Scoring Rigged in Psychopathic Olympics - Trump CHEATED of the Silver

Though psychopaths and narcissists share central traits in common — egocentricity, lack of empathy, being interpersonally exploitive — I’m quite used to encountering narcissism, and much more frequently than the estimates provided by the American Psychiatric Association.

But psychopaths are a different, more rarely encountered breed. There’s something distinctively missing in their foundational makeup. The kind of socialized human restraints and accountability you’d expect as a given in another human being, just aren’t there, and it can be palpable, shocking.

And so, whenever a psychopath has entered my life, however briefly, it’s been unsettling. It scares me, and can keep me up at night. Similarly, the therapy clients I mentioned in my book’s prologue — who were having anxiety-filled reactions in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election — weren’t freaking over his narcissism.

Though under-reported at the time, the psychopathy about to emerge didn’t escape the notice of Oxford University psychologist Kevin Dutton — though it wasn’t able to be adequately identified by many others, from the manual left to them by the American Psychiatric Association. For its manual, the DSM-5, had totally eliminated sociopaths, and couldn’t bring itself to even utter the term psychopaths — having replaced them both with its own self-created construct: “Antisocial Personality Disorder.”

But as the election of 2016 was drawing toward the homestretch, Dutton wanted to explore the extent to which those running for president resembled psychopaths. As reported in “Of Psychopaths and Presidential Candidates,” a “Mind” guest blog by Claudia Wallis, published in Scientific American, Dutton compared Trump and Clinton, as well as each party’s runner up (Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders) to 16 historical leaders in terms of their scores on the short form of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, which measures individually and in composite, eight central psychopathic traits.

Image based on chart by Kevin Dutton
* See Key of Abbreviations at bottom

For the historical leaders — some going back over 2000 years — the form was completed by biographers or other scholars, and for contemporary candidates by a seasoned political reporter. In terms of the contemporary candidates, Trump outpaced them all in the composite scoring of psychopathic traits, just as he wound up outpacing them in the election.

And for one of the traits, “Machiavellian Egocentricity,” (where narcissism can place a bit of a thumb on the scale) he was almost beyond compare, and bested only by Adolf Hitler, while outscoring near rivals Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and every other world leader over the past 2000 years. (Since I’d expect a correlation between psychopaths and autocrats, I’d be curious to see how Trump fared, if competing with Vladimir Putin and other autocratic leaders today).

Though in fairness to Trump’s psychopathic attributes, in his total score when all eight traits were combined — and as close as psychopaths come tohaving a decathlon, its Olympic equivalent — Trump outdid even Hitler, though the gold medal here was carried away by Saddam Hussein. But it’s possible the scoring was skewed … or as Trump might say, “RIGGED.” For Trump deserved a higher score than a 4th place finish.

He actually tied for the gold with Idi Amin in CN (Carefree Nonplanfulness: difficulty in planning ahead and considering the consequences of one’s actions). This has been evident in most of his foreign policy decisions, and quite evident in his handling of the COVID pandemic. And for SI (Stress Immunity: a lack of typical marked reactions to traumatic or otherwise stress-inducing events) only two historical world leaders scored higher.

Yet what truly skewed the composite results was the score given to Trump for Blame Externalization (BE: inability to take responsibility for one’s actions, instead blaming others or rationalizing one’s behavior). His score here seems artificially low — a mere 17 points, the same awarded to George Washington, a horrible conclusion.

Remember — Saddam had led his nation for decades, while Trump hadn’t been given equal time to show what he was made of. If scoring had been done later, and not before his presidency even began, the ways he blamed all but himself for his failures, would have placed him at the upper reaches of Blame Externalization, thus bringing home the silver for psychopathy as a whole, rather than a lackluster 4th place finish. (Just in the early months of the COVID pandemic, he lied about the lethality of the pandemic, and blamed his failure to respond to it on the Obama administration, the Chinese, the WHO, CDC, the Press, and states that have complained too much).

Trump never admits fault; to him that conveys weakness. Blame Externalization is actually a central feature, if not the central feature of his narrative. He’s really off the charts here, and at least the equal of Emperor Nero, rather than equated with the lowly George Washington. UNFAIR!

In the composite scores of the women — Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton — all finished in the bottom half of the 20 contestants. My takeaway is, that though I’m a big fan of equal opportunity, women simply can’t compete with men when it comes to psychopathy. (Though in truth, none of the women came in last).

For bringing up the rear — as if competing in events for which neither had adequately trained — there was a tie between two men: Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi.

Key to Abbreviations:

Social Influence (SI)
Fearlessness (F)
Stress Immunity (STI)
Machiavellian Egocentricity (ME)
Rebellious Nonconformity (RN)
Blame Externalization (BE)
Carefree Nonplanfulness (CN)
Coldheartedness (C )