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Podcast

#483 – Julia Shaw- Criminal Psychology of Murder, Serial Killers, Memory & Sex

Lex Fridman Podcast

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  • Dark Traits Are Continuous
    • The Dark Tetrad traits (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, sadism) exist on continuous scales rather than as binary labels.
    • Scoring high on multiple traits raises harm risk, but most people are subclinical and mixed across traits. Transcript: Julia Shaw Yeah. So each trait on the dark tetrad, 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 in hurting other people. Machiavellianism, which is doing whatever it takes to get ahead. Narcissism, 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. 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, Machiavellianism, 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 tetrad 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 scores somewhere. So I might 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. Lex Fridman So early in the book, you raised the question that I think you highlight is 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? Julia Shaw 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 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 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 defined the horrors that he was capable of. So would I go back in time and kill baby Hitler? The answer is no, because I don’t think it’s a straight line from baby to adult. And I don’t think people are born evil. Lex Fridman 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 out to the world? Julia Shaw Well, and 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 there’s nothing fundamental to people that makes Them capable of great harm. (Time 0:08:43)
  • Group Dynamics Enable Atrocities
    • Dehumanization plus de-individuation (us-vs-them group identity) enable large-scale violence like war.
    • These social processes create a cloak of moral justification for atrocities. Transcript: Julia Shaw That’s right. And 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. (Time 0:13:28)
  • Interview To Reveal Rationalizations
    • When interviewing controversial figures, listen for rationalizations and controlled narratives as informative psychological data.
    • Treat their stories as signals about motives and normalization, not mere confessions of truth. Transcript: Julia Shaw 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. 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. (Time 0:16:51)
  • Pickton Case Sparked Her Path
    • Julia described covering the Robert Pickton case on Bad People and how it influenced her career choice.
    • She interviewed Stephen Hart, Pickton’s expert witness, which sparked her interest in criminal psychology. Transcript: Julia Shaw 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 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 Picton case. And the episodes are called Piggy’s Palace because that was the nickname for the farm where Robert Picton brought victims whom he had kidnapped. And then he killed them and he did terrible things to their bodies. And 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 Pickton 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 Stephen Hart. And Stephen Hart was an expert witness on the Robert Pickton trial. And so he was keeping us abreast of some of the developments of what he was covering. And I found it so interesting. And I loved Stephen Hart as a person. And he seemed to have a 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. (Time 0:29:38)
  • Loneliness And Reality Monitoring In Killers
    • Many serial killers show loneliness and poor reality-monitoring due to weak social networks.
    • Loneliness plus dark tetrad traits can push individuals into extreme, untethered behavior. Transcript: Julia Shaw The psychology about Robert Picton, 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 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 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, 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 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. Lex Fridman So that’s one important component of serial killers. What else can we say about the psychology? (Time 0:32:16)
  • Most Murders Are Opportunistic Overreactions
    • Murder often arises from impulsive fights, not grand motives; most homicides are bad decisions in the moment.
    • Homicide recidivism is low, so our punitive focus may be misaligned with prevention priorities. Transcript: Julia Shaw 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 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 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. (Time 0:37:30)
  • Train The Heroic Imagination
    • Practice the ‘heroic imagination’ to rehearse stepping in during emergencies and defeat bystander inertia.
    • Simulate intervening so you’ll be more likely to act rather than assume others will. Transcript: Julia Shaw 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, oh, 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 off track. I don’t want to go this way. And I’m going to stop myself here and here’s how I can find my way back. And so the heroic imagination is exercising that. (Time 0:41:04)
  • Online Echo Chambers Fuel Entitlement
    • Incels and similar groups amplify entitlement and rage via online reinforcement, increasing danger.
    • The internet provides tailored echo chambers that normalize extremist grievances and radicalization. Transcript: Julia Shaw 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 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, with a woman at home who’s taking care of the kids and this sort of white picket fence ideal that we’ve Been sold. We have been told that that is what we should have. Like, 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 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. Lex Fridman And the internet gives you a mechanism to be your worst self. Julia Shaw And it can reinforce that worst self. You see other people saying, yeah, I feel the same way. Do you want me to help you? Oh, (Time 0:49:53)
  • Tinder Swindler Love-Bomb Scam
    • Julia described the Tinder Swindler: love-bombing, lavish dates, and staged crises to extract money.
