📅 Thought for today:
‘When the norm is decency, other virtues can thrive: integrity, honesty, compassion, kindness, and trust.’
— Raja Krishnamoorthi
#thoughtfortoday #compassionate #morality #honesty #humility #agreeable #considerate
Yesterday I wrote about psychopathy and the Hare Checklist.
Today I’ve been looking at the opposite.
Interestingly, all but one of the traits of a psychopath lie on a normal distribution curve.
That means the individual traits are exhibited much like exam results – most are average, some are outliers.
The one trait that doesn’t fit is criminality.
Two researchers, Kyler Woodmass and Brian O’Connor have studied this distribution and determined an opposite.
Something, I would suggest, we can aspire to, learn, teach, encourage, and look out for.
The opposite of psychopath is described as compassionate morality.
Their 2018 paper is titled “What is the opposite of psychopathy? A statistical and graphical exploration of the psychopathy continuum.” should you be interested (and if you are a coach or counsellor, you probably are.
This is an extract from the paper’s abstract:
‘The opposite of psychopathy was defined by a tendency to experience guilt following private transgressions, by a tendency to experience shame following publicly exposed transgressions, by honesty, humility, cooperativeness, agreeableness, consideration, restraint, and conscientiousness.’
Doesn’t that sound like someone you’d like to meet?
To me, it is reminiscent of Arthur Schopenhauer.
