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=== Both heroes and villains are psychopaths === | |||
In two studies of undergraduate students, involving a total of 243 volunteers, and one study of 457 adults recruited online/ Researchers asked people to fill out questionnaires regarding their heroic acts, even ones as minor as breaking up a public fight or helping a stranger push a car out of a ditch. The volunteers also took a personality questionnaire to determine their level of psychopathic personality traits — none of the volunteers were actually psychopaths, but because personality is a spectrum, some people were closer than others. | |||
The personality of a hero | |||
The results revealed that a couple of psychopathic traits are, indeed, linked to heroic behavior. In one undergraduate sample and in the sample of adults, a psychopathic trait called fearless dominance — essentially boldness — was linked with greater heroism and altruism toward strangers. In the other undergraduate sample, people who had higher levels of impulsive antisociality (marked by aggressiveness and antisocial behavior) were also more likely to report heroism. | |||
Fearless and antisocial people might be more likely than the average person to lie, of course. To control for that possibility, Smith, Lilienfeld and their colleagues inserted a few stealth questions into the surveys. Some were designed to out self-aggrandizers: People who answered "yes" to questions about whether they'd ever taken the controls of an airplane during a crash-landing scenario or saved people from multiple volcanic eruptions were assumed to be lying and tossed out of the study. | |||
Some of the other questions were subtler and designed to catch people who answered questions in ways that made themselves look good. The researchers statistically controlled for high scores on these questions. | |||
Finally, the researchers did one more test: a look at heroism, psychopathy and U.S. presidents. Using psychopath ratings from biographers and experts in presidential history, the researchers compared likely psychopathic personality traits of the 42 presidents up to and including George W. Bush with their war records. Although this study was small and limited, it did show that the more psychopathic the personality, the more likely the president was to have a record of heroic behavior in war before taking office.<ref>https://www.livescience.com/37483-heroism-psychopaths.html</ref> | |||
== References == | == References == | ||
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