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Audio · 2025-10-14 · 2h 49m · 6 moments

#483 – Julia Shaw: Criminal Psychology of Murder, Serial Killers, Memory & Sex

Julia Shaw is a criminal psychologist and author who in her books explores human nature, including psychopathy, violent crime, the psychology of evil, police interrogation, false memory manipulation, deception detection, and human sexuality. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep483-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/julia-shaw-transcript CONTACT L ✦ AI generated

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01
Definition

The dark tetrad traits — psychopathy, sadism, narcissism, Machiavellianism — exist on a continuum; everyone scores somewhere on each trait, and this undermines the binary 'monster vs. non-monster' label.

Shaw introduces the dark tetrad and explains that these traits are continuous — everyone scores somewhere on each — so the line between 'evil' and 'good' people is artificial.

transcript

Julia Shaw: each trait on the dark tetrad, as it's called, which is the four traits that are associated with dark personality traits, so things that we often associate with the word evil, like sadism, which is a pleasure in hurting other people, Machiavellianism, which is doing whatever it takes to get ahead, narcissism, which is taking too much pleasure in yourself, and seeing yourself as superior to others. And then there's psychopathy. Psychopathic personality specifically often lacks in empathy. And it's usually characterized by a number of different traits, including a parasitic lifestyle, so mooching off of others, deceptiveness, lying to people, and again, that empathy dimension, where you are more comfortable hurting other people because you don't feel sad when other people feel sad. Now, all of those traits, psychopathy, sadism, Machiavellianism, and narcissism, all of them have a scale. And so you can be low on each of those traits or you can be high on each of those traits. And what the dark tetrad is, it's actually a way of classifying people into those who might be more likely to engage in risky behaviors or harmful behaviors and those who are not. And if you score high on all of them, you're most likely to harm other people. But each of us score somewhere.

02
Claim

We should not use the word 'evil' to describe people because it others them, shuts down understanding, and is itself a tool that enables harm.

Shaw argues the word 'evil' is counterproductive: it ends the conversation, dehumanizes, and is often used to justify violence against those so labeled.

transcript

Julia Shaw: I would be careful with using the word evil because I think we shouldn't use it to describe human beings because it most commonly others people. It's in fact, I think, makes us capable of perpetrating horrendous crimes against those we label evil. So for me, that word is, it's the end of a conversation. It's when we call somebody evil, we say, this person is so different from me that I don't even need to bother trying to understand why they are capable of doing terrible things, because I would never do such things. I am good. And so that artificial differentiation between good and evil is something that, certainly with the book, I'm trying to dismantle.

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03
Claim

All of us are capable of doing the worst things we can imagine; the question is why we don't, not why we do.

Shaw argues that everyone has the capacity for extreme violence — history shows neighbors turning on each other in wars — and that acknowledging this is essential for prevention.

transcript

Julia Shaw: I think all of us are capable of doing basically the worst things we can imagine. And one of the reasons I think that is because you can see neighbors turning on each other, especially if you look historically at the start of wars or big political moments where you have people who would have called each other friends, turning each other into the police, killing each other, doing terrible things. So I think all it takes is to become convinced that the people you think are your friends are actually your enemies, whether that's just in your own world or in a larger political national landscape, that I think, I don't think it takes all that much for us to be capable of doing terrible things.

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04
Data

Most murders are not premeditated by psychopaths but are fights that get out of control over trivial reasons, which contradicts the glamorized media portrayal of murder.

Shaw explains that the reality of murder is usually banal — a fight over money or a stolen bike that escalates — not the calculated serial-killer narrative popular in true crime.

transcript

Julia Shaw: What really happens in murder most of the time, which is not what you see on TV because it's really boring, is it's a fight that gets out of control. And if you look at the real reasons stated, it's things like this person owed me $4 and so I killed him. This person stole my bike. This person, I mean, it's these really stupid reasons. And it is just this bad decision in the moment, an overreaction to a fight, to an argument. And it wasn't planned. It's not some psychopath sharpening their knives, waiting for months to try and kill this person. And we don't like that because there's something called the victimization gap, which is that the impact of this extreme situation on the perpetrator, there's a huge gap between that and the impact on the victim and their family. So the victim loses the life, whereas the perpetrator, sure, they get imprisoned, but at best, right, if you will, in terms of justice, but they don't have the same kinds of consequences. And we don't like that. We like things that have extreme consequences to have extreme reasons.

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05
Claim

Jealousy is always a red flag — it is not a sign of love but of control and insecurity, and it is a known precursor to intimate partner violence.

Shaw challenges the romanticized view of jealousy, arguing it signals insecurity or a mismatched relationship and is a well-established precursor to domestic violence.

transcript

Julia Shaw: I personally think that jealousy is basically always a red flag. Because what it means is that the person who is jealous isn't secure in the relationship. And the reason that they're not secure in the relationship is either because a relationship is wrong for them or because they are insecure in themselves. And I don't think it is a sign of love. I don't think it is a sign of, you want to protect your mate. I think it is mostly control. And it's the desire to control and to possess. And jealousy, we know, is a precursor to intimate partner violence, almost always.

06
Context

The Kinsey scale and the Klein grid show that most people are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual — sexuality exists on a continuum and can change over time.

Shaw recounts the history of Kinsey's research, which found that about half of men in the 1940s fell somewhere in the middle of the heterosexual-homosexual spectrum, and explains the more nuanced Klein grid that considers past, present, and ideal dimensions.

transcript

Julia Shaw: He created something called the Kinsey scale. And so the Kinsey scale is from zero to six, and he found that it was not useful to apply a binary to people's sexual desires and sexual orientation. It was more useful to put them on a continuum, because most people were not exclusively homosexual or exclusively heterosexual. Most people were somewhere in between. And so zero was exclusively heterosexual tendencies, and six was exclusively homosexual. And he would place people based on all the things they told him somewhere on the scale. And about half of men were somewhere in the middle, not exclusively either, and about 1/4 of women.

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