Ashley L. Watts

Fearless dominance and the U.S. presidency: Implications of psychopathic personality traits for successful and unsuccessful political leadership.

Although psychopathic personality (psychopathy) is marked largely by maladaptive traits (e.g., poor impulse control, lack of guilt), some authors have conjectured that some features of this condition (e.g., fearlessness, interpersonal dominance) are adaptive in certain occupations, including leadership positions. We tested this hypothesis in the 42 U.S. presidents up to and including George W. Bush using (a) psychopathy trait estimates derived from personality data completed by historical experts on each president, (b) independent historical surveys of presidential leadership, and (c) largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance. Fearless Dominance, which reflects the boldness associated with psychopathy, was associated with better rated presidential performance, leadership, persuasiveness, crisis management, Congressional relations, and allied variables; it was also associated with several largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance, such as initiating new projects and being viewed as a world figure. Most of these associations survived statistical control for covariates, including intellectual brilliance, five factor model personality traits, and need for power. In contrast, Impulsive Antisociality and related traits of psychopathy were generally unassociated with rated presidential performance, although they were linked to some largely or entirely objective indicators of negative job performance, including Congressional impeachment resolutions, tolerating unethical behavior in subordinates, and negative character. These findings indicate that the boldness associated with psychopathy is an important but heretofore neglected predictor of presidential performance, and suggest that certain features of psychopathy are tied to successful interpersonal behavior.

The Double-Edged Sword of Grandiose Narcissism Implications for Successful and Unsuccessful Leadership Among U.S. Presidents

Recent research and theorizing suggest that narcissism may predict both positive and negative leadership behaviors. We tested this hypothesis with data on the 42 U.S. presidents up to and including George W. Bush, using (a) expert-derived narcissism estimates, (b) independent historical surveys of presidential performance, and (c) largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance. Grandiose, but not vulnerable, narcissism was associated with superior overall greatness in an aggregate poll; it was also positively associated with public persuasiveness, crisis management, agenda setting, and allied behaviors, and with several objective indicators of performance, such as winning the popular vote and initiating legislation. Nevertheless, grandiose narcissism was also associated with several negative outcomes, including congressional impeachment resolutions and unethical behaviors. We found that presidents exhibit elevated levels of grandiose narcissism compared with the general population, and that presidents’ grandiose narcissism has been rising over time. Our findings suggest that grandiose narcissism may be a double-edged sword in the leadership domain.

Correlates of Psychopathic Personality Traits in Everyday Life:Results from a Large Community Survey

Although the traits of psychopathic personality (psychopathy) have received extensive attention from researchers in forensic psychology, psychopathology, and personality psychology, the relations of these traits to aspects of everyday functioning are poorly understood. Using a large internet survey of members of the general population (N = 3388), we examined the association between psychopathic traits, as measured by a brief but well-validated self-report measure, and occupational choice, political orientation, religious affiliation, and geographical residence. Psychopathic traits, especially those linked to fearless dominance, were positively and moderately associated with holding leadership and management positions, as well as high-risk occupations. In addition, psychopathic traits were positively associated with political conservatism, lack of belief in God, and living in Europe as opposed to the United States, although the magnitudes of these statistical effects were generally small in magnitude. Our findings offer preliminary evidence that psychopathic personality traits display meaningful response penetration into daily functioning, and raise provocative questions for future research.

Successful Psychopathy A Scientific Status Report

Long the stuff of clinical lore, successful psychopathy has recently become the focus of research. Although numerous authors have conjectured that psychopathic traits are sometimes associated with occupational or interpersonal success, rigorous evidence for this assertion has thus far been minimal. We provide a status report on successful-psychopathy research, address controversies surrounding successful psychopathy, examine evidence for competing models of this construct, and offer desiderata for future research.

Does response distortion statistically affect the relations between self-report psychopathy measures and external criteria?

Given that psychopathy is associated with narcissism, lack of insight, and pathological lying, the assumption that the validity of self-report psychopathy measures is compromised by response distortion has been widespread. We examined the statistical effects (moderation, suppression) of response distortion on the validity of self-report psychopathy measures in the statistical prediction of theoretically relevant external criteria (i.e., interview measures, laboratory tasks) in a large sample of offenders (N = 1,661). We conducted 378 moderation and 378 suppression analyses to examine the response distortion hypothesis. The substantial majority of analyses (97% moderation, 83% suppression) offered no support for this hypothesis. Nevertheless, suppression analyses revealed consistent evidence that controlling for response distortion slightly increased the relations between the fearless dominance and coldheartedness features of psychopathy and maladaptive outcomes. Our findings are largely inconsistent with the popular notion that the validity of self-report psychopathy measures is markedly diminished by response distortion. Further research is necessary to determine whether these findings generalize to other populations or contexts.

