Would You Vote for a Psychopath? | James Fallon | Big Think
Would You Vote for a Psychopath? | James Fallon
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Neurobiologist James Fallon on the psychopathic brain.
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James Fallon:
James Fallon teaches neuroscience at the University of California Irvine, and through research explores the way genetic and in-utero environmental factors affect the way the brain gets built — and then how individuals’ experience further shapes its development. He lectures and writes on creativity, consciousness and culture, and has made key contributions to our understanding of schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Only lately has Fallon turned his research toward the subject of psychopaths — particularly those who kill. With PET scans and EEGs, he’s beginning to uncover the deep, underlying traits that make people violent and murderous.
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TRANSCRIPT:
James Fallon: This team of researchers asked the biographers – the really top biographers – for all the presidents from the beginning all the way through almost up to the present. And said, rate them on this psychopathic scale. And they did and right at the top was Teddy Roosevelt. Then FDR, then JFK. Bill Clinton was right up there. People really low on the – way low in psychopathy like Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, George Bush Sr., very low psychopathy. George Bush’s son is kind of in the middle.
So anyway there’s this group that are very high, group low. The thing is is that if you look at what people consider leadership – who am I gonna follow – they pick the people at the top. They’re picking and voting for and enjoying the psychopathic traits, because those are the people that you think are the ones who can lead you. And, in fact, these are – you know, psychopaths are known for really being world champ liars – pathological liars. Even for the hell of it, right. And so if you look at people at the top of the presidential list they did, in fact, lie. But the thing is they lied for us. They lied to protect us. And people for some reason don’t seem to mind psychopathic behavior when it’s done on their behalf. It’s like the person who wants to get the best deal. They want the money manager that’s gonna – if they’re gonna cheat, cheat for me. Make me money. If you’re gonna lie, lie and save me, save us.
And so a lot of the behavior of leaders like that who have these are such that people will say they don’t like it but they vote for it over and over and over again. So it must be something very essential in us. They’re not thinking I want to vote for a psychopath but they like those traits and those traits are strongly associated with psychopathy.
You would also think people would say well Hitler and all those Nazi leaders must have been psychopaths. And yet the analysis by many, many psychiatrists over the years – Hitler does not come up as a psychopath and none of those Nazis do at all. They’re all family men. They’re all very smart and they thought they were doing their job.
And that’s why Hannah Arendt when she talked about this she didn’t call it psychopathy but she – the way she analyzed it is that people will get into a position and they’re just little pieces of a bigger organization. That organization is evil, right. It’s the banality of evil is what she called it. But each individual’s role is sort of hidden. And so people with those tendencies can be not fully psychopathic, but they will do things that within an organization will get them what they want. So they helped the launch and it’s a fulcrum for general psychopathy, let’s say, in a culture country. So that’s a little bit different. But the individual ones – there’s a study that just came out on Mafia in Sicily. So they took imprisoned Mafia – now these were not the very top guys but kind of the middle management of the Mafia. And all of them tested lower in psychopathy than the average person. No psychopathy. But you would think that Nazis, Mafia is psychopathy. It’s not.
See there’s kind of a misunderstanding of what it is. And there are really very few psychopathic killers. And there’s very few of the ones you would see in a film or TV. Extremely rare people. But they are working with you and they, you know, in any organization that has more than about 35 people there’s gonna be somebody in there that’s really a psychopath but they put themselves there and they’re usually in a spot where they can lord it over people just below them and get what they want and use a manipulation and some intimidation.
Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/people/james-fallon/
@EmoEmu
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
I feel like Sleepy Joe might top the list if they start looking into it. He has lied his way through life since he was in school. Cheating on tests, plagiarizing work, then plagiarizing speeches and so on and so on.
@FrankNStein-gc1on
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
If you're voting it's for a narcissistic psychopaths……that's the only people who seek office.
@Solar.Geoengineering.Advocate
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
ha the real question is. are we ever given a choice?
@minoramare5829
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Because people often vote not for person itself.. they just for their internal object, for "dream". So yes, answer is yes) unfortunately. Thanks for your video❤
@ngpb17
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
this reminds me televangelists pastors.
@danquarterman
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
LOL this was too funny. OMG. George bush senior was not a psychopath… BULL FUCKING SHIT. White people can't really grasp psychopathy Cuz they're all fukn psychotic. How else does the values of lying cheating and stealing from poor people all over the world, is their highest virtue. Always has been always will be. The real danger of loosing your culture, is you become a white person, or something to that effect.
@HaroldCrews
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
The US presidents who were and are psychopaths aren't lying for "us." They were lying for the oligarchs and the other elites that got them into the presidency. To believe otherwise is to believe in the myth of democracy. Democracy simply can't exist at a national scale. There are far too many intermediaries when dealing with hundreds of millions of voters or even hundreds of thousands of voters. Democracy on such a scale isn't even a remote possibility.
