The "Need for Chaos" Voter

New research has discovered a new personality trait called "need for chaos." They just want to watch the world burn and they're happy to help democracy end in flames. We must understand them.

Thank you for reading The Garden of Forking Paths. This article was released many moons ago—for paid subscribers only—but given that the US presidential election is approaching, I figured it was worth releasing it again more broadly.

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A few years ago, after I had just appeared on television, I received one of my favorite hate e-mails of all time.

“Dear Brain,” it began. Already, I could tell, we were on a winning trajectory. He thinks I’m smart. Then, alas, it took a turn for the worse:

“You are a hate-filled poorly educated Nazi clown. A leftist cancer on humanity. You are EVIL.”

It concluded as follows.

Best wishes,

Max

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Well, at least he was polite. These kinds of e-mails appear regularly in the inbox of anyone who writes about American politics or comments on it on television. They get particularly vitriolic if you’re critical of Trump, as I have been for years, and they’re much worse if you’re a woman. I’ve heard horror stories.

Every so often, there are death threats. (Thankfully, for me, there’s usually an ocean between me and the people issuing them, and I’d place a fairly large bet on them not having an up-to-date passport, nor a penchant for the delightful cultural curosity that draws one to international travel).

But here’s the thing: ignore the disturbing nature of these e-mails for a moment, and consider them as a sociological phenomenon. What did Max hope to achieve from this e-mail? Did he think that he would deliver the crushing blow with his biting prose that would make me reconsider my political viewpoints? “Maybe I really am a Nazi clown?” I would wonder, as I cried myself to sleep, clutching the Panzer tank I had made in balloon form.

Or, was Max not trying to achieve anything, but was rather lashing out in anger, flinging word salad into the internet ether as he flailed about in frustration?

A few months ago, researchers provided a new answer to those questions. They’ve identified a personality trait that was best captured by Alfred, Batman’s confidant, in the film The Dark Knight. His character explains why some people have an impulse to destroy, to lash out, to cause mayhem—not for any instrumental reason, but for fun and for status.

"Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

These people, according to the new research, share a desire to “unleash chaos to ‘burn down’ the entire political order in the hope they gain status in the process.” This trait now has a name — and an established psychological profile.

It’s called the “Need for Chaos.” Understanding it provides an important insight into the destructive world of modern politics, in which the trolls have taken over, and politicians are no longer problem solvers, but are rather political influencers. It’s not about making the world better. It’s about burning down the world of people they hate.

So, how does it work — and how can we spot these traits?

The Puzzle

The researchers—Michael Bang Petersen and Mathias Osmundsen from Aarhus University in Denmark, and Kevin Arceneaux from Sciences Po in Paris—focus on a specific behavior to create a typology of “Need for Chaos” individuals. Specifically, they focus on those who share “hostile political rumors,” which they note, “portray politicians and political groups negatively and possess low evidential value.” In plain speak, they like spreading malicious political lies.

What kind of person are they talking about? Well, if you follow the weird world of US politics closely, perhaps you will remember Jacob Wohl, the political huckster, provocateur, and malignant prankster. (Wohl has recently been implicated in a bizarre “AI lobbying scheme,” using fake names). At one point, Wohl tried to discredit Special Counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller by inventing a false accusation about him, then hyping it for the press.

But Wohl made a rookie mistake. When reporters tried to track down the “intelligence company” that had allegedly uncovered the accusation, they called the phone number that was publicly listed for the “company.” It turned out to be Wohl’s Mom.

Let’s just say that if I ever wrote an e-mail to Jacob Wohl, I would not begin it, as Max did, by saying “Dear Brain.”

More recently, Wohl pleaded guilty to another hare-brained scheme in which he tried to suppress voter turnout among minorities by spreading lies about election procedures. (Wohl will now have to spend 500 hours helping to register voters to atone for his idiotic crimes).

This fits the Need for Chaos profile perfectly. As the researchers explain:

We outline a theoretical framework about an over-looked psychological strategy for acquiring social status—the incitement of chaos—and demonstrate the relevance of this strategy for contemporary politics. We build on research showing that status-oriented personality traits combined with social rejection can push people toward an escalation of aggressive motivations. We argue that such motivations, when sufficiently strong, take root as a general destructive mindset.

