Psychopathy is a personality construct. Sure, it can be used as a slur, but conservatives are actually more likely to be psychopaths. Or, to put it more accurately, they’re more likely to have dark triad / tetrad traits – psychopathy, machiavellianism, narcissism and everyday sadism.
In the present research (N = 675), we focus on the relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism, respectively, in the course of a presidential election where the two candidates represent either left-wing or right-wing political policies. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism were associated with right-wing political orientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. Moreover, the relationships between personality and right-wing political orientation and extremism, respectively, were relatively independent from each other.
We found eleven significant correlations between conservative [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad – [narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy,] all at significance level of p<.00001 – and no significant correlations between liberal [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments
I ran a follow-up study testing the Dark Triad against conservative and liberal judgments on 15 additional moral issues. The new issues examined include illegal immigration, abortion, the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools, the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terrorism, laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and environmentalism.** 1154 participants […] Twenty-two significant correlations were observed between “conservative” judgments and the Dark Triad (all of which were significant past a Bonferonni-corrected significance threshold of p = .0008), compared to seven significant correlations between Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments (only one of which was significant past p = .0008).
That article seems to mainly criticize how dark triad theory can be used to stigmatize people:
One of the major criticisms of the dark triad theory also stems from its potential to stigmatize individuals living with Cluster B personality disorders
In fact, I can’t see anything in that that’d support your claim that the whole concept is pseudoscientific twaddle, and it mainly talks about how the dark triad / tetrad can be abused as a concept to stigmatize people, and there’s just one paragraph at the start that really even touches on other issues:
The lack of a clear definition of each trait, the focus on negative aspects of behavior, the failure to consider cultural and social factors, the limited explanatory power, and the potential for stigmatization all raise questions about the validity and usefulness of this model. While it may be useful in some context, researchers and practitioners should be cautious in its application and interpretation.
And none of those claims have any sort of sourcing for them. Elsewhere in the blog post there’s a link to a Science article that goes into a bit more detail, and it gave me the impression that – unlike what you claimed – the concept hasn’t been abandoned wholesale, and researchers acknowledge that it’s sometimes misused but don’t generally think it’s completely fundamentally broken as a concept. Some do, but some don’t – which is pretty common for this sort of stuff as there are very few hard truths in psychology
Since its introduction in 2002, Dark Triad (DT) research– the simultaneous study of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism – has exploded, with the publication of hundreds of peer reviewed articles, books and chapters, as well as coverage by the lay media. Unfortunately, there are several limitations to this research that are unrecognized or ignored. These limitations include 1) the treatment of DT constructs as unidimensional contrary to evidence for their multidimensionality, 2) the indistinctness between current measures of Machiavellianism and psychopathy, 3) the use of multivariate statistical approaches that pose statistical and interpretive difficulties, 4) failure to test DT relations directly against one another, and 5) methodological limitations related to convenience sampling and reliance on mono-method approaches. We discuss these problems in detail and describe solutions that can result in a more robust, replicable, and meaningful literature moving forward.
And here’s a study empirically criticising the dark triad by demonstrating that it offers no explanatory benefits over studying psychopathy in isolation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25248015/ . Though again, this is not an epistemic criticism.
Let me explain the epistemic problem to you. The problem is that these dark triad traits are social constructs. Psychology doesn’t generally have a problem with scientists inventing whatever constructs they like, as long as they then proceed to study those constructs empirically. But the initial definition of the constructs is not empirical. You can say anything you like in a hypothesis, define any construct, and the relevance or validity of the construct isn’t really questioned.
Let me give you an example. Suppose I’m a psychologist, and I want to study the personality trait “Black criminalism”. Which I define as the set of personality traits causing criminal behaviour in black people. I then go to a prison, interview a hundred black prisoners on what motivates their crimes, I formulate a measure of “black criminalism” that I can apply to the general population, and I successfully demonstrate through statistical modelling that “black criminalism” is associated with lawbreaking behaviour. Now, according to the rules of how psychology is done, this is considered empirically valid. I used real science at every stage of the process to inform and develop my hypotheses and to confirm them. But guess what? It’s all racist pseudoscience! Because the choice to associate blackness and criminalism wasn’t empirically informed. And it’s going to have horrible consequences for society if I publish that research.
