Heroes and Psychopaths: More Similar Than You Think?

Fearless. Bold. Determined. Resilient.

These are all traits that make us think of heroes. But guess what? They’re also common in psychopaths.

Yes, you read that right. Psychological studies indicate there’s an eerie connection between supposedly heroic qualities and psychopathy.

So, does this mean your friendly neighborhood firefighter might have more in common with the erotomanic Joe from You than archetypal hero Hercules? Or that your dependable doctor might be hiding a sinister side?

We spoke to the experts to find out. 

The Similarities Between Heroes and Villains

Heroes and psychopaths. One is the epitome of good, the other, evil. One embodies kindness, the other malice. But what if the line between them is thinner than we think?

According to Professor Frank McAndrew, that might just be the case. “People tend to have an idea of what heroes are like,” he explains. “In one study, when rating the personalities of movie heroes, participants expected them to be more conscientious, open to experience, extraverted, agreeable, and emotionally secure than the average person. Studies of real-life heroes tell a different story.”

That "different story" is not quite what you’d expect. As researchers from Emory University found, there’s an interesting correlation between ‘heroic’ traits and psychopathic ones. 

The researchers examined the personality attributes of your everyday heroes – people like military personnel, emergency doctors and firefighters. They found that these individuals typically scored higher than your average civilian in traits like risk taking, sensation seeking, coolness under stress, and a tendency to take over in social situations. 

At first glance, you might think these traits are admirable, and they definitely make sense given the jobs these people do. After all, to embody heroism, someone needs to be able to face danger head-on, lead with confidence while others crumble, and keep a clear mind in the midst of chaos. 

But you can also easily see how these attributes could make someone a cool and calculated psychopath. Someone who takes over social situations could also be manipulative and controlling. Someone who is comfortable with risk-taking could also be reckless and disregard the safety of others. There's a fine line between heroism and psychopathy, and these traits can easily cross over from one to the other.

And that was exactly the researchers’ conclusion. As McAndrew says: “The study perversely indicates that people who exhibit heroic behavior score high on personality traits associated with psychopaths.”

Do You Need to be Bold to be a Psychopath? 

Before you start side-eyeing every firefighter or police officer, it’s worth noting that the research linking heroes and psychopaths has stirred up some serious debate.

As psychology researcher Scott McGreal points out, the study’s conclusions rest heavily on the assumption that fearlessness is a core trait of psychopathy, which isn't well established in psychology research.

“The idea that psychopaths and heroes may be ‘twigs off the same branch’ derives from the idea that they share a common characteristic of fearlessness,” explains McGreal. “However, considering that fearlessness may not be of core importance to psychopathy yet is clearly important to heroism, it may be quite misleading to suggest that psychopaths and heroes are ‘cut from the same cloth.’”

This throws a major wrench into the study’s findings. If fearlessness isn’t a definitive marker of psychopathy, then labeling people with high levels of fearlessness as “more psychopathic” simply doesn’t hold up.

The Dark Triad: A True Villain’s Traits

If fearlessness is not a solid indicator of psychopathy, what is? 

“Psychopathy encompasses callous disregard for the rights of others," McGreal says, which you'll probably notice as a lack of remorse for their actions or manipulativeness that allows them to get what they want. Psychopaths also display a lack of empathy, which explains why they’re able to charm, deceive and lie with ease.

But he points out that psychopathy is only one of the traits that are common in people who are driven to do dark things.  The other two are narcissism and Machiavellianism – together, these traits make up the infamous Dark Triad. 

“Machiavellianism involves a cynical, manipulative approach to social interaction, and narcissism refers to a grandiose sense of one’s own superiority to others,” McGreal explains. When he dug into the research, he found that true heroes score low in this trifecta. So they're not as similar to psychopaths as the Emory study might lead you to believe.

“Among the so-called psychopathic traits, only those related to fearlessness were positively associated with heroic behavior,” McGreal says. “Socially aversive psychopathic traits, such as cold-heartedness and disinhibition, were actually associated with reduced likelihood to perform heroic acts.”

In other words, while the bravery of heroes might overlap with the fearlessness of psychopaths, their lack of cold-heartedness and recklessness is what truly separates them. Psychopaths are bold because they don’t care about consequences—heroes are bold because they do. 

Other research backs this up, too.

In another personality study conducted on firefighters, the researchers noted that traits like “altruism, honesty and courage mediated the relationship between Machiavellianism and risk-taking in firefighters.” Meaning? Good qualities outweigh the bad, and can steer us down a heroic path.

In essence, then, what makes heroes truly different from psychopaths is one crucial, human thing: their conscience. This conscience, combined with innate courage, is what makes heroes the ones to leap into action whilst others stand by. They know what’s right, and they’re brave, and they use that bravery in the service of others – the complete opposite of a psychopath.