Sleeping next to a psychopath

Wow, so if there's anything all three of us are really bad at, it's updating our blog. But guess what? =) Now that finals season has graced us here at UW, I'll be looking for distractions from studying. Multiple updates, here I come...

First thing that caught my eye today was this on msn.ca. The whole article talks about how women are stupid and most of them are looking for the wrong traits in men. I'm sure we could take this article and generalize about the much lamented 'the jerks get all the girls'. However, that wasn't what caught my eye. I found this fascinating:

"In my book Prince Harming Syndrome, I share an article from The New York Times about the psychology of evil which included "The Psychopath Checklist." Criminal psychiatrists use this helpful list use to test the potential of someone being a hardcore psychopath, capable of committing repeated evil and violent crimes.

Guess which traits psychopaths share?

• Glibness
• Extreme charisma
• Need to always be doing something
• Feelings of high self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Proneness to boredom"

Umm....the scary part of this is the number of people I have known growing up, or do know, who are only one trait away from satisfying all items on this checklist. For instance, if X had grown up with tons more self-confidence, or if Y was just more charismatic to the general public. Even I am dangerously close....hehehe, then again, I generally think I am waaaaaay more charismatic than I actually am. =P

I'm sure that this list covers what, 30, 40, 50% of the population? Ok, 50% is probably too high, but still. Just think, you live in a society where you are surrounded by possible future psychopaths. In particular...you might just sleep in the same house as one. Now I'm sure there are perfectly normal people who satisfy the list entirely, and goodness knows that these sort of 'tests' are horribly imprecise, but it still makes you think...

Anyways, if anyone asks...*shifty eyes*....it wasn't me. =D

S

Edit: I just had another thought. How many of our politicians would be on the psychopath watch list? o.O