ANGER MANAGEMENT: Self-control is key to a well-functioning life, because the brain is easily susceptible to all sorts of influences, both positive and negative, says Iacoboni, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences.
Image: COURTESY OF TOMML, VIA ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
More In This Article
-
The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
Read More »
People are often confronted with feelings of disappointment, frustration and anger as they interact with government officials, co-workers, family and even fellow commuters. Most can control their actions to the extent that relatively few of these interactions end in violence. The attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D–Ariz.) last weekend shows, however, sometimes the cognitive control mechanisms required to guide one's behavior are either nonexistent or ignored, with disastrous consequences.
Giffords and several others were fired on at close range Saturday during a public gathering for her constituency outside a Tucson, Ariz., supermarket in the representative's home district. Before the shooter could be wrestled to the ground and disarmed six people were dead and 14 wounded, including Giffords who was shot in the head. The accused gunman, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, apparently expressed contempt for the government on a number of issues via MySpace rants and YouTube videos. He allegedly took his grievances with the government and society in general a step further in November when he bought a 9-millimeter Glock 19 handgun and began planning to assassinate Giffords.
The criminal justice system will have to determine the specific motives and mental competency of Loughner, but Scientific American interviewed Marco Iacoboni, a University of California, Los Angeles, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and director of the school's Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Laboratory, about why some individuals act on their violent thoughts whereas others do not. Iacoboni is best known for his work studying mirror neurons, a small circuit of cells in the brain that may be an important element of social cognition.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What turns anger into action?
Mostly cognitive control, or to use a less technical term, self-control. About a year ago I was in Davos at the World Economic Forum, and we had a dinner-with-talks on intelligence. University of Michigan professor of social psychology Richard Nisbett, the world's greatest authority on intelligence, plainly said that he'd rather have his son being high in self-control than intelligence. Self-control is key to a well-functioning life, because our brain makes us easily [susceptible] to all sorts of influences. Watching a movie showing violent acts predisposes us to act violently. Even just listening to violent rhetoric makes us more inclined to be violent. Ironically, the same mirror neurons that make us empathic make us also very vulnerable to all sorts influences.
This is why control mechanisms are so important. Indeed, after many years of studies on mirror neurons and their functioning we are shifting our lab research to the study of the control mechanisms in the brain for mirror neurons. If you think about it, there must be control mechanisms for mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are cells that fire when I grab a cup of coffee (to give you an example) as well as when I see you grabbing a cup of coffee. So, how come I don't imitate you all the time? The idea is that there are systems in the brain that help us by imitating only "internally"—they dampen the activity of mirror neurons when we simply watch, so that we can still have the sort of "inner imitation" that allows us to empathize with others, without any overt imitation.
The key issue is the balance of power between these control mechanisms that we call top-down—because they are all like executives that control from the top down to the employees—and bottom-up mechanisms, in the opposite direction, like mirror neurons. Whereby perception—watching somebody making an action—influences decisions—making the same action ourselves.
What has neuroscience uncovered about the capacity of the person who shot Giffords, the person responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, and many others (yet still a small percentage of people) to behave so violently?
What happens in these individuals is that their cognitive control mechanisms are deranged. Mind you, these individuals are not out-of-control, enraged people. They just use their cognitive control mechanisms in the service of a disturbed goal. There are probably a multitude of factors at play here. The subject is exposed to influences that lead him or her to violent acts—including, unfortunately, not only the violent political rhetoric but also the media coverage of similar acts, as we are doing here. A variety of issues, especially mental health problems that lead to social isolation, lead the subject to a mental state that alters his or her ability to exercise cognitive control in a healthy manner. The cognitive control capacities of the subject get somewhat redirected—we don't quite understand how—toward goals and activities that are violent in a very specific way. Not the violent outburst of somebody who has "lost it" in a bar, punching people right and left. The violence is channeled in a very specific plan, with a very specific target—generally fed by the media through some sort of rhetoric, political or otherwise—with very specific tools, in the Giffords case, a 9-millimeter Glock.
