William Lindsey 

"A new psychological study has found that people who report favorable views of Donald Trump also tend to score higher on measures of callousness, manipulation, and other malevolent traits—and lower on empathy and compassion. The findings, based on two large surveys of U.S. adults, shed light on how personality traits relate to political beliefs, including support for Trump and conservative ideology."

~ Eric W. Dolan

#Trump #authoritarianism #empathy #psychopathy
/1

https://www.psypost.org/trump-supporters-report-higher-levels-of-psychopathy-manipulativeness-callousness-and-narcissism/

Trump supporters report higher levels of psychopathy, manipulativeness, callousness, and narcissism

Support for Donald Trump is linked to darker personality traits, including increased psychopathy and decreased empathy, new research finds. The study also connects conservative political beliefs to lower benevolence, suggesting personality may shape how people engage with politics and ideology.

PsyPost Psychology News
Aug 9, 2025 at 9:25pmWeb
Show threadWilliam Lindsey Aug 9, 2025

"Conservative political ideology is associated with social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), psychopathic propensities (PPs), and other malevolent dispositions, and reduced empathy."

~ Craig S. Neumann and Darlene A. Ngo

#Trump #authoritarianism #empathy #psychopathy
/2

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656625000704?via%3Dihub

Show threadWilliam Lindsey Aug 9, 2025

"We examined the links between SDO, RWA, PPs and political ideology, and whether those who view Trump favorably reported higher PPs (or malevolent traits) and reduced empathy or benevolent dispositions."

#Trump #authoritarianism #empathy #psychopathy
/3

Show threadWilliam Lindsey Aug 9, 2025

"The report also revealed that while both men and women showed similar patterns, the associations were stronger for men."

~ Adam Lynch

#Trump #authoritarianism #empathy #psychopathy #men #gender #MaleEntitlement #MaleDomination
/3

https://www.alternet.org/trump-supporters-maga-empathy/

Callous and manipulative: Study says 'malevolent personality traits' dominate Trump voters

PsyPost reports a new psychological study has found that people who claim favorable views of President Donald Trump also tend to score higher on measures of callousness, manipulation, and other malevolent traits—and lower on empathy and compassion.“Our findings suggest a link between malevolent pers...

Alternet.org
Show threadWilliam Lindsey Aug 9, 2025

"Can we stop supporting sociopathic leaders? Isn’t it possible to recognize these qualities as dangerous warning signs of unfitness rather than expressions of strength? What does it say about our body politic that so many Americans are drawn to these types of people? Is this attraction a dangerous affliction found in every society? Should there be psychological tests as one guardrail against their continuing success?"

~ Steven Beschloss

#Trump #RFKJr #psychopathy
/4

https://www.americaamerica.news/p/can-we-stop-supporting-sociopathic

Can We Stop Supporting Sociopathic Leaders?

A Saturday Prompt

America, America
Show threadAdam MacLeodAug 9, 2025
@wdlindsy Yes, one of the many things from the Star Trek universe that would help our societies today. Every officer in Starfleet must undergo multiple and lengthy psychological assessments, evaluations, and testing. and the one's who are psycho get dropped from the service.
Show threadToni AittoniemiAug 9, 2025

@adam @wdlindsy According to very recent studies in political neuropsychology, we could probably scan people’s brains and with modern structural/functional scans be able to get about 20-30% correlation to these traits.

But do we really want to?

Because once we start filtering for some treat, that filter can be flipped over quite easily. Especially by strongmen in power. 🤔

Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@gimulnautti @adam @wdlindsy if we get rid of the psychopaths, there will be no strongmen in power to be afraid of
Show threadhexAug 10, 2025

@InfoDumpTruck @gimulnautti @adam @wdlindsy this assumes that those traits can't change.

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean

Social psychology indicates that the very power structure itself informs behavior, rather than the other way around. Psychopathy can be the result of the structure rather than the cause of a behavior.

If we focus on building systems that eliminate involuntary hierarchy, then we get rid of the structure that elicits authoritarian behavior *and also* minimize the impact of people who might manifest such behaviors naturally.

Paul Piff: Does money make you mean?

