Wannabe sociopaths

I'm not talking about the people that sometimes frequent the comments section and forum of this site, but those who have adopted sociopathic traits due to their environment -- maybe a rough childhood leading to finding respite in gang and adopting the heartlessness of that life, or someone on wall street?  I was sort of charmed by this comment to a recent post:

Corporations are absolutely sociopathic because of their bottom line. However, like sociopaths, they can choose to act in a benevolent manner out of their own best interest- and often do. Corporations are amoral. Corporations reside in the world of power and winning first. I could do on, but there is nothing empathetic about a corporation in our present "free" market system. A benevolent sociopath could not survive intact in the corporate world unless they were lying to themselves all day every day. You want to talk about wannabe sociopaths? Talk to an empath on wall street. 

I have a friend who I am starting to believe is an empath on Wall Street. He worked for many years in his country's version of the CIA or MI-6. He is one of the most cold, calculating people I know -- the type that would never hesitate to pull the trigger on something. Now he is an investment banker, his attempt to cash out on his connections and background. Still he hates it because of the crushing workload, and every time he talks to me about it he has another exit plan fantasy. One of his escape hatches involved taking over an ammunitions company from an ailing client of his. He was talking to me about it, how the company is strong but not much room for expansion (the company primarily sells directly to militaries). I suggested that even if he just stuck with his government contracts, he would be doing well with the company at least for the rest of his lifetime because there would always be war. To his discredit he argued back, "yeah, but how long are we going to be shooting bullets?" Maybe I am wrong on this point, but I thought there were several treaties, including the Hague Conventions, that have basically insured that not only will we be using bullets in war, we will basically be using the same type and kind of bullets as we have always have (as opposed to hollow point bullets in conjunction with chemical warfare, etc.). Undeterred, I mentioned the possibility of expanding out of government contracts into the private market, which he also balked at, saying that he didn't want to be the equivalent of an arms dealer in a very "bullets kill people" sort of way. I was disappointed to hear him say that. How could he have done what he did as a spy, then become a ruthless banker, then take a moral stance on selling bullets that might end up in the brain of some thug?

This goes along a little with my post from yesterday. Sometimes I get a vibe from someone that indicates to me that they are a sociopath and I get all excited. Then they say something that makes it clear that although we may see eye to eye on some issues, there's an ocean of disagreement separating us. It's sort of what it feels like to be libertarian.

1 in 10 Wallstreeters are psychopaths

According to Sherree DeCovny, a the former investment broker and got the figure from "researchers," including a Wall Street psychologist.  Selections from the Wall Street Journal:

• They excel in any arena where aggressive behavior is rewarded and where grandiose levels of confidence can result in rousing applause.
• It is often difficult to argue that these people are indeed sick until the day they have to exchange their Armani suit for an orange jumpsuit.
• I only know one man who openly admits he's a psychopath. I called him to see what he thought of the numbers Ms. DeCovny reported. "First of all, it's not one out of 10," says Sam Antar. "It's probably eight out of 10." "The reality is, to succeed on Wall Street you've got to be a psychopath in one form or another," Mr. Antar says.
• Mr. Antar now teaches law-enforcement organizations how to spot psychos. He thinks of himself as a psychopath in remission, but he admits he could snap back at any time, much like a relapsing alcoholic.
• It may be part of the human condition to venerate psychos, mistaking their grandiosity for leadership.
• If you work on Wall Street, chances are good you are not a psychopath, but chances are also good you report to one.

Sociopaths on Wall Street

From a New Yorker article about the collapse of Bear Stearns:

[Former Bear Stearns C.E.O. Jimmy] Cayne understood selling; he started out as a photocopier salesman, working the nine-hundred-mile stretch between Boise and Salt Lake City, and ended up among the highest-paid executives in banking. He was known as one of the savviest men on the Street, a master tactician, a brilliant gamesman. “Jimmy had it all,” Bill Bamber, a former Bear senior managing director, writes in “Bear Trap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008” (a book co-written by Andrew Spencer). “The ability to read an opponent. The ability to objectively analyze his own strengths and weaknesses. . . . He knew how to exploit others’ weaknesses—and their strengths, for that matter—as a way to further his own gain. He knew when to take his losses and live to fight another day.”

Although the most successful Wall Streeters are probably narcissists:

This is what social scientists mean when they say that human overconfidence can be an adaptive trait. “In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exaggerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning,” Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard, writes. “Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.” Winners know how to bluff. And who bluffs the best? The person who, instead of pretending to be stronger than he is, actually believes himself to be stronger than he is. According to Wrangham, self-deception reduces the chances of “behavioral leakage”; that is, of “inadvertently revealing the truth through an inappropriate behavior.” This much is in keeping with what some psychologists have been telling us for years—that it can be useful to be especially optimistic about how attractive our spouse is, or how marketable our new idea is. In the words of the social psychologist Roy Baumeister, humans have an “optimal margin of illusion.”