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Language: en
We all have the capacity to kill people
and murder people and do other terrible
things. The question is why we don't do
those things rather than why we do do
those things. Quite often most men have
fantasized about killing someone. About
70% in two studies and most women as
well. More than 50% of women have
fantasized about killing somebody. So
murder fantasies are incredibly common.
The following is a conversation with
Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist who
has written extensively on a wide
variety of topics that explore human
nature, including psychopathy, violent
crime, psychology of evil, police
interrogation, false memory
manipulation, deception detection, and
human sexuality. Her books include evil
about the psychology of murder and
sadism, the memory illusion about false
memories, by about bisexuality, and her
new book, you should definitely go order
now called Green Crime, which is a study
of the dark underworld of poachers,
illegal gold miners, corporate frauds,
hipmen, and all kinds of other
environmental criminals. Julia is a
brilliant and kind-hearted person with
whom I got the chance to have many great
conversations with on and off the mic.
This was an honor and a pleasure. This
is the Lex Freedman podcast. To support
it, please check out our sponsors in the
description where you can also find uh
links to contact me, ask questions, give
feedback, and so on. And now, dear
friends, here's Julia Shaw.
You wrote the book evil, the science
behind humanity's dark side. So, lots of
interesting topics to cover here. Let's
start with the continuum. You describe
that evil is a continuum. In other
words, the dark tetrd, psychopathy,
sadism, narcissism, mechavalianism are a
continuum of traits, not a binary zero
one label of monster or non-mon. So, can
you uh explain this continuum?
>> Yeah. So each trait on the dark tetride
as it's called which is the four traits
that are associated with dark
personality traits. So things that we
often associate with the word evil like
sadism which is a pleasure and hurting
other people. Mchavelianism which is
doing whatever it takes to get ahead.
Narcissism which is taking too much
pleasure in yourself and seeing yourself
as superior to others. And then there's
psychopathy. Psychopathic personality
specifically often lacks in empathy. And
it's usually characterized by a number
of different traits including a
parasitic lifestyle. So mooching off of
others, deceptiveness, lying to people,
and again that empathy dimension where
you are more comfortable hurting other
people because you don't feel sad when
other people feel sad. Now all of those
traits, psychopathy, sadism,
machavelianism, and narcissism, all of
them have a scale. And so you can be low
on each of those traits or you can be
high on each of those traits. And what
the dark tetrat is, it's actually a way
of classifying people into those who
might be more likely to engage in risky
behaviors or harmful behaviors and those
who are not. And if you score high on
all of them, you're most likely to harm
other people. But each of us score
somewhere. So I might score score low on
sadism but higher on narcissism. And in
all of them, I'm probably subclinical.
And so this is the other thing we often
talk about in psychology is that there's
clinical traits and clinical diagnoses
like someone is diagnosed as having
narcissism
or there's subclinical which is you
don't quite meet the threshold but you
have traits that are related and that
are so important for us to understand in
the same context.
>> So early in the book you raised the
question u that I think you highlight as
a very important question. If you could
go back in time would you kill baby
Hitler? This is somehow a defining
question. Can you explain?
>> Well, it's about whether you think that
people are born evil. And so the
question of would you kill baby Hitler
is sort of uh meant to be something that
gets people chatting about whether or
not they think that people are born with
the traits that make them capable of
extreme harm towards others or whether
they think it's socialized, whether it's
something that maybe in how people are
raised is sort of manifests over time.
And with Hitler, we know from certainly
psychologists who have poured over his
traits over time and looked at who he
was over the course of his life, there's
always this question of sort of was he
mad or bad? And with the answer to was
he mad? Well, he certainly had some
characteristics that people would
associate with, for example, maybe
sadism with uh this idea that he was
less high on empathy is probably also
showcased in his work. But in terms of
whether he was born that way, I think
the answer usually would be no. And
actually in his early life, he didn't
showcase quite a lot of the traits that
later he sort of defined the horrors
that he was capable of. So would I go
back in time and kill baby Hitler? The
answer is no. Um because I don't think
it's a straight line from baby to adult.
And I don't think people are born evil.
So you think a large part of it is
nurture versus nature, the environment
shaping the person to become to manifest
the evil that they bring onto the world.
>> Well, and I I would be careful with
using the word evil because I think we
shouldn't use it to describe human
beings because it most commonly others
people. It in fact, I think makes us
capable of perpetrating horrendous
crimes against those we label evil. So
for me that word is it's the end of a
conversation. It's when we call somebody
evil, we say this person is so different
from me that I don't even need to bother
trying to understand why they are
capable of doing terrible things because
I would never do such things. I am good.
And so that artificial differentiation
between good and evil is something that
certainly with the book I'm trying to
dismantle. And that's why introducing
continuums for different kinds of
negative traits is really important. and
introducing this idea that the there's
nothing fundamental to people that makes
them capable of great harm. We all have
the capacity to kill people and murder
people and do other terrible things. The
question is why we don't do those things
rather than why we do do those things
quite often. So I think humanizing and
understanding that we all have these
traits is the most important thing in in
my book certainly.
