I’d definitely agree that leaders’ personalities are not the sole factor in determining a countries’ policies, levels of repression, etc., even in autocracies. And I’d tentatively guess that leaders’ personalities tend not to be a larger factor than other influences combined. And it’s very plausible to me that institutional structures tend to be a larger factor.
But it seems to me that leaders personalities are very likely at least sometimes a substantial factor. And, from memory, I don’t think this post makes or requires stronger claims than that. I.e., I don’t recall it making confident claims that other factors like institutional structures are usuallysmallerfactors than personality. Are there passages you thought were overly strong?
I think this post was largely arguing that, on the margin, it could be quite valuable to think about reducing risks from malevolence—not that other factors like institutional structures don’t also matter.
Torture is more common in multi-party autocracies than in one-party states.
This claim seems plausible to me, but I’ve never seen the claim before or seen specific evidence on it. Could you cite a source for that?
I also know of some data points that seem to push against that claim. For example, I believe there was a lot of torture during the one-party states of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. (Here are some sources that seem to support this, though I only read the titles, as I was already pretty sure this was true: 1, 2, 3.)
And a handful of historical accounts I’ve read make it seem quite plausible that the personality of the leaders played a role in this. In particular, those accounts suggest these leaders (or at least Hitler and Stalin; I know less about Mao) took pleasure in things like ordering tortures or gruesome deaths, that they regularly personally ordered these things, and that they sometimes ordered these things at times when it seems it wasn’t useful or logical to do so. Here’s one paper that supports those claims (though I’m mildly skeptical of the paper in some ways): Why Tyrants Go Too Far: Malignant Narcissism and Absolute Power.
(I’ve just started doing research following on from this post, and collaborating somewhat with its lead author, but all of the above opinions are my own, as always.)
I worry about the underlying assumption that democracies don’t encourage malevolent traits. So we observe less mass killings and rival killings in democracies than in dictatorships. One explanation is that democracies are selecting for anti-killing leaders. Another explanation is that malevolent leaders in democracies see little gain from killing while malevolent leaders in certain types of dictatorships see much gain from killing. For example, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon seem to have a lot of malevolent traits, but they mostly refrained from political killings. So the fourth section suggests too much causation on the personalities of leaders.
But it seems to me that leaders personalities are very likely at least sometimes a substantial factor.
Fair—even if most of the difference in political killing is from institutional incentives, preventing malevolent actors from becoming dictators or presidents is big gains.
Secondly, this research agenda must recognize that authoritarian cultures may accept or encourage violence against non-comformists or “disloyal” people. It’s a deeply sad fact, but important to understand. If torturing dissidents is an expected and approved behavior it is weaker evidence of a malevolent personality (fundamental attribution error).
Targeting your interventions:
You should pay more attention to how autocrats are actually selected. There are a few good models, my favorite is selectorate theory which (in dictatorships) emphasizes trust between top lieutenants. To continue with your preferred 40′s references, Herman Goring, Himler, Keitel and Borman all hate and distrust one another. But they each trust Hitler because Hitler selected them to receive stolen wealth in exchange for support. So as long as the autocrat is alive the alliance is “stable”.
In this model they care most about malevolence when the ruling coalition/launching org selects the next dictator. This famously happened after Stalin died, when Beria (head of secret police) got overthrown and replaced with Khrushchev who promised to stop political killings. So target regimes in or near transitions.
For example, the politburo of Cuba might be interested in this research. Saudi Arabia, now that MBS has solidified control, will be less fruitful.
