I'm quoting Scott L. below but this is not necessarily directed towards him, indeed, I'd like to tap TiPS collective knowledge. First, the quote:
|Incidentally, I do not agree with Martha Stout (quoted in the article) that |it's self-evident that politicians are more psychopathic than non-politicians, |nor am I aware of much good (or even lousy) evidence bearing on this issue. To |my knowledge, our study is the first to show that some politicians (the U.S. |presidents) may (given the inherent limitations of historical ratings by |biographers) have higher levels of some psychopathic traits than people in the |general population, but even here that was true only for the fearless dominance |traits of psychopathy, not to the antisocial/impulsive traits of the disorder. |Re: Stout's conjecture, I worry about the misuses of an availabilty heuristic |here. No doubt, there are plenty of psychopathic politicians out there, but |those are the ones we often hear most about. Although some features of |psychopathy (e.g., shading the truth, superficial charm, self-promotion) may |well predispose to political success in some cases, other features (e.g., poor |impulse control, difficulties in delaying gratification, low frustration |tolerance, short fuse) might make long-term political success more difficult. I tend to agree with Scott that Martha might be overreaching about the number of politicians being psychopaths -- though it does have the smell of truthiness about it ;-) -- but then I decided to do a couple of online searches. I sometimes search the popular magazines and newspapers and came across the following which I quote in part: |Politicians share many of the traits common to serial killers |Business Day (Johannesburg, South Africa) - Friday, September 25, 2009 |Author: Michel Pireu |StreetDogs | |Politicians share many of the traits common to serial killers | |I PREFER rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take |a rest. — Alexandre Dumas. | |In June the LA Times reported on a study by Jim Kouri, vice-president |of the American National Association of Chiefs of Police, that showed |politicians share many of the personality traits common to serial killers . | |“Our elected officials often show many of the exact same character |traits as criminal nut-jobs, who run from police but not for office,” Kouri |was quoted as saying. According to his study of material obtained from |the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavioural Analysis Unit, “Psychopathy |is a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, |manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, |in order to satisfy their own selfish needs. | |“Interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, a grandiose |sense of self-worth, pathological lying, and the manipulation of others. | |“The affective traits include a lack of remorse and/or guilt, shallow affect, |a lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility. The lifestyle |behaviours include stimulation-seeking behaviour, impulsivity, irresponsibility, |parasitic orientation, and a lack of realistic life goals. | |“Consequently, violent offenders who are psychopathic are able to assault, |rape, and murder without concern for legal, moral, or social consequences. |Allowing them to do pretty much what they want, whenever they want. | |“While not resorting to violence, many political leaders display similar |degrees of anger, feigned outrage and other behaviours,” Says Kouri. |“They also lack a ‘shame’ mechanism”. Now I thought "that's pretty striking stuff and I wonder how Scott might have missed it?" Since Jim Kouri is identified as a source I thought I would try to locate the LA Times article that is cited. I used the ProQuest platform to search its database for Kouri and psychopaths but no hits. I tried several different ways to find Kouri and stuff but was unsuccessful. Perhaps someone else can look? I may have been doing something wrong. I did some additional searching in other databases on Proquest and came across a long article on psychopaths; here's the ref: Why Don't the Corrupt Players On Wall Street and In D.C. Show Remorse for Their Destructive Actions...And Why Don't We Stop Them? Phil's Stock World [Phil's Stock World - BLOG]Chatham: Newstex. (Jul 14, 2012) Kouri is also mentioned as a source among others. I'm now thinking that maybe Kouri isn't so much a part of "our" establishment but of some other. So, I do a search on [ "Jim Kouri" psychopaths ] and come up with a lot of hits (over 18,000) and the first one is: |Serial killers and politicians share traits - National Law Enforcement ... |www.examiner.com/article/serial-killers-and-politicians-share-traits |Jun 12, 2009 – Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people |who use a mixture ... Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the |National ... I'm not familiar with the examiner.com website but they and many other websites seem fond of Kouri and his theory of the psychopathic politician. I guess I've been missing out on this popular trend. I haven't read the book by Babiak and Hare "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work" but politicians come up as an example three times in the book (which is available in preview mode on books.google.com). Though this is related conceptually, there is no mention of Kouri and 3 mentions of politicians as psychopaths is hardly a call to action. So, I wonder if there is a real published study by Jim Kouri somewhere (which I have been unable to find -- maybe I'm doing something wrong). There also seems to be a subculture that believes that most politicians are psychopaths (again, an assertion that may have far more truthiness than truth about it). So, what else are we missing? Send me something. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=20462 or send a blank email to leave-20462-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
