Ranking Psychopaths

If claims to expertise in economics and politics are dubious, as the last post discusses, the field of psychology has a witch-doctor quality all its own. In this case, it's even worse than usual: this is an economist writing on psychology! That said, the headline finding is plausible: "Washington, DC: The Psychopath Capital of America."
Ryan Murphy, an economist at Southern Methodist University, recently published a working paper in which he ranked each of the states by the predominance of—there’s no nice way to put it—psychopaths. The winner? Washington in a walk. In fact, the capital scored higher on Murphy’s scale than the next two runners-up combined.

“I had previously written on politicians and psychopathy, but I had no expectation D.C. would stand out as much as it does,” Murphy wrote in an email.
The whole piece is a festival of confirmation bias for me, so I'm disinclined to credit it as a piece of true knowledge. (What an odd thing to say: "I'm disinclined to believe it because I already believe it." But there we are.)

3 comments:

Sam L. said...

Politico would KNOW.

douglas said...

IF you're evaluating DC- the entire district- it may have more to do with bureaucratic sorts than politicians- politicians are a relatively small number of people even there.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@Grim - You might say that you consider it only slightly more evidenced than you did a day ago.

@ douglas - and lobbyists, PR firms, non-profit advocacy groups, and lawyers.