What are the signs that a person is disturbed enough to take action?
The signs are quite visible, although difficult to interpret without a context—and unfortunately they unfold very quickly, and people can rarely witness them before the action is taken. The action itself is a sign, a desperate form of communication from a disturbed individual. Unfortunately, nobody was chatting with the guy when he left his final messages on Internet before getting into action. But I bet that if somebody was communicating with him before the act and saw those signs and read those messages on MySpace or whichever social network he was using, that person could have done something, could have engaged him in a sort of conversation that might have redirected his deranged plans. Indeed, by connecting with the subject, that person might have redirected some of the activity of mirror neurons toward a truly empathic behavior, rather than in the service of the deranged imitative violence leading to action.
Rights & Permissions
See what we're tweeting about
32 Comments
Add CommentWhat causes people to behave calmly and rationally as often as they do?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA sad lack of PCP in their diets?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe MEDIA is the culprit also, in transform assassins in heroes. The notoriety that the assassins always earn in the US is the very cause of their behavior.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee the pictures of the assassins!!! How interesting it is to know the details of the personality and style of life of the assassins!!!
The MEDIA shows for you all this stuff and much more to satisfy your curiosity. The MEDIA should be obliged to omit all publicity of assassins. Not that it should signify censure to information, but that it should serve to prune the usual abuse in inform what is unnecessary. In the current situation crazy persons can see the notoriety offered by the MEDIA for acts of assassination like an irresistible attractive.
Is it possible to inform with liberty, without censure (excessive at least)?
I think that it is necessary!
The reason, which I have in me, dislikes the emphasis that the MEDIA gives to assassins in US, but my other side that opposes reason likes all those frivolities. If I was a crazy man it is possible that I could be tempted by the notoriety like the assassins are. However, God (or the nature, or my breeding) spared me and I am a sane man. But, not everybody can say the same in good faith.
I think that the MEDIA have to have responsibility sparing the public from sensationalism. Maintaining the right of inform, of course.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwo general comments.
(1) Initial evidence suggests that Loughner suffered from severely distorted thinking, usually associated with schizophrenia.
(2) In this case, and in the Ft. Hood case, and in the Virginia Tech case, and in the Kennedy case (to go way back), and in the unibomber case, and in the case of the guy who shot Reagan and the press secretary, and in the Texas clock tower shootings, and in the Jim Jones mass suicides case in Guyana, and so on for virtually every case where a person goes berserk and kills people, the perp was identified as a deeply troubled person WELL BEFORE the violence took place.
We get all worked up when it happens, but we do nothing to prevent the violence from happening in the first place. These people should be put into protective (for their own good and for the rest of society), then evaluated very carefully, and professionally treated for their mental illnesses until it is safe to release them back into society. Psychotic (which is very different from neurotic) people, violent repeat criminals and sexual predators should not be walking the streets of our cities in large numbers, with easy access to weapons.
We spend trillions of dollars on hopeless wars in stinking deserts of primitive countries, but we spend paltry sums on education, counseling and professional help for the large number of disadvantaged and mentally ill people in this country. Usually we just put them in jail, and then let them out in an even more dangerous condition.
We need decent health care [physical AND mental health care] for all our citizens. And we need the courage to humanely protect innocent people from violent psychopaths.
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
If you are talking about things like causality and the permanence of self-imposed limits, one only need to look at this individual's mind set and attitudes towards the generally agreed upon reality construct that most of us inhabit daily, if uneasily.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow many of you have killed another human... in your dreams? If a person is sufficiently cut off or removed from 'waking life' then their normal limitations of morality, selfish fear of punishment, etc. begin to fall away.
The only way to catch something like that is to monitor everybody mentally, all the time. The only way to do THAT is if every individual takes it upon themselves to look out for these signs and people in our society. The next time somebody walks into your house, or a classroom and goes OUT OF THEIR WAY to be bizarre - THERE IS A REASON. No outburst by a disaffected human should be ignored. Most of us are just too busy bursting out ourselves to have much time to give a toss.
