Do Psychopaths Have Morals?

This is a layered and perhaps provocative question because it cuts right to the heart of a question that most will ask of themselves: What are "morals?"

Let me invite you to look beyond the pop-culture version of the psychopath—the serial killer, the boardroom sociopath—to something far more uncomfortable: the reality that morality itself might not be a universal code; it might be a strategy.

The Different Moral Operating System

There are psychopaths that have been shown to have morals. The twist is that those morals often operate quite differently than in neurotypical people.

Where most people feel guilt, empathy, or shame as internal brakes on their behaviour, psychopaths must navigate the world without those empathic powers.

Some are taught a kind of cold moral reasoning; some develop their own rules, and those rules are operated intellectually and even clinically rather than felt emotionally.

Rational Rather Than Emotional Morality

It has been shown that for many psychopaths, "right" and "wrong" aren't about inner emotional disturbance — they're about cost-benefit analysis, social contracts, or even personal codes of honour.

There are psychopaths who operate as if they believe deeply in loyalty, fairness, or justice — not because it hurts their heart to see suffering, but because betrayal or disorder offends their internal logic or threatens their power control.

Research backs this up. Studies show that many psychopaths score normally on abstract moral reasoning tests. They know the difference between right and wrong.

They just don't feel right or wrong as others do. Psychopathy is more common than most imagine, and it, like most atypical neutral phenomena, is fascinating.

The morality of psychopathy occurs on a spectrum. There are posited evolutionary benefits to having some psychopaths in your community, and this is because when, say, a psychopathic mercenary or a psychopathic surgeon following their own strict moral codes, not because they feel compelled by empathy, because they've decided that their code works, and in it working, they may outperform non-psychopathic contemporaries in grisly tasks.

Morality as Strategy

In a weird way, this may force us to admit something uncomfortable about human morality in general. It's not always about goodness. Sometimes it's about structure. Sometimes it's about power or control. Sometimes it's just… strategy.

This might beg the question: what happens when a person builds a moral system without empathy at the centre? Can it be stable? Can it be noble? Can it be terrifying?

It demonstrably can and even all at once. It can also be the polar opposite. For the psychopath, chaos may be their strategy of choice, and scarier still, they may have nothing holding them back from switching strategies on a whim.

Psychopathic Traits in Leadership

For example, politics can reward those with psychopathic traits. Sure, the loud, chaotic kind might be obvious, and the quiet, calculating, disciplined kind may actually be hugely beneficial to a society. The kind of traits that don't allow someone to flinch when ideals collide with reality. The kind that knows: everyone talks about the "greater good" and someone has to decide who gets sacrificed for it.

Let me give you one of the cleanest examples: Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore.

Now, I would not say Lee Kuan Yew was a psychopath, certainly not in the clinical sense, and his leadership style carried traits that have been seen in high-functioning, strategic psychopaths. Famously detached and pragmatic. Ruthlessly focused on results over sentiment. He openly admitted he would use laws, media control, and social engineering to bend the nation into shape because, to him, freedom without order was chaos, and that was, to him, immoral.

His morality wasn't soft. It was almost architectural.

He clearly articulated that building a strong nation required crushing corruption, silencing threats, and sometimes ridding the country of people who got in the way. Not because he hated or disliked them emotionally, because his math of survival demanded it.

As I live in Ireland, let us back further and look at Thomas Cromwell. The man behind Henry VIII's brutal reformation of England, which also cast a horrific shadow over Ireland. Some historians have painted him as a classic political psychopath: calculating, emotionally detached, ruthlessly pragmatic. Yet Cromwell wasn't chaotic or bloodthirsty in the way a cartel leader or serial killer might be. He never even set foot in Ireland. He had a system. His "morality" was rooted in order, loyalty to the Crown, and the belief that England needed to be reshaped violently to survive. He didn't kill for fun. He killed because, in his world, removing obstacles was moral clarity.

Corporate Psychopathy

Modern corporate psychopaths have often been lauded, people like "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, the notorious CEO famous for slashing tens of thousands of jobs while smiling for Wall Street. Dunlap wasn't confused about his version of right and wrong. He genuinely believed that maximizing shareholder value, no matter the human cost, was not just acceptable, it was efficient, clean, and logical. To him, such work was right, not wrong.

At all levels, there have been psychopathic figures who harnessed their cold-blooded detachment for what may be considered good. Take certain military surgeons in war zones. In the heat of combat, when empathy might paralyze action, their emotional detachment became a superpower. They moved from wounded soldier to wounded soldier, machine-like, saving lives not because they felt compassion, instead because they were obsessed with precision, duty, and standing.

These examples reveal something extraordinary: psychopaths aren't all inherently evil, although they are a heavy price to pay if they become so. What they lack is not morality. They lack emotional brakes. Their morality can also become terrifyingly pure, stripped of hesitation, stripped of doubt, stripped of mercy.

Psychopathy in Politics

In democracy, they can even thrive because of psychopaths, and also it can be destroyed by them. They may build structures that last. They may make hard choices that most of us couldn't stomach. They might cut deals that feel dirty, knowing that the alternative is instability, collapse, or chaos.

Horrifically, Churchill let entire villages starve in Bengal during WWII while focusing on defeating Hitler. Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" not as mere dramas, as a kind of user manual for power. Some modern political consultants talk about voters as segments and turnout models instead of people.

Psychopathic morality in politics can be cold, it is rarely beautiful, and it is often terrifying. It often claims to be willing to do harm now to prevent greater harm later. Most of us aren't comfortable making such choices.

No small irony that many of history's most "beloved" political figures had to act in such ways to survive. The semblance of their compassion may have gotten them elected; their cold-blooded strategy keeps them in power. They say power corrupts; perhaps that's just an observation of the expression of what was already inside.

The Double-Edged Sword

There is profundity here as some of the greatest atrocities and some of the most astonishing feats of survival have been driven by the same cold moral clarity.

Whether that clarity built gulags or trauma hospitals depended entirely on that person's choices, whether they were a psychopath or something in between.

What's wild is that psychopathy, in its raw form, is a bit like nuclear radiation. It can light up a city or it can obliterate it. Morality doesn't do as much as we would like to determine which result comes from putting a psychopath into power, and we are left with the question of whether psychopaths that have morals are likely less toxic than those that don't? Then there is the even deeper question of whether any of us should rely on our morals to produce good outcomes.

Noticeably, there are many more nuclear missiles poised to destroy the world than there are nuclear reactors available to cleanly power it. Was that by moral choice?

Bill Liao is a prominent Irish Australian entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. He is a general partner at SOSV and co-founded CoderDojo, a global movement to teach young people to code. Liao is passionate about technology, sustainability, and social impact, and has been a driving force behind numerous successful startups and initiatives.