>> Yeah. Yeah, I think a prerequisite of of
doing evil, I see this in war a lot, is
to dehumanize the other. In order to be
able to murder them at scale, you have
to reformulate the war as a fight
between good and evil. And the
interesting thing you see with war is
both sides think that it's the battle of
good versus evil. It almost always is
like that, especially at large scale
wars.
>> That's right. And on on top of
dehumanization, there is also this other
thing called de-individuation, which is
where you see yourself as part of the
group and you no longer see yourself as
an individual. And so it's this fight of
us versus them. And so you need both of
those things. You need that sort of
collapse of empathy for other people,
the people who are on the other side.
And you need this idea that you can be
swallowed by the group. And that gives
you a sense of also the cloak of
justice, the cloak of morality even when
you know maybe you're on the wrong side.
And and that's where I mean getting into
sort of who's on the right side of each
war is always a more complicated issue.
But certainly calling other people evil
and calling the other side evil and
dehumanizing them is is crucial to most
of these kinds of fights.
>> Yeah. You promote empathy as an
important thing to do when we're trying
to understand each other. And then a lot
of people are uncomfortable with empathy
when it comes to uh folks that we
traditionally label as evil. Hitler as
an example. To have empathy means that
you're somehow dirtying yourself by the
evil. What's your case for empathy? Even
when uh we're talking about some of the
darker humans in human history.
>> My case for empathy or evil empathy as I
sometimes call it. So empathy for people
who we often call evil. Also the title
of my book is evil or in the UK market
it's making evil which is a reference to
a nature quote which is thinking evil is
making evil. The idea being that evil is
a label we place onto others. There's
nothing inherent to anything that makes
it evil. And so I also think that we
need to well dismantle that and
empathize with people we call evil
because if we're saying that this is the
worst kind of act or worst kind of
manifestation of what somebody can be.
So if someone can destroy others,
torture others, hurt others. I work as a
criminal psychologist. So I work a lot
on sexual abuse cases, on rape cases, on
murder trials. And so in those contexts
that word evil is used all the time to
go this person is evil. And if we're
doing that then we need to go okay but
what we actually want is we don't really
just want to label people. We want to
stop that behavior from happening. And
the only way we're going to do that is
if we understand what led that person to
come to that situation and to engage in
that behavior. And so that's why evil
empathy I think is crucial because
ultimately what we want is to make
society safer. And the only way we can
do that is to understand the
psychological and social levers that led
them to engage in this behavior in the
first place.
>> So on a small tangent, I get to
interview a bunch of folks that a large
number of people consider evil. So how
would you give advice about how to
conduct such interviews when you're
sitting in front of a world leader that
some millions of people consider evil or
if you're sitting in front of people
that are actual like uh convicted
criminals? what's the way to conduct
that interview? Because to me, I want to
understand that human being. They also
have their own narrative about why
they're good and why they're
misunderstood and they have a story in
which they're not evil and they're going
to try to tell that story and some of
them are exceptionally good at telling
that story. So, if it's for public
consumption,
how would you do that interview? I think
it's important to speak with people whom
we or whom a lot of people dehumanize
including myself. I mean I also speak
with people who I think are or have I
know have committed terrible crimes and
I have spoken to these people because as
a criminal psychologist that's often
part of my job. So, what's interesting,
I think, when you're speaking to people
who have committed really terrible
crimes or certainly who've been
convicted of terrible crimes is that not
only is it potentially insightful
because they might give you a real
answer and not just a controlled
narrative about why they committed these
crimes, if they are either maintaining
their innocence or they're more
reluctant to do that, I think even the
narrative that they are controlling that
they're being very careful with still
tells us a lot about them. So I think
certainly in my research on
environmental crime as well, what we see
is that people use a lot of
rationalization and they say things
like, "Well, everybody's doing it and if
I hadn't done this first, somebody else
would have done this waste crime or this
other kind of crime." And so there's
this rationalization, there's this
normalization, there's this diminishing
of your own role and agency. And that
still tells us a lot about the
psychology of people who commit crimes.
Because most of us are very bad at
saying sorry and saying I messed this up
and I shouldn't have done that. And
instead what our brains do is they try
to make us feel better and they go no
you're still a good person despite this
one thing. And so we try to rationalize
it and we try to excuse it. We try to
explain it and there is some truth to it
as well because we know the reasons why
we engage in that behavior and other
people don't have the whole context. So
we also do have more of the whole story.
But on the other hand, we need to also
face the fact that sometimes we do
terrible things and we need to stop
doing those terrible things and prevent
other people from doing the same.
>> I find this uh these pictures of World
War II leaders as children kind of
fascinating cuz it it grounds you, makes
you realize that um there is a whole
story there of environment,
of uh development through their
childhood, through their teenage years.