All I get from this is that we're not really sure why an individual will act on some imagined violent plan. Where's the research that backs up this supposed and very vague cognitive control mechanism? I'm very skeptical that any kind of explanation is given here or even that a direction for investigation is implied. Sure, these people have messed up brains, but how do you support your claim that it's all in the mirror neurons? Smoke and mirrors is more like it, if you ask me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to know if he was on any SSRI meds for any psychiatric treatment. Because a percentage of young people who are, the side effect is "mania" which leads to elaborate plans of mass murder and then executing their actions. Every person who committed the school massacres were on or just gotten off of an SSRI and its a documented fact that they cause mania in a percentage of people. See Breggin dot com for more information. Its a real eye openener.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo mental illness isn't real? The psych docs have been conspiring for these many decades to fool all of us?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think watched behaviour, unwatched bahavior, intended behavior, and some unknown or known historical facttors or a combination of some or all of them can alter the outcome of the individual's act sometimes. A watched behavior is like the one that we saw in 'The Tank Man' in June 4th, 1989 Tien-an-men Square. Both the operator of the tank and the gunsman in the tank knew that they were being watched by TV, camera etc., and so they controlled their acts. At night time, when lights were turned off, the outcome was different --- Tien-an-men Massacre. An intented behavior is like the one that we saw in Evil-kin-evil's attempt to jump across the Grand Canyon with his motor cycle. He failed and never did it again because his intented behavior became a watched behavior in failure rather than in success. He controlled himself after he failed. An unwatched and intented bahavior is like the present one exhibited by Loughner in assination of the US Res. Gabrielle Giffords. Loughner may do it again because his unwatched bahavior became a watched behavior in success --- a reward in Loughner's mind. I agree that had someone talked to Loughner after Loughner posted his intention, the outcome of his behavior could have been different since an unwatched behvaior would become a watched behavior before the tragedy happened. However, a watched and intended behavior can sometimes enhance the violence of the criminal such as the one like Col. Russell Williams's case. He collected and saved his own behaviors for watching them. Media such as videos, photographs, movies, broadcasted messages in internet, newspapers etc. therefore do have a social responsibility in this sense. Freedom of speach, and freedom of press are valuable if we bother to spend some efforts and time to weigh them or have a second thought before publishing them. Bear in mind that the mental age of some people can be lower than their physical age. Other factors such as religion, video games, and cult that can drive suicidal bombing, racial hatred etc. have triggerred violence and terrorist acts. It is important to recognize and be awared of all these factors but not to promote them. All acts are driven by people's mind which are being influenced constantly by external beside internal factors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for saying this. I agree that we have our priorities twisted to the point where they make absolutely no sense any more. We have hog tied our entire society by rules and regulations that prevent anyone from taking action when they perceive someone behaving in a strange or unusual way. They have to commit a crime before we are allowed to take action and then almost nothing is done about it unless someone dies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe onset of overt symptoms in schizophrenia far most commonly occurs in late teens and twenties.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1% of humans across all cultures appear to suffer from schizophrenia. A very low percentage of these become violent.
The dialogue on civility begun by this event is considerable, with discourse largely concerned with arrogating civility to those who hold beliefs similar to the speakers'.
Blame, outgrouping, and coalition formation are universal traits, well-studied by social psychologists and anthropologists, and too broad to discuss here.
The various substances used by our species, it's true, do affect our perceptions, thoughts, and actions to varying extents.
Aristotle described man as the political animal. The trait is more universal in social animals, competing for social dominance.
One cannot expect a reality in which politicians are correctly termed, "ours." Politics only reflects individual and species traits. I do wish that readers of SA could consider whether political comments are useful, appropriate: whether they serve any purpose other than to advertise a perceived association with a group.
Perceiving an association is a way of testosterone generation, and contacting one's own power. This adaptation in our social species, increases reproductive capacities and opportunities.
This is why we and chimpanzees form coalitions. A coalition is a temporary association.