In particular, people who score high on this metric tend to answer that they agree with several of these statements:

1. I get a kick when natural disasters strike in foreign countries.

2. I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over.

3. I think society should be burned to the ground.

4. When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking “just let them all burn.”

5. We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.

6. I need chaos around me—it is too boring if nothing is going on.

7. Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.

Then, to make sure that people weren’t just ticking the box next to every question mindlessly, the researchers included two additional statements that were the opposite of the other seven:

1. We need to uphold order by doing what is right, not what is wrong.

2. It’s better to live in a society where there is order and clear rules than one where anything goes.

Interestingly, when they looked at other toxic personality profiles — such as psychopathy (being a psychopath) and social dominance orientation (an urge to assert social dominance) — they found that the Need for Chaos was a separate dimension to destructive individuals. It wasn’t just capturing the same impulse.

It’s a unique trait.

What about Democrats vs. Republicans?

But the researchers wanted to know how Need for Chaos interacts with partisanship. To study that in the American context, they split research participants in two groups—Republican and Democrats. What they found was, as you’d expect, that Democrats were more likely to spread baseless political rumors about Republicans and Republicans were more likely to spread baseless political rumors about Democrats.

Here’s the interesting twist: this relationship breaks down once a person scores high on the Need for Chaos index. At that point, the person just wants to spread everything that could cause damage, regardless of partisan affiliation. It’s not about political agendas; it’s about destruction.

The role of status

The Need for Chaos trait is particularly damaging for individuals who also feel that they’ve been failed by society, manifesting in their loneliness. For them, sowing chaos is a way to lash out against the system while asserting their power and trying to establish some form of social status. As the researchers write:

These individuals are not idealists seeking to tear down the established order so that they can build a better society for everyone. Rather, they indiscriminately share hostile political rumors as a way to unleash chaos and mobilize individuals against the established order that fails to accord them the respect that they feel they personally deserve.

As you might expect, this means that perceptions of a loss of status are really important. And if that’s true, then there will inevitably be a group that’s particularly worrisome, because they feel a relative loss of status in recent decades. That group, they found, is white men.

That creates a strange dynamic, in which most white men—by virtue of their historically privileged position in society—tend to score lower on Need for Chaos than other groups. However, when white men do score high on Need for Chaos, it’s particularly dangerous. To put it plainly, the research suggests that of those who have this chaotic trait, it’s most destructive when that person is a white man.

As the researchers explain:

White men—experiencing both less marginalization and less fear of opposing the system—express a Need for Chaos because of extreme reactions to any perceived status threat including, for example, the expansion of racial and gender equality."

Why does this matter?

A relatively small group of people with Need for Chaos traits can now inflict a lot of damage in society. That’s partly because of the advent of social media, in which malicious lies travel much faster than they used to; partly because it’s easier for like-minded chaos agents to mobilize and organize; and partly because these individuals are more prone to political violence—a particularly important finding in the context of a post-January 6th United States political environment.

The researchers explain that this is nothing new, but that the trait may have more impact than in the past. “Every society contains disoriented radicals,” they write. “In the age of social media, however, these radicalized individuals can more easily find like-minded others and can more easily share their views.”

Their studies also show that people who score high on the Need for Chaos index express a greater willingness to participate in violent acts on behalf of a political cause.

The challenge for modern politics, then, lies with figuring out a way to deal with the inevitable perceived loss of social status that accompanies a society that’s becoming more equal, while mitigating the damage that these aggrieved chaos agents can inflict on everyone else.

Next time you’re on social media and you try to engage with a vicious troll, keep in mind that you’re likely not dealing with someone who cares about truth, or social progress, or justice. Instead, odds are that you’ve just encountered someone who wants to watch the world burn, because they’ve got a destructive trait: the Need for Chaos.

Or, maybe, just maybe, you’re interacting with a comically polite chaos agent named Max. Please give him my best wishes.

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P.S. I know that I’m a tiny bit obsessed with my majestic Border Collie, Zorro, but I have now taken things to another level. I have spray painted this custom stencil—which captures his heroic, regal personality—just above his dog bed and figured that some of the fellow dog lovers who read my work would understand.