Thanks for sharing that source. I tried to skim through to find the part most relevant to your claim, and found this:
What is observed regarding patterns of torture under dictatorship? The Hathaway torture data include 967 country-year observations of from 1985 to 1996 covering 109 separate dictatorships. The mean rate of torture is 3.0 with a standard deviation of 1.1; the median is 3. My principal explanatory variable is Gandhi’s “parties,” a dummy variable coded 1 if more than one party exists legally and 0 otherwise. For the Hathaway data, nearly 52 percent of the observations have multiple political parties. Average rates of torture under dictatorships without political parties is 2.8 (standard deviation 1.1), but rates of torture under dictatorships with political parties is 3.1 (standard deviation 1.0). A t-test indicates that the difference in average rates of torture is statistically significant beyond the 0.01 confidence level (t = −4.44). Rates of torture are ironically higher under open dictatorships that allow multiple political parties
So I do think this source supports your claim. But I’d note that:
That data just covers 1985-1996. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao seem the most salient examples of potentially very malevolent individuals wielding great power and causing great harm, and each would be excluded from that data set.
I’m not saying that the study should’ve focused on an earlier period, or that there’s some reason our predictions about the future would be better informed by an earlier 11 year period.
But I’d be more confident about extrapolations from the data set if it spanned a larger period of time.
And I think it would make sense for our predictions to draw on both that data and the observation of extreme harms under the one-party states of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. (The latter is just a sample of 3, but I believe it accounted for a large portion of all deaths in mass murders, famines, etc.)
The difference in averages doesn’t look hugely substantial - ~30% of 1 standard deviation—even if it was statistically significant.
This seems like a further reason to also pay substantial attention to other observations, like harms under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
(Again, this doesn’t mean your claim was false, just that its evidence base and implications may be more limited than one might have thought.)
I’m compelled by this. That the difference is only 30% of 1 standard deviation means that lots of variation could be explained by other factors. Personality of the dictator could still explain lots of variation, even a majority. There could also be a relationship between dictator personality and allowances for dissent. Thanks for explaining that!
Aside, you would be more compelling if you talked about autocrats other than Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Aside, you would be more compelling if you talked about autocrats other than Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Do you mean talking about other autocrats as well, or instead of, talking about Hitler, Stalin, and Mao?
If you mean “as well”, I’d agree. I’ve already started looking at some others (as did David and Tobias, the authors of this post), and will hopefully do more of that. The reason for focusing mostly on those three so far is just that it takes time to learn about more, and those three were (I’d argue) huge factors in a large portion of all harms from political atrocities in the 20th century.
If you mean “instead of”, could you explain further why you say that?
Hmmm, that is a good question. Let me dig in more. Here are reasons to talk about others than Hitler Stalin and Mao
Coup Proofing is a common practice of dictators for political survival
Some behaviors of Hitler, Stalin and Mao have compelling institutional explanations that have become repeated behavior of long-ruling dictators. I’m thinking of coup proofing in particular. Coup proofing is a set of policies dictators enact to prevent a single small group from seizing power; rotatring or purging officers (Tukachevsky/Rommel) splitting the army into multiple factions/militias (NKVD/SS/Revolutionary Guard). We’ve since observed that lots of dictators (and coup-threatened democracies) practice coup-proofing. So I would be careful about attributing the *intra-elite* violence by particular regimes to the personalities of the leaders. Coup-proofing cannot explain violence against non-elites by those regimes.
Change in ideological motivation between early dictators and modern dictators
Secondly, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were much more ideological than most modern dictators. The Mussolini model of a “moderate” or “synarchic” authoritarianism spread more after WWII. By moderate I mean without a narrow, extreme vision of state-society interaction, not that dissent or economic freedom were allowed. Particularly today ideology structures the behavior of dictators much less. So one could argue that both Hitler and Stalin faithfully followed the visions laid out in their (terrible and warped) ideologies. If you buy that argument you would update downward on future dictators committing similar violence against non-elites.
For example, Mohammad Bin Salman has killed and tortured elite rivals, dissenters and starved many thousands of Yemenis to death. But he does not seem interested in any state project that would involve violence on the scale of Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot.