@dexterity___
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Having a psychopathic family, their behavior is not to be criminal, its to reinforce their ego and to feel powerful. Of course psychopaths would LOVE to be president, and its why they constantly seek to take positions of power.
It baffles me that we as a population enable these people and vote for them even. But it really can be a popular character trait at times.
@pauljr1533
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
If U.S. presidents, the "good guys," were psychopaths—and Hitler and the Nazis were not—then isn't it the case that the only reason we think the non-psychopathic Nazis were "bad guys" is because the PSYCHOPATHIC "good guys" told us so?
@Luis-el7rp
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
@realDonaldTrump
@aziz_hassan-h2i
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
We are voting for psychopaths since time immoreal
@BadBuddhist-r2q
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Are you do PR for the Nazi's? A quick search on wic…shows that there are various diagnoses for Hilter by various individuals including psychopathy.
If they were not born psychopaths then they tried their best to become one. Brown shirts, lots of sociopaths. The worst of the worst, were released from prisons to form units that destroyed villages and people. More sadistic, than the average psycho. For me is this sadism that distinguishes the psychopath and sociopath from some one who I call near enough. For example Oscar Schindler, was high in many of these traits. He said he had a difficult time with the sadism. 13 + years with psychopath similar to Amon Goth has taught me a few things about psychopaths and sadism and how to be a specimen. They should be excluded from power positions. Conducting psych assessments (at least two). We can all descend to hell/corruption evil. It just seems to me that psychos are already there.
@BadBuddhist-r2q
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Psychopaths do nothing for the people unless it meet some personal goal. They believe they are superior and use and abuse, those considered beneath them. They should never have power. If we don't prohibit the unqualified, one or more is going to use nukes. Trump so wanted to nuke something.
@jarrodyuki7081
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
japan will retake the kurils sakhalin and vladivok south korea willt ake north korea.
@australienski6687
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Well people voted for Trump
@Besotted85
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
I would. People usually vote with their feelings. Psychopaths can make important choices without feelings, and this is needed in many cases. They are very logical!
@pondwaterwriter1625
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
The problem is Society is obsessed with being perceived as good and bad. Evil vs pure. Dark vs light. when reality we have goood and bad in all of us and we’re all capable of doing evil things. Lying hypocrisy adultery the list goes on and on. non psychopaths when they mess up they get a pass bc at least they are still a good person??? Okay what does that have to do with the fact they still did a bad thing and in that moment they were a bad person and tomorrow they can be good again but they seem to focus more on making sure that person is still understood as a good person before holding them accountable for their shit bag choices. But if a psychopath who has been well behaved and suddenly does the same sinning or same crimes suddenly it’s “this is a Non virtuous man incapable of being good we must not trust him. Let’s ostracize him” like ????? Maybe just maybe people are what they are and you can’t define them with labels but by what they do and how they choose to act and show up in the world. You good virtuous people say psychopaths don’t deserve anything and are dangerous to the general public but the the first to turn a blind eye when your country invades another and kills innocent women and children. Morally superior your ass. More like morally superior as long as it’s convenient and meets my confirmation bias then I guess it’s justified.
Laughable.
@NAConen
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Pretty sure in another vid he says Clinton was very low in psychopathy.
@jmfs3497
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Of course a psychopath is going to think psychopaths are the best. They aren't smarter than other people. They just don't care whether they do harm. They don't feel guilt for their mistakes. They don't care if they are right or wrong, they just want to be in control, and will casually lie to get themselves there, and then will use that power to create a culture that focuses on keeping themselves in power. Even if they aren't creating value. Psychopaths enjoy High Power Difference cultures over Low Power Difference cultures, because it is easier to manipulate others in cultures where hierarchal deference is mandatory.
@Thespiritleads777
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
You mean there’s a choice? 😳
@thewb8329
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
That’s a hard concept to wrap my mind around that the biggest mass murders in history are the most sane and rational people
@Roadtoconsciousness
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
The answer is yes for all who voted for Trump
@kennethgarcia25
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
His neuroscience is so oversimplified it is hard to relate to what he is saying other than the fact that the environment plays a huge part of the result of the kind of adult we become! So what's new! He overdramatizes the connection between having a risk-prone temperament, having been spoiled, and being a psychopath. You could say jerk or bombastic or overly self-centered, self-involved human being, but so was Picasso. Just because your amygdala does not light up in an fMRI does not mean it is not engaged as the threshold for detection by that device requires high levels of engagement. And then there is the PFC which can dampen the amygdala; all work by LeDoux that is well established. What idiot-psychiatrists thought it was a good idea to tell this narcissist that he is some borderline psychopath to give him a platform in his old age for talking and talking and talking about himself? What this tells you is that it is post-genetic expression that matters a great deal more in terms of the encoded operational strategies that an individual engages in order to obtain optimal outcomes which are rewarded and that those innate influences get tuned by one's experience! Using the overly dramatic "psychopath" term is a wonderfully effective way to sensationalize traits that are well distributed in society to sell his book and monetize incompletely understood research results from small sample sizes.
