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Could Testing Block Psychopaths From Senior Management?
Freshly Exhumed writes "Dr. Clive Boddy believes that increasingly fluid corporate career paths have helped psychopaths conceal their disruptive workplace behavior and ascend to previously unattainable levels of authority. Boddy points out psychopaths are primarily attracted to money, status and power, currently found in unparalleled abundance in the global banking sector. As if to prove the point, many of the world's money traders self identify as the "masters of the universe." Solution? Screening with psychological tests. Who would pay for it? The insurance industry." The tech world has plenty of company heads who've been called psychopaths, too — but would you want to actually change that?
Hell yes, this is a problem. Watch The Corporation. It basically shows that most corporations are psychopathic, and I believe that most governments are too. This is fundamentally at odds with our basic notion that people in charge should have some sort of human decency. If the majority of us have empathy but are ruled by psychopaths without empathy, this is a very very serious problem...especially when many people will go ahead and assume that the people in authority have empathy.
Basically the people who have the most say on how this world operates (including whether to wage war, take people's money, pollute the environment or not) are often (or mostly, depending on your point of view) behaving like psychopaths. This is nuts and it really goes a long way towards explaining the current state of affairs.
Or in a less knee-jerk way: have we verified that this is actually a problem? What issues arise from psychopaths being in these positions of authority? Is there a way we can mitigate those negative effects while still playing to the strengths of the psychopath?
The characteristic lack of remorse or shame leads psychopaths to a fervent belief that "rules are for other people".
This results in catastrophes like the recent Banking/Finance issues in the US and the recent "rogue trader" excesses (UBS, and others).
"It's only against the law if you get caught" is a prime Directive of psychopaths.
And yet somehow you think there's ANY reason we want these people running anything?
Seriously folks, their behaviour is classed as antisocial for a reason, read the words - ANTI SOCIAL.
By Definition BAD FOR THE ENTIRE SOCIETY.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
[citation needed]
Or, if you want another way of putting it.
BULLSHIT
To be a Doctor or surgeon requires years of dedicated study and work. That's not a feature of psychopathy - quite the opposite. Psychopaths are pathetic individuals who thrive only in the most superficial quick win environments where chancers and spivs can make it big by spinning the wheel.
So many people seem to think emotional control = psychopath. Quite the contrary... psychopaths have very poor emotional control as well as concentration... they are also have extremely poor impulse control. In any environment where you have to deal with people over long periods... they fail horribly by getting caught out eventually. They only succeed when they can wreck their havoc and then vanish up/out leaving others to clean up.
Go speak to a real psychopath sometime.
No, the easier it will be for them to "feel for" ALL affected. This includes the positively affected. If a decision saves the lives of 1000 while killing 1, empathy doesn't mean "feel for the 1, ignore the 1000".
Also, how is selfishness more rational? How would a sociopath do ANY calculation other than "does it give me what I want, fuck everyone else" --- ?
Bullshit. There's plenty of strong people who just happen to have empathy, too. You just don't know em. Just like there's plenty of weak-ass sociopaths. You just don't recognize em. How does that quote go? "Gentleness can only be expected from the strong."? I think you have it exactly upside down, and good luck with that.
I'd be happy if we can block them from moderating /. Is there a test for that? :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I worked with a genuine psychopath; no hyperbole; a true psychopath. This guy could charm the pants off anyone. If you met him you loved him; that simple. But after around 6 months you wanted him dead. After a while I learned some key skills to working with him. One was to nail everything down in an email and I mean everything. If you didn't have everything nailed down he would change the past. If you said you could have something done by the 30th and didn't put it in an email then around the 20th he would announce at a meeting that you were going to be late with your promise to have it done by the 25th like he told the client and put in the contract, a contract he would swear on a stack of bibles that you had looked over. The key here was that you probably did look over a contract that said the 30th and he had an email from you saying that it looked fine. So as I said, everything must go in an email so the trick was if he handed you some paper you scanned it and attached it to the email replying that you had read the contract.
Most people were unwilling to go to such lengths and thus would be screwed over and over until they quit. The key to understanding this guy was that he simply had zero empathy. Not little but zero. So if he hurt you for some tiny gain of his own so be it. But this is different from someone who is say mean as in a bully, for them being mean is the goal. For my psychopathic co-worker you had to understand that he had his own desires and that was it. He didn't weigh pro and cons in any normal fashion. If you quit then you could be replaced with a fool who might be easier to screw.
I long ago left working with him but in the years since I have encountered really nice person after person who clench their fists and say horrible things about this guy. They all say the exact same basic thing; wow charisma coming out his ass until he sets you on fire to warm his hands.
On a superficial basis a company might justify that having someone like this around is useful for the moment that you need to charm some upset client. This might work in theory but what you forget is that the moment it is advantageous for this type of person to screw you they will screw you. Your company might say, "they wouldn't do something so stupid as this industry is too small" but keep in mind that there are two incomprehensible factors at play. This is a person who does not give the tiniest of craps what anyone really thinks as long as they can't actually do anything. The other factor is that they will be able to charm themselves out of almost any situation. So if you say that they will never work in this industry again you are wrong. You will make a solid case to other people you know really well who also respect you and your opinion but the psychopath will meet them and turn their opinion 180 degrees and land on their feet.
This might seem a bit long winded but after dealing with a true psychopath it is hard to believably explain the functioning of someone who simply is incapable of sympathy and has 100% confidence that normal consequences don't apply to them. Take any situation where a normal person might say ooh this might blow up in my face, or I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy and remember that a psychopath will do it and would do it to their mother if there was even a tiny chance of them somehow benefiting.
So when I see the whole banking crisis and people are suggesting that these guys inadvertently destroyed trillions of dollars of the wealth in the US along with their own companies and I just remember my psychopath and think that if he was getting low on gas and could push a button that refilled his tank but destroyed a company all he would think is "cool Free gas" while the rest of us would frown about what kind of dick would even create such a button.