You just remember they're all kids
>> except Stalin. He was looking evil
already when young.
>> Well, people used to not smile in photos
as well. So, I think looking at
historical photos of children or
sometimes even kids in other cultures,
it's like, oh, why are they all so
serious? Um, but our creepiness radars
are also way off. So, this is something
that I've been interested in for a long
time as well. Is that we have this
intuitive perception of whether or not
somebody is trustworthy. And that
intuitive perception, according to ample
studies at this point, is not to be
trusted. And one thing in particular is
whether or not we think someone is
creepy. uh including children, but
usually the research is done of course
on adult faces and with adults. And
there's only recently did we even really
define what that vague feeling of
creepiness is. And it has a lot to do
with just not following social norms.
And this is something we see that
transfers to other contexts like why
people are afraid of people with severe
mental illness and psychosis. If you're
on the the bus or the tube in London and
someone's talking to themselves and
they're acting in an erratic way, we
know that people are more like to keep a
distance. There was one study where they
literally had a waiting room where they
also had people with chairs and the
question was how many chairs would you
sit away from someone you know has a
severe mental illness and the answer is
you sit more chairs away and there's a
physical and psychological distancing
that's happening there and it's not
because people with severe mental
illness are inherently more violent or
more dangerous. That is not actually
what the research finds. It's that we
perceive them as such because we
perceive them as weird. Basically, we
go, "This isn't how you're supposed to
be behaving and so I'm worried about
this and so I'm going to keep my
distance." And so creepiness is much the
same. And that's where you can totally
misfire whom you perceive as creepy just
because they're not acting in the way
that you expect people to act in
society.
>> Well, what are the sort of concrete
features that contribute to our
creepiness metric? Is that meme accurate
that when the person is attractive,
you're less likely to label them as
creepy?
>> It depends. If they're too attractive,
it can be. So, there's there's effects
that interact there.
>> That's hilarious.
>> Um, and we also don't trust people
potentially who are too attractive. Um,
but again, deviation from the norm. And
so if you're deviating in any way, that
can lead to uh well your your assessment
being more wrong, but also you assessing
people as more negative. And so with
Yeah. But with creepiness, the the main
thing that bothers me as a criminal
psychologist is that tangential to
creepiness is this general idea of
trustworthiness and that you can tell
whether somebody is lying. And I've done
research on this as have lots of other
people like Alder Fry is one of the
leading researchers on deception
detection. Uh and he has found in so
many studies that is really hard to
detect whether someone is lying reliably
and that people especially police
officers, people who do investigative
interviewing, they have this high
confidence level that they because of
their vast experience can in fact tell
whether the person across from them is
lying to them. this witness, this
suspect, and the answer to that even
that if you take them into experimental
settings, they are no better than chance
at detecting lies. And yet they think
they are. And so again, you get into
this path where you're going to miss
people who are actually lying to you
potentially, and you're going to
potentially point at innocent people and
say, "I think you're guilty of this
crime." And you go hard on that person
in a way that might even lead to a
wrongful conviction.
So it's the fact that it's very
difficult to detect lies and
overconfidence in policing
creates a huge problem.
>> Not just policing in relationships and
in lots of other contexts as well. I
mean a lot of je jealousy is born out of
uncertainty. Jealousy isn't I know for
sure that you have done something that
is threatening our relationship. A lot
of jealousy is what's in my head because
I am assuming that you might be thinking
or doing X. And that is also basically
an exercise in lie detection and there
as well we are very bad at it.
>> Is there a combination of uh the dark
tetrad and how good you are at lying?
Like are people with uh the certain
traits maybe psychopathy are better at
lying than others.
>> There's definitely some research to
support the idea that people with
psychopathy are better at lying. There's
also some research specifically on sort
of faking good in for example parole
decisions. So when it comes up to
someone who is there's a legal decision
to be made as to whether this person is
going to be released from prison or
released from just detention in general
and then the person will act in a
particular way sort of mimic a good
prisoner mimic someone who's safe to be
released into society and then the
committee goes oh well you know this
this person's doing great and so they're
ready to to be released and then they
make the wrong decision because that
person's been faking it. So I think with
psychopathy it's a bit complicated. It's
there has been some sort of historically
as well some concern that certain
treatment for psychopathy especially
empathy focused treatment makes people
with psychopathy more likely to fake
empathy and to weaponize it. But then
there's other research which finds that
if you use other kinds of interventions,
it's like Jennifer Schkeeme in
California who does research on people
with psychopathy who have committed
severe crimes and she specifically
creates these treatment programs that
aren't just around empathy, but they're
more around almost learning the rules of
society and convincing people that
actually being pro-social is a better
way to get what you want in life. And so
there there's a real need for tailored
treatments to deal with especially
certain kinds of personality traits,
dark personality traits to try and
convince people basically actually being
pro-social is the better path rather
than just going hard on you know empathy
and things that they don't maybe also
see as faults with themselves.