All that said, I personally do not put much weight on my ideology argument. Firstly, the ideological explanation of Hitler and Stalin’s behavior is not that strong. Secondly just because most dictators, like MBS and the Ethiopians, have “moderate” visions of state-society relations does not prevent future radical dictators from taking power (tail risk). Note that ISIS is a deathcult that took over half of two middle income countries, and that even in the 20′s and 30′s Mein Kampf was such ridiculous nonsense that Hitler should not have risen to power.
But on a first read this is a real hole in your argument. Almost all modern dictators do not look like Hitler, Stalin and Mao due to their weak ideoligical commitments. If you include a few more modern examples you can evade this argument. Off the top of my head I would suggest:
Khomeini and Ahmedinajad—they did not murder lots of people but their stubborn refusal to compromise with the world order has impoverished Iran without causing a regime change (they changed a bit recently but 30 years of bad decisions before).
Pol Pot − 1980′s, only stopped by Vietnamese intervention
Your comments about coup-proofing seem interesting and useful.
We’ve since observed that lots of dictators (and coup-threatened democracies) practice coup-proofing. So I would be careful about attributing the *intra-elite* violence by particular regimes to the personalities of the leaders.
I think the fact that more leaders engaged in violent coup-proofing (rather than it just being Hitler, Stalin, and Mao) should indeed provide weak evidence against the theory that the unusual (compared to the population as a whole) personalities of leaders plays a key role in whether violent coop-proofing occurs. This is because that theory would now need to claim that a larger number of leaders have personalities that are unusual in the relevant way, or that a lack of such unusual personalities was “made up for” by other factors in some cases.
But I think that this fact would only serve as weak evidence, because it doesn’t seem very implausible to claim that a fairly large number of dictators, or leaders of coup-threatened democracies, have personalities that are unusual in the relevant way. These are people in unusual positions which are arguably easier to get into if one is ruthlessly self-interested, so it wouldn’t seem surprising (prima facie) if their average levels of ruthlessness-relevant traits was notably above population averages.
Additionally, it seems worth distinguishing violent coup-proofing from coup-proofing as a whole. In terms of how well they might evidence malevolent traits, “rotating [...] officers” and “splitting the army into multiple factions/militias” seem quite different from the sorts of violent purges engaged in by e.g. Stalin. (It may well be that violent coup-proofing is very common as well; I’m just flagging that the distinction seems relevant for my purposes.)
You also seem to imply that (a) these coup-proofing behaviours may have been rational things for a self-interested leader to do in those situations, and (b) this is reason to be careful in assuming that this is about personality. I think (a) is a good point. And I think there’s some merit to (b), in the sense that this pushes against thinking something like “These leaders are just crazy and evil.”
But overall, I don’t think this is a question of personality vs incentive structures. I think neither determines a person’s behaviour by itself. And I think whether or not one would do even horrific things if it’s in one’s self-interest is partly a matter of personality. E.g., I’d be willing to bet that a very large portion of people wouldn’t engage in violent coup-proofing, even if they were in a situation where doing so would help them keep power. (Another framing of this is that a person’s personality and values helps determine their incentives, in the sense that it influences what we like and dislike, including how much we dislike harming people.)
Coup-proofing cannot explain violence against non-elites by those regimes.
I think this is key; I think the massive-scale violence against non-elites is probably a larger part of why Hitler, Stalin, and Mao seem like interesting case studies of potential harm from malevolence than is the potentially “rational” coup-proofing.
That said, it’s good to independently consider the merits of a even non-central arguments/points, and to update incrementally, so your arguments against making naive inferences from coup-proofing behaviours are still useful.
I have one criticism of the argument that coup-proofing prevalence is evidence for personality factors. Suppose that if people observe a game being played multiple times they are more likely to set aside their personal preferences and “play to win”. So if I were the first dictator of Iraq I might say “no I’m not going to kill generals who come from different towns, that would be evil”. And then get killed for it. And maybe the second dictator says the same thing. But by the time the third or fourth dictator rises to power he’ll either be selected for willingness to use violence or he will decide his preference for living is stronger than his preference for not killing. While I agree that many people would not commit inter-elite violence as the first leader, I suspect a much larger number would as the 5th leader. So an argument for point B.
