Psychopaths And Animals

Fiction versus fact...

Have you ever had an animal give you a distinct and clear warning about someone? Did you find out later that they were correct, and the person was someone to steer clear of? Many people state that they won’t trust someone that their dog doesn’t like, and frankly, I think that there is wisdom in that perspective. Dogs pick up on things that humans often miss. Toward the end of this post, I will relay a story about just such a situation that my Significant Other and I encountered. For now, before we get to the factual part of this post, let’s explore the myths of psychopaths and pets, shall we?

Dogs Can Sense That Someone Might Be A Psychopath

As per usual, I have not read this article, but I have to note that the title alone is nonsense. A dog can sense that someone might be a psychopath. That is a lot of words to state that there is no evidence that dogs can sense psychopathy. However, let’s give this a go, and see where we end up before tackling the other myths about psychopaths and pets.

There's no shortage of ways dogs benefit the lives of their owners simply by being around - from their daily offerings of emotional support to their protective instincts when disaster strikes. Yet one of the most important roles our canine companions play might actually be in sensing when people we meet could be trouble.

All right, tons of unnecessary fluff regarding dogs, and also, implying that psychopaths are “trouble”. Sensing some bias here, Stephen Messenger, weird last name, but anyway, bias.

In fiction, it's a common trope for an antagonist's dark nature to be foreshadowed by a dog who seems untrusting of them from the start. As it turns out, that may not be so far from the truth when it comes to avoiding real psychopaths.

*Head on desk*

Shouldn’t you first, I don’t know, demonstrate that you know what a psychopath is prior to making claims about dogs’ ability to “sense” us? So far, all I see is a person that has no idea what psychopathy is, and then using their ignorance to explain the behavior of dogs. That’s a problem, and a conclusion without evidence.

Do better.

The Dodo spoke with Dr. Lillian Glass, an internationally acclaimed expert in the fields of body language and communications, to learn how dogs can help us identify people who aren't as nice as they might seem.

Is she though? I have never heard of her, and her website has this emblazoned across it.

None of those logos tell me anything about her other than she is a TV sl*t. Not a good look for a so-called expert. Shouldn’t you link to her research studies to lend her credibility, not a site that is nothing more than an advertisement for her services? It is literally a more flashy version of Love Fraud, if that site is even still around.

Oh, look at that, it is. Compare for yourselves:

Love Fraud

Dr. Lillian Glass – Body Language Expert & Communications Consultant. Find out what your Body Language is really saying about you and your relationships.

It’s like they are using a very uninspired template. Again, do better. I know nothing about this woman, but if her entire claim is, psychopaths are untrustworthy, and dogs can tell, then she has no business speaking about… well… anything. That is not research, nor is it factual.

"Dogs are very intuitive. They can pick up when something is not right," Glass said. "They are great barometers of what is problematic, but you have to know how to read your dog."

I’m sorry, lady, but I looked at your profile, and nowhere in it did I see “expert in animal behavior”. If you are going to make claims about reading a dog's behavior, I would first need to see that you know anything about that field. Do you? Because I doubt it. Also, I doubt you know anything about psychopathy either. Again, I looked at your profile, an expert in neuroscience was not listed there. You may have a PhD, but I have seen the ridiculous things those are handed out for, and they seem to be, in modern times anyway, a massive grift.

Also, “Because of her interest in animal communication, she has written “50 Ways My Dog Made Me Into a Better Person.” She has several books on animal communication in development”, does not make you an expert in animal behavior. You like dogs, so you wrote a book on them… Okay? Why does that make you an expert? I could write a book about structural engineering, but my lack of ability to do math, and total lack of training in the subject matter, makes taking anything I say about the subject seriously, a problem. Liking dogs is not enough qualification to be writing about their behavior or providing advice about their behavior.

Psychopaths can be masters of manipulation, but their characteristic lack of empathy or outright meanness to animals is often a clear giveaway. Feigning affection for other creatures is difficult for people with those disorders, so they are unlikely to interact with dogs with the same sense of warmth and caring that most folks show toward them.

