need to draw lines to prevent things from going too far.

People think [psychopaths] are just callous and without fear,' he says. 'But there is definitely something more going on. When emotions are their primary focus, we've seen that psychopathic individuals show a normal [emotional] response. But when focused on something else, they become insensitive to emotions entirely.