TED
Show threadToni AittoniemiAug 10, 2025

@Hex @InfoDumpTruck @adam @wdlindsy Changing those traits might be possible, but perhaps not within reasonable timeframes.

They aren’t inheritable per se, but for some characteristics that lead to social dominance behaviour, physical dimensions and connectivity of brain regions explains about 1/4.

This treat is actually particularly well explained among personality traits by neurophysiology, most barely correlate at all.

Show threadToni AittoniemiAug 10, 2025

@Hex @InfoDumpTruck @adam @wdlindsy Among studies that I’m familiar with, perhaps most famous one being the Dunedain Study, it was suggested that social dominance behaviours appeared to have a certain level of inherent tendency that combined with a developmental trigger mechanism.

The funny anecdote being, one of the professors themselves discovering they were a psychopath while in the process of conducting the analysis of the study. 🙂

Show threadhexAug 10, 2025

@gimulnautti @InfoDumpTruck @adam @wdlindsy the previous post suggested brain scans to identify and omit people whose brain structure indicates a predilection towards psychopathy. Soy concern is less one of "can we fix people who' brain structures correlate with social dominance behavior" and more "can systems elicit social dominance behavior in otherwise neurotypical people."

If the system is toxic, then neurotypicals will act in accordance with the system... Meaning that brain scans would be turned into a weapon to reinforce the system. Most Nazis were neurotypical.

Show threadToni AittoniemiAug 10, 2025

@Hex @InfoDumpTruck @adam @wdlindsy Yes. That was my point in the very first instance I brought it up.

However, the knowledge of a systematic neurophysiological component cannot either be ignored.

The challenge is ultimately more in the value system. We must be able to treat psychopathy as valuable first, to be able to shape and mold it into beneficial behaviours.

That’s how we mold future society into not bringing out the toxic effects.

Show threadhexAug 10, 2025
@gimulnautti @InfoDumpTruck @adam @wdlindsy ah, ok, thanks for the depth. :)
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@gimulnautti @Hex @adam @wdlindsy psychopathy is the opposite of valuable. Its social cancer. Psychopaths are intra-species predators.
Show threadToni AittoniemiAug 10, 2025

@InfoDumpTruck @Hex @adam @wdlindsy This is false.

Psychopathy is a component of many valuable traits.

Many successfull surgeons are psychopathic. It's common in emergency workers. Firefighters as well.

Incapacity for empathy can at times help in surviving great hardship, because it provides immunity from sadness and shock as a side-effect.

It has been preserved by evolution. I would not fight against evolution. It's stupid to fight against evolution.

Don't fall for simple us vs them games.

Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@gimulnautti @Hex @adam @wdlindsy I'm not "falling" for anything. Just because it happens to be convenient in very specific instances that we could find other solutions for doesn't make it valuable. Every other consequence of psychopathy is awful. Stop defending the "value" of a condition that is responsible for most of the worlds needless suffering. Also the fact that surgeons are psychopaths is a PROBLEM. It leads to so much malpractice.
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@gimulnautti @Hex @adam @wdlindsy behaviors can be modified to a degree through social engineering, but as long as they are fundamentally, neurologically different, it's irrelevant, because they will always be exclusively self-serving. and while the antisocial behaviors may be more subtle in some cases, they are still incapable of human connection and will screw anyone over when they have an excuse.
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@gimulnautti @Hex @adam @wdlindsy psychopathy is inheritable. I was raised in a family of psychopaths. It was obvious from birth for many of them. The rest were more subtle about it, and they did even more damage because they were trusted to a degree.
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@Hex @gimulnautti @adam @wdlindsy it informs behavior to a degree, but certain people don't need the system to "inform" them how to be evil, and certain people will never be that evil no matter how much the system promotes it, with the exception of extreme brainwashing/brain damage and/or threats to their own lives, and that's my point. Not all people with bad behaviors are psychopaths, but all psychopaths have bad behavior that will escalate as far as their environment allows for
Show threadToni AittoniemiAug 10, 2025
@InfoDumpTruck @adam @wdlindsy But that’s just eugenics again. We don’t know what traits are inherently good for future events. Philosophers have warned against this for centuries.
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@gimulnautti @adam @wdlindsy I don't care what you call my stance on it, psychopathy is never a good thing and cannot be integrated into society. Its defining feature is antisocial, its lacking humanity.
Show threadWilliam HamiltonAug 10, 2025
@adam @wdlindsy
“I am proud to say that I’ve written another insane admiral. They must put something in the water at Federation Headquarters.”
— Ronald D. Moore
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@wdlindsy psychopaths are the final boss of SoCiEtY
Show threadGeraldo Aug 9, 2025

