Whether you shrug off bruises with ease or find that a stubbed toe knocks you out for a week, each of us has our own unique reaction to pain. But scientists now say that being able to grin and bear it could be a worrying sign of a dark personality. According to scientists from Radboud University, people who can handle greater levels of pain are more likely to be psychopaths. The study found that people with elevated levels of psychopathy are not only more resistant to pain but less able to learn from painful experiences. Researchers believe that this could be an important part of why people with these traits fail to learn from negative consequences.

Whether it's a horrible manager at work or a particularly unlikeable ex-partner, everyone knows at least one person they'd describe as an a**hole. Now, scientists from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences have revealed the key characteristics of a**holes – and say middle-aged men are most likely to have them. The core traits include manipulation, aggression, and entitlement, as well as irresponsibility and anger. The'Big Five' personality traits are: Openness - People who are generally open have a higher degree of intellectual curiosity and creativity. They are also more unpredictable and likely to be involved in risky behaviour such as drug taking.

Scientists have identified the five key personality traits that are common among famous psychopaths, including serial killer Ted Bundy, disgraced fraudster Bernie Madoff and robber Clyde Barrow. The US academics looked for shared traits in six men - Ted Bundy, Bernie Madoff, Clyde Barrow, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Chuck Yeager - who have previously been identified as psychopathic. They found that Bundy, Madoff and Barrow are all psychopaths guilty of callousness, manipulativeness, dishonesty, arrogance and cruelty. However, Bond, Holmes and Yeager likely are not psychopaths, and may have been misidentifed in the past due to their fearlessness and boldness, the experts say. Clyde Barrow (1910-1934): Along with Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow went on almost two-year crime spree that spanned several US states.

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterised by antisocial behaviour, remorselessness, deception, and interpersonal manipulation. Automated techniques that analyse non-verbal behaviours may be useful to evaluate the presence of these nefarious tendencies, the experts believe. The results are interesting because excessive non-verbal cues like head movements, blinks and hand-gestures have been linked to deception. The study, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, represents an'important first step' in demonstrating the feasibility of using computer vision in conjunction with psychology, the authors claim. 'I've been interviewing individuals high on psychopathic traits for more than 20 years,' study author Kent A. Kiehl, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, told PsyPost.

Older people can pick up new skills faster if doing so benefits other people, rather than themselves -- unlike young adults, who learn faster when helping themselves. This is the conclusion of a study by researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford who conducted tests involving so-called reinforcement learning. This is the understanding we develop from assessing the positive outcomes from our previous choices -- enabling us to adapt our decisions to our environment. The finding that older people are more motivated to learn when it helps others could help experts find new ways to combat age-related cognitive decline, the team said. The team also found that older people appeared more likely to have'grown out' of psychopathic traits like a lack of empathy, perhaps explaining the results.

You may think of psychopathy as an antisocial behaviour, but a new study suggests that people with these traits may actually be good for society. Researchers have found that while most people struggle to make moral decisions, psychopaths are more cut-throat about making pragmatic choices for the greater good. The findings show that, in certain circumstances, psychopathic traits could be considered beneficial. The researchers compared a questionnaire with actions in immersive moral dilemmas created using a robotic device that measures force, resistance, and speed, whilst simulating the action of harming a human. In several dilemmas, participants had to decide whether to sacrifice a person by performing a harmful action against them, in order to save a larger group of people.