Schizophrenics exhibit numerous symptoms, with individual differences. Paranoia and perception of conspiracy, are not exclusive to schizophrenia: different personality disorders can be indicated.
Bipolar I and some anxiety disorders can result in disturbed cognitions.
Governments, like space aliens and gods, can seem to be beyond contact, unutterably "other" for many of us. The ultimate disconnect for a member of a social species is to encounter disconnection. We seek always to repair such a connection.
Effective action is is an imperative in organisms.
Schizophrenics appear to be unable to entertain consideration for their needs, their attention sometimes consumed by thoughts experienced as thoughts of other nonself entities.
Just as the rest of us, they can and do act upon imperatives.
Tales told by parents across cultures, and the lively fear of lone strangers may point to the presence of of sufferers of such disorders across history.
Some cultures embrace and value individuals who would in ours, be diagnosed with severe disorders. Thus, however dangerous or damaging it may seem, it could be a frequency-dependent adaptive variation.
Substance abuse, and substance use, generally refers to substances which affect neurotransmitters and neuromodulators.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUse of these exogenous analogues surely results in cognitions which would differ from thoughts and emotions useful for personal and social health!
When substance abuse is a comorbidity, accurate diagnoses are more difficult, and treatment is made more difficult.
Minds develop in unique ways, and SSRIs load the neural system in unforeseeable ways. Because our culture appears to require quick reinstatement of individuals to community, the penalty is financial distress.
Psychiatry has become a dispenser of pharmaceutical ways to reenter social webs. The defense is practicality, as well as the compassionate relief of distress often caused by dissociation with the community.
THe mirror neuron discussion in the article refers to the cutting edge of inquiry into behavior, and deserves more of your attention.
On a broader phenotypic and evolutionary scale,some commentators offer insight into why. See #11 above, and
Thanks, 4karats, for a look into motivating factors in our social species!
Over the years I've known a number of people who were extremely angry over political or social issues but it was rare when I found one even remotely close to physical violence. What I discovered was that just taking the time to talk to someone, ask questions and help them work through their feelings was very effective in helping them refocus, think things through and put matters in perspective. Feeling visible and "listened to" can have a great calming effect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"But I bet that if somebody was communicating with him before the act and saw those signs and read those messages on MySpace or whichever social network he was using, that person could have done something ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of my first questions (tweeted it even - @entropy01) after learning about the shooting and visiting Loughner's Youtube Channel was if some of his viewers had raised concerns or offered help. I went to his Youtube profile right after the shooting had occurred and his videos were even voted on and on average received around 300 views. And I think it is safe to say that it is clear to see that this person was mentally distressed. Be it schizophrenic or paranoid. His mySpace even showed his weapon along with his rhetoric.
My point is though, that with hundreds of people viewing and even rating his broadcasts, I couldn't escape the feeling that he could have received help and maybe things could have turned out differently. Posting such material is in part a cry for help, IMO. I think the recent history of similar events support this (Columbine for instance and similar events in Germany were all preceded by YouTube posts.) This made me wonder if it would be in some way technically feasible to scan social networks for such 'distress' signals. If we can monitor for radical or fundamentalist threats, couldn't we also use some of those resources to scan for those in distress? Even if it aides in the prevention of one such tragedy like Gifford's shooting, wouldn't that be worth it?