>> Is there a psychological cost to
empathizing with so-called monsters? You
reference n in the book, you know, gaze
into the abyss, the abyss gazes into
you. If you study quoteunquote evil or
study monsters, it may a bit become
that. Is there a danger of that?
>> I don't think so. I think that's what
people fear. So, a lot of the nature
quotes I use as well are some of them I
like because they speak to the chapters
I write about, but and the issues I
write about, but some of them I also
like because they are how people think
about evil and people who are labeled
evil. And I do think with gazing into
the abyss and the abyss gazing back,
it's more of a you're trying to find it.
And and that's why in some ways that
doesn't work actually because it isn't a
total blank. It isn't the abyss. There
are in fact things that you can see even
even if it's just superficially and
patterns you can recognize to help you
and key decision makers especially in
legal settings make better decisions
around people like this. So when they
see these patterns they act a better
way. So yeah I I get asked a lot as a
criminal psychologist do you carry the
cases that you deal around with you? So
some of the cases involve, you know,
huge amounts of witnesses, huge amounts
of um potential w uh victims. And so in
these cases, there are very visceral
descriptions sometimes of heinous
crimes. And I think that as someone who
does this work, you can't be someone who
sees it as anything other than a puzzle.
So you have to look at it and go, here's
the different pieces of information.
What I am doing is pattern recognition.
I'm not here to emotionally invest in
each of these victims or potential
victims. That's not my role. There's
therapists for that. There's other
people who do that work. I am here
working with the police. I'm here
working with lawyers. I'm here looking
at it more sort of objectively to see
how this all fits together. And so, I
think that's how I engage with it. I see
it as this this puzzle that I'm trying
to figure out. I worry for my own brain
that when I confront people and see them
as a puzzle, which I do, I see the
beauty in the puzzle. All the puzzles
look beautiful to me. I'm sometimes uh
like a Prince Mishkin character from The
Idiot by Dusty, where you just see it's
not the good in people, but the beauty
in the puzzle. And I think you can lose
your footing on the moral landscape if
you see the beauty in everything a bit
too much because like everyone is
interesting. Everyone is complicated.
>> It's the classic scientist response as
well to what other people in society go
oo they go you know this is horrible or
this atrocious thing has happened or
this shocking existential crisisinducing
thing I've just found is you know giving
me existential crisis. Um, and
scientists instead go, "Wow." And you
can sort of see the delight in discovery
as well. And I think sometimes
scientists read as callous because we
enjoy this discovery of knowledge and
the discovery of insight. And it just
feels like this little light bulb has
gone off and you go, I understand a tiny
bit more about the human experience or
about the world around us. And I think
must be similar. I don't I don't know
that I feel or worry that I sort of
become more quote unquote evil. I think
it's more that you add this nuance which
I guess sometimes can be estranging to
other people. So there's that. So when
you speak with others sometimes like
even when I say we shouldn't use the
word evil, people go no but you have to.
Does that mean you're trivializing
things? And the answer is no. I'm not
trivializing. I'm just trying to
understand. Also like sympathizing or
being empathetic towards people whom
others have written off um is always
going to get that response from some
people. And I mean there are real
questions around whom we're platforming
and what that has and what role we have
as content creators both of us of the
people we talk about how we cover them.
Um I often come across this in true
crime work that I do cuz I get asked to
do TV shows. I host TV shows and I host
um BBC podcasts and there's always the
question of sometimes people commit
murder to become famous and should it be
a blanket ban that we don't cover those
cases or should we cover those cases but
in a different way or should we
anonymize the So there's it doesn't mean
that you shouldn't never cover that
case. It just means that you need to
think about it.
>> Speaking of which, you've done a lot of
really great stuff podcast shows. Uh one
of them is Bad People podcast. you
co-host it. It has over a hundred
episodes each covering a crime. What's
maybe the most disturbing crime you've
covered?
>> One of the most disturbing crimes that
we covered on Bad People and just to be
clear, Bad People, much like the title
evil, is sort of tongue-in-cheek where
the idea is it's people whom we refer to
as bad people and then it's always a
question of like who are these quote
unquote bad people and are we all
capable of doing these terrible things?
But one of the most certainly
problematic dark cases that we covered
was the Robert Pikton case. And the
episodes are called Piggy's Palace
because that was the nickname for the
farm where Robert Pikton brought victims
whom he had kidnapped and then he killed
them and he did terrible things to their
bodies and uh rumors have it certainly
that he fed some of these victims to
pigs. Now, one of the reasons I covered
that case is actually because it was
influential in my own career. So, Robert
Pictton is one of the most famous
Canadian serial killers of all time. And
as I was doing my undergrad at Simon
Fraser University in Canada, I was being
taught by someone called Steven Hart.
And Steven Hart was an expert witness on
the Robert Pikton trial. And so, he was
keeping us a breast of some of the
developments of what he was covering.
