The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success

by Kevin Dutton

“But human beings are pathologically risk averse. A lot of the mechanisms that drive our emotions aren’t really that well adapted to modern life.”

anxious individuals are better than the rest of us at detecting the presence of threat: slip an angry face in among a display of happy or neutral faces on a computer screen and anxious people are far faster at picking it out than those who are non-anxious—not a bad ability to fall back on should you happen to find yourself alone at night and wandering around an unfamiliar neighborhood.

Aristotle observed more than 2,400 years ago, “There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.”

according to Szabolcs Kéri, a researcher at Semmelweis University in Budapest, who appears to have uncovered a genetic polymorphism associated with both schizophrenia and creativity. Kéri has found that people with two copies of a particular single-letter DNA variation in a gene called neuregulin 1, a variation that has been previously linked to psychosis—as well as poor memory and sensitivity to criticism—tend to score significantly higher on measures of creativity compared with individuals who have one or no copy of the variation. Those with one copy also tend to be more creative, on average, than those without.

Even depression has its advantages. Recent research suggests that despondency helps us think better—and contributes to increased attentiveness and enhanced problem-solving ability.

If there’s one thing that psychopaths have in common, it’s the consummate ability to pass themselves off as normal everyday folk, while behind the facade—the brutal, brilliant disguise—beats the refrigerated heart of a ruthless, glacial predator.

there’s evidence to suggest that psychopathy, in small doses at least, is personality with a tan—and that it can have surprising benefits.

During his trial in 1980, John Wayne Gacy declared with a sigh that all he was really guilty of was “running a cemetery without a license.”

This is one of the reasons why psychopaths remain so cool, calm, and collected under conditions of extreme danger, and why they are so reward-driven and take risks. Their brains, quite literally, are less ‘switched on’ than the rest of ours.”

Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic, ruthless, and focused.

This distinction between hot and cold empathy, the kind of empathy that we “feel” when observing others, and the steely emotional calculus that allows us to gauge, coolly and dispassionately, what another person might be thinking,

a significant correlation between a utilitarian approach to the trolley problem (push the fat guy off the bridge) and a predominantly psychopathic personality style.

“The great thing about insensitivity,” explains Moulton, “is that it lets you sleep when others can’t.”

In the light of Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon’s 2005 survey, however—which, if you will recall, demonstrated that a number of psychopathic traits were more prevalent among business leaders than among diagnosed criminal psychopaths—Rachman’s comments beg the question of what, precisely, we mean when we use the word “psychopath.”

Hippocrates discerned four distinct temperaments in the canon of human emotions: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic

Psychologists don’t really do consensus if they can help it. But in this case it’s hard to avoid. Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism—think OCEAN—comprise the genome of human personality. And we’re all the sum of our parts. We are not numbers, as Patrick McGoohan famously asserted in The Prisoner. Rather, we are a constellation of numbers. Each of us, in the infinite algorithmic firmament of personality space, has our own unique coordinates depending on precisely where we fall along each of these five dimensions.

a striking connection between temperament and job type. Between how we’re wired and where we’re hired.

A number of U.S. presidents exhibited distinct psychopathic traits, with John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton leading the charge.*

The psychopath’s powers of persuasion are incomparable; their psychological safecracking abilities, legendary.

Psychopathy, in other words, is a composite disorder consisting of multiple interrelated components that range discretely and independently along a number of different spectra: interpersonal, emotional, lifestyle, and antisocial—a witches’ brew of personality leftovers.

DSM’s listing of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), an area of particular strategic importance in the epidemiological conflicts. The official line, as set out by the American Psychiatric Association, is that ASPD and psychopathy are, in fact, synonymous.

ASPD is defined as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”

Not all psychopaths are behind bars. The majority, it emerges, are out there in the workplace. And some of them, in fact, are doing rather well.

Over the years, Lilienfeld realized, the diagnostic spotlight had widened. Initially focused on the personality traits that underpinned the disorder, the emphasis now seemed to be as much, if not more, on antisocial acts.

These eight independent satellite states of the psychopathic personality—Machiavellian Egocentricity (ME); Impulsive Nonconformity (IN); Blame Externalization (BE); Carefree Nonplanfulness (CN); Fearlessness (F); Social Potency (SOP); Stress Immunity (STI); and Coldheartedness (C)—divide and re-form along three superordinate axes … 1. Self-Centered Impulsivity (ME + IN + BE + CN) 2. Fearless Dominance (SOP + F + STI) 3. Coldheartedness (C) … to reveal, in the statistical residue, once the mathematical dust clouds have settled, the structural DNA of pure, unadulterated psychopathy.

“We reasoned that psychopathy was on a spectrum.

the traditional take on the evolution of psychopathy focuses, as we saw in the previous chapter, predominantly on the predatory and aggressive aspects of the disorder.

The saints call the shots for only such time as the economy is in recession, and the shysters preside for only as long as the saints can keep them afloat. It’s a bleak carousel of recurring boom and bust.

altruism, though undoubtedly an ingredient of basic group cohesion, is perfectly capable of arising not out of some higher-order differential such as the good of the species or even the good of the tribe, but out of a survival differential existing purely between individuals.

