How Did Newspaper Ads Recruit People for a Psychopath Study?

Kelly McGonigal says an undergraduate psychopathy study recruited people with newspaper ads, not by asking who was a psychopath. About 30 years ago she was the research assistant, working with one graduate student, and the ads ran on the back page of magazines and of newspapers that no longer exist. The lines asked whether you are smarter than everyone you know, and whether people have a hard time keeping up with you. The ad did not ask whether you are a psychopath. She does not remember the exact questions.

People who showed up still had to be tested. One task had them trace a picture, then redo it after a distraction, to see what stayed in memory. Another measured electrodermal activity while they saw emotional words. Someone who met the study's bar could see a word like murder and show no physiological reaction. A gambling task checked whether they learned from mistakes, and they did not learn as well.