Authoritarian Leaders as Successful Psychopaths: Towards an Understanding of the Role of Emotions in Political Decision-making

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Published: Dec 29, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/cjp.33978
Keywords:
psychopathology authoritarianism political behavior emotions in decision-making processes leadership in business Machiavellianism
Maria Clara Garavito
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5185-6824
German Bula Caraballo
Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Colombia
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1296-0610
Sebastián Alejandro González
Universidad de la Salle, Colombia
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6271-0276
Abstract

In this paper, we seek to understand the psychology and cognitive strategies of people with the psychological profile of authoritarian leaders. To understand their personality traits, we compare them with literature concerning successful psychopaths. We also see both personalities in the light of literature in the field of self-help for success in business. We say these psychological profiles are shaped by culture, as self-help literature shows. Our intention in comparing successful psychopaths and authoritarian leaders is not to reinforce the idea that authoritarian leaders are unemotional, but rather the opposite. We wish to explore this relationship from the perspective of embodied cognition, according to which emotions are a fundamental part of decision-making, including political decision-making. Traditionally, both successful psychopaths and authoritarian leaders are understood as unemotional and therefore completely rational: here we explore the idea that this apparent rationality hides a particular emotional profile and a certain stubbornness and impulsivity regarding previously set goals. Also, as self-help literature reveals, set goals are closely associated with their identity, so that compromise regarding goals is seen as a loss of said identity. The study of the authoritarian leader as a gnoseological category helps us think about the relationship between volition, rational thought, identity, and emotions in decision-making; and to understand the way of acting of authoritarian leaders, and the way they succeed and fail.

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