Good lord, all humans are “masters of manipulation”, as that is the entire base of human interaction. We don’t operate on the same wavelength, and our wants and needs are different. That doesn’t make the manipulation that we do any more nefarious than the manipulation that NTs do.

Please do provide evidence of our outright meanness to animals. Now, I can’t help but notice that she claims that psychopaths have a “lack of empathy” for animals. That is false. I have a great deal of cognitive empathy for animals. I have no emotional empathy for them, but that is because I have no emotional empathy for anything, animals aren’t going to be a magical exception.

“Feigning affection for other creatures is difficult for people with those disorders…”

Let’s see.

1. Psychopathy is not a disorder. It is a difference, and one she clearly has no understanding of.

2. Feigning affection is not difficult at all. I have no idea why she thinks it is, but it isn’t. Animal or human, I got you covered there. However, from my own experience, and my experience speaking to others wired like me, we like our animals. Often more than we like people. My advice? Speak to an actual psychopath before putting out a list of outdated and incorrect myths regarding psychopathy.

“…so they are unlikely to interact with dogs with the same sense of warmth and caring that most folks show toward them.”

Yeah, I am not interested in engaging strange animals on the street, and frankly I find the neurotypical habit of doing this when I am with one of mine, annoying. If that is what she is referring to, sure, I agree with that. I don’t want to pet someone else’s dog, and I will get to why in a moment, and I don’t want you trying to pet mine. Bugger off. Stop being weird with strangers.

Even the absence of a playful tone of voice is an indicator that an individual may be one to avoid.

Ha! That’s funny. I am so freaking good at the playful tone. It’s amusing that she thinks that psychopaths would lack that ability. I mean, maybe they, as in dogs, should avoid people that lack that tone, I don’t know, but that lack has nothing to do with psychopathy. She really should do some cursory reading prior to writing about things. She would have learned about the psychopathic mask.

"They don't have it in them to put on that affect. It's not a part of them. If someone is completely monotone around your animal, that would be a huge warning sign," said Glass. "I would look at their body language too, not just their voice. I would see how they touch the dog, how they look at the dog, if they smiled, and what their facial expression is. Also, your dog will let you know. Some dogs might bark, others might shrink back."

Oh, my good lord, this woman is so very funny.

"They don't have it in them to put on that affect. It's not a part of them. If someone is completely monotone around your animal, that would be a huge warning sign," said Glass.

Psychopaths aren’t monotone robots. Has this woman, ever, once in her life, picked up a book about psychopathy? Even if I disagree with an enormous number of the claims made in them, even Robert Hare, who I think is as wrong as the day is long regarding psychopathy, writes about psychopathic charm. This is a core attribute of psychopathy. No psychopath is wandering around like Vicki on Small Wonder. Woman, please be less embarrassing to your chosen career field.

"I would look at their body language too, not just their voice. I would see how they touch the dog, how they look at the dog, if they smiled, and what their facial expression is. Also, your dog will let you know. Some dogs might bark, others might shrink back."

God help this woman should a serial killer who also happens to be psychopathic, shows up at her door, and her dog loves them. Psychopaths are well aware of the need to be consistent in emotional presentations. Granted, I may not be looking to pet some stranger's dog on the street, but if I am at some social gathering that I find tedious and boring, you had best believe that I am going to be more inclined to pay attention to the dog in the room than the conversation I would prefer not to be a part of. I also guarantee, that dog isn’t going anywhere. Dogs really, really like me for some reason that I have yet to understand. Not as much as they like my Significant Other, but they still will gravitate toward me if he isn’t around.

Now, if your dog barks, or shrinks away from a person, listen to your dog. There is something that they are sensing about them that they are alerting you to. I would also take note if your normally friendly and outgoing dog puts themselves between you and the stranger. That would tell me that something is up. Keep in mind, just as I criticized this woman for not being an expert in dog behavior, I am not either. I am just going off of what I have observed with dogs when they are uncomfortable. However, despite her claim that the dogs are somehow intuiting psychopathy, I have never had a dog behave this way when they deal with me. They may sense something is up, but psychopathy ain't it.

