Have you ever secretly thought that a colleague – or even your boss – behaves like a psychopath? Well you may well be right.
A study published in New Scientist magazine has found that there are far more sub-criminal psychopaths – self-serving, narcissistic schemers who display a stunning lack of empathy, but are not criminally inclined – at large in the population than had previously been thought. And many of them end up in managerial positions.
Around one per cent of the population – or 600,000 people in Britain alone – can be categories as psychopathic, according to Professor Robert Hare of the University of British Columbia in Canada.
And because ‘corporate psychopaths’ display similar ruthless traits to sadistic killers, they often gravitate towards roles in business the media, law and politics where their scheming and bullying is just part of everyday working life.
They tend to be manipulative, arrogant, callous, impatient, impulsive, unreliable, superficially charming and prone to fly into rages. They break promises, take credit for the work of others and blame everyone else when things go wrong.
As far as I can tell this describes half of the Silicon Valley CEO’s and the yellers and screamers at Microsoft, Apple and elsewhere.
I totally believe this report. Corporations are amoral institutions (at best!) and these psycho guys are the perfect fit.
It’s one reason corporations should not be allowed legal rights equal to real humans in a democracy.
“They tend to be manipulative, arrogant, callous, impatient, impulsive, unreliable, superficially charming and prone to fly into rages. They break promises, take credit for the work of others and blame everyone else when things go wrong.”
Sounds like a fair description of Rush Limbaugh.
My maxim has always been that, whoever wants the job of being boss, is probably the last person who should get it. That goes for most politicians too. They usually screen the Gong Hos out of jury pools, police and firefighters. But the rest of the work place seems to reward these little Hitler types. And give them a leg up the career ladder. The last place I worked at (a steel plant) they always gave the back stabbers, the promotions to salaried positions. I rarely ever saw any exception to this. Which is probably why the place went bankrupt. Because they screwed off at Country Clubs, while we all took pay cuts, and the place lost money from poor planning and management. But at least those clowns all felt powerful in their positions, while it lasted.
Wow, that explains a lot. Though I’m not really surprised. I wonder what it is about certain places that seem to attract large numbers of these types? “Birds of a feather” I suppose…
Yea, thats very well said.