Todd Grande

Even in instances where a characteristic is shared, it may be expressed differently between psychopaths and narcissists. One of the best examples is pathological lying. Psychopaths like to get what they want like money, power, and sex. Narcissists lie so that people will think better of them, whereas psychopaths are generally not concerned about how other people feel.

Psychopathy has been tied to what is referred to as the MacDonald Triad. These are three traits that were put forward as predicting future psychopathic behavior:
• setting fires
• torturing small animals
• bedwetting

1. Delusions (a fixed false belief that the individual holds to be true even though presented with evidence to the contrary)
2. Hallucinations (perceiving something that does not exist, for example, hearing voices or seeing shadowy figures that are not real)
3. Disorganized speech (for example, incoherent speech, repeating words back to another person who originally said them, or rapidly moving from one topic to another)
4. Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
5. Negative symptoms like diminished emotional expression or avolition

Serial killers may have the cognitive ability to understand how another person feels. This is referred to as cognitive empathy, and for many psychopaths, this type of empathy is intact

The type of empathy that these killers do not have is referred to as affective empathy. They cannot feel how others feel. When they are murdering a victim, nothing that victim says or does can invoke actual feelings in the killer

As horrible as they are, the notion of the serial killer gives people an opportunity to study something that appears improbable if not impossible