Saddam Hussein was the 5th Iraqi leader to take power by coup within 21 years.
But on the other hand, there are lots of leaders that just stepped down when they lost the support of their ruling coalitions. And those heroes do not become famous. This is strong evidence of the importance of personality.
I have one criticism of the argument that coup-proofing prevalence is evidence for personality factors.
To be clear, my argument was more like “coup-proofing prevalence doesn’t seem like strong evidence against personality playing an important role”. I.e., I don’t think that it should reduce our belief that personality plays an important role.
It is true that I think I’d see these behaviours as evidence for personality playing an important role. But I’m not sure, and I’m not seeing it as key evidence.
While I agree that many people would not commit inter-elite violence as the first leader, I suspect a much larger number would as the 5th leader. So an argument for point B.
I’d agree that a much larger number would as the 5th leader than as the 1st leader, in the scenario you describe. And I think this is a valuable point.
But, in line with your final paragraph, I’d still bet that many people wouldn’t; I think many people would simply step down, flee, or accept radical changes to the nature of their regime.
And perhaps more importantly, I think personality influences whether someone tries to become a leader in the first place, and whether they succeed in that. So I expect a lot of people to not want to “do horrible things”, recognise that pursuing this leadership position may require them to “do horrible things” along the way or to stay in power, and thus just not pursue those positions.
(That said, I did say “I’d be willing to bet that a very large portion of people wouldn’t engage in violent coup-proofing, even if they were in a situation where doing so would help them keep power.” So there’s a valid reason why you focused on how people would behave if they somehow landed in the leadership position, rather than how likely they are to enter those positions to begin with.)
Your points (and counterpoints!) about changes in ideological motivation are very interesting. And I think it’d probably be good for me to spend some time engaging with evidence/arguments about how much ideology influenced Hitler, Stalin, and Mao’s most “extreme” behaviours and whether/how much the influence of ideology has waned.
And it does seem wise to think about that, and about more modern examples, if one is planning to communicate with the public, policymakers, or academics about this topic in a way that leans substantially on historical examples of dictators. (I’m not sure if anyone will actually do such communications, or emphasise those cases when doing so. It may, for example, make more sense to just focus on the psychological studies, or on examples from business.)
Another explanation is that malevolent leaders in democracies see little gain from killing while malevolent leaders in certain types of dictatorships see much gain from killing. For example, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon seem to have a lot of malevolent traits, but they mostly refrained from political killings. So the fourth section suggests too much causation on the personalities of leaders.
I did recently think it might be interesting to look into Nixon as a case study in how, and how well, democratic institutions can mitigate the harm caused by leaders with high levels of dark tetrad traits. (I just think it might be such a case study, because I haven’t yet really looked into evidence on Nixon’s personality—this is just a guess so far.) Thanks for highlighting Lincoln too—I wouldn’t have guessed he had high levels of dark traits, but I’ll look into it.
I’d definitely guess that the reasons there is less harm from malevolent leaders in democracies are both that democracies select for malevolence less, and that democracies don’t allow/incentivise malevolent behavioursas much.
In my head, I currently break intervention options in this cause area into:
Reducing how malevolent people are (via, e.g., very cautious and well thought-out and not-rushed genetic engineering)
Reducing the chances of malevolent people getting into positions where those traits create major risks (via, e.g., electoral reform, reducing instability and conflict)
Reducing the risks created when malevolent people get into those positions (via, e.g., checks and balances, maybe reducing centralisation of power)
I had felt like this post implied all three of those categories, not just the first two. But now that I re-skim the Political interventions section, I see that that might not have been made very explicit. So that critique of yours may be valid. (And I definitely agree with your point, separate from how it relates to potential oversights of this post.)
this research agenda must recognize that authoritarian cultures may accept or encourage violence against non-comformists or “disloyal” people. It’s a deeply sad fact, but important to understand. If torturing dissidents is an expected and approved behavior it is weaker evidence of a malevolent personality (fundamental attribution error).
