The Psychology of Dexter - Bella DePaulo [32]
NO CONSCIENCE? NO PROBLEM
When Robert Hare, one of the world’s foremost authorities on psychopaths, wrote a book about them, he called it Without Conscience. That lack of conscience is probably the quality that most starkly separates psychopaths such as Dexter from everyone else. In fact, it may be Dexter’s inability to experience the ordinary range and depth of emotions—especially feelings such as fear and anxiety—that accounts for his failure to develop a conscience.
Dexter, though, has a serviceable substitute—the Code of Harry. Dexter’s foster father realized that Dexter’s urges to kill would be uncontrollable, so he channeled and regulated them instead. Dexter is only allowed to kill people who deserve it. He can’t get caught. Those are the two most important rules in the Code of Harry. The whole set of rules functions as a moral checklist. Dexter doesn’t have to have an inner guiding light; he can just go down the list.
If it is your goal to kill people, lie about it, and get away with both the wicked deed and the lie, then not having a conscience, like not having emotions, is not such a bad thing. If you are an ordinary, morally grounded human who is tempted to transgress, your sense of right and wrong can give you pause. That feeling that you are about to do a bad thing is like a moral stomachache; it warns you that you had better stop indulging if you want to feel good again. Not so for Dexter. He has a stomach of steel. He will lie and manipulate and destroy evidence to stay in the clear, without even a twinge of guilt or shame. And if others, despite Dexter’s best efforts, become suspicious anyway, well, let’s say that Dexter may just take matters into his own hands.
DEXTER’S NO DUMMY
Watch Dexter as he sizes up a blood-drenched scene and in an instant deduces the entire choreography of the criminal and the crime. Listen to his repartee with his fellow serial killer who was a used-car salesman. The salesperson tossed out one lie after another, and Dexter batted each one away without missing a beat.13 Notice how Dexter observes other people and commits their words and intonations to memory. Remember when Dexter was young and Harry told him how to come across as normal on a mental health assessment? Dexter nailed it.
All lines of evidence lead to the same conclusion: Dexter is no dummy. His smarts help him get away with his both his crimes and his lies. While other liars might stumble around as they try to fabricate the perfect lie and struggle to remember what they already said and to whom—making it all the more obvious that they have something to hide—Dexter thinks quickly and sharply. The mental challenges of telling lies don’t trip him up.
The significance of a good memory became especially apparent when Dexter suffered a concussion after his car accident in season four. Suddenly, he couldn’t remember what he did with Benny Gomez’s remains. How un-Dexter-like!
Dexter’s cautiousness is smart, too. His trophy blood slides are so well hidden that only someone as determined as Doakes, who was willing to tear Dexter’s place apart, would ever find them. His office is in good shape, too. When the feds descended upon the Miami Metro’s homicide department to help with a particularly daunting case, Dexter gave them the password to his computer and walked away. He knew they weren’t going to find anything.
A friend and colleague of mine, Weylin Sternglanz, had a great idea for his doctoral dissertation when he was a student in my lab. He thought that people trying to get away with their lies would be more successful if they admitted to a lesser