In 2005, Scott Peterson was convicted of the murder of his wife Laci and her unborn child. During the first hour on death row, he received a marriage proposal, and within a day the warden’s office was inundated with over 30 phone calls from women asking for his mailing address as well as letters from women professing their love for him.
This is not an isolated incident, and there is even a clinical term for it: Hybristophilia.
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[In a new study, Ashley Watts investigates] whether people are especially attracted to psychopathic characteristics, and whether there are individual differences in such attraction. The researchers had both an undergraduate sample as well as a community sample of males and females report on their own personality and then had them construct their ideal mate.…
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In general, people did not find psychopathic characteristics particularly attractive for any form of relationship — whether it was a date, a short-term relationship, or a long-term relationship. Across the board, expressed preferences for psychopathic traits were low.
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[The] results suggest that although most people are not attracted to psychopathic features (and the older one gets, the more one is wary of such characteristics), those with pronounced psychopathic features in particular and personality disorder features more generally are more likely than others to endorse a romantic preference for psychopathic mates.Read full, original post: Who Finds Psychopaths Hot?