Perhaps they spent the past decade banking on the GNOME project which now turns out to be overvalued. As it now appears, circumstances are a much greater influence on mental problems than genetics. Off course, not something the pharmaceutic industry likes veary much. I think we are capable of providing better treatment but the problem is that these treatments are less profitable. It is a disgrace, but one of many examples of how our modern industries prevent us from doing what's best.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe different personality types listed by Jung are not helpful in revealing the criminal type. As they point out, criminals are all types of personalities. The system that seems to explain them better is Eneagrams, where you have the Integrative (stoic) personalities at one extreme, and the Disintegrative (hedonistic) personalities. I plain English, to me everybody has crap in their heads, but some people have so much it spills out onto everyone around them (like with massacres). The cure is Homeopathic, you hold there heads under in a dunny can until they stop struggling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh lala thats a read and a half!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBY GUM LETS READ IT AGAIN
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA body can only take so much before snapping..There is NO help...It dont matter if you are starving to death, homeless or whatever, once on that downward spiral ,You are absolutely alone. public service workers are only there to demean and humilliate you further...There is NO help...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGenerally, such people that commit to atrocities have experienced mental difficulties. How do such mental breakdowns occur?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe downfall with all of these 'analysis' of mass killers, serial killers, etc. is that they provide explanations that don't account for why the thousands with similar identified variables also don't act like crazies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience isn't about hit and miss...mostly miss.
You both have a point, but let's not forget that highly functioning people also suffer from some of the same maladies that may cause others (Laughner, Hinckley, etc.) to kill. So while it's easy to just suggest we just confine and treat these "crazies", the reality is that, statistically speaking, most people with similar "craziness" don't commit acts like this. They are troubled and need help, but how do we know which ones will kill and which ones will just hole up in their mom's basement, harmlessly playing WoW, and cussing out their virtual foes? Unfortunately, murderers aren't murderers until they murder. Be careful what you wish for in trying to stop pre-criminals, lest your behavior ever be deemed strange enough to merit such inquisition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about those who claimed earlier that inferior races are about to attack us therefore we have to attack first,ie. preemptive self-defence. The Norwegian guy sees it coming, so, he decided to protect his brothers by punishing those who were in favour of letting the gates of the castle open.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo offence but I don't think this article adds anything at all to the debate about the fundamental causes of violent acts. If you remove the jargon and specialised language there is really nothing there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my opinion acts of violence,like every other aspect of human behaviour, arise as consequences of particular genes and particular environments. To come to any useful understanding of how such acts might be avoided requires much more than speculation about internal neurological processes. Assuming we are not about to genetically engineer the human genome to remove "risky" genes,progress depends on our willingness to create environments less likely to generate violent behaviour. We probably have some ideas how that might be achieved but there is still much to learn. Let's hope for "Enlightenment 2" somewhere down the line!
I don't think the Gabby Giffords shooter and the Norway guy are in the same category at all. The Norwegian did it for cold and rational reasons, whereas the Giffords shooter did it for some imagined slight on her part.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts totally ludicrous to think that there are not social causes for the kind of irrational social violence that we are seeing acted out today in the West.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author quotes someone who he claims is the leading "expert" on intelligence and then proceeds to say how the expert hopes that HIS child has more "self-control" rather than intelligence as if an individuals ability to have control over his/her inner states of mind is NOT a form of intelligence.
It is these very selfsame "experts" on intelligence who lack intelligence or at least the ability to really understand how there are many, different kinds of intelligences that one person can have or maybe none at all like this so called "expert" who now that I think of it I have indeed heard of.
This great "expert" needs to read Howard Gardiner's THE THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES, a book written about 25 years ago so that he can get up to speed on the real nature of intelligence.
Meanwhile the great "expert" can continue bringing home the big university bucks with no one else the wiser!
That says a lot about the real state of so-called "higher" education, doesn't it?
However, the article does indeed acknowledge that there are social factors that are major contributors to personal behavior; its just not politically correct or economically sensible to shout to loud about that fact.
And then there is the matter of what the author refers to as "violent speech" as if speech alone had the ability to hurt anything other than another persons feelings.
What the free exercise of our First Amendment right gives us is the ability to communicate freely with all other human being and this ability to freely reason and communicate is what all civilizations are built upon.
Where there is no freedom of speech and the totalitarian doctrine of political correctness holds sway civilization will wither and die.
The fact that the owners of the "bully pulpit" in America and elsewhere feel threatened by the free exercise of this basic human right speaks volumes about THEIR real motives and their need and willingness if not to actually sponsor such wanton acts of mass cruelty, then to at the very least to exploit them to further deprive people here and elsewhere of their basic human liberties.