Macroscopic harmony and microscopic individualism were, it emerged, two sides of the same evolutionary coin.

The mystics had missed the point. Giving wasn’t better than receiving. The truth, according to Robert Axelrod’s radical new gospel of social informatics, was that giving was receivi...

To demonstrate so convincingly that “goodness” was somehow inherent to the natural order, that it was an emergent property, as it were, of social interaction, succeeded only in driving an even bigger wedge between those on the side of God and those who put God to one side. What if our “better” nature wasn’t better, after all? But was, instead … well, just nature?

“Survival of the fittest” now appeared not, as had been previously thought, to reward competition indiscriminately. But rather, to reward it discerningly. Under certain sets of circumstances, yes, aggression might open doors (one thinks of Jim and Buzz). But under others, in contrast, it might just as easily close them—as we saw with the saints and the shysters.

So the psychopaths, it transpires, have got it only half right. There’s no denying the harshness of existence, the brutal, sawn-off truth that it can, at times, be survival of the fittest out there. But this is not to say that it has to be that way. The meek, it turns out, really do inherit the earth. It’s just that along the way there are always going to be casualties. “Do unto others” has always been sound advice. But now, some two thousand years later, thanks to Robert Axelrod and Anatol Rapoport, we’ve finally got the math to prove it.

that there are other areas of life, other fields of endeavor, in which it pays to be a psychopath. A psychopathic strategy doesn’t just code for greater success in the bedroom. It also comes in handy in the boardroom.

“The most successful stockbrokers might plausibly be termed ‘functional psychopaths’—individuals who on the one hand are either more adept at controlling their emotions or who, on the other, do not experience them to the same degree of intensity as others.”

Bob Hare and his colleagues in 2010. Hare handed out the PCL-R to more than two hundred top U.S. business executives, and compared the prevalence of psychopathic traits in the corporate world to that found in the general population at large. Not only did the business execs come out ahead, but psychopathy was positively associated with in-house ratings of charisma and presentation style: creativity, good strategic thinking, and excellent communication skills.

“The psychopath has no difficulty dealing with the consequences of rapid change. In fact, he or she thrives on it,” he explains. “Organizational chaos provides both the necessary stimulation for psychopathic thrill seeking and sufficient cover for psychopathic manipulation and abusive behavior.”

Ironically, the rule-bending, risk-taking, thrill-seeking individuals who were responsible for tipping the world economy over the edge are precisely the same personalities who will come to the fore in the wreckage.

Research shows that one of the best ways of getting people to tell you about themselves is to tell them something about yourself. Self-disclosure meets reciprocity. Research also shows that if you want to stop someone from remembering something, the key is to use distraction. And, above all, to use it fast.

psychopathy does indeed predict criminal success. That said, there’s a limit. A very high dose of psychopathy (all the dials turned up to max) is as bad as a very low one. Instead, it’s moderate levels that code for greater “accomplishment.”

they might also be better at controlling their emotions than others when the stakes are high and backs are against the wall, which would give them an edge not just outside the courtroom, when planning and effecting their nefarious schemes and activities. But inside it as well.

Psychopaths, in other words, not only have a natural talent for duplicity, but also feel the “moral pinch” considerably less than the rest of us.

If the psychopath can “make” out of a situation, if there’s any kind of reward on offer, they go for it, irrespective of risk or possible negative consequences. Not only do they keep their composure in the presence of threat or adversity, they become, in the shadow of such presentiment, laser-like in their ability to “do whatever it takes.”

“There has been a long tradition of research on psychopathy that has focused on the lack of sensitivity to punishment and a lack of fear,” comments David Zald, associate professor of psychology and psychiatry, and coauthor of the study. “But those traits are not particularly good predictors of violence, or criminal behavior … These individuals appear to have such a strong draw to reward—to the carrot—that it overwhelms the sense of risk or concern about the stick … It’s not just that they don’t appreciate the potential threat, but that the anticipation or motivation for reward overwhelms those concerns.”

The psychopath seeks reward at any cost, flouting consequence and elbowing risk aside. Which, of course, might go some way toward explaining why Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon found a greater preponderance of psychopathic traits among a sample of CEOs than they did among the inmates of a secure forensic unit.

psychopaths not only have the capacity to recognize emotions—they are, in fact, actually better at it than we are.

psychopaths, rather than having an impairment in recognizing the emotions of others, indeed have a talent for it. And that the problem lies not in emotional recognition per se, but in the dissociation between its sensory and affective components: in the disconnect between knowing what an emotion is and feeling what it’s like.

Homer Simpson reminded us earlier, not caring and not understanding are two different things entirely.

psychopaths’ enhanced ability to recognize emotion in others might go some way toward explaining their superior persuasion and manipulation skills—as, needless to say, does their enhanced ability to fake emotion, a phenomenon we touched upon earlier in the chapter.