Are psychopaths and heroes twigs off the same branch? Evidence from college, community, and presidential samples

• We examine the relation among psychopathy, heroism, and closely related altruistic behaviors.
• Psychopathy tends to be positively associated with heroism and altruism towards strangers.
• The fearless dominance component of psychopathy appears to be most related to heroism and altruism.
• Heroism tended to be positively correlated with indices of antisocial behavior.

We examine the relation between psychopathy, especially its fearless dominance dimension, and heroism in two undergraduate samples (N = 124 and 119), a community sample (N = 457) and 42 U.S. presidents. The first undergraduate and community sample revealed significant positive correlations between fearless dominance and heroism and altruism toward strangers; the presidential sample provided some evidence for an association between fearless dominance and war heroism. In the second undergraduate sample, fearless dominance was related only to altruism toward strangers; heroism was instead significantly positively correlated with the impulsive antisociality component of psychopathy. These findings raise the possibility that some psychopathic personality traits are modestly associated with heightened levels of heroic altruism, and raise questions for future research on the personality correlates of heroism.