Violence is never the answer to anything; however, based upon the actions of our own (mis)leaders they see it as the best and usually only option in their conduct of the nation's business in international affairs.
Social Learning Theory tells us that we model our behavior of that of others around us.
There is a political dimension here that you fail to discount. Specifically, it is the constant harping on anyone who wants to change the world, to fight unfairness, that they are powerless, that they are only a peon and can do nothing, so they might as well accept injustice. This is a blatant lie. Action does not have to mean violence. People need to know they have non-violent alternatives for fighting injustice. As an example, I was outraged by the 2006 demotion of Pluto by four percent of the IAU. Instead of just being disappointed and moving on, I mounted a campaign to get it either ignored or overturned, complete with a blog and a strong Internet presence organizing other like-minded people. I went back to school to study astronomy and now am working on a book about why Pluto is a planet. My feelings on this are extremely intense, but the important thing is I have found a way to act on my anger that is not destructive. People need to learn that whatever the issue, whether Pluto or a wrongful firing from a job, they can fight, and they can organize against injustice and for a better world. We are not powerless, and we are not peons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOops, I mean you do discount the political dimension, not that you fail to discount it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it is safe to say here that constant bathing in an atmosphere that dehumanizes a group or individual erodes the "control" referred to in this context.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen you have increasingly-virulent messages repeated by the media (in the instance of the Norwegian fellow, racist right-wing hate sites like Stormfront among them), that creates an environment of de-humanization. FOX News is a perfect example of a mainstream pipeline making radical hate-speech available to the general population. By making the message of "liberals are evil" or "members of congress are un-american", etc., it erodes the mentality of individuals exposed to it. Effectively it paints these groups as "enemy."
And the people close to the edge are easily pushed over. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, people. We've had thirty+ years of this - starting with Limbaugh, continued with Hannity, Beck, Coulter, O'Reilley, etc. Is it any surprise that right-wing extremists are now taking up arms against this invisible enemy? Why does this seem like such a surprise to anyone at all? It has worked time and time again throughout history - it's why children are being burned as witches in Uganda, it's why Jews were targeted for centuries, it's how the Balkan states erupt into ethnic conflict every so often, it's social control through repeated messaging. Hell, anyone who works in marketing and advertising knows that if you repeat a message often enough, it gets picked up. This is *common practice*.
Really, why is this such a shock to anyone?
T
To bloomingdedalus:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI hate to say this but you are wrong. Empathy does not lead to depression or mental illness. The latest findings from a new sub-discipline of psychology called "moral psychology" an outgrowth from cognitive psychology finds that both psychopaths and autistics lack empathy. Now, the research is focused on why psychopaths break the law and autistics generally don't. The best guess is that psychopaths want to dominate and autistics don't. Read the book "The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty" by Simon Baron-Cohen, or look up on Google, Jonathan Haidt's papers on moral psychology, or better still go to Amazon.com and look up the three volume set titled "Moral Psychology."
Depression is not linked to having/not having empathy but to hopelessness. Hoplessness is the best predictor of depression.
Loren Wingblade
This is a very interesting study of human behavior with, or course, no pat answers as in every individual case, I'm sure many affecting elements can be attributed to a person's psyche or given mental state at the time of the crime, and even the time period leading up to the violent undertaking. I think genetics, environmental issues, as well as any mind altering stimulants within the system of this person, all would come into play. Some people are simply "born" with neurological defeciencies which can certainly attribute to an individual's inability to be able to properly manage their anger and frustrations without acting them out in a violent manner. It's interesting and valuable to try and analyze why a person commits a violent act, but what you're really asking is how do we make sense out of a senseless act. Good luck with that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it does not lead to depression then you are simply not very empathetic or completely confined to an environment where you do not see individuals who suffer. I didn't say it leads to mental illness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAustistic people are also usually dumb, and psychopaths sometimes are and sometimes aren't.
I mean, as long as we're using the arbitrary and unempirical taxonomy of individual personalities by the American Psychfraudical Association.