Neuroscientist sounds the alarm on the GOP’s 'contagious sociopaths'

Sociopaths, a term often used to describe those living with antisocial personality disorder, operate within their daily lives without a “conscience,” can be characterized as acting without feelings of guilt, remorse, or shame coupled with a tendency to reject the concept of responsibility.

Antisocial people will intentionally make others angry or upset and use harsh and cruel indifference as they manipulate or attack others.

Clinically speaking, there is no defined difference between a sociopath and a psychopath although some have drawn this line at acting with low moral conscience (sociopath) and no moral conscience (psychopath) or having no regard for someone else’s rights or feelings (sociopath) and taking pleasure in robbing another of their rights, freedom, or well-being (psychopath).

My colleagues and I have discussed psychopathy in the previous president elsewhere as an example. Recognizing these nuanced differences exist, I will use the term sociopath and sociopathy here for brevity’s sake.

There appear to be at least three forms of this public political/governmental sociopathy present today. The first are those individuals for whom sociopathic tendencies are deep-seated and a core feature of who they are – the former president being a prime example. A second form includes the scores of Republicans and right-wingers who have decided to play the role or act sociopathic for their own personal gain. This includes hard-line MAGA members such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Kari Lake and Matt Gaetz, who decided to infect themselves with contagious sociopathy.

Look at the case of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis whose impressive on-paper resume includes graduation from Yale University (where he served as captain of the baseball team) and Harvard law school (with honors), distinguished service in the United States Navy including a legal role with Seal Team One and a deployment to Iraq. On paper, he is highly accomplished and embodied what we as Americans tend to hold in high regard … until he acquired contagious sociopathy.

Coincident with his departure from active military service and rise to Congress and the Florida governorship, he apparently chose to include antisocial tendencies in his political and public persona. He believes in unregulated gun ownership (despite brutal killings in his state’s own schools), he attacks the rights of women with his restrictive abortion laws, he suppresses legislation that would support the LBGTQ+ community, and he seeks to diminish the plight of historically maltreated groups (such as African Americans) with his attempts to bury the past.

In another high-profile example, the U.S. Supreme Court was constitutionally designed as a third arm of our democratic republic that was supposed to serve independently from the other Branches in an apolitical manner … now its majority is infested with contagious sociopathy. In just the last year (and weeks), they sociopathically overturned Roe v. Wade and severely undercut women’s healthcare rights, ruled in favor of discrimination, and ruled against students struggling under the mountain of student debt…all while facing accusations of improper gifts, hypocrisy, and politicization … in other words, with contagious sociopathy.

The third group with contagious sociopathy are the passive enablers of widespread acts of manipulation and cruelty ranging from long-serving, establishment leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) all the way to the throngs of people clad in Confederate flags and MAGA idolatry whose inaction and permissiveness serves as a large-scale petri dish by which contagious sociopathy can flourish. It cannot go without mentioning that the processes of cultism are at play here as well.

It should be noted that the term I have been using – contagious sociopathy – is not mutually exclusive from what we have been observing with the perversion of Christian thought to suit sociopathic behaviors and the rise of fascism in the U.S. (Ruth Ben-Ghiat has written extensively on the latter). In addition, and in no way trying to simplify or underestimate the factors underlying American racism, the racist platforms of the far right and GOP, have provided a type of currency by which contagious sociopathy can spread – many have argued that the ascension of Donald Trump allowed closeted racists to become public racists. Racism includes the antisocial tendencies of demeaning, manipulating and harming others without remorse as a key feature.

One cannot talk about contagious sociopathy without considering righteousness – a term describing the phenomenon by which malicious acts – including harming and killing others – are justified as long as the bad actor can consider the ‘victims’ to be an enemy. This is a bedrock of the Trump and MAGA attacks on the Left and any that criticize or oppose them.

I have written and said it before and I will do so again: The contagious spread of sociopathy has provided us with potential and actual leaders who embody the worst that humanity has to offer according to moral, legal, religious/spiritual, and societal norms…and they continue to run on this platform.

About the author: Seth D. Norrholm, PhD (Threads: neuropsychophd) is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Dr. Norrholm has spent 20 years studying trauma-, stressor-, anxiety-, depressive-, and substance use-related disorders and has published over 120 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters. The primary objective of his work is to develop “bench-to-bedside” clinical research methods to inform therapeutic interventions for fear and anxiety-related disorders and how they relate to human factors such as personality, genetics, and environmental influences. Dr. Norrholm has been featured on NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, Politico.com, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, USA Today, WebMD, The Atlantic, The History Channel, Scientific American, Salon.com, The Huffington Post, and Yahoo.com.