@wdlindsy "people who claim favorable views of President Donald Trump also tend to score higher on measures of callousness, manipulation, and other malevolent traits—and lower on empathy and compassion".

That same behavior is observed in Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil.

Show threadWilliam Lindsey Aug 9, 2025
@mosquete I can well imagine that.
Show threadLRAug 9, 2025
@wdlindsy 50% of americans
Show threadfoundseedAug 9, 2025
@wdlindsy this is kinda like when scientists had to confirm the existence of the clit....
Show threadWilliam Lindsey Aug 9, 2025
@foundseed Some things just stand out as self-evidently obvious and true, right?
Show threadfoundseedAug 9, 2025
@wdlindsy and yet, someone still needs some guy in a lab coat to say it into a microphone
Show threadWilliam Lindsey Aug 9, 2025
@foundseed Needs that male validation, right? So we've been long conditioned to think, many of us….
Show threadfoundseedAug 9, 2025
@wdlindsy the paternalism goes so deep that even lefty feminist types still refuse to take medicines or wisdom seriously if there isn't "empirical scientific data" about it
Show threadJason StiffAug 9, 2025
@wdlindsy I completely believe that...trump attracts like-minded people his way. Totally off-topic, but I wish that publication didn't use an AI generated photo for the article. They stick out like sore thumbs (even if they have the correct number of thumbs) and they are not necessary, and could easily be misleading. Okay, I'm going back to my workday already in progress.
Show threadLuna chanAug 9, 2025
@wdlindsy A you don't aay moment if there ever was one.
Show threadRiaResistsAug 10, 2025
@wdlindsy yeah trumpers are delusional psychos.
Show threadCM ThiedeAug 10, 2025
@wdlindsy strong Christian values
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@wdlindsy I've been saying this for years. Its the politics of psychopathy. Of predators. The ultimate struggle, the one preventing us from solving almost every other struggle, is tragically simple. Its empaths vs psychopaths. Humanity vs inhumanity. Good vs evil. They are the enemy. They are evil. That's all there is to it.
Show threadJayAug 10, 2025
@InfoDumpTruck @wdlindsy You’ve made several posts in this thread that exhibit black and white thinking, dehumanization, and a belief that if we eliminate one inherently and permanently broken group of people, all problems will be solved, otherwise it’s all lost. Do you not see how this is the psychology of fascism?
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@WhiteCatTamer @wdlindsy when psychopaths dehumanize us, its projection. When we dehumanize them, its an observation. That's the difference. Don't let them DARVO you that hard. They are the problem.
Show threadJayAug 10, 2025

@InfoDumpTruck @wdlindsy Please don’t belittle me by assuming my concern is borne from manipulation.

My concern is that you are failing to recognize immoral or antisocial behaviour is not an intrinsic or permanent state of being and by failing to recognize this, you give yourself and others a pass to engage in the exact behaviour you are decrying. This is decidedly UNempathic, and I hope your studies in psychology will challenge this reflexive and dogmatic thinking.

Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@WhiteCatTamer @wdlindsy it is. Psychopathy is a permanent state of being. Its not a "pass" for anything. I'm not advocating we murder them for profit, or sexually abuse them, or any of the horrible things they do to us. I'm pointing out the reality of the situation and the factors at play. I've been studying this my entire life, both personally and academically. It's just the truth. I didn't come to this conclusion without a ton of second and third and fourth guessing. Its just how it is.
Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@WhiteCatTamer @wdlindsy don't belittle me by suggesting I don't have empathy for psychopaths. I do. My FAMILY is full of them. I'm not advocating for torture or revenge or "punishment". Just for damage control, whatever that takes. Its not lacking empathy, its self defense.
Show threadJayAug 10, 2025

@InfoDumpTruck @wdlindsy You can’t say you don’t lack empathy when you describe another person as not being human.

