Your boss, the sociopath

Bob Hare and others recently released an estimate that as many as 1 in 25 bosses are psychopaths:

They disguise it by using their status, charm and manipulation.

It is only positive experiences such as having a happy childhood that stop them from turning into potential serial killers, according to the scientists.

The ruthless corporate culture helps psychopaths by rewarding callousness and the disregard of people’s feelings.

What’s even worse is that these vicious bosses are rubbish at their jobs. They keep climbing the ladder because they cover up their failings by charming people.

The pioneering study was led by New York psychologist Dr Paul Babiak who said: “Psychopaths really aren’t the kind of person you think they are.

“You could be married to one for 20 years and not know it.” His team studied business chiefs to find out how many psychos work for major companies.

Fellow researcher Professor Bob Hare said: “A psychopath can tell what you’re thinking but what they don’t do is feel what you feel. These are people without a conscience.”

The findings . . . showed that bosses are four times more likely to be psychopaths than the general population. Scientists believe 1% of the public are psychos.

The tone of the article is completely sensationalist. It's also typical of any positive information about sociopaths to try to put as negative a spin on it as possible. Instead of congratulations sociopaths for being apparently 4 times more likely to succeed than normal people (am I doing the math right?), they are instead bad at their jobs and succeed by disregarding people's feelings? In what way does disregarding people's feelings lead to success, necessarily? I mean, it's so obviously a ploy, so obviously thinly veiled propaganda -- the type that allows dictators to ascend to power and oppress people all in the name of courting power over the idiot masses.

The quotes from Babiak and Hare are pretty reasonable, though.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

This is an old comment from UKan that I've been meaning to give its own post. It describes why psychopathy is not necessarily maladaptive, but rather can be quite fantastic:

See here's the thing that bothers me with people who write about psychopathy. They display all the traits of a psychopath as a weakness. As if all the psychopaths out there are doomed to eternal suffering in a emotional void. In a psychopaths point of view it is quite the opposite.

Its all about perspective really. Robert Hare, which many of you know to be the worlds leading expert on sociopathy said he believes he would find more of a percentage of psychopaths in the cut throat business world than in prison. That doesn't really sound like a disorder to me. The hype over psychopathy is over a small minority of sexually violent predators, most of whom went through serious child abuse.

My lack of impulse control allows me to take risks others could not. In business its all about taking risks. If you don't have what it takes to make quick decisions you are fucked. Especially my business.

Constant boredom is a great thing to have. It keeps you busy and enables you to multi task. It sets you apart from the rest.

Being grandiose can be self actualizing. We belong in roles of power even if we have to creste it from thin air. If you make yourself look great and you are so convinced that others around you believe it to be true, does that not make it so?

A psychopaths temper is quick, sharp, and its also effective. Why not get it all out there instead of bottling it up till you have to go cry to some therapist. If I don't get my way I'm fucking angry. Guess what? Most of the time I get my way. Who wouldn't want that?

Psychopaths don't have shallow emotions they just have different reactions because they lack empathy. Is rage not potent? Is possessing someone not passion? I feel want. I want it all.

Which brings me to this pirate shit. What a cheeky way of portraying a psychopaths constant hunger for more. Some people are satisfied with a mediocre existence. Not the psychopath. This constant need for more gets you more. Funny how that works. Who wants to employ someone who is satisfied over someone who will never be? Dissatisfaction can make one ambitious.

Like I said its all perspective.

Everybody's different

This was an interesting story from an older Mormon prophet, Joseph Fielding Smith, about difference:

We need to appreciate and love people for themselves.

When I was a boy, we had a horse named Junie. She was one of the most intelligent animals I ever saw. She seemed almost human in her ability. I couldn’t keep her locked in the barn because she would continually undo the strap on the door of her stall. I used to put the strap connected to the half-door of the stall over the top of the post, but she would simply lift it off with her nose and teeth. Then she would go out in the yard.

There was a water tap in the yard used for filling the water trough for our animals. Junie would turn this on with her teeth and then leave the water running. My father would get after me because I couldn’t keep that horse in the barn. She never ran away; she just turned on the water and then walked around the yard or over the lawn or through the garden. In the middle of the night, I would hear the water running and then I would have to get up and shut it off and lock Junie up again.