    • Victims like Cecilia borrowed heavily before realizing they were being defrauded. Transcript: Julia Shaw 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 love bomb 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. 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 the story of a future together. In relationships in a lot of ways. 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. 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 she realized that this all was a big fraud. This was a love scam. So the reason that we spoke with her is partly to show how can happen. (Time 0:51:59)
  • Fraud Exploits Desires, Not Stupidity
    • Fraud succeeds because scammers tell people exactly what they want to hear and exploit vulnerability.
    • Victims aren’t ‘dumb’; they’re often kind people seeking love or trust, which scammers weaponize. Transcript: Julia Shaw Yeah. Because 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 really manipulative way in, and 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 did just happen. And then we get really embarrassed. And so I think talking about it is really important and seeing it as not the thing that happens to dumb people, because that is sometimes how it’s framed. It’s like, oh, 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. Lex Fridman Yeah. And I hope she and others that fall victim (Time 0:54:41)
  • Monogamy Is A Social Construct
    • Research shows many people cheat; strict monogamy mismatches common human behavior.
    • Polyamory offers a valid option and choice rather than a moral failing. Transcript: Julia Shaw So the research also bears out that people are really bad at monogamy. So most people either have cheated on a significant other, maybe not their current significant other, but a significant other, or have cheated multiple times. And that’s just consistently found in the research. Lex Fridman So maybe there’s justification to be jealous? Julia Shaw I think it’s the other way around. I think monogamy is setting us up to fail. So I think monogamy is a social construct. That’s a nice idea for some people. And I think that at least based on the research on how people actually behave, they’re not actually behaving in a monogamous way. If you’re cheating on your partner, that is not monogamy. (Time 0:58:01)
  • Set Relationship Rules Early
    • Discuss relationship structures early and honestly to avoid later hurt or secrecy.
    • Choose agreed norms instead of assuming one-size-fits-all monogamy will suit both partners. Transcript: Julia Shaw But to have it early and say, you know, how do you actually want to structure your life? And I think how do you want to structure your relationship as part of that? And especially if you’re going to commit yourself to one person, one primary person, or one exclusive person, that’s part of it. And I think then you also, you know, don’t have to lie to each other if you do cheat, or you can talk about it in a different way if you feel like there’s, you know, certain capacity to be honest About whom you’re attracted to and how that might impact your life more generally. Lex Fridman So how difficult is polyamory? I think a lot of people would be curious about that kind of stuff. Does jealousy come up? Is it difficult to navigate? Julia Shaw Can be. I mean, all relationships can be difficult to navigate. I think it’s the same. And the same risk factors. If you’re going in because you’re trying to fix something about yourself, you’re going to have a hard time. Much like if you’re dating a single person. If you’re trying to fix something and this is going to be the solution to the thing that you feel is broken about yourself, it’s going to be hard. (Time 1:02:01)
  • Sexuality Is Multi-Dimensional
    • Sexual orientation exists on continua like the Kinsey scale; past, present, and ideal facets matter.