I try not to assume that most people, including people in this thread, are doing anything more than expressing frustration at the antisocial and manipulative behaviour that people engage in. But your repeated posts indicate a rigidity of thought that stems from dehumanization of (to you) an acceptable target. And that’s something you need to work on.

Show threadAllyAug 11, 2025
@WhiteCatTamer @wdlindsy that's absurd. You can have empathy for anyone, it doesn't mean you have to ascribe characteristics to them that they don't possess. I have empathy for anyone or anything suffering. But I'm not going to pretend something is different than it is just because the implications suck. I didn't make it this way. I wish I was wrong. I've tried desperately to come up with any other explanation for what I've studied. There is none. That's not my doing or my fault.
Show threadAllyAug 11, 2025
@WhiteCatTamer @wdlindsy its not rigidity of thought, not stemming from dehumanization, its not frustration, and I don't need to work on it. Its an observation that I want to make very clear for others. You need to work on your reading comprehension or your ability to process hard truths, if anything.
Show threadJayAug 11, 2025
@InfoDumpTruck @wdlindsy I do accept that some people are more prone, for whatever reason, to engage in terrible behaviour and that it is both prudent and acceptable to be wary of or reject association with said people. Had you stuck to that, you and I would not disagree.
Show threadJayAug 11, 2025
@InfoDumpTruck @wdlindsy I do not accept that anyone isn’t human because that denies both their and my own humanity. I make allowance for heated language, but when it consistently and repeatedly hits different elements of dehumanization, and from someone who claims to hold this view in a psychology-based professional setting, then at best, you are being sloppy with language and at worst, someone who has already justified disregarding others.
Show threadJayAug 11, 2025
@InfoDumpTruck @wdlindsy I don’t expect to change your mind here, so I don’t see much value in continuing to talk. What I hope to do is provide pushback and to indicate to the audience that there is a fine and important line to be drawn between cutting yourself off from harmful people, and dehumanizing them.
Show threadAllyAug 14, 2025
@WhiteCatTamer enjoy your self-righteous denial and bad faith arguments elsewhere
Show threadDavid GrieveAug 10, 2025
@wdlindsy
This years No Shit Sherlock award for academia goes to.......
Bunch of C#*ts vote for another C#*t.
Show threadDebbie BelairAug 10, 2025

@wdlindsy Big surprise.

We have plenty of this in Canada, too. Just look at Edmonton?

Show threadhexAug 10, 2025

@wdlindsy I think the question, that seems to be omitted while the answer implied, is (assuming the correlation is causal, which I do accept) "which way does the causal relationship go?"

Did we suddenly, for no clear reason, have a bunch of horrible people show up and make the world worse? Or is there a system that makes the world worse and both Trump and his supporters are caused by this system? Nothing omits the possibility of positive feedback loops, such as the violence of a police state traumatizing people into supporting authoritarianism, or lead poisoning impairing judgement such that a population makes poor decisions that increase the amount of lead in the water.

It's that question that I think we have rushed to miss, because the implications are much less convenient than blaming the current set of crises on some inherent defect in the people who created them. If we have the wrong system, then the only way we get out of this mess is by doing a ton of work to build something better... And humans tend to want to find ways to avoid doing such complicated work.

Show threadAllyAug 10, 2025
@Hex @wdlindsy I think the answer is that we have more psychopaths than anyone wants to realize, that many of them go unnoticed because they mask well enough, and when the ruling class gives them the excuse, they show their true colors. They were always here and always awful. Just harder to notice. Not saying that we don't also have issues that need to be addressed systematically, I'm saying that the psychopaths are the ones who built the system, and they are the ones protecting it.
Show threadcalmcrashAug 10, 2025
@wdlindsy 😂 you really believe this echo chamber bullshit! Hahahaha!
Show threadKim Possible Aug 10, 2025
@wdlindsy People who are already mad at the world, just looking for a target. The perfect mark for a grifter.