Leistedt watched 400 movies depicting psychopaths (and “sociopaths”—some distinguish between the two, but there’s no official diagnostic difference) and diagnosed each and every one of their featured villains. Once he weeded out supernatural characters, he was left with 105 male and 21 female characters to analyze with a team of 10 forensic scientists.
I keep getting a kick out of this:
Sometimes, a psychopath can look a lot like your friendly neighborhood neuroscientist; James Fallon made headlines when he accidentally diagnosed his own brain scan as showing psychopathic features. After further research and self-evaluation, Fallon categorized himself as a “pro-social psychopath”—one who can keep his behavior within socially-acceptable bounds, despite not feeling true empathy for others…
Of course he did!