And it I found it so interesting. And I
loved Steven Hart as a person. and he
seemed to have this sense of humor, this
gallows humor around it all despite
being faced with one of the arguably
worst people in Canadian history. And I
thought that that was so interesting
that someone could be so nice and so
kind and so wonderful and be an expert
witness for these kinds of people. And
so that's one of the reasons I went into
the field is because of this case as
well. And so we had him on the show. So
he came on to Bad People and we
interviewed him for it. Uh, and he has
done um I imagine a lot of really
difficult cases.
>> Yes, he's done a lot of difficult cases
as have other researchers like Elizabeth
Loftess who's one of the main founders
of the area of false memory research
which is what I also do. I do research
on memory and false memory and witness
statements. And Elizabeth Loftess has
also been uh recently actually for the
Gileain Maxwell uh case. she was in the
press and so she has worked with lawyers
to educate the court on memory in lots
of really really controversial cases.
But the way she would explain it is that
it's still her role to just train people
and teach people on how memory works.
She's not there to decide whether people
are guilty or innocent. But she is there
to help people distinguish between fact
and fiction when it comes to how our
memories work or don't.
>> So what kind of person feeds their
victims to pigs? What's interesting
about that psychology? The psychology
about Robert Pictton. H I mean he was a
tricky person because I think he was
profoundly lonely and this is something
we see with a lot of serial killers is
that um they have this loneliness which
I think also not only contributes to
them committing the crimes in the first
place but also allows them to get away
with things because they don't have as
much of a social network or any social
network that is helping them to do
what's called reality monitoring to
understand what's true and what's not.
And so when you see people get
radicalized in their own thoughts,
whether that's in in the sense of things
like schizophrenia where you've got
psychosis, you've got delusions, maybe
command hallucinations, that's when you
think you're hearing voices and someone
is telling you that you have to do
something, usually something harmful to
other people. And if you don't follow
those, you will hear those voices
forever. They're profoundly distressing
and they are one of the aspects of
schizophrenia that if you have it, does
make you more prone to violence. And so
for these kinds of cases, if you don't
have someone intervening, whether that's
a family member or a therapist saying h
how can you tell whether this thought is
real, maybe that thought, maybe you're
not hearing that voice, right? Maybe
that aspect of what you're thinking
isn't true and bring you back and closer
to reality, you can just wander off to
whatever alternate universe that you
might live in in your head. And it's the
same with radicalization in other
contexts is that you see that people who
drift more and more into a certain group
that has certain beliefs that are maybe
divorced from the evidence, divorced
from reality, you can see that people
will get more extreme over time. And
unless you have a tether that brings you
back that allows you to do reality
monitoring, it's going to be very
difficult to to find your way out of
that. So with serial killers, we find
this reality monitoring problem. And I
think part of that's related to the lack
of social networks that people have.
>> That's fascinating. So that's one
important component of serial killers.
What else can we say about the
psychology? What motivates them? So if
you look at some of the famous serial
killers, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gasey,
Jeffrey Dalmer, is there other things we
can say about their psychology that
motivates them? So interesting. The
tether to reality. I mean loneliness is
a part of the human condition. It is in
fact one of its side effects is you can
get untethered
and then with some of these brains I
guess the untethered goes to some dark
place.
>> The untethered goes to a dark place and
it then is often combined with some of
these other dark tetrd traits. So you've
got someone who maybe is high on
psychopathy, low on empathy, someone
who's high on sadism, someone who thinks
that it's okay to pursue your own goals.
And your own goal can be
like with Jeffrey Dmer, um you can be
wanting to create the perfect partner,
which in some ways seems to be what he
was trying to do by killing people and
piecing them together and sewing up a
sort of new version. There's something
in that where I can't help but go,
that's so sad. I don't go, "Oh my god,
how terri, how awful." And of course
it's atrocious. Of course it's heinous.
But I have this real sympathy for that.
And I think that's important for us to
have though and not to say I can't
relate to this person at all, but to say
that is an extreme manifestation of
something I have felt. And the
difference between me engaging in that
and this person engaging that are these
other factors, but the core is is in all
of us.
Do you think all of us are capable of
evil
of some of the things we label as evil?
>> I think all of us are capable of doing
basically the worst things we can
imagine. And one of the reasons I think
that is because you can see neighbors
turning on each other, especially if you
look historically at the start of wars
or um big political moments where you
have people who would have called each
other friends, turning each other into
the police, uh killing each other, doing
terrible things. So I think all it takes
is to become convinced that the people
you think are your friends are actually
your enemies. Whether that's just in
your own world or in a larger political
national landscape. That I think I don't
think it takes all that much for us to
be capable of doing terrible things. So
that's also why it's really important
when things are good and when you're not
at war and when you have the capacity to
think deeply about important issues to
train your mind on these thoughts of
knowing that things like loneliness can
manifest in these extreme ways that
things like uh jealousy and aggression
that they can turn into murder that they
can turn into these horrible versions
and to then also spot the red flags if
you start going down that path. I think
if we don't rehearse evil, if you will,
we are much more like to engage in it,
especially in those moments where we
don't have much time or energy to really
think about what we're doing.
