THIS IS AN excerpt from an article on sociopaths:
I've been reading and writing about oxytocin lately (see the article, Peace, Love, and Oxytocin) and came across an interesting experiment. Paul Zak, one of the primary researchers in the field, found that when you give someone a dose of oxytocin, they tend to become more generous.
"Interestingly," wrote Joyce Gramza, "Zak found that oxytocin had no effect on two percent of the participants and that these students fit the personality profile of sociopaths."
Oxytocin is a naturally-produced hormone that creates feelings of closeness, comfort, relaxation, empathy for others, and trust.
The estimates given in the research on sociopaths is that one to four percent of the population is sociopathic. Now with this study, coming from an entirely different field, maybe we can be more specific and narrow it down to two percent. One in fifty. If you know more than fifty people, chances are you know a sociopath.
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