Psychopaths make up 4.5% of the adult population, according to a new meta-analysis

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Originally published at: Psychopaths make up 4.5% of the adult population, according to a new meta-analysis | Boing Boing

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And then there’s the death-cult Party of Demonstrable Bad Faith (motto: “The Cruelty is the Point!”)

I’m sure a study of self-identified Libertarians would show a high proportion of psychopaths as well.

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That doesn’t explain nearly enough of the 74 million people who voted for trump.

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radio or television characters

Characters or actors? Dexter or Michael C. Hall?

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I believe that decimal point should be one more place to the right.

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That percentage seems rather low, considering how badly we’ve seen people acting over the last decade.

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Def need Tory politicians at a high rating there.

But it does list ‘journalistists and civil servants’ which somewhat includes our mini-trump of a PM…

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The rest is explained by racism.

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Psychopath != stupid. We’re running a surplus of both and there is definite overlap. But stupid is far more common.

Which makes me wonder: If you could press a button and end either stupidity or psychopathy, which would be better?

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Thats actually an interesting question.

The worst possible type of psychopath is a competent one…

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Depends - does the button transform all members of the eliminated group into the other? That sounds bad either way, but I guess a few more stupid people would be better than 10x psychopaths

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I neither said nor implied that; I wrote exactly what I meant.

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Try asking for clarifications, rather than just assuming.

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Well, this is very disturbing, as previously what I’ve read indicated only a little over 1% of people were psychopaths, and that sociopaths outnumbered psychopaths 4 to 1.

Well, there are the sociopaths, too. If traditional ratios are correct, that would mean 16%+ of the population would be sociopaths. Though the potentially more disturbing thought is that people don’t have to be socio/psychopaths to be massive, cruel assholes. That “regular” people can be trained to act like psychopaths.

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Indeed; I think that number is even larger.

Still, I maintain my original point; someone like DeSantis in FL, for instance:

He seems like a bonafide psychopath, actively trying to get lots of people killed needlessly.

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Psychopathy is just an excuse. Think on how many psychopaths don’t kill people.

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I think I’d need to see their definition of psychopath before I’d accept their numbers.

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If the traditional accepted ratios of sociopaths to psychopaths is true, that means something slightly upwards of 20% of the population, total. We start getting into the “crazification factor” numbers…

I’ve always suspected that a fair number of politicians (of both parties) are sociopaths, but the psychopath ratio among Republican politicians has got to be insanely high at this point. Most people with a conscience left because of Trump. In terms of national-level Republican politicians, psychopaths must be making up a significant percentage (close to a majority, even) - all the most visible R politicians seem to be psychopaths, certainly. In fact, I’m guessing there’s only a few who aren’t at least sociopaths.

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I concur.

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(This has a meh intro, starts getting good at 1:45 in or so. First found this in a Fatboy Slim mix.)