Do psychopaths lack a conscience?

Question

It is often claimed that psychopaths lack a conscience. There was even a book named after the claim. A review of that book states:

As the title suggests, psychopaths are qualitatively different from other people, literally having no conscience.

This website which seems to be an information resource for psychopathy states:

Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.

I think it is well established that psychopaths lack empathy, which has been shown with differences in brain structure and/or activity, although I don't think it is necessarily valid to conclude that psychopaths have no conscience from that.

The definition for conscience is not dependent on empathy, bur rather knowing or having a sense of what is right or wrong. Even with a complete lack of empathy or remorse, why could there be no sense of right and wrong?

Is there any validity to the claim that psychopaths lack a conscience? Why would they be unable to have the same values of wrong and right instilled as other people, or to sense how people will morally view their actions?

Answer 1

Psychopathy is measured through a scale known as "Hare Psychopathy Check List, Revised (PCL-R)". It is not simply a paper but a whole book on psychopathy. It is very, very well tested experimentally, and hugely cited - Google Scholar reports 3000+ citation.

Unfortunately, the book is not freely available, but, since this is a non-controversial subject, I'll simply use Wikipedia. See the voice for PCL-R. There are 2 main factors identified in psychopaths:

Factor 1: Personality "Aggressive narcissism"

• Glibness/superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Cunning/manipulative
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
• Callousness; lack of empathy
• Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Factor 2: Case history "Socially deviant lifestyle".

• Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
• Parasitic lifestyle
• Poor behavioral control
• Lack of realistic long-term goals
• Impulsivity
• Irresponsibility
• Juvenile delinquency
• Early behavior problems
• Revocation of conditional release

It is clear from this that lack of conscience (or remorse, guilt) and lack of empathy are part of the same factor and thus they are strongly correlated.

So - to answer your question in full - lack of a conscience is a common trait of psychopaths, but it's not, strictly speaking, necessary, for a psychopathy diagnosis.

Answer 2

Edited to make it more clear

From the dictionary defintion of conscience that you provided:

Breaking these down individually:

a : the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good

In other words, being able to determine if one's actions are right or wrong and feeling a need to do good.

b : a faculty, power, or principle enjoining good acts

In other words something inside of you that tells you to do good.

c : the part of the superego in psychoanalysis that transmits commands and admonitions to the ego

In other words something that tells the individual they are doing a good thing, i.e. a feeling of positivity also known as a "warm, fuzzy feeling. Or warning them that they are doing a bad thing i.e. a sense of guilt or remorse.

As you noted psychopaths lack empathy. The conscience is what supplies the feelings of guilt or remorse i.e. empathy. With no conscience there can be no empathy.