The dark side of personality is aptly named. But is there such a thing as an evil personality? During World War II, psychiatrists wondered whether the authoritarian leaders of the Nazi regime shared any personality characteristics that would explain their criminal behaviour.
On episode 146 of The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with Jack El-Hai, world-renowned journalist and author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, about the personality of authoritarians.
During the first Nuremberg trials, US Army psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley, MD, assessed and interviewed the German defendants, which he wrote about in 22 Cells in Nuremberg (1947). Jack’s 2013 biography of Kelley, which forms the basis of the 2025 film Nuremberg, highlights the relationship between Kelley and Hermann Göring, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit crimes, war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity.
So, how dark is the dark side of personality? What is an evil personality? And how can we resist authoritarian leaders?
The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring and Douglas Kelley
Jack, whose research has often taken him down dark paths, discovered Kelley’s story while working on another book. Kelley worked among the high-ranking German defendants in the first Nuremberg trial, particularly with Hermann Göring, the most powerful man in the Nazi regime after Adolf Hitler. Yet Kelley did not call them monsters or write off their behaviour as the product of mental illness.
“Kelley came to the belief that men like that were not outside the range of ‘normal personality,’” Jack said.i “That’s what’s so frightening about them. There are people all around us in every era who are capable of evil acts.”
Drawing on thousands of pages of Kelley’s personal archive, Jack published The Nazi and the Psychiatrist to tell the story of real-life Nazi war criminals and those who sought to understand them. He pushed back on the idea that the defendants fit Hannah Arendt’s famous “banality of evil” framing. Where Arendt described Adolf Eichmann as a colourless bureaucrat who would not have stood out in a crowd, Jack noted that the Nuremberg defendants were a different case entirely. “Many of the Nuremberg defendants were colourful, unforgettable figures,” he said. “But people who make a choice to do an evil thing can be held responsible and accountable for their choices.”
What Personality Characteristics Do Authoritarian Leaders Share?
As Kelley evaluated the people who were tried and convicted of some of history’s most evil crimes, he hypothesised that he would find a so-called Nazi virus, a psychiatric disorder that would explain their behaviour.
But after Kelley administered numerous psychiatric assessments to the German defendants in the first Nuremberg trial, he concluded there was no Nazi virus. The defendants did not share a common disorder.
Kelley did notice some personality characteristics that they shared, including opportunistic behaviour. Many of the defendants were interested in acquiring and exercising power over others and looked for opportunities to give themselves that chance. For example, Göring told Kelley he was initially attracted to the Nazi party precisely because it was very small at the beginning of the 1920s. Someone with opportunistic inclinations could easily rise to the top.
Jack explained: “As Göring was talking with Kelley, he was within his own mind formulating his own defence. Göring professed not to care about some of the foundational articles of Nazism—for instance, anti-Semitism. That has to be taken with a great deal of salt because Göring himself was the architect of many of the worst anti-Semitic policies that Nazi Germany instituted. What Göring said about his reasons for becoming a Nazi accords with the principles of opportunism, thinking of oneself primarily and thinking of a political movement as an opportunity to climb a ladder.”
Moving Against
In addition to being opportunistic, the defendants also seemed to Kelley to be workaholic, narcissistic, and lacking in remorse. Kelley was most intrigued by Göring, who appeared intelligent, charming, and self-deprecating. “He told jokes about himself and about Hitler,” Jack said. Yet Göring seemed to lack a conscience and only cared about himself and his immediate family.
Based on this high-level description of Göring’s personality, Göring perhaps would have scored high on a certain cluster of scales on the Hogan Development Survey (HDS). The HDS describes behaviours that can be counterproductive when overused, such as when too much confidence becomes arrogance. One response to stress, pressure, or complacency is to overuse the Moving Against cluster of behaviours, characterized by a tendency to dominate and intimidate others.
The Moving Against cluster concerns showing overconfidence in oneself, charm and charisma, a willingness to take risks, and the ability to keep others’ attention. These behavioural strategies are typical for executive profiles. At their worst, as Göring likely demonstrated, Moving Against characteristics can include entitled, exploitative behaviour.
The Authoritarian Personality: Followers
Some ordinary people who yield to situational pressures may become evil actors. Kelley asked Göring why more people didn’t say no to Adolf Hitler. “Göring’s response was that the no-men, those who disagreed or voiced objections, ended up underground in graves,” Jack said. Those who wanted to stay alive agreed with Hitler.
The personality characteristics that Kelley identified in Göring and the other defendants were not newly developed but rather lifelong traits. The men’s upbringing, political environment, and life experiences contributed to their political savvy and drive for power. Jack observed that the structure of the Nazi party followed that of many authoritarian regimes: a chain of command that makes it difficult for followers to disobey orders.
The German defendants were not uniformly rebellious and defiant. Some both gave and took commands; some were both leaders and followers. This suggests aspects of the authoritarian personality may also be related to the HDS Dutiful scale, which concerns waiting for and wanting to follow orders. Whether from fear, the desire to gain favour, or other complex motives, the willingness to comply with authority is characteristic of a follower personality.
The Authoritarian Personality: Leaders
Göring took a leadership role among the other defendants—gathering them together, coaching them on defence strategy, and giving them pep talks. As Ryne observed during the episode, Göring seemed to view his codefendants as subordinates and nobodies, an impression Jack confirmed. “He had a very high opinion of himself, as did Douglas Kelley,” Jack said. Göring resented sharing the limelight of the trial with others whom he viewed as nobodies. Instead, he took a leadership role among the other figures at the trial, coaching them about their defence strategy and giving them pep talks.
Those with authoritarian tendencies tend to dismiss perspectives that don’t align with their own. Like Göring, they proceed with actions in their own interest regardless of the consequences. Göring’s flair for drama and his overconfidence meant that he did not try to deflect blame. “Instead of seeing them as expressions of racism or hatred or out-of-control animosity, he tried to cast all of the crimes that happened during the war as expressions of patriotism and loyalty,” Jack explained.
Most people who have opportunistic traits don’t become mass murderers or designers of genocidal systems. Those in positions of power typically have the strategic self-awareness to know they are likely to suffer consequences for committing crimes. In the case of the German defendants who were convicted at the trials, they took the chance anyway and exercised their power in criminal acts.
How to Resist Authoritarian Leadership Behaviour
Authoritarianism did not end with the Nuremberg trials. Kelley viewed authoritarian leadership as currently happening in America. He saw Southern politicians as Nazi-like in their emotionally manipulative propaganda and rights-restricting policies. “Kelley recommended that to preserve our democracy, we need to rebuild our educational system to reinforce critical thinking,” Jack said. “If you have a public that’s good at critical thinking, you have hobbled many of the strongest efforts of authoritarians because the propaganda won’t work.”
According to Jack, critical thinking is always important, but it’s even more difficult now because of the need to judge the credibility of a source. This challenge is compounded by widespread loss of faith in institutions. “The loss of faith creates a void. The authoritarian tries to fill it,” he added. He urged people to consider a variety of information from a variety of sources.
Jack concluded: “Kelley’s position was that not everyone is capable of horribly evil acts, but it’s a condition of the human race that people like that are always among us, a measurable percentage of our species. And that Nazism, fascism, authoritarianism—these are not German things [. . .]. They are just human things, and we have to learn how to deal with it.”
Listen to this conversation in full on episode 146 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts.
Note
- “Normal” here does not imply that their actions were acceptable or ordinary. Kelley’s point was that the capacity for evil is not the exclusive province of a recognizable “type” of evil personality, which is precisely what made his findings so difficult for the public to accept.