>> Yeah. I'm really appreciate the way you
think and the way you talk about this.
Listening to history, when I'm reading
history books, I imagine myself like
doing the thing I'm reading about. And I
almost always can imagine that like when
I'm being honest with myself.
>> And it's important to admit that to
ourselves. And research on murder
fantasies finds that most men have
fantasized about killing someone. About
70% in two studies. And most women as
well. More than 50% of women have
fantasized about killing somebody. So
murder fantasies are incredibly common.
And certainly according to some
researchers, that's a good thing. Being
able to rehearse and think through doing
the most terrible things is it's a great
dress rehearsal for also how we don't
want to live our lives and only if you
are able to fully think through what
would I actually be like if I was
engaging in this what would I be
thinking who would I be with what would
be my the group that I'm charging
against this other person you know who
who am I there with as you said like
really putting yourself in the shoes of
these people who've done terrible
things. That is how you also realize
that you do not want those consequences.
And so, yeah, you maybe want to murder
this person, but you don't really want
to murder this person. That's that
intuitive sort of anim animalistic brain
coming in. But then, luckily, we have
higher reasoning that goes, actually, if
you think this through, that's a pretty
terrible consequence for yourself. So,
the better thing to do is not to murder
this person. So, I think it's adaptive
to be able to fantasize and think about
these things. Obviously, if you start
getting to a point where you're
ruminating and you're going in these
circles where you're constantly
fantasizing about doing dark things,
especially to a specific person, I'd
always advise seeing somebody to talk to
a psychologist, for example, because
that then does become a risk factor for
acting on those dark fantasies. But up
to that point, if it's just a fleeting
thought or something that sort of in in
one day you had these thoughts, that is
totally healthy, I would say. And also,
I think it's useful to simulate or think
through what it would take to say no in
that situation. Meaning, once you're
able to imagine yourself doing evil
things, you have to imagine the
difficult act of resisting. A lot of
people think they would resist in Nazi
Germany.
>> Well, most people didn't, and there's a
reason for that. Um, it's not easy. Same
reason, I've seen this. If something bad
is happening on a public street, most
people it's the bystander effect. Most
people just stand there and watch. I've
seen it once in my life. Yeah. This is
humans. So it's actually you want to
simulate
stepping up.
>> Yeah. So it's also been called the
heroic imagination. So someone who has
studied evil quote unquote at length is
called Philip Zimardo. He did the
Stanford prison experiment and that was
an experiment which is I mean it's now
been torn apart in various ways. I it
was absolutely influential for
psychology. It's where uh participants
were randomly assigned whether they
would be prisoners or guards in a mock
prison experiment and then for a number
of days they were told to do various
things and it got out of control and the
guards went way over what they were
supposed to be doing and they
effectively started pseudo torturing
some of these um inmates or these
pretend inmates and the whole thing had
to be stopped prematurely. But it was
really fundamental in showing how just
by randomly being assigned into guard
the person in charge or inmate you can
within a matter of days have a
completely different way of thinking
about one another. And so Philip
Dumbardo has also spoken at length about
evil and that all of us are capable of
it in the right circumstances. But he
also is a big proponent of what he calls
the heroic imagination. And the heroic
imagination is really what the purpose
of everything I do is. The purpose of
what I do isn't just to go oo this is
curious and to stop there. The point is
to then prevent it and to prevent it in
ourselves because that's I think
ultimately what has to happen. You can't
do a top- down sort of government level
approach to trying to be so tough on
crime that no one will ever commit
crime. That's impossible. But you can
change sort of to say it in a tacky way,
the hearts and minds of individuals to
recognize the pathways towards evil and
to go, wait, I'm I'm off track. I don't
want to go this way and I'm going to
stop myself here and here so I can find
my way back. And so the heroic
imagination is exercising that I see
someone on the street. How do I make
sure that they're okay? How do I not
become a bystander? And actually the
bystander stuff is interesting because
there was a really famous case, the
murder of Kitty Genevvesa. And there
were all of these both ear and
eyewitnesses. So an earwitness is
someone who just hears things and an
eyewitness is someone who sees the crime
happening. And they didn't intervene in
the murder of this woman. And so this
case was often taken as this almost
example of look how terrible human
beings are. We just walk by. We don't
care about what's happening to strangers
on the streets. And actually what's
happened since is that there's been lots
of other bystander experiments and they
have not substantiated this. So we need
to be very careful with looking at these
extreme cases and going how horrible
that this happened to this one person.
