Understanding The Wisdom Of Psychopaths - Dr Kevin Dutton - #552

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr. Kevin Dutton. He's a psychologist, author, and elite performance consultant whose research focuses on psychopathic personality and elite cognition. Psychopaths get a bad rap, perhaps understandably. They have a branding problem, to say the least, but there are some personality traits like emotional control, focus, drive, and single mindedness that elite performers can model off to improve their effectiveness every day. Expect to learn how psychopathy exists at all, why teams kicking second in a penalty shootout have a 30% greater chance of missing, why psychopath pilots in WWII didn't make it home even though they won their fights, how different accents can be more prejudiced against than different races, why splitting the world into categories creates a foundation for huge biases to occur, and bunch more. Don't forget, you might be listening but not subscribed and you're going to miss episodes when they go up if you do that. And you don't want to. The next few weeks have got some of the biggest guests that I've ever had on the show. So go to the follow button in the middle on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts. There's a plus in the top right hand corner. It really does support the show and it makes me very happy indeed. And it ensures that you're not going to miss those episodes. Thank you. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dr. Kevin Dutton.
Kevin Dutton, welcome to the show.

**Kevin Dutton** (1:47)
Cheers, Chris. Thanks for having me, mate. How are you?

**Chris Williamson** (1:49)
And well, thank you. How do you describe what you do for work? What is your area of expertise, if there is one?

**Kevin Dutton** (1:58)
Well, I'm a psychologist. That's number one. I'm talking to you from down under, mate, in Adelaide, where it's 8.3 in the morning at the moment, so bright and early. And I'm professor of the public understanding of psychology. At the University of Adelaide. So that is Australia's first professor of such a thing. So I'm Australia's first professor of the public understanding of psychology, which basically means that I bring psychology to the general public. So psychology is a very broad church. It's got loads of sub-disciplines and different areas of study, everything from forensic to social to developmental to educational to sport, all those kinds of things. And so what my job is down here is to collate the best of that kind of information and make it accessible to the general public. So that's what I do for a living. That's my day job. My area of expertise, as most people will probably recognize me for, is psychopaths.
So many years ago, well, about 10 years ago now, I wrote a book called The Wisdom of Psychopaths, which became very controversial. And it's still, I think, the only book that suggests that psychopaths aren't all bad, that actually, you know, we have this stereotype of psychopaths being rapists and serial killers, and what have you. But actually, if you were to look inside the realms of special forces, for example, you would also find people who were high on what I call the psychopathic spectrum. So when I wrote Wisdom of Psychopaths, as I say, it became a controversial book, became quite well known. And it was on the basis of that really, that I suppose, you know, if you can say this kind of thing, I kind of made my name in psychology.

**Chris Williamson** (3:57)
So you would be the current Australian equivalent in psychology of Brian Cox for physics in the UK?

**Kevin Dutton** (4:06)
Listen, don't put me down like that, mate. Don't you dare put me down like that. What did it know? Actually, Brian's over here doing a big tour at the moment.

**Chris Williamson** (4:15)
Yes.

**Kevin Dutton** (4:16)
He's doing a great big tour. Yeah, I mean, listen, I'd go with that. Yeah, at the moment, obviously not doing the big stadium shows like Brian, but one can only hope. Okay. But yeah, no, absolutely, mate.

**Chris Williamson** (4:35)
Talk to me about the adaptive explanation for how psychopathy exists. Why would it be that evolution creates humans that have that particular mix of traits?

**Kevin Dutton** (4:49)
Well, it's true, isn't it? I think first of all, it's probably a good idea to define what a psychopath actually is, Chris, because there's a lot of misnomers about psychopaths, mate. So it might help your listeners to just get a brief description of what they are. I mean, it's true, isn't it? When most people hear the word psychopath, they instantly think of on the silver screen, serial killers like Hannibal Lecter and in real life, serial killers like Ted Bundy. But actually when psychologists like myself talk about psychopaths, mate, we're actually referring to a distinct subset of individuals with a specific constellation of personality traits such as ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness, self-confidence, coolness under pressure, emotional detachment, focus, charm, charisma. Of course, those trademark deficits in conscience and empathy that you hear so much about. Now, none of those traits is necessarily a problem in itself, Chris. In fact, all of them dialed up at the right levels and deployed within the right context can actually prove rather useful. Okay, the key here, as I've always said, lies in context and levels. So imagine, for instance, a personality mixing desk, probably the best way of thinking about it, on which those traits I've just outlined comprise the kind of hodgepodge of knobs and sliders. Okay, twiddle them up and down in various combinations and you arrive at two conclusions. All right, the first one is that there is no objectively correct setting at which those dials might be positioned, but rather it will invariably depend on context on the particular set of circumstances you might happen to find yourself in. The second, and this comes back to answering your question, the second is there exists certain jobs or professions, for example, that by their very definition might demonstrate what we might call precision-engineered psychopathy, that might by their very nature have those dials turned up a little bit higher than you might find in everyday life. So give you a couple of examples. Imagine you've got the skill set to be a top surgeon, all right, but that you lack the ability to emotionally disengage from the people that you're operating on. We're not going to cut it. Well, quite literally, in fact, you're not going to cut it. Sorry, mate, I didn't mean that on purpose.