My father suggested that the horse seemed smarter than I was. One day he decided that he would lock her in so that she couldn’t get out. He took the strap that usually looped over the top of the post and buckled it around the post and under a crossbar, and then he said, “Young lady, let’s see you get out of there now!” My father and I left the barn and started to walk back to the house; and before we reached it, Junie was at our side. She then went over and turned the water on again.

I suggested that now, perhaps, she was about as smart as either one of us. We just couldn’t keep Junie from getting out of her stall. But that doesn’t mean she was bad, because she wasn’t. Father wasn’t about to sell or trade her, because she had so many other good qualities that made up for this one little fault.

The horse was as reliable and dependable at pulling our buggy as she was adept at getting out of the stall. And this was important, because Mother was a licensed midwife. When she would get called to a confinement somewhere in the valley, usually in the middle of the night, I would have to get up, take a lantern out to the barn, and hitch Junie up to the buggy.

I was only about ten or eleven years old at the time; and that horse had to be gentle and yet strong enough to take me and Mother all over the valley, in all kinds of weather. One thing I never could understand, however, was why most of the babies had to be born at night and so many of them in winter.

Often I would wait in the buggy for Mother, and then it was nice to have the company of gentle old Junie. This experience with this horse was very good for me, because early in life I had to learn to love and appreciate her for herself. She was a wonderful horse with only a couple of bad habits. People are a lot the same way. None of us is perfect; yet each of us is trying to become perfect, even as our Father in heaven. We need to appreciate and love people for themselves.

Maybe you need to remember this when you evaluate your parents or teachers or ward and stake leaders or friends—or brothers and sisters. This lesson has always stayed with me—to see the good in people even though we are trying to help them overcome one or two bad habits. …

I learned early in life to love and not to judge others, trying always to overcome my own faults.

I think it's interesting the different reactions I have gotten from readers. Often they're positive, they agree that sociopaths are much maligned for just being a mental disorder that people don't choose to have and have very limited ability to change or even modify in themselves. And of course some people see sociopaths as subhumans that should be exterminated. Of course that will usually happen, a split of opinions on something, but the interesting thing is the reasoning. Often religion is used to justify both positions. Efficiency is used to justify both positions. Certain philosophies (e.g. utilitarianism) are used to justify both positions. What I learned in law school is that there are always two sides to every coin. The more you argue that certain people are worthless, the easier it is for those types of beliefs to become acceptable or even desirable as standing on good "moral" principles. The more those beliefs become acceptable, the more likely someone who is willing to act on those beliefs will come into power. The more people in power who are willing to act on those beliefs, the more risky it is for anyone to live in a way that is both different and authentic.

Why don't we just kill off all sociopaths? Maybe because like the horse Junie, the same traits that make them sometimes dangerous, obnoxious, disgusting, or reprehensible are also the traits that will promote survival and success for them and all those attached to them in certain dangerous, obnoxious, disgusting, or reprehensible situations.

Baron-Cohan vs. Fallon

From a reader:

Hi M.E.,

If you haven't seen this, it's an interesting watch and I would be interested hear your take.  Simon Baron-Cohan (Ali G's cousin) is part of the panel and there is some interesting back and forth on Aspie's vs. Socio's and such with folks on the panel.

With all the debate on the forum of "who is what" and what the diagnosis mean and such, it might make fore some interesting fodder as well.

For me it was as much a confirmation of "whatever he is, I'm a lot like that."  Not exactly, but close - as an engineer, I can seen both elements in myself.

There is a funny quote around 45:00 about being the guy, in the case of trouble, "running down the street with two machetes in his underwear."  ...knives out and grinning!  8D~

And the "coming next time" bit on cultural alcoholism is a crack up!  I love the Ausies!

Cheers!

This American Life

I just got around to listening to this This American Life episode on psychopaths:

It's largely more of the same from the NPR articles, but in audio format. More from Jon Ronson about sociopathic CEOs, sociopathic stares, small amygdalas make you "dangerous," and the role that the "predatory spirit" plays in success.

The most entertaining section is the part about Jon Ronson meeting a sociopathic seeming CEO who fired an employee who happened to be bragging about his car thusly: "You may have a fancy sportscar, but I'll tell you what you don't have -- a job." Gasp! Psychopaths can be so straightforward and tactless!!!!!

Spoiler alert, host Ira Glass practically outs himself as a sociopath, but not really, according to the psychologist, because he wasn't malicious enough (is that the hidden PCL-R trait, that only psychologists are privy to?)