That’s what’s going on with the dark triad. You can define psychopathy and narcissism however you like, and as long as you answer your questions about this made up construct with science, it’s considered valid and can be published in a journal. But it’s still bad science.
Psychopath is a slur. It’s literally just Greek for mentally ill person.
Psychopathy is a personality construct. Sure, it can be used as a slur, but conservatives are actually more likely to be psychopaths. Or, to put it more accurately, they’re more likely to have dark triad / tetrad traits – psychopathy, machiavellianism, narcissism and everyday sadism.
sources
The Dark Triad has been criticised by modern day scientists as pseudoscience rooted in historical bigotry. It’s nonsense with no empirical backing.
I don’t suppose you have a source for that? Frankly you seem to be convinced everything is bigotry
https://www.theswaddle.com/the-dark-triad-theory-debunked
That article seems to mainly criticize how dark triad theory can be used to stigmatize people:
In fact, I can’t see anything in that that’d support your claim that the whole concept is pseudoscientific twaddle, and it mainly talks about how the dark triad / tetrad can be abused as a concept to stigmatize people, and there’s just one paragraph at the start that really even touches on other issues:
And none of those claims have any sort of sourcing for them. Elsewhere in the blog post there’s a link to a Science article that goes into a bit more detail, and it gave me the impression that – unlike what you claimed – the concept hasn’t been abandoned wholesale, and researchers acknowledge that it’s sometimes misused but don’t generally think it’s completely fundamentally broken as a concept. Some do, but some don’t – which is pretty common for this sort of stuff as there are very few hard truths in psychology
I’ll quote from the abstract of one of that article’s primary sources on criticism on the dark triad, https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/mbkr8
Here’s another source discussing empirical problems with the dark triad, but I want you to keep in mind that this is an analysis of well-defined technical issues with the empirical methods, and it doesn’t do very much to address the overarching problems with the model, which fall more under the purview of epistemic philosophy than statistical methods: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/personality-and-its-problems/201907/don-t-believe-the-hype-shining-light-the-dark-triad
And here’s a study empirically criticising the dark triad by demonstrating that it offers no explanatory benefits over studying psychopathy in isolation: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25248015/ . Though again, this is not an epistemic criticism.
And here’s a short but effective news article on the problem: https://www.science.org/content/article/does-dark-triad-personality-traits-make-you-more-successful
Let me explain the epistemic problem to you. The problem is that these dark triad traits are social constructs. Psychology doesn’t generally have a problem with scientists inventing whatever constructs they like, as long as they then proceed to study those constructs empirically. But the initial definition of the constructs is not empirical. You can say anything you like in a hypothesis, define any construct, and the relevance or validity of the construct isn’t really questioned.
Let me give you an example. Suppose I’m a psychologist, and I want to study the personality trait “Black criminalism”. Which I define as the set of personality traits causing criminal behaviour in black people. I then go to a prison, interview a hundred black prisoners on what motivates their crimes, I formulate a measure of “black criminalism” that I can apply to the general population, and I successfully demonstrate through statistical modelling that “black criminalism” is associated with lawbreaking behaviour. Now, according to the rules of how psychology is done, this is considered empirically valid. I used real science at every stage of the process to inform and develop my hypotheses and to confirm them. But guess what? It’s all racist pseudoscience! Because the choice to associate blackness and criminalism wasn’t empirically informed. And it’s going to have horrible consequences for society if I publish that research.
That’s what’s going on with the dark triad. You can define psychopathy and narcissism however you like, and as long as you answer your questions about this made up construct with science, it’s considered valid and can be published in a journal. But it’s still bad science.