I definitely agree that:
it’s important to consider multiple explanations of the various horrific or troubling behaviours
it can be easy to psychoanalyse/diagnose from a distance in a foolish way
the fundamental attribution error is worth keeping in mind here
I’m hoping to look a bit into how much we can trust speculative psychological profiles in general, maybe “best practices” for that shaky endeavour, and maybe how this relates to people like Hitler in particular. (Before getting into EA, I might’ve dismissed such psychological profiles. But I’ve moved towards thinking that, for many questions, it’s hard to do better than weak evidence, and it can be best to just gather diverse kinds of weak evidence, update incrementally, and remain aware of how uncertain we are.)
(Also, by the way, I read The Dictator’s Handbook last year and found it interesting. I agree that the models/ideas in that book seem relevant here.)
I’d definitely agree that leaders’ personalities are not the sole factor in determining a countries’ policies, levels of repression, etc., even in autocracies. And I’d tentatively guess that leaders’ personalities tend not to be a larger factor than other influences combined. And it’s very plausible to me that institutional structures tend to be a larger factor.
But it seems to me that leaders personalities are very likely at least sometimes a substantial factor. And, from memory, I don’t think this post makes or requires stronger claims than that. I.e., I don’t recall it making confident claims that other factors like institutional structures are usually smaller factors than personality. Are there passages you thought were overly strong?
I think this post was largely arguing that, on the margin, it could be quite valuable to think about reducing risks from malevolence—not that other factors like institutional structures don’t also matter.
This claim seems plausible to me, but I’ve never seen the claim before or seen specific evidence on it. Could you cite a source for that?
I also know of some data points that seem to push against that claim. For example, I believe there was a lot of torture during the one-party states of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. (Here are some sources that seem to support this, though I only read the titles, as I was already pretty sure this was true: 1, 2, 3.)
And a handful of historical accounts I’ve read make it seem quite plausible that the personality of the leaders played a role in this. In particular, those accounts suggest these leaders (or at least Hitler and Stalin; I know less about Mao) took pleasure in things like ordering tortures or gruesome deaths, that they regularly personally ordered these things, and that they sometimes ordered these things at times when it seems it wasn’t useful or logical to do so. Here’s one paper that supports those claims (though I’m mildly skeptical of the paper in some ways): Why Tyrants Go Too Far: Malignant Narcissism and Absolute Power.
(I’ve just started doing research following on from this post, and collaborating somewhat with its lead author, but all of the above opinions are my own, as always.)
Source: https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/103226/mod_resource/content/1/James%20Vreeland%202008.PDF
Concerns with causation:
I worry about the underlying assumption that democracies don’t encourage malevolent traits. So we observe less mass killings and rival killings in democracies than in dictatorships. One explanation is that democracies are selecting for anti-killing leaders. Another explanation is that malevolent leaders in democracies see little gain from killing while malevolent leaders in certain types of dictatorships see much gain from killing. For example, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon seem to have a lot of malevolent traits, but they mostly refrained from political killings. So the fourth section suggests too much causation on the personalities of leaders.
Fair—even if most of the difference in political killing is from institutional incentives, preventing malevolent actors from becoming dictators or presidents is big gains.
Secondly, this research agenda must recognize that authoritarian cultures may accept or encourage violence against non-comformists or “disloyal” people. It’s a deeply sad fact, but important to understand. If torturing dissidents is an expected and approved behavior it is weaker evidence of a malevolent personality (fundamental attribution error).
Targeting your interventions:
You should pay more attention to how autocrats are actually selected. There are a few good models, my favorite is selectorate theory which (in dictatorships) emphasizes trust between top lieutenants. To continue with your preferred 40′s references, Herman Goring, Himler, Keitel and Borman all hate and distrust one another. But they each trust Hitler because Hitler selected them to receive stolen wealth in exchange for support. So as long as the autocrat is alive the alliance is “stable”.
