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@article{205636,
        author = {Dhwanika Gosain},
        title = {The Map and the Mask: Performance, Psychopathy, and Perception in Primal Fear},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {1},
        pages = {7908-7912},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=205636},
        abstract = {Richard Gregory’s 1996 film Primal Fear opens with a body and closes with a revelation. Between those two moments, it performs something more interesting than a courtroom thriller: it stages a sustained experiment in how institutions — legal, psychiatric, journalistic — construct truth from the raw material of human behaviour. This paper examines three psychological mechanisms that drive the film’s narrative architecture. First, the simulation of dissociative identity disorder and what it reveals about the fragility of clinical diagnosis. Second, the Machiavellian manipulation Aaron Stampler deploys — not chaos, not impulse, but cold strategic patience — and its relationship to the Dark Triad literature. Third, the confirmation bias that seizes Martin Vail and the entire defence apparatus, and why that bias is not a failure of intelligence but a structural feature of motivated reasoning. The argument, taken together, is this: Aaron does not exploit weakness. He exploits the systems that humans use to feel certain.},
        keywords = {Confirmation Bias, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Forensic Psychology, Machiavellianism, Motivated Reasoning, Simulation},
        month = {June},
        }