PonerologyNews.com

By any reasonable standard, Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston had a remarkable 2013-14 football season athletically. Just a redshirt freshman, Winston:

• Passed for over 4000 yards
• Threw 40 touchdown passes, the most ever in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) by a freshman, setting an Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) record
• Led his Florida State Seminoles to an undefeated season in which they consistently beat their opponents by astounding margins of victory
• Became the youngest person ever, and only the second freshman, to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy as college football’s most outstanding player
• Passed for the game-winning touchdown with just seconds left in the game to help the Seminoles win their first college football national championship since 1999 as he garnered Most Valuable Player honors

On top of all this, Winston lit up televisions around the country all year long with his enthusiasm, bright smile and charm.

Off the field, however, Winston faced a serious challenge.

For the last month of the season, the Florida State Attorney’s Office was investigating a complaint of sexual assault against Winston. The investigation made for headline news and called into question not only whether Winston would be eligible to lead the Seminoles in the last games of the season and in a possible national championship game – since, if charges were brought, he would be declared ineligible – and not only whether, despite his stellar performance, he might be denied the Heisman Trophy, but whether he could eventually go to prison.

Ultimately, on December 5, 2013, just days before the ACC championship game and the deadline for Heisman voting, Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs announced, in a widely-publicized and controversial press conference, that the state would not file charges against Winston or anyone else in the case. But for nearly a month, Winston played, and continued to perform at a historically high level, while the cloud of the investigation and a possible felony charge hung over him.

So how did he manage to maintain such a standard on the field despite the pressures of incredibly high expectations combined with being the subject of a high-stakes investigation? (more…)

For those that don’t know, Channel 4 is a public service television network that broadcasts throughout the United Kingdom.

Earlier this month, on Saturday, December 14, 2013, Channel 4 aired Psychopath Night.

Psychopath Night is an approximately 90-minute show that engages many leading experts, psychopaths/sociopaths themselves – including convicted serial killer Charles Albright and a supposed sociopathic lawyer who goes by the pseudonym M.E. Thomas – and even the parent of a child psychopath, in order to explore a number of areas relating to psychopathy.

Below is the trailer for the episode:

The areas explored include: (more…)

I’ve been a big fan of the band Pearl Jam for many years. And they just released a new album (which, incidentally, is the #1 album in the US as of this writing) so I’ve been listening to it a lot over the last few days. In particular, the album includes what I think is one of their best songs ever, “Sirens”. The song is about mortality and how fragile life and love are in the face of it.

So I’ve been grateful to them for connecting me to those issues and feelings through the song. But then, last night, they connected me to them in another way that is extremely relevant to ponerology.

Pearl Jam performed on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” last night. Well, technically, their taped performance from an earlier time was played. In fact, they played a live show in Hartford, Connecticut last night. So after watching the airing of their performance on Fallon’s show, I was just looking around on Twitter to see what people were saying about it.

Instead, I ran into this tweet from the band regarding the show in Hartford:

“Come Back” was dedicated to Avielle Richman who would’ve turned 7 on 10/17. @AvieFoundation @sandyhook #PJHartford pic.twitter.com/WCvMqlkHXt

— Pearl Jam (@PearlJam) October 26, 2013

I was instantly hit with a mix of heartbreak for the obvious tragedy the tweet alluded to and curiosity about what the “Avie Foundation” was all about.

So I clicked through to their Twitter account. (more…)

Many throughout the world consider Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man who abducted three girls and held them captive for approximately ten years, a monster. On August 1, 2013, Castro was sentenced to life in prison plus 1000 years. At the sentencing hearing that day, Castro spoke. He took this opportunity to tell the world that he is “not a monster.” In the process of doing so, he claimed that this decade long ordeal was due to his addiction to porn and also seemed to, stunningly, come very close to blaming his victims for their own abduction.

That evening, on his CNN program, Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper discussed with a number of guests the events of the hearing and Castro’s behavior during it, including his persistent shirking of responsibility. Throughout the show, the topic of psychopathy was front and center. In fact, the words “psychopath” or “psychopathy” were used 19 times during the episode. And, unlike in many cases, they were used appropriately and accurately.

What was most heartening was that Cooper, as well as several of his guests, exhibited a genuine understanding of how important it is to expose the public to and educate them about the true nature of psychopaths. A number of important lessons about them were conveyed during the episode.