In this model they care most about malevolence when the ruling coalition/launching org selects the next dictator. This famously happened after Stalin died, when Beria (head of secret police) got overthrown and replaced with Khrushchev who promised to stop political killings. So target regimes in or near transitions.
For example, the politburo of Cuba might be interested in this research. Saudi Arabia, now that MBS has solidified control, will be less fruitful.
Thanks for sharing that source. I tried to skim through to find the part most relevant to your claim, and found this:
So I do think this source supports your claim. But I’d note that:
That data just covers 1985-1996. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao seem the most salient examples of potentially very malevolent individuals wielding great power and causing great harm, and each would be excluded from that data set.
I’m not saying that the study should’ve focused on an earlier period, or that there’s some reason our predictions about the future would be better informed by an earlier 11 year period.
But I’d be more confident about extrapolations from the data set if it spanned a larger period of time.
And I think it would make sense for our predictions to draw on both that data and the observation of extreme harms under the one-party states of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. (The latter is just a sample of 3, but I believe it accounted for a large portion of all deaths in mass murders, famines, etc.)
The difference in averages doesn’t look hugely substantial - ~30% of 1 standard deviation—even if it was statistically significant.
This seems like a further reason to also pay substantial attention to other observations, like harms under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
(Again, this doesn’t mean your claim was false, just that its evidence base and implications may be more limited than one might have thought.)
I’m compelled by this. That the difference is only 30% of 1 standard deviation means that lots of variation could be explained by other factors. Personality of the dictator could still explain lots of variation, even a majority. There could also be a relationship between dictator personality and allowances for dissent. Thanks for explaining that!
Aside, you would be more compelling if you talked about autocrats other than Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Do you mean talking about other autocrats as well, or instead of, talking about Hitler, Stalin, and Mao?
If you mean “as well”, I’d agree. I’ve already started looking at some others (as did David and Tobias, the authors of this post), and will hopefully do more of that. The reason for focusing mostly on those three so far is just that it takes time to learn about more, and those three were (I’d argue) huge factors in a large portion of all harms from political atrocities in the 20th century.
If you mean “instead of”, could you explain further why you say that?
Hmmm, that is a good question. Let me dig in more. Here are reasons to talk about others than Hitler Stalin and Mao
Coup Proofing is a common practice of dictators for political survival
Some behaviors of Hitler, Stalin and Mao have compelling institutional explanations that have become repeated behavior of long-ruling dictators. I’m thinking of coup proofing in particular. Coup proofing is a set of policies dictators enact to prevent a single small group from seizing power; rotatring or purging officers (Tukachevsky/Rommel) splitting the army into multiple factions/militias (NKVD/SS/Revolutionary Guard). We’ve since observed that lots of dictators (and coup-threatened democracies) practice coup-proofing. So I would be careful about attributing the *intra-elite* violence by particular regimes to the personalities of the leaders. Coup-proofing cannot explain violence against non-elites by those regimes.
Change in ideological motivation between early dictators and modern dictators
Secondly, Hitler, Stalin and Mao were much more ideological than most modern dictators. The Mussolini model of a “moderate” or “synarchic” authoritarianism spread more after WWII. By moderate I mean without a narrow, extreme vision of state-society interaction, not that dissent or economic freedom were allowed. Particularly today ideology structures the behavior of dictators much less. So one could argue that both Hitler and Stalin faithfully followed the visions laid out in their (terrible and warped) ideologies. If you buy that argument you would update downward on future dictators committing similar violence against non-elites.
For example, Mohammad Bin Salman has killed and tortured elite rivals, dissenters and starved many thousands of Yemenis to death. But he does not seem interested in any state project that would involve violence on the scale of Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot.
