Lectures on Tap - Baby Psychopaths? The Childhood Roots of the Dark Triad

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🧠 Lecture: "Baby Psychopaths? The Childhood Roots of the Dark Triad"

🎙 Speaker: Dr. Sarah Lynch

We tend to think of the Dark Triad as something you meet on a bad date, not in a preschool classroom. But the building blocks of traits like fearlessness, low empathy, and emotional coldness can first appear in early childhood—often subtly, and in ways most of us would never link to later personality.

Developmental psychologist Dr. Sarah Lynch will unpack callous-unemotional (CU) traits in kids: patterns of low guilt, low empathy, and striking fearlessness that are not “mini psychopathy,” nor destiny. Instead, they offer a powerful window into how empathy develops, why some children engage differently with the social world, and how biology, temperament, caregiving, and peers shape their paths.

Drawing on her research and consulting work, Dr. Lynch will explore how these traits look from infancy through adolescence, when and how they can crystalize into more rigid patterns, and—crucially—what lets us intervene early and effectively. Along the way, she’ll challenge the “bad seed” myth and replace it with real developmental science.

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