And it is but that doesn't mean that
that's always how it happens. And so
actually what we find in bystander
research is that most of the time
bystanders do intervene. It's just when
there has already been a crowd that has
accumulated you read the room and you
assume well nobody else has intervened
yet. And so it must not be a real
problem. That desire to not stand out in
a negative way is often what hinders
heroicism. I mean that's why we look at
heroes, people who especially risk their
own lives to save others, especially
strangers. We see them with a sort of
respect that nobody else gets. And
that's because we recognize that we
might not be capable of that. If I saw a
stranger drowning in a river, would I
really risk my life get jumping in the
river to maybe save them? It's I think
that's a big question mark. And so when
people do that, especially when people
almost have this inherent reaction that
they just jump in, they just go for it.
That is something that is a really
admirable quality and that we as humans
do celebrate and we should and I think
often we should celebrate those
incidents more and not the you know the
bystander moments where we didn't inter
intervene. We should be normalizing,
intervening.
>> And again, again, this idea of heroic
imagination,
actually simulating, imagining yourself
standing up and saving the person when a
crowd is watching, they're drowning to
be the one that dives in, tries to help.
Uh, you mentioned
70% of men and some large percentage of
women fantasize about murder. And I also
uh read that you wrote that res
recidivism for homicide is only 1 to 3%.
So that raises the question, why do
people commit murder?
>> Murder is a really interesting crime
because most of the time it's
perpetrated for reasons that we don't
like as a society. So, as a person who
talks a lot to uh the news and also to
producers who are trying to make true
crime shows who don't necessarily have a
deep understanding of psychology, let's
just say, and who come at you with myths
where you go, "Oh, no. We're not we're
not going to talk about that. We're not
going to talk about whether or not the
mom is to blame for this person killing
somebody." Um, I hate that exc. That's
one of my my least favorite sort of the
trauma narrative of all people who do
terrible things must have had a terrible
childhood. I think is really
problematic. What really happens in
murder most of the time, which is not
what you see on TV because it's really
boring, is it's a fight that gets out of
control. And if you look at the real
reasons stated, it's things like, "This
person owed me $4 and so I killed him.
This person stole my bike. This person
owed me." It's these really stupid
reasons. And it is just this bad
decision in the moment, an overreaction
to a fight, to an argument. And it
wasn't planned. It's not some psychopath
sharpening their knives, waiting for
months to try and kill this person. And
we don't like that because there's
something called the victimization gap,
which is that the impact of this extreme
situation on the perpetrator, there's a
huge gap between that and the impact on
the victim and their family. So the
victim loses a life whereas the
perpetrator sure they get imprisoned but
that at best right if you will in terms
of justice but they don't have the same
kinds of consequences and we don't like
that we like things that have extreme
consequences to have extreme reasons and
so that's why I think there's this real
desire to show serial killers and to
show people who are in fact planning
murders for a really long time and then
engage in them rather than this fight
that goes out of control or someone
drink driving or someone who is uh I
mean unfortunately intimate partner
homicide is also one of those situations
that is common um one of the top four
reasons for murder as well um but that's
not the almost glamorized version that
we see of murder online or that we see
in the news so I think it's always
important to talk about murder as
something that is rarely inherent to an
individual very few people want to
murder they might fantasize about it,
but they don't want to go through with
it. And very few people who do engage in
murder wanted to do it in that instance,
never mind again.
I think in general, we have the way that
we look at lots of crimes upside down.
So, we put murderers in prison for a
really long time because we think that
that's justice, which is sure, that's
one version where it's an eye for an eye
kind of, you know, life for life.
There's obviously the more extreme
version of that which is the death
penalty which I don't adhere to but I
could see the rationalization of well
you you stole somebody else's life so
you don't deserve to have one but
there's also the other side which is if
we're looking at prevention murder is
really like they're not going to people
aren't going to go out and murder again.
So that is that's a really low risk in
terms of recidivism actually. And high
risk are things like fraud and elder
abuse and sexual violence. And so in
some ways sometimes our sanctions are
upside down in terms of how we can
actually make society safer and they're
in line more just with how we perceive
justice to work. So there there's big
fundamental questions about how we
organize our justice systems and what we
want them to be for.
>> Can you just linger on that a bit? So,
how should we think about everything
you've just described for how our
criminal justice system forgives if they
are very unlikely to murder again? How
would you reform the criminal justice
system?
>> I think forgiveness is up to the
victim's families. And quite often when
you speak with victim's families there
is this divide where you have some who
are much more keen on something called
restorative justice which is where they
what they want is for the person to
apologize the perpetrator to apologize
to explain how it happened. Also quite
often I mean you look at the some of the
other consequences and the other context
it's sort of like teenage boys who are
part of gangs for example is the other
context and it's a teenage boy killing
another teenage boy. Like these are kids
and the parents of a teenage boy
understand that this isn't, you know,
they don't think of this other
perpetrator as this grown man who has I
don't know. It's I think we think of it
as this fight between the parents of
both teenage boys in that case. But
really often what parents want is to
just understand how this could happen
and in some ways to allow the other
teenage boy to still have a life and to
not steal theirs as well or his as well.