@nefelibata4190
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
After meeting one, no.
@zalseon4746
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
i'd be very interested to see the actual data on that study that suggests this conclusion. I think we'd all love to see the actual data.
@rodgerbane3825
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
If the person failed to try and HIDE that they were Psychopaths' and made no attempt to try and seem normal that would really give me pause. But sadly I have probably have voted for psychopaths'. What is odd is someone like tRump who sort of wore his psychopathy, or intense narcissism on his sleeve.
@danherrick5785
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Anyone that thinks tRump is lying for us is an uninformed fool…Or a christian evangelical…
@eaton55r
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
I do not think there is enough information to support you even though I admire you so I strongly disagree because of the fact psychopaths would in fact do anything to protect themselves even lie to convince other people that they are the best ones to have as leaders.
@pandakso3365
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Love that Joker lip lick XD
@mothership2917
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
The reason he does not kill people is: because he likes his life and does not want to be caught. The reason I dont kill people is because I dont want to. Seeing someone hurt feels like pain to me. But this man would not feel bad for killing someone…
Psychopaths are killing the seniors by giving them an experimental vaccin. And they dont feel bad because they allready told everyone its not tested good enough. All the info is out! They laugh at the dumb people taking the shot walking around in their masks killing their parents and then what is next because they have you living in their world.
@mitchmisaki1
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Yeah so this is dangerous. Normalizing psychopathy by letting a psychopath tell you everything he wants to tell you without actual accounts of their behavior from an objective viewer. How about the immoral actions and behavior towards others? Psychopaths simply cannot be psychopaths while also being virtuous. This man is justifying psychopathic behavior while ignoring the sinister side of it.
@zexji3728
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Needs more views
@jackwatson4683
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
People in the comments thinking there more an expert than the expert as per usual.
@harrypalmer3481
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Mr. Fallon, states very concisely & well "the banality of evil", a concept that is essential for us all to know for a better future yet known or understood by hardly anyone (it seems). History, particularly 20th century, has taught us about "the banality of evil" in ways that couldn't be more clear. It's just much more comfortable to believe in Goodies & Baddies & that we, personally, are basically good. So history will continue, if not in circles, then certainly in spirals. Have a nice day.
@hitlerology
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Hitler was not a psychopath but Göring and Goebbels were
@fuzailhasan7856
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
I see so voting is basically the flaw of democracy
@katieb2098
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
I need him to lick my stamps
@brettneuberger
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Super interesting given today’s circumstances.
@chicxulub2947
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
That's borderline psychopath… Full blown are the murderers and serial killers
@xgfreedom
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
If you really think about it, banality evil is much, much scarier than serial killing psychopathy….
@dirtydave1889
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
And just who the fuck is this guy? A democrat sent me here. And to this day, no democrat can give me a Trump lie. They say he lies all the time but can't give me a lie. FUCK ALL DEMOCRATS! I hope you all die horrible deaths about now.
@jamesstevenson7725
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
But if your a psychopath, why should we believe anything you say?
@AnnaMishel
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Hitler was the definition of a psychopath.
@yousraadly7341
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Hahahaha thats what left to do in this lovely world. 😂🤣
@musictravellife392
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
I wish I could be a psycopath Iam on the other extreme Iam super sensitive
@ayounglivelysoulinanoldtir3512
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
well,I don't know what the political situations in other countries are like but ,here in the UK, you don't have any choise , but to vote for a psychopath, because, it seems, that all the politicians, councilors, etc, are psychopaths!!!. that is glareingly apparent by the way this country is run, particularly evident in the cold, harsh, ruthless way in which the poor, the unemployed, the disabled & the pentioners are treated. our gouvernment & councils seem determined to create a society where only the coldest, hardest,toughest,strongest ,most successful people can survive, in other words, a society ,run BY psychopaths, FOR psychopaths!! &, if you are unlucky enough to be poor &/or unemployed, it certainly helps to be ,at least, a moderate -to-high psychopath (like me!) who dosen't realy worry ,much,about anything, who can keep soldiering on, through the most brutal hardships, mountainous debts & grinding poverty, & just smile,& laugh & sing through it all!. in fact, when i think about it, if i'd had a better start in life, i might have become a prime minister by now!!!!
@joshSmacknMouths
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
I voted for you james fallon. 😉
@charlieanstey9998
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Check out the current psychopath in the white house. Rank Trump.
@Spot1TightenUp24
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Where does Jim Jones and Charles Manson fall on this psychopathy scale?🤔
@davidfowler3082
January 10, 2026 at 1:19 pm
Get this man a glass of water
Comments are closed.