Scientists have identified the top five personality traits common to famous psychopaths, including serial killer Ted Bundy, disgraced fraudster Bernie Madoff and thief Clyde Barrow.
American scholars have looked for common traits in six men – Ted Bundy, Bernie Madoff, Clyde Barrow, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Chuck Yeager – who have previously been identified as psychopaths.
They discovered that Bundy, Madoff and Barrow were all psychopaths guilty of callousness, manipulation, dishonesty, arrogance and cruelty.
However, Bond, Holmes and Yeager are likely not psychopaths and may have been misidentified in the past due to their fearlessness and daring, experts say.
Common psychopathic traits in serial killer Ted Bundy, thief Clyde Barrow, and fraudster Bernie Madoff were callousness, manipulation, dishonesty, and cruelty.
The research was conducted by Cristina Crego at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia and Thomas Widiger at the University of Kentucky.
“There remains considerable debate about the core characteristics of psychopathy,” they state in their paper published in Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment.
“One approach to addressing this question is to identify the traits that are present in people considered to be real or even prototypical examples of psychopathy.”
According to the team, Ted Bundy, Clyde Barrow, Bernie Madoff, pilot Chuck Yeager, and two fictional men – James Bond and Sherlock Holmes – have all previously been portrayed as psychopaths.
Ted Bundy was a serial killer, rapist and necrophiliac who assaulted and murdered many young women in the 1970s, while Madoff is one of the best-known “snakes in suits”, implementing what many consider to be the biggest Ponzi scheme and financial fraud in the United States. the story.
As for Barrow, he committed more than 100 robberies, many of which were carried out recklessly and impulsively, with his partner Bonnie Parker.
“He ruthlessly murdered police officers, prison guards and a fellow inmate, as well as law-abiding citizens,” the authors say. “He was said to be charming and engaging, and at the time he was considered a folk hero in some newspapers and in several ‘Hollywood’ films.”
For the study, the team prepared case histories for each of the six men, covering three to five pages.
The researchers then recruited volunteers to read these case histories and score each of the men on a full range of traits that have been listed in various psychopathy scales used in previous studies.
Ethe traits of light were found to be common to all six men – low vulnerability, low self-awareness, low anxiety, fearlessness, boldness, assertiveness, dominance and excitement seeking.
However, these traits can also be used to describe people not considered psychopaths, suggesting that previous studies that have used them as measures of psychopathy may be unreliable.
NOT A PSYCHOPATH: British secret agent James Bond is portrayed here by Daniel Craig, in an excerpt from the 2006 film ‘Casino Royale’
NOT A PSYCHOPATH: Chuck Yeager (pictured) was a ‘fearless’ US Air Force pilot who, in 1947, became the person who flew faster than the speed of sound. Here, Yeager sits in an Air Force plane in 1948
NOT A PSYCHOPATH: Pictured is Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes for the BBC
Meanwhile, the five unmistakably psychopathic traits were those related to antagonism – callousness, manipulation, dishonesty, arrogance, and cruelty.
Yeager, Bond, and Holmes did not show these antagonistic traits, so they cannot be described as psychopaths, according to the team.
These three men may have been misidentified as psychopaths in the past simply because of their fearlessness, boldness, assertiveness, and dominance – traits found in psychopaths, but not exclusive to them.
Today, Yeager, Bond, and Holmes are also considered heroes, although “the hero and the psychopath are twigs of the same branch,” the authors point out.
“From this perspective, the hero and the psychopath may not represent twigs of the same branch but entirely independent branches,” the team explains.
PSYCHOPATH: Clyde Barrow (1909 – 1934) is seen here holding a machine gun while seated on the front fender of a car
PSYCHOPATH: Bernard Madoff leaves US federal court after a bail hearing on January 14, 2009 in New York
PSYCHOPATH: Ted Bundy (pictured) was a serial killer, rapist and necrophiliac who assaulted and murdered scores of young women in the 1970s
Yeager was the least psychopathic person of the six – he showed only thrill-seeking and low anxiety (traits that are not exclusive to psychopaths).
Interestingly, Madoff also scored highly in many aspects of consciousness, including Achievement Seeking and Competence.
Madoff robbed 37,000 victims in 136 countries for $64.8 billion, taking money from one to pay the other, for two decades before he was finally arrested in 2008 after his two adult sons killed him. denounced.
Many of his victims came from the Jewish community where Madoff had been a great philanthropist.
