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.
