Many people tell the odd white lie - taking a day off "sick" or halving the amount they spend on a shopping trip.

But most feel a little bit guilty about the deception.

Scientists have now found that twinge of conscience can be seen in increased activity in the brain.

In short, it takes more effort to lie than to tell the truth.

But people with psychopathic tendencies find lying as easy as telling the truth.

The reason is that when children develop the ability to deceive - around the age of three of four - they also develop the ability to empathise.

But researchers say people with aggressive and antisocial personality disorders do not develop this ability, and therefore they have no moral compass.

They say traumatic experiences and a lack of contact with understanding adults could be to blame.

'Deception is OK'

The reasons why some people become psychopathic will be discussed at a conference in Sheffield entitled "Psychopathy and the Problem of Evil".

Dr Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield, who is chairing the conference, has found parts of the frontal lobe area of the brain are more active when someone was lying than when they were telling the truth.

He will prevent evidence confirming earlier studies which showed the neurological activity involved in lying.

Dr Spence said: "When we're lying, there is a moral part of us that doesn't wish to manipulate others or take advantage of them.

"In psychopaths, there is no activity in that area of the brain, and deception is OK to them.

"They don't have any qualms about doing it."

He said a lack of adults displaying empathy towards them as children meant psychopaths could not learn from example, and developed the aggressive antisocial personality disorder.

"If they have experienced gross sexual abuse of severe physical violence, they may never have been in contact with the feeling of empathy."

Dr Spence said 'good parenting' was a crucial part of preventing these tendencies developing.

"Even if people have had an experience such as sexual abuse, if they have had at least one good relationship with an adult figure, they don't become delinquent."

Diet and exercise

Childhood diets could also influence whether people develop psychopathic tendencies, experts say.

The conference will hear from Professor Adrian Raine, a psychologist from the University of California.

He gave a group of three-year-olds from Mauritius a programme of an enriched diet, exercise and cognitive stimulation - being read to and involved in conversation.

By the age of 11, they showed increased activity on brain scan readings, and by 23, they were 64% less likely than a group of children who had not been on the programme to have criminal records.

Professor Raine said: "This is not a silver bullet to solving crime and violence, but I think it's certainly one of the ingredients.

"The take-home point is that the seeds of crime are sown early in life."

Dr Spence added that alcohol or drug abuse could also cause damage to the brain and cause psychopathic behaviour.

But he said that even people who had never before shown any signs of psychopathic behaviour could behave very cruelly in extreme situations.

"In Rwanda, around 800,000 people were killed in 100 days.

"Most people doing the killing had been 'normal' before - it was something in their environment that changed."

A psychopath is a person who appears normal on the surface, until he/she performs some outrageous criminal act. At that point it has been customary to label the behavior as temporary "insanity", but that is a legal term, not a medical one. The prison psychiatric hospital environment greatly reduces the options for the new patient to make the kind of independent decisions that caused the original trouble in open society. In this controlled environment he/she appears normal, shows no overt signs of psychosis, passes all probing tests with flying colors, and is discharged as "cured". On the street again, more crimes are committed, and the cycle repeats. Thus, these individuals fall through the cracks between law and medicine.

Most people, including judges and juries, are still unable to make the distinction that not all prison inmates are psychopaths and not all antisocial individuals are convicted criminals. The links below can be confusing unless one is aware that the label "psychopathic personality" was the original descriptive term for today's aggressive "antisocial personality". The new euphemism is an obfuscation of an unpleasant truth about people we are forced to deal with on a daily basis. It is difficult for all of us, especially when associating with disruptive school children, whose unearned "self esteem" must be protected at all costs. In the literature one can expect to see both the new and the old terms, without much distinction between them.

Western industrial civilization has developed a complex set of rules of behavior for its citizens. These rules have evolved from the need for cooperative organization in order to produce the goods and services actually needed by society for minimum survival as a group, and also to produce the intangible benefits that make that survival tolerable for the individual. It makes most sense to reserve the greatest rewards to those individuals who produce the most goods and services of the highest quality. Most people understand they need specialized training for any role above some minimum level, and they must compete for that training, and later compete on the job itself. They understand that the need for group survival dictates the rules of the game, and they must not disrupt the group process by uncooperative, dishonest, unethical, or violent behavior, or flagrant violation of the rules.

Psychopaths believe they are "entitled" to the lifestyle benefits of Western Civilization that most people only hope for as a potential reward for outstanding job performance, organizational loyalty, and smooth cooperation with other members of a team. Psychopaths can't or won't work at the high performance level that might logically provide upscale benefits. At a lower level where they might be more qualified, they feel that any menial, boring, dirty, or disgusting WORK is "beneath" them. Thus, whether at a high level or low level, any meaningful, honest "work" is a dirty word to a psychopath.

With extraordinary assistance from motivated parents, some more intelligent, but still antisocial people can and do gravitate to higher-paid management, politics, or the professions, where power and prestige can be significant ego enhancers. However, they are always "close to the edge" emotionally, and are likely to abuse sex, drugs, and alcohol. Also, they may tend to "seek out" excuses to deliberately over-indulge, in order to remove temporarily the stifling "mask of sanity" that never quite fits. Then, when "under the influence" they are more likely to exhibit aggressive, violent, and/or bizarre behavior in inappropriate public places. This odd behavior is the key classic sign of acute dysfunction. Some reference books provide fascinating case histories describing typical incidents.

When one realizes that the antisocial syndrome is pervasive in today's society, what protection is available to the average adult citizen? How can one know the alien body snatcher before any actual overt criminal act? There are two simple test tools available to any perceptive, educated adult: The tools are contrived casual conversation and unobtrusive observation. With these tools one can make a simple first screening test to possibly rule out psychopathic personality in public officials or others:

The psychopath is a dangerously clever "alien reaction machine" that has practiced giving all the correct answers. However, much of that verbal practice will have taken place in institutions or in dysfunctional families in lower-class neighborhoods. When those same answers are given in upscale surroundings, they come out as contrived falsehoods.

Another clue is that the alien machine will not take responsibility, but will tend to "blame others" for misfortunes with drugs, sexual partners, bosses, co- workers, authorities, or whatever. Also, the full-blown psychopath is NEVER altruistic or ethical (except by accident), but may be shrewd enough to pretend altruism as sham behavior (to attract votes). By accepting a psychopath's statements at face value, without cross- checking public records or other sources, a careless or inattentive interviewer can fail to pick up on the frequent lies. For example, to trip up corrupt politicians or self-described "experts", sometimes it is only necessary to compare two different answers to the same or similar questions repeated on two or more different occasions, without involving external sources at all. Any pattern of lies will stand out as outside the norm of ethical conduct. By itself, this discrepancy is insufficient to classify the individual as antisocial, but it is an indication that other tests should be made.

Information from: � http://home.ntelos.net/~write/sociopth.html
and
� http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3116662.stm