While it may be tempting to jump to conclusions based on a single interaction, Glass is quick to note that there are many reasons an otherwise healthy person would be standoffish around dogs, like if they had a traumatic incident with animals in the past. Still, if someone seems oddly cold, or worse, outright cruel to your pet, it should raise red flags.

“Otherwise healthy”? Can you imagine if psychopaths spoke about neurotypicals the way they speak about us? We would have a lot more room to do so, in my estimation. We live in your world. We interact with you every day. Frankly, there are a lot of things that I have seen from neurotypicals that I find rather astounding in terms of their behavior. I don’t, however, paint you all with a broad stroke about how all of you are cruel people who are phenomenally selfish, greedy creatures solely interested in their feelings. It would be an incorrect thing to state, yet I see a great deal of evidence in the world around me to support such a thought. This woman, has never met a psychopath, and clearly knows nothing about how we think, nor how we behave. But she sure has a lot of opinions about us.

Fascinating.

If someone is mean to your pets, it’s time for them to go. Not for the reason that she’s stating. It has nothing to do with psychopathy, but from a psychopath’s perspective, if they are cruel to an animal, they have no reason to be kind to you. It’s telling of their overall opinion of those, other than themselves. Unfortunately, a lot of people are like this. Avoid them, for sure, but don’t think that they are psychopathic.

"Dogs are conditioned to melt our hearts," Glass said. "There's something in our brains that connects us with these animals in a very primitive way, so if someone shows no emotion or treats them poorly, it says a lot. If someone is not feeling your dog, or if it's not genuine, there could be a real issue."

This is not true for everyone. I have met plenty of neurotypicals that not only are indifferent to dogs, they outright dislike them. They aren’t mean to them, they don’t seek them out to cause pain or harm, they just don’t like them. I have seen the same for cats, and likely that is even more frequent. There are a lot of people that hate cats for whatever reason.

“If someone is not feeling your dog, or if it's not genuine, there could be a real issue."

All right, let’s be honest here. If someone is not feeling your dog, that might be a you problem. I know that this is not going to be the most popular thing to say, but a lot of you have unruly dogs that are d*cks, and frankly, no one wants to deal with that noise. That might be why someone is cold to your dog. It’s the same thing with kids. They have to be trained about acting properly in the world. You can’t cry psychopath because someone finds your dog, or your kid, totally insufferable. Maybe, just maybe, they are.

This woman sounds like the type that takes her dog into the grocery store, and allows her kid to run around the dining room of restaurants, sticking their hands into other people’s food.

That was the end of the article, and it was hot garbage, as I suspected it would be. It would have been nice to be surprised, but no. Now, let’s talk about real relationships with animals that I personally have had.

When I met my SO, I had a cat that, for this article, we will call Lauren. He was totally shocked at how she would come running when I called her. It didn’t matter where she was in the house, she would charge toward me like I was the one that let the sun out in the morning for her to lay in. Since she was a kitten, Lauren went everywhere with me. She slept on my lap while I drove, she slept above my pillow at night, she was attached to me all day long. It was very cool. She was an awesome cat.

I like cats. I like their attitude, I like their independence, and I like the way they interact. What is so funny to me is that there are so many people that don’t really understand the nature of cats. They mistake their independence for indifference, and a lot of people believe that cats are just fine on their own. That they could just leave for a week, and as long as the cat has food and water, that they are fine.

Seriously? This from the emotional empathy crowd? That’s just weak sauce. Why bother getting a cat if that is how you think of them. Cats, despite their rather aloof behavior, are highly social and affectionate beings. They do not want to be left alone, and they rely on the humans around them for companionship. They aren’t a plant that can be watered and forgotten about, and yet, I see so many neurotypicals be incredibly nonchalant about their cats’ needs.