    • Complex grids (Klein) help people analyze attractions, identity, fantasies, lifestyle, and ideals. Transcript: Julia Shaw I think the right way to think about it is that I’m not attracted to most people, but I can be attracted to people regardless of gender. Much like you’re probably not attracted to most people, but you are attracted to people of a certain gender maybe. And so it’s the same as being heterosexual in terms of potentially my pool of people whom I might be interested in. It’s just that their gender is irrelevant. Lex Fridman What’s the biggest thing that people misunderstand about bisexuality? Julia Shaw The biggest thing that researchers find people misunderstand about bisexuality is that it’s a phase and that it’s this idea that it’s transient, that it’s always and that it’s a stepping Stone. So I think a lot of people still see bisexuality as on the way to gay town, sort of like you’re on your way, but you haven’t quite committed and you’re still stuck in expectations of society. You haven’t quite let go yet, but really you’re gay. And that’s especially true for men. And so when you look at research on bisexual men, which is actually how the research started. So I think now when we think of bisexuality, we think of women. And it’s true that today, twice as many women identify as bisexual as men. But if you look at the history of this and the research on bisexuality over time, it was the other way around. So someone called Alfred Kinsey was one of the first sexuality researchers in recent history, certainly. And he, after World War II, did this really big study of sexual behavior in the human male, it was called. He was a biologist himself. And so he thought in taxonomies and he was doing research on gall wasps, so insects. And this idea of human sexuality was sort of thrown at him after the war, because there’s also this whole move to get people to reproduce and to rebuild America. And so sexuality was partly, and sex specifically, was becoming more of an area of interest, both in terms of research and in terms of policy and funding. And so Alfred Kinsey was asked, do you want to do a class on human sexual behavior? And he was like, I know nothing about this. And so he spent about a year just listening to students’ questions about what they want to know about sex. And he realized that he was looking for research to try and build up this course that he was probably going to teach. And he realized that he couldn’t answer most of their questions because the research hadn’t been done. And so a lot of the questions were around, what is normal? You know, if I feel this during sex, is that normal? How often do people have sex? Should I want these? What about these fantasies? What does it mean? What if I have homosexual fantasies? What if I engage in this kind of? And so he was looking at all of these questions and collating them. And then he went out and did these huge studies. And he interviewed thousands of people himself, but also had all these research assistants who are out there interviewing people in America about their sexual behavior, which, I Mean, just picture the time, the 1940s. This is quite a conservative time. I mean, certainly more than we might expect now. And here’s this researcher asking incredibly personal questions about thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And he ended up finding, and this is one of the big findings in this book that he published called Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was a bestseller for an entire year. He sold out auditoriums. They had to sometimes add the room next to the room he was in because there was so much desire to go to his lectures about sex that they had to connect radios to other halls to give people Enough space to sit down. He was basically a rock star. And again, I think this challenges a misconception we have about sexuality, that we think of it as this sort of woke thing now, that the rainbow flag and all this stuff is sort of this modern Invention almost. But if you, that’s, this is the 40s. This was happening. People were going to these talks. People were having these conversations. And he created something called the Kinsey Scale. And so the Kinsey Scale is from zero to six. And he found that it was not useful to apply a binary to people’s sexual desires and sexual orientation. It was more useful to put them on a continuum. Because most people were not exclusively homosexual or exclusively heterosexual. Most people were somewhere in between. And so zero was exclusively heterosexual tendencies. And six was exclusively homosexual. And he would place people, based on all the things they told him, somewhere on the scale. And about half of men were somewhere in the middle, not exclusively either. (Time 1:06:50)
  • Destigmatize Consensual Kinks
    • Many sexual kinks are common and consensual; society wrongly stigmatizes them as moral defects.
    • Open conversations and safety practices reduce shame and mental-health harms. Transcript: Julia Shaw The reason I included kinks in evil and sexual conversations in general is because it is so often thrown into the same conversation. So if someone comes to me and says, Julia, I want you to help me explain why this person killed this other person. And they’ll often say, did you know that he or she was also into insert kink here or insert non-traditional relationship structure here or insert whatever? And I respond to that by going, OK, so? And I think people use these words like, oh, he was really into BDSM and think that that’s going to have this really important impact on me. Or, oh, they were swingers. And so and again, I go, yeah, that’s, you know, almost like and in other news, they were swingers. It’s like that is not related to this crime all, unless one of the partners was killed. But people see this as a defective character. And kink is very much seen as a defective character in many circles, especially in broader society. And that is wild to me, because if you look at research on sexual fantasies and kinks, a lot of people have at least one. So a lot of people, BDSM being the most common, are engaging in or interested in BDSM. So things like choking or things like restraints or being degraded or doing the degrading of other people in bed, consensually, of course. That is something that a lot of people fantasize about and a lot of people engage in. And so these kinks and these fetishes, they are much more commonplace than we sometimes think about them as. Now, on the other hand, we obviously need to be careful not to assume that because in pornography, BDSM is almost ubiquitous, it feels, that that means everybody wants this. That is absolutely not the case. But we also don’t want to marginalize it and say it’s almost nobody. It’s somewhere in between. And the main thing is always just to ask and to have open conversations about what it is that people actually want in bed and to make sure you have things like safe words. (Time 1:20:44)