All that said, I personally do not put much weight on my ideology argument. Firstly, the ideological explanation of Hitler and Stalin’s behavior is not that strong. Secondly just because most dictators, like MBS and the Ethiopians, have “moderate” visions of state-society relations does not prevent future radical dictators from taking power (tail risk). Note that ISIS is a deathcult that took over half of two middle income countries, and that even in the 20′s and 30′s Mein Kampf was such ridiculous nonsense that Hitler should not have risen to power.
But on a first read this is a real hole in your argument. Almost all modern dictators do not look like Hitler, Stalin and Mao due to their weak ideoligical commitments. If you include a few more modern examples you can evade this argument. Off the top of my head I would suggest:
Khomeini and Ahmedinajad—they did not murder lots of people but their stubborn refusal to compromise with the world order has impoverished Iran without causing a regime change (they changed a bit recently but 30 years of bad decisions before).
Pol Pot − 1980′s, only stopped by Vietnamese intervention
Modern Burma
Your comments about coup-proofing seem interesting and useful.
I think the fact that more leaders engaged in violent coup-proofing (rather than it just being Hitler, Stalin, and Mao) should indeed provide weak evidence against the theory that the unusual (compared to the population as a whole) personalities of leaders plays a key role in whether violent coop-proofing occurs. This is because that theory would now need to claim that a larger number of leaders have personalities that are unusual in the relevant way, or that a lack of such unusual personalities was “made up for” by other factors in some cases.
But I think that this fact would only serve as weak evidence, because it doesn’t seem very implausible to claim that a fairly large number of dictators, or leaders of coup-threatened democracies, have personalities that are unusual in the relevant way. These are people in unusual positions which are arguably easier to get into if one is ruthlessly self-interested, so it wouldn’t seem surprising (prima facie) if their average levels of ruthlessness-relevant traits was notably above population averages.
Additionally, it seems worth distinguishing violent coup-proofing from coup-proofing as a whole. In terms of how well they might evidence malevolent traits, “rotating [...] officers” and “splitting the army into multiple factions/militias” seem quite different from the sorts of violent purges engaged in by e.g. Stalin. (It may well be that violent coup-proofing is very common as well; I’m just flagging that the distinction seems relevant for my purposes.)
You also seem to imply that (a) these coup-proofing behaviours may have been rational things for a self-interested leader to do in those situations, and (b) this is reason to be careful in assuming that this is about personality. I think (a) is a good point. And I think there’s some merit to (b), in the sense that this pushes against thinking something like “These leaders are just crazy and evil.”
But overall, I don’t think this is a question of personality vs incentive structures. I think neither determines a person’s behaviour by itself. And I think whether or not one would do even horrific things if it’s in one’s self-interest is partly a matter of personality. E.g., I’d be willing to bet that a very large portion of people wouldn’t engage in violent coup-proofing, even if they were in a situation where doing so would help them keep power. (Another framing of this is that a person’s personality and values helps determine their incentives, in the sense that it influences what we like and dislike, including how much we dislike harming people.)
I think this is key; I think the massive-scale violence against non-elites is probably a larger part of why Hitler, Stalin, and Mao seem like interesting case studies of potential harm from malevolence than is the potentially “rational” coup-proofing.
That said, it’s good to independently consider the merits of a even non-central arguments/points, and to update incrementally, so your arguments against making naive inferences from coup-proofing behaviours are still useful.
I have one criticism of the argument that coup-proofing prevalence is evidence for personality factors. Suppose that if people observe a game being played multiple times they are more likely to set aside their personal preferences and “play to win”. So if I were the first dictator of Iraq I might say “no I’m not going to kill generals who come from different towns, that would be evil”. And then get killed for it. And maybe the second dictator says the same thing. But by the time the third or fourth dictator rises to power he’ll either be selected for willingness to use violence or he will decide his preference for living is stronger than his preference for not killing. While I agree that many people would not commit inter-elite violence as the first leader, I suspect a much larger number would as the 5th leader. So an argument for point B.
Saddam Hussein was the 5th Iraqi leader to take power by coup within 21 years.