So there's that restorative justice
model where forgiveness I think belongs
to the families. Some families of course
want the most extreme punishment. That's
also I can understand how that would be
a response that's triggered if you've
suffered a severe loss. But if we're
looking to make society safer, putting
people who have killed in prison is
actually not the answer. Right? Because
if we want society to be safer, it
should be based purely on what is most
likely to deter crime and who is most
likely to engage in it. And that's where
I think we've got it upside down.
>> If I could just stick to the Bad People
podcast, there's an episode on incelss
called Black Pill. Are incelss
dangerous? So, are they dangerous?
What's the psychology of incelss? So
that episode was all about what it means
to espouse certain kinds of views,
especially about women, and what it
means to be in an environment that is
fueling the fire of well, hatred of
gender. And so and and the idea of
entitlement. So I think one thing that
we see often in crimes of all sorts
actually is the sense of entitlement
that drives the perception that I'm
allowed to engage in X because of
something else and I deserve to have a
life that looks like this but I don't
and so I'm going to go take it or I'm
going to go do something to show my
dissatisfaction in life. And so if you
think that all men deserve to have a
happy life, sort of a Disney version um
with with a woman at home who's taking
care of the kids and it's a sort of
white picket fence ideal that we've been
sold, we have been told that that is
what we should have. Like I I understand
where it comes from. And the question
though is are we entitled to that or is
that the idea that that's something we
should strive towards? And I think the
answer is no. Nobody's entitled to a
good life. I would like to see freedoms
and rights manifest in such a way that
everyone is able to achieve the kind of
life that they themselves want, but
you're not entitled to it. And so that's
where I think it can get a bit crossed
and we can be sold these lies that are
basically impossible for everybody in
society to achieve. And and
understandably, people get angry. And if
you're angry and if you feel entitled
and if you're in this group where
everyone else is thinking the same way
as you, yeah, that can make you
dangerous.
>> And the internet gives you a mechanism
to be your worst self.
>> And it can reinforce that worst self.
You see other people saying, "Yeah, I
feel the same way. Do you want do you
want me to help you?"
>> Oh, the internet. Uh, so one more
episode you interviewed the lady Cecilia
who got Tinder swindled. Can you can you
tell what happened with the Tinder
Swindle situation?
>> So Tinder Swindler, that was a person
who pretended on Tinder to be a rich guy
who had this lavish lifestyle and he
would match with women on Tinder and
very quickly lovebomb them. So he would
send them all kinds of messages and
immediately start being very emotional,
very sharing, pretend that he's
messaging from his private jet or
actually message from his private jet.
but pretend that he's in love with this
person very quickly and then he would
invite women in this case Cecilia to
very expensive luxurious dates. So he
would whisk them away to Paris or he
would show them his private jet or he
would take them to a really expensive
restaurant almost to prove that he in
fact is this really wealthy guy. And he
would simultaneously be building up this
story of a future together. And you see
this in people who are really
problematic in relationships in a lot of
way. I mean this is not just in scams or
in criminal settings but problematic
relationship styles often involve
someone who is creating this idea of a
future together that you can just see it
now. You know our kids in the garden
running around. Um you're the only one
for me. That kind of language like
almost planning your wedding on the
third date. That kind of thing is what
he would weaponize. And she, Cecilia,
was looking for love. She wanted all of
those things. And so it worked really
well. And what he ended up doing is
defrauding her of lots of money. And she
ended up taking out loans. And her
family were giving her money to help
what he was saying was this critical
situation, very classic fraud, this
critical situation where he was being
followed. He was under attack. And he
needed her to pay for some things. He
needed her to pay for some flights until
she ran out of money. And then then then
she realized that this all was a big
fraud. This was a a love scam. So the
reason that we spoke with her is partly
to show how it can happen. And I think
it's really important to remind people
that this is something everybody is
capable of believing. Fraud works
because people know what we want to hear
and they tell us the things we want to
hear. And so I think all of us there's a
tailored version of fraud that could
appeal to basically everybody if they
have enough information about you.
>> Yeah. And by the way, now in modern day
AI could probably better and better do
that kind of thing. Do the tailored
version of the story that you want to
believe and
love is a topic on which that would be
especially effective.
>> Yeah. Cuz you're playing with people's
emotions and you know that they're
vulnerable in that way. And most people
want to be loved and want to love. And
so it's a it's a really manipulative way
in and it's I think it's really
horrible, but it's also something that
we all almost underestimate. So we think
I would identify fraud. I would know if
someone's trying to scam me of money
until it happens to us and then we go,
"Oh, wait. That that that did just
happen." And then we get really
embarrassed. And so I think talking
about it is really important and seeing
it as not this thing that happens to
dumb people because that is sometimes
how it's framed. It's like such an
idiot. She was so gullible. Was she? Or
was she just a nice person who wanted to
believe that this person was capable of
loving her which I would hope we all
are.
>> Yeah. And I hope she and others that
fall victim to that kind of thing don't
become cynical and keep trying.
>> Yeah. That's right. That's right. Those
kinds of things can really destroy y