Is Your Boss a Psychopath?

Dogers writes "Robert Hare, creator of the Psychopathy Checklist, has recently been applying his test 'Is your boss a psychopath' to businessmen and has found some disturbing results. From the article: 'Why wouldn't we want to screen them? We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?'. Citing Enron and Worldcom management as an example, it seems a reasonable argument. The same source also has a quiz (magazine produced it seems) which allows you to test your own boss, too!"

Comments

You would *have* to be a psychopath..

[BlackCobra43]

to basically earn your way through life by exploiting and berating underlings, some of which are inevitably of equal or even superior skill and/or intellect to you.

Re:The question is why do they exist?

[CDarklock]

> Surely in ancient times psycopathy would not
> have got you far. You'd likely be expelled
> from a society or likely killed.

I'd think the psychopaths would probably be the ones doing the killing.

Why psychopaths exist...

[pieterh]

The reason is quite simple.

Much of our history has been dominated by violence, and our ancestors are those who survived violent episodes. Either by being very smart, very cute, or very evil.

Psychopaths are overwhelmingly male and psychopathic behaviour is generally evidenced by the ability to hurt and harm others without the usual remorse and empathic pain that most people feel.

The reason why only a small fraction of people show this behaviour is because (a) it's quite counterproductive in stable societies, so quickly gets pushed into marginal genepools (the bad boys of any village), and (b) it has a large component of environmental triggering, meaning that many people (mainly men, again) can exhibit psychopathic behavour given the right circumstances.

Why are psychopaths so charming? Partly because it works well in conflict situations. Partly because it acts to deflect attention. Selection works at the gene level, and the charming psychopathic genes have survived civilisation much better than the pure violence ones.

Re:The question is why do they exist?

[PaxTech]

Capitalism and psychopathy go hand in hand. That's why it has survived today.

Definitely. No other ideology in history has produced so many psychopaths.

I think theres a better question

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Who cares if your boss is a psycho, when we work out why people who do all the work (manual labour etc.) get 10 times less money then the people who point and go "Get it done by next week" (managers). I think we'll be about ready to ask pointless questions like these..

That's been my experience as well

[mdarksbane]

I was always under the naive impression that anyone in office was a sociopath who cared about power or money or whatever, and had therefore concocted a detailed plot to use the government and people for their own benefit.

Then I actually job shadowed a state senator for a day, sat in on a couple meetings and the general assembly... and I realize that they aren't (for the most part) psychopathic or plotting...

They're just... average.

And then I realized that the horrible state of legislation was not the result of malice, but of the pure incompetent that infects the entire society. These were the C students in high school who had the right connections, or just the right interests. They were the masses that I have spent my entire life trying not to disdain because they do not comprehend most complex issues as quickly as my "gifted" friends.

Heinlein once said (paraphrased) than an elected official, ideally, represents a slightly above average member of his electorate. I realized that day that when I consider my opinion of most people I meet, I am not surprised at all at what comes out of the capital. It is no hand-picked best of the best representatives, nor a oligarchy of vile schemers, but simply a vaguely representative group of the more affluent members of our society.

Unfortunately, I think that this realization made me expect even less out of government. An intelligent psychopath at least acts intelligently in his own interest, as opposed to blindly herding in whatever direction is popular today.

Re:Douglas Adams knew why

[demachina]

"Why do so many bosses suck?"

The key problem is bosses ARE screened .... by each other. The people doing the hiring LIKE people with this psychopathic profile, because they want people just like them. Its no accident sales and marketing people are the ones most like to make the jump in to senior management because aggressive salesman with no morales are the one this good ole boy network promotes. Its also why R&D is cratering in the U.S. and most U.S. companies are fixated on making their quarterly sales numbers instead of making companies that are built to last, that and the stock market totally incentivizes companies to nail quarters and cannibalize the future.

Worst problem with American CEO's is they are hired by boards that are basically a good ole boy crony network. They all golf together, are members of the same country clubs, go to the same parties, and were in the same partying fraternities in college. They tend to not evaluate CEO's with a critical eye they are just hiring their friends, with the understanding that the people hire will in turn do favors for them and serve on their boards.

Then the problem extends downward. The CEO in turn hires good ole boys as President and VP's who in turn hire good ole boys in training to be middle management.

Re:easy

[rben]

Because people are not machines and if you fail to understand how people really work, you will invariably be a bad manager. You really think that the guys at Enron did a good job? Billions of dollars were stolen from investors.

I've known a few of these people. I knew one manager who emotionally tortured a twenty-year old woman he was attracted to, as part of his plan to seduce her. This is the kind of guy you want to hand billions of dollars to?

Handling billions of dollars requires someone who has higher principles, not no principles. Enron is a perfect example. If you never feel remorse, why not steal? If you have no compassion for those you will hurt, there is no reason why you shouldn't operate in a purely selfish manner.

Corporate officers have to act on behalf of other people, the stock holders. They also have a responsibility to the people who work for the company, because, contrary to what seems to be taught at most business schools, in todays economy, the talent and dedication of your employees is worth as much or more as the capital you have to work with. If you hire people who are incapable of relating to other human beings and who are completely self-involved, they will invariably destroy the company.

It isn't being soft or wishy-washy to want sane and rational people working in top management, it's just good sense.