But on the other hand, there are lots of leaders that just stepped down when they lost the support of their ruling coalitions. And those heroes do not become famous. This is strong evidence of the importance of personality.
To be clear, my argument was more like “coup-proofing prevalence doesn’t seem like strong evidence against personality playing an important role”. I.e., I don’t think that it should reduce our belief that personality plays an important role.
It is true that I think I’d see these behaviours as evidence for personality playing an important role. But I’m not sure, and I’m not seeing it as key evidence.
I’d agree that a much larger number would as the 5th leader than as the 1st leader, in the scenario you describe. And I think this is a valuable point.
But, in line with your final paragraph, I’d still bet that many people wouldn’t; I think many people would simply step down, flee, or accept radical changes to the nature of their regime.
And perhaps more importantly, I think personality influences whether someone tries to become a leader in the first place, and whether they succeed in that. So I expect a lot of people to not want to “do horrible things”, recognise that pursuing this leadership position may require them to “do horrible things” along the way or to stay in power, and thus just not pursue those positions.
(That said, I did say “I’d be willing to bet that a very large portion of people wouldn’t engage in violent coup-proofing, even if they were in a situation where doing so would help them keep power.” So there’s a valid reason why you focused on how people would behave if they somehow landed in the leadership position, rather than how likely they are to enter those positions to begin with.)
Thanks for this comment.
Your points (and counterpoints!) about changes in ideological motivation are very interesting. And I think it’d probably be good for me to spend some time engaging with evidence/arguments about how much ideology influenced Hitler, Stalin, and Mao’s most “extreme” behaviours and whether/how much the influence of ideology has waned.
And it does seem wise to think about that, and about more modern examples, if one is planning to communicate with the public, policymakers, or academics about this topic in a way that leans substantially on historical examples of dictators. (I’m not sure if anyone will actually do such communications, or emphasise those cases when doing so. It may, for example, make more sense to just focus on the psychological studies, or on examples from business.)
I did recently think it might be interesting to look into Nixon as a case study in how, and how well, democratic institutions can mitigate the harm caused by leaders with high levels of dark tetrad traits. (I just think it might be such a case study, because I haven’t yet really looked into evidence on Nixon’s personality—this is just a guess so far.) Thanks for highlighting Lincoln too—I wouldn’t have guessed he had high levels of dark traits, but I’ll look into it.
I’d definitely guess that the reasons there is less harm from malevolent leaders in democracies are both that democracies select for malevolence less, and that democracies don’t allow/incentivise malevolent behaviours as much.
In my head, I currently break intervention options in this cause area into:
Reducing how malevolent people are (via, e.g., very cautious and well thought-out and not-rushed genetic engineering)
Reducing the chances of malevolent people getting into positions where those traits create major risks (via, e.g., electoral reform, reducing instability and conflict)
Reducing the risks created when malevolent people get into those positions (via, e.g., checks and balances, maybe reducing centralisation of power)
I had felt like this post implied all three of those categories, not just the first two. But now that I re-skim the Political interventions section, I see that that might not have been made very explicit. So that critique of yours may be valid. (And I definitely agree with your point, separate from how it relates to potential oversights of this post.)
I definitely agree that:
it’s important to consider multiple explanations of the various horrific or troubling behaviours
it can be easy to psychoanalyse/diagnose from a distance in a foolish way
the fundamental attribution error is worth keeping in mind here
I’m hoping to look a bit into how much we can trust speculative psychological profiles in general, maybe “best practices” for that shaky endeavour, and maybe how this relates to people like Hitler in particular. (Before getting into EA, I might’ve dismissed such psychological profiles. But I’ve moved towards thinking that, for many questions, it’s hard to do better than weak evidence, and it can be best to just gather diverse kinds of weak evidence, update incrementally, and remain aware of how uncertain we are.)
(Also, by the way, I read The Dictator’s Handbook last year and found it interesting. I agree that the models/ideas in that book seem relevant here.)