The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.

Sutton, Geoffrey W.

THE WISDOM OF PSYCHOPATHS: WHAT SAINTS, SPIES, AND SERIAL KILLERS CAN TEACH US ABOUT SUCCESS. Kevin Dutton, New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2012. Pp. 261, Hardback, $26. ISBN 978-0-37429135-8. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Evangel University / Springfield, MO).

Every time we learn of a mass killing in an otherwise peaceful community, news sources descend on the hapless to represent our collective puzzlement, "Why?" How could anyone do such a thing? Leaders cringe when the perpetrators are linked to their religious or ethnic group as if an association implied causation. Dutton's thesis takes us beyond the violent acts of some psychopaths to the behavior of people who head governments, churches, and multinational corporations. Dutton focuses on the traits of psychopaths and believes we can learn something useful from a more moderate version of the callous core dimensions.

Kevin Duton is a passionate story teller who piqued my interest by his clever lecture title, "What Psychopaths Teach Us about How to Succeed" and his ability to weave experiments, interviews, and case studies into a cohesive narrative in a Scientific American (2012) podcast adapted from his book. He gains and maintains readers' attention by offering examples of mainstays like John Wayne Gracy and Gary Gilmore as well as other lesser known members of this four percent club- including his own father. But Dutton is a psychological scientist at Oxford University who does not rely on case studies to support his thesis; he offers a smorgasbord of research in support of his thesis that the traits of psychopaths can be adaptive in society.

Readers get an abbreviated tour of personality theory beginning with Hippocrates' four temperaments and rapidly proceeding to Cattell's sweet 16, the Big Five, and the final four factor model from Robert Hare's revision of the well-known Hare Psychopathy Checklist. After making his case for the measurement of personality and psychopathic traits, Dutton explores how select traits, or dimensions of those traits, may be linked to high levels of success in society. One recent such attempt is the development of the Business Scan scales (also four dimensions) designed to examine traits in corporate leaders. Here are a few examples of variations between leadership and psychopathic traits: Charismatic v. Superficial charm, Self-confidence v. Grandiosity, Action oriented v. Thrill seeking.

Dutton identifies seven core psychopathic traits, which he labels the Seven Deadly wins: Ruthlessness, charm, focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness, and action. He finds high levels of these traits in such diverse professions as CEos, Lawyers, Salespersons and Clergypersons. Low levels appear in Nurses, Therapists, Teachers, and Accountants. He heads to Broadmoor prison (United Kingdom) to test the theory that those incarcerated do not adjust the seven core traits to succeed in particular situations. within the high security Paddock Centre, he interviews the inhabitants of the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder wards using moral dilemmas. In novelistic style, Dutton illustrates the losing side of psychopathy.

The journey ends with an unexpected foray into spirituality. Using venn diagrams, Dutton illustrates how spiritual and psychopathic states may overlap in facets like stoicism, mindfulness, fearlessness, and mental toughness, while not sharing traits associated with persons identified as psychopathic (e.g., impulsivity, lack of conscience) or spiritual (e.g., love, gentleness).

In The Wisdom of Psychopaths, Dutton demonstrates considerable charm as a writer who communicates well with scientists and educated readers. While focused on his thesis, he takes readers on action-adventures from New Mexico to Montreal and rural England. The excursions are both entertaining and educational. Readers new to the study of psychopathy will become quickly acquainted with select scientists who have focused on trait-based measurement as well as a few explorations of neuropsychological correlates, which I did not discuss because the nascent findings seems peripheral to the thesis. The hypothesis that a set of core traits associated with psychopathy may be adaptive when modulated is interesting and may have some benefit assuming researchers could establish a reasonable basis for credibility and reliability in data from participants lacking a reputation for honest self-disclosure. Clearly, more than self-report and interview strategies are needed.

The notion of psychopath as a psychological construct consisting of a set of extreme traits fits well with psychological approaches to understanding human nature. Harvard Psychologist Stout (2005) offered a different view in The Sociopath Next Door. And in a recent review for the New Republic (2012), she challenges Dutton not only on the light treatment of the subject but on missing a crucial difference between the sociopaths and the other 96%, "they do not have a conscience (Stout, 2005, p. 9)." Assuming that the constructs psychopath and sociopath are interchangeable, the challenge of the role of conscience might be of particular interest to JPC readers. Of course, this leads to another conundrum, how do we measure the construct, conscience?

Deriving wisdom from psychopaths may trigger a revulsion response but there are matters of interest to readers of JPC that deserve a look. I mentioned considerations of spiritual mental states and the features of conscience. Perhaps of greater importance is the assessment of psychopathic traits in Christian leaders, which is vital to the prevention of abuse within society as a whole and within churches and religious organizations in particular.

References

Dutton, K. (2010). What psychopaths teach us about how to succeed. Scientific American. Retrieved from www.scientificamerican.com

Stout, M. (2005). The sociopath next door. New York, NY: Broadway Books.

Stout, M. (2012, December). In praise of empty souls--Can we learn from psychopaths? Retrieved from www.newrepublic.com/book/review/wisdom-ofpsychopaths-kevin-dutton#