I have always gotten along with cats, and dogs for that matter. Multiple times I have had the vicious cat at someone’s house, the one that no one outside the family could touch, and sometimes even in the family it would still be a gamble to try, come out into the main part of the house…

“She doesn’t like strangers”

come right up to me and rub against my legs…

“She doesn’t like to be pet”

allow me to pet and then make themselves comfortable in my lap for a nap

“She’s never done that before”

to the shock of those they reside with.

I have had other people’s dogs adopt me as well. They liked me more than they liked their own family, often much to the chagrin of those family members, because it was very obvious who the dog preferred.

If dogs, or cats for that matter, can intuit psychopathy, they must really really really like psychopaths. This has been an ongoing theme in my life, since I was a child.

All that said, dogs do pick up on nefarious folks. Not all the time, of course, but I have personally seen it for myself, and I will share that story.

My SO and I had been out with our dog, and were heading home. We had to cross through a well populated downtown area that had many cars, and many pedestrians. We came to a red light, and had to stop. Our dog, who I will call Clara, was watching all the people, and activity, when she started growling. It was a deep and vicious growl that was totally abnormal for her. Then she began to ferociously bark, and into our view came a jogger.

Now, he wasn’t running down the street with a knife that had blood streaming off of it, or anything. He was a normal looking jogger. Someone neither my SO nor I would have given a second thought to. He also wasn’t the only jogger. In fact, a few had already past her purview, and she had no reaction to them whatsoever. Nope, it was something about this guy. As he passed us, she was practically trying to lunge out of the car at him, despite all the windows being up. Clara had never responded this way to anyone. Frankly, as much as we assume that there is a highly protective side to those animals that we spend our lives with, it isn’t so often that we have the chance to see it for ourselves.

The light changed, and we could continue. By now, the guy had passed us, and was further down the block. We drove along, and further up we came to another stop light. Clara continued to bark at the guy as we passed, but once we were at the next light, he was a decent distance behind us. She settled now that he wasn’t near.

However, this was a long red light, and wouldn’t you know it, the jogger caught back up, and just as before, Clara lost her ever-loving mind. It was such a display of instinct that there was no mistaking it. Something was up with that guy. Someone once told me that when you have murdered someone, it changes your very essence. Your soul is different somehow. Maybe that’s true of other things. Perhaps once you indulge your darkness, you become marred in a way that is perceptible to dogs, and cats. I don’t know for certain, but what I do know is, that jogger had something wrong with him.

Clara never behaved that way toward another person in the four short years she was with us. She passed this month, unexpectedly, from an illness. She was a fantastic dog, and her not being here is noticed. Whatever it was that she picked up from that man, there was no mistaking her behavior.

I also have had our Bengal tell me that there was something up with a neighbor. This was a guy that wasn’t around very often, they AirBNBed the house, but when she saw him for the first time, she had a low guttural growl. She didn’t trust him one bit. I know my cat, and I know her behavior. That was unusual, and I took note. Fortunately, they sold the house, so I never dealt with whatever it was that she was sensing. However, I know her well enough to take it seriously when she tells me something is up with that dude.

I think articles like this do a disservice to those that read them. They should be speaking about how animals do pick up things, and that it would behoove the reader to note when there is some change in their companion’s behavior. When there is something that is off in how they act, there is likely something off with the situation, or that person. Take note, and respond accordingly. However, placing “psychopath” as the articles subject, it’s just clickbait. The post would have been far more effective to come at it from a logical and reasonable approach, but instead, that incessent need for internet traffic raises it’s head, and creates another false narrative.

The chances are, your dog will absolutely love the psychopath that he or she meets. That has been my experience, anyway. They aren’t psychopath detectors, but they may well be bad people detectors. Most psychopaths are not bad people, and most bad people are not psychopaths. Don’t trust your dog to sniff out the psychopath, because you will be waiting a long time.

I found a couple of article about cats and psychopathy. I don’t think that any animal can be considered a psychopath, but there was something written by C S Friedman, over on Quora, that made an interesting argument for the positive regarding cats and psychopathy. I can address the articles, and her perspective, if you guys are interested. Let me know. Also, let me know if there is anything more you guys would like to know about psychopathy and pets.