Lack of guilt, fearlessness and interpersonal dominance -- that may sound like a description of a high-powered executive or politician, but it's actually a list of traits commonly found in psychopaths. According to new research, this similarity may not be a coincidence.

A team of researchers at Emory University in Atlanta recently found that the fearless dominance associated with psychopathy may predict presidential performance. The study was published in the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Certain psychopathic traits may be like a double-edged sword," the study's lead author Dr. Scott Lilienfeld, a psychologist at Emory, said in a written statement. "Fearless dominance, for example, may contribute to reckless criminality and violence, or to skillful leadership in the face of a crisis."

The researchers compiled personality assessments of the 42 previous U.S. presidents -- up to and including George W. Bush -- using data from about 100 historical experts, such as biographers, journalists, and political scholars. Those personalities were compared with each president's performance, and links began to emerge.

Out of all the former presidents tested in the Emory study, Theodore Roosevelt ranked the highest for fearless dominance, according to the researchers. He was followed by John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Rutherford Hayes, Zachary Taylor, Bill Clinton, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson and George W. Bush.

"Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths," clinical psychologist and author Dr. Martha Stout, who's not associated with the Emory study, told The Huffington Post for an earlier story. The terms sociopath and psychopath can be interchangeable in the mental health profession, she said.

"I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this," Stout continued. "That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow -- but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one."

Emory researchers noted that psychopathic personalities are defined by a myriad of traits, including many that are maladaptive. But this recent analysis opens the door for further study of the condition's positive effects.

“We believe more research is needed into the implications of boldness for leadership in general,” Lilienfeld said in the statement.

Also on HuffPost:

Loading Slideshow

• "I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens out on our West Coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about."

  - President Ronald Reagan, 1980

  Not quite. Cars emit about 81,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, while Mount St. Helens emits only about 2,000 tons.

• "The internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes."

  -Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), 2006

  The "series of tubes" phrase subsequently became a pop cultural catchphrase--it even has its own a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes" target="_hplink"Wikipedia page/a and mentioned in the a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=a series of tubes" target="_hplink"Urban Dictionary/a.

• "And sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good, things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not."

  - former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska), 2008

  The common fruit fly is one of the most commonly used organisms in genetic research. Discoveries such as sex-linked inheritance and techniques such as gene mapping are a result of such research.

• "Information is moving--you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets."

  - President George W. Bush, 2007

  The former president went on to use the word "Internets" two more times in public.

• "Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?"

  -Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), when asked whether the U.S. climate policy should focus on reducing carbon emissions.

  Rainforests actually absorb far more carbon dioxide than they emit.

• "Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus."

  - Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia), 2009, at a debate over the Clean Energy and Security Act.

  Many researchers point to a decline in Arctic sea ice, an increase in droughts, and changing rain and snow patterns as signs of climate change.

• "What the science says is that temperatures peaked out globally in 1998. So we've gone for 10-plus years where the temperatures have gone down."

  - Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), 2009 in an interview with conservative radio show host Jay Weber.

  The mean global temperature has in fact been increasing since 1998.

• "Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as Earth]....Mars is somewhat the same distance from the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

  - Dan Quayle, former vice president, commenting on President George H.W. Bush's Space Exploration Initiative as quoted in emThis New Ocean/em by William E. Burrows.

  Actually, Mars completes an orbital revolution around the sun about every 1.88 Earth years, according to NASA.

• "If it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

  - Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri), 2012

  In fact, women can become pregnant from rape.