Secret psychopaths

When you think of a psychopath your thoughts probably tend towards images of an arch villain who often have the word “nemesis” associated with them. You probably see them as having a “lair” where normal people have a home, and they will more than likely have an outlandish hairstyle with equally bizarre fashion sense. It is likely too that you will be thinking that the psychopath will be undone by their own psychosis before they can do any real damage. In all of these conceptions you are pretty much mistaken because as new research has shown, psychopaths are more than capable of masking what they are and they are drawn to positions like senior management.

By definition a psychopath is someone who is as amoral, antisocial, lacking in ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extremely egocentric, and fails to learn from experience…no wonder they make such good Hollywood villains. In real life though there are shades and nuances to this.

Despite their negative tendencies psychopaths are also known to be both charming and charismatic. They can exude a calm confidence as well as being manipulative, strong minded, and fearless. They can in fact be very popular in social settings and at work. Many psychopaths are male and many are very promiscuous, often embodying the qualities of the uninhibited alpha male, which might be why women can find themselves inexplicably drawn to these “bad boys”. This popularity in turn fuels the psychopath’s already immense sense of self-importance, and so they become even more willing to use others for their own needs.

Psychopathic tendencies of course exist along a sliding scale. For instance although psychopaths lack empathy there are two levels of this and they are called “factor one” and “factor two”. In “factor one” psychopathy there is a callous and manipulative orientation, devoid of empathy and emotion. However, in “factor two” psychopathy there is a more impulsive form of aggression, usually as an emotional response to negative events.

Estimates are that among the general population about one per cent of people are “psychopathic” but this researcher noted that among senior management on corporations this figure increases to around three per cent. As a result of her research she thinks she knows why this is so.

For her study she gave her subjects IQ tests and then gave them a test, the “Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale”, which established whether they had factor one or factor two psychopathic tendencies. She then showed the subjects pictures of crying children, people being threatened and scenes of natural disasters. There were no horrific images but they were the sort that would shock a normal person. The emotional responses of the subjects were gauged using a galvanic skin response (GSR), electrodes attached to their fingers. A person with factor one psychopathic tendencies would show little or no emotional response while someone with factor two psychopathic tendencies should show a heightened response due to excitement.

The results exactly matched what would be expected except that it was only those psychopathic individuals with a lower IQ who showed the expected levels of excitement. The researcher concluded that psychopaths with higher IQs are able to fake their emotional response. Based on this, and given the appeal of managerial roles for the psychopathic personality, the researcher thinks that there could be more than the established “three per cent” of psychopaths among managers.

Douglas Adams once said of the American Presidency that, “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” This might be an overstatement when it comes to upper management in corporations and the percentage of psychopaths there is probably still small, but it does cast a new light on what comes out of board meetings.