The focus on psychopathy was evident right from the get-go. At the beginning of the show, before playing the first footage from the hearing, Cooper prefaced it by saying:

“Now it’s very rare to see someone who may be a true psychopath justify their crimes. Today in court on live television, we saw just that.” (more…)

The release of the new book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime by University of Pennsylvania neurocriminologist Adrian Raine has sparked a wave of media coverage of issues at the heart of ponerology.

Our last post focused on Raine’s essay “The Criminal Mind,” featured in the April 27, 2013 Wall Street Journal, in which he discussed how advances in our understanding of the genetic, neurological and environmental bases of violence are influencing our view of and approach to crime.

Now another large media outlet, CNN, has run not one, but two segments featuring Raine’s work. (more…)

A couple of months ago, we shared a story about a pilot episode for a CBS television show based on the work of a very intriguing professor who works on issues at the heart of ponerology. That person is Adrian Raine, professor of criminology, psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Today’s Wall Street Journal features a sizeable piece by Raine as its “Saturday Essay.”

The title of the essay is “The Criminal Mind” and underneath the title it says “Advances in genetics and neuroscience are revolutionizing our understanding of violent behavior—as well as ideas about how to prevent and punish crime.”

It doesn’t get much more relevant to ponerology than that. And it’s heartening to see Raine given a platform to share his extremely important and provocative ideas in The Wall Street Journal just in advance of the release of his book The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.

Raine’s essay touches on: (more…)

I’ve long lamented the fact that the public is not nearly aware enough about empathy-reducing conditions such as psychopathy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). While a growing proportion of people have at least heard of these disorders – as well as related ones like sociopathy and antisocial personality disorder – they still too often remain unclear about precisely what they are and how they differ from each other. And in so many cases where these disorders should be considered as factors, they aren’t even mentioned in media reports or public discussions.

One of the reasons this website was started is to document the evidence that this situation may be changing for the better. Awareness about these conditions is starting to spread and people are even starting to talk about them in cases where they should be rightfully suspected.

Perhaps no case has demonstrated this more than that of the Jodi Arias trial. (more…)

Yesterday, the bombings at the Boston Marathon took place, killing a few and injuring many more. In the wake of this event, there has been an outpouring of thoughts and feelings online.

One response that has gotten a lot of attention is the one posted on Facebook by comedian and actor Patton Oswalt.

I highly doubt that Oswalt has ever heard of the term ponerology. But his response, more than many others, especially from celebrities, actually comes close to placing the event in a ponerologic context.

So first I want to point out the particular statements that reflect a somewhat-ponerologic perspective in his writing. (more…)

When I first learned about ponerology, I experienced a huge epiphany. Suddenly, I was aware of one field that in one word brought together tens, if not hundreds, of disparate threads that I’d been tracing and trying to communicate about throughout my life. The power of that insight drove me to write extensively about the topic and to start this website.

One of the bonuses of running and promoting this site is that, in the course of doing so, a lot of relevant ideas and people come to my attention. And, once in a while, another whole field of study, related to ponerology, that also brings together many disparate threads, becomes known to me.

This happened recently. (more…)

One of the “holy grails” of ponerology – and an achievement that will inevitably force us to confront extremely challenging ethical dilemmas – is an improved ability to predict harmful behavior before it happens.

Dr. Kent Kiehl of the Mind Research Network has been one of the more active researchers investigating what we can learn from brain imaging of psychopaths. And he and colleagues have recently published, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a study entitled “Neuroprediction of future rearrest.”

The study involved having 96 soon-to-be-released male prisoners perform computer tasks that required quick decision-making and inhibition of impulsive responses, while their brains were observed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The researchers focused in on the brain region known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and found that, when controlling for other known risk factors, those prisoners with less ACC activity than their fellow study participants were about twice as likely to be rearrested within 4 years of release as those with higher ACC activity.

We’ve already mentioned, in previous stories, that reduced cingulate cortex function is associated with psychopathy and has been identified in some violent criminal offenders.

The question is, as we zero in on markers like this – whether they be certain anatomical or functional characteristics of the brain, particular genetic features or anything else – what is the most ethical way in which to use this knowledge? (more…)