Psychopathy: relations with three conceptions of intelligence

Psychopathy is often associated with heightened intelligence in the eyes of clinicians and laypersons despite mixed research support for this possibility. We adopted a fine-grained approach to studying the relations among psychopathy and multiple indices of intelligence, including both cognitively based intelligence (CBI) and emotional intelligence (EI), in a large sample of undergraduates (N = 1,257, 70% female, 82% Caucasian). We found no clear support for marked associations between psychopathy and CB I measures, with the magnitudes of these relations being small. With the exception of the dimensions of Fearless Dominance (FD) and Coldheartedness (C), psychopathy dimensions were negatively associated with (EI). In contrast, we found some support for the hypothesis that intelligence served as a protective factor against antisocial behavior among individuals with high levels of psychopathy. On balance, our findings show weak relations between psychopathy and intelligence, suggesting that the link between them may be less robust than theoretical models portray, at least among undergraduates. (PsycINFO Database Record

Do Psychopathic Individuals Possess a Misaligned Moral Compass? A Meta-Analytic Examination of Psychopathy's Relations With Moral Judgment.

Psychopathic individuals are often characterized as lacking a moral sense. Although this hypothesis has received ample experimental attention over the past decade, findings have been inconsistent. To elucidate the relationship between psychopathy and abnormal moral judgment, we conducted a meta-analysis of the research on psychopathy and morality-related variables (k = 23, N = 4376). A random effects model indicated a small but statistically significant relation between psychopathy and moral decision-making (rw = .16) and moral reasoning (rw = .10) tasks. These results reveal at best modest support for the common perception that psychopathic individuals fail to understand moral principles. A secondary meta-analysis (k = 9, N = 4294) of the growing body of literature on the relationship between psychopathy and moral reasoning on moral foundations measures provides preliminary evidence that psychopathic individuals may possess a differential set of “moral taste buds” than less psychopathic individuals. We discuss the implications of the results from both meta-analyses for models of the etiology of psychopathy and the criminal responsibility of psychopathic individuals.

What Features of Psychopathy Might be Central? A Network Analysis of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) in Three Large Samples

Despite a wealth of research, the core features of psychopathy remain hotly debated. Using network analysis, an innovative and increasingly popular statistical tool, the authors mapped the network structure of psychopathy, as operationalized by the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003) in two large U.S. offender samples (nNIMH = 1559; nWisconsin = 3954), and 1 large Dutch forensic psychiatric sample (nTBS = 1937). Centrality indices were highly stable within each sample, and indicated that callousness/lack of empathy was the most central PCL-R item in the 2 U.S. samples, which aligns with classic clinical descriptions and prototypicality studies of psychopathy. The similarities across the U.S. samples offer some support regarding generalizability, but there were also striking differences between the U.S. samples and the Dutch sample, wherein the latter callousnesss/lack of empathy was also fairly central but irresponsibility and parasitic lifestyle were even more central. The findings raise the important possibility that network-structures do not only reflect the structure of the constructs under study, but also the sample from which the data derive. The results further raise the possibility of cross-cultural differences in the phenotypic structure of psychopathy, PCL-R measurement variance, or both. Network analyses may help elucidate the core characteristics of psychopathological constructs, including psychopathy, as well as provide a new tool for assessing measurement invariance across cultures.

THE DSM REVISION AS A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS: A COMMENTARY ON BLASHFIELD AND REYNOLDS

We trust that we do not need to persuade readers of this journal that the DSM revision process is unavoidably political (Kirk & Kutchins, 1992; Widiger & Clark, 2000). As Blashfield and Reynolds (2012) observe in their useful and important article in this issue, this is not entirely a bad thing. The “invisible colleges” to which Blashfield and Reynolds refer can assist in achieving group consensus and facilitating rapid research progress. Nevertheless, these shadow committees may sometimes impede long-term scientific knowledge by being closed to alternative viewpoints. One might be tempted to argue that because the DSM revision process involves human beings, who are by their very nature fallible, this enterprise cannot be improved. We respectfully disagree. Although the DSM is inevitably a political document, there may be ways of minimizing the extent to which political considerations override scientific evidence in the process of diagnostic revision. Our thesis is straightforward and perhaps self-evident, but insufficiently emphasized: The DSM revision is not merely a political process, but a social psychological one as well. The diagnostic revision process necessitates an expert grasp of descriptive psychopathology, research methodology, and clinical utility, to be certain, but it would also benefit from a thoughtful consideration of evidence-based perspectives derived from research on group decision making.

The nature and correlates of the dark triad: The answers depend on the questions.

The past several decades have witnessed a proliferation of research on the dark triad (DT), a set of traits comprising Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The bulk of DT research has been marked by several core assumptions, most notably that each DT construct is a monolithic entity that is clearly separable from its counterpart DT constructs. To examine the tenability of these assumptions, we pooled data from 2 samples of North American community members (ns = 312 and 351) to explore (a) the external validity and profile similarities of DT indicators and (b) the factor structure of the DT. Using general personality dimensions as external criteria, we demonstrated that each DT measure is multidimensional and that subdimensions within DT measures often display sharply different and at times even opposing relations with personality domains; these opposing relations were largely obscured at the total score level adopted in most of the DT literature. In both samples, confirmatory factor analyses and exploratory structural equation models provided no clear support for the traditional tripartite DT structure delineated in the literature. Instead, various aspects of the DT constructs fractionated across a number of factors that represented more basic personality elements (e.g., emotional stability, grandiosity). Taken together, our findings raise serious questions regarding the standard model of DT research and suggest that the questions posed regarding the correlates of DT constructs hinge crucially on the specific DT measure and subdimension examined.