Election 2016 has so far provided rich pickings for armchair psychologists—and some professionals too. An academic at prestigious Oxford University has weighed in with his expert opinion and declared both Trump and Clinton are “full blown psychopaths.”
Dr Kevin Dutton has been exploring the psychopathic traits of the candidates and comparing them to other historical figures – such as Adolf Hitler, Saddamm Hussein, and Jesus – using a standard psychometric tool, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised (PPI-R), reports the Daily Mail.
While learning about these traits, Dutton also looked at which ones can be beneficial and which will lead to destruction.
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He explains that being a psychopath is not an all-or-nothing affair, but is on a spectrum along which each of us has our place.
There also seems to be a range of positions that attract individuals on the high end of the psychopathic scale such as business, surgery, the law military and of course, politics.
Previous to this recent study, Dutton contacted the official biographers of many historical leads and asked them to fill out an abbreviated version of the PPI-R in order to create a table showing which traits these figures had.
The table shows each subject’s scores for psychopathy’s eight component traits.
The first three being, social influence (SI), fearlessness (F) and stress immunity (STI), which are collectively known as Fearless Dominance traits – these leaders tend to be more successful.
However, the next four traits that are known as Self-Centered Impulsivity can be destructive.
This group includes Machiavellian Egocentricity (ME), Rebellious Nonconformity (RN), Blame Externalization (BE) and Carefree Nonplanfulness (CN).
And the final trait is Coldheartedness (C), which is helpful for making tough decisions such as sending troops off to war.
The ‘league table’ implies that a majority of these well-known individuals are high scorers, such as Winston Churchill.
HOW DO TRUMP AND CLINTON RANK?
Although Trump and Clinton both scored high on the test, Trump is deemed to be the higher scorer.
The Republican nominee was found to be on par with Hitler, the German leader of the Nazi Party who was blamed for the genocide of millions of Jews, and Idi Amin, president of Uganda who racially persecuted and executed his people without hesitation.
Trump, however, was found to outscore Clinton altogether, but the most was in Fearless Dominance, which is associated with successful presidencies.
However, The Donald also ranked high in ‘self-centered impulsivity’, the set of traits considered negative.
Clinton falls into the category Self-Centered Impulsivity and scored the highest for Machiavellian Egocentricity, which means she has a lack of empathy and sense of detachment from others for the sake of achieving her own goals.
Hillary Clinton is not prone to blatant braggadocio or outrageous outbursts, but critics have persistently questioned her utter disregard for State Department rules on email security. Her biggest critics paint her as a “pathological liar.”
The Democratic nominee sits between Napoleon Bonaparte, who is known for his ruthlessness and policies which were directly responsible for millions of deaths, and Emperor Nero, who murdered his mother and wife and confiscated senators’ property and severely taxed the people to build his own golden home.
