Increased numbers of psychopaths in senior managerial positions?

http://www.hud.ac.uk/news/2014/july/psychologygraduatesdissertationacceptedbyacademicjournal.php

by uladzislau • 12 years ago

34 23 12 years ago

hud.ac.uk

kelukelugames3• 12 years ago

"To test her ideas, Carolyn assembled 50 participants, mostly from among students, who underwent a series of tests."

Sensationalist title that fits a narrative people want to believe.

Russell913• 12 years ago

Perfect for the front page of hacker news!

dang2• 12 years ago

I know it's fun to say stuff like that, but we work hard to make exactly the opposite be true. Users help a lot by flagging inappropriate stories. We can't even skim all the articles, let alone evaluate how substantiated their claims are.

The system seems to have worked well in this case.

greggarious• 12 years ago

I agree it's sensationalist:

"Not only was she awarded an exceptionally high mark of 85 per cent"

In most PhD programs (at least in the USA), a B is the absolute minimum grade you can get to receive credit for a course. An 85% on a major class project would have basically been a "B for effort" - you did SOMETHING, but it had major flaws.

keithpeter• 12 years ago

well, you know, it is a scale but perhaps not an interval scale. Probably ordinal.

UK grading at undergrad is 40% pass, then anything over 75% is Class 1.

_blah• 12 years ago

In the UK (in most cases) you don't get the same sort of dynamic range compression in marking you seem to get in the US (though it is coming - witness the A/A/A* stuff at GCSE). It is fairly ridiculous for 85% to represent 'you turned up'.

kelukelugames3• 12 years ago

A for average, B for bad, C for catastrophe.

baxterross• 12 years ago

Is it not possible that there is a correlation between high IQ and better self control? That explanation would fit the facts just as well as Carolyn's without casting shade on massive groups of people for no reason.

bane• 12 years ago

Also, sometimes when you end up in senior positions, you end up with situations where there's no option but for somebody to be, for lack of a better term, fucked over in the end.

It's not fun to be in those positions, but it happens, and having a stomach for that kind of ugliness over the long run is what allows people to work in those kinds of positions. That may select for psychopaths, or for people who can overcome their emotional distaste, which can look superficially like psychopathy I suppose.

kelukelugames3• 12 years ago

Sadly, that is not the case. Here is the groundbreaking work on this subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Tha...

kevincennis2• 12 years ago

Jon Ronson touched on this a bit in The Psychopath Test (worth reading if you get a chance).

I was under the impression that there was already data supporting this.

DanBC• 12 years ago

Personality disorders are controversial diagnoses that are difficult to make.

As this submission shows a lot of research is fucking hopeless.

I'd be very careful about drawing conclusions from a book, even very good books like Jon Ronson's books, about psychopathy. The science isn't good; he's not a scientist nor a science writer; etc.

Things are much easier if you want to substitute "assholes" for "person with antisocial personality disorder", because you're not stigmatising mental illness and you're not making shit up, you're just voicing an opinion on the weird behaviours seen in some bosses.

kevincennis2• 12 years ago

Oh, for sure.

I took the book as "here's a light history of this diagnostic tool that's almost certainly flawed AND misapplied, plus some interesting anecdotes". It's obviously not, like, a science book.

sp332• 12 years ago

What about non-managers? Maybe there are just more psychopaths in general.

obilgic• 12 years ago

more compared to past. probably not compared to non-managers.

carsongross• 12 years ago

This article is pretty weak stuff, but we do appear to be increasingly selecting for criminality across the board:

http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(14)00077-4/abstr...

snowwrestler• 12 years ago

To diagnose a mental disorder, there must be impairments to normal living. A person who is able to function constructively in society might have tendencies, habits, leanings, personality traits, or whatever word you want to use to describe the differences between people. But if they are functioning and not in distress, by definition they do not have a disorder.

That does not stop people from using disorder names as shorthand. "OMG I'm so OCD about checking that my back door is locked!" "I'm pretty Aspberger at parties." Etc. But it's important to remember that these are a casual shorthand, not actual diagnoses. People with actual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder do not laugh about it; they are in deep distress about it.

So: while we can talk about psychopathic tendencies, or use "psychopath" as a shorthand, people who operate normally or successfully over a long term in business are likely not afflicted with a psychopathic disorder. They might be ruthless, they might be hard headed, they might have lower empathy than