What percentage of people in US Government are sociopaths?

Answer 1

Sociopath is a strict clinical definition of a set of psychological traits. Be careful about bandying it about as some sort of general label.

In the USA, some studies have put the percentage of people exhibiting some level of sociopathic traits at up to 3% of the total population. However, the vast, vast majority of said persons don't fit the clinical definition of a sociopath, the instance of which is posited at somewhere far lower (1 in 10,000 or less).

Given the nature of US Government work, both in elected and appointed office, and the civil service and military sectors, there is little reason to believe that the incidence is any higher than the general population. In the military, specifically, sociopathic tendencies are actively discouraged and such individuals are more rapidly discovered and pushed out than elsewhere in society. Conversely, it may be possible that the power of elected office somehow may be more attractive to sociopaths (and they somehow might be more successful at it than "normal" people), but that's all speculation, with no scientific basis.

The truth is that the US government almost certainly contains no more sociopaths than any other institution on this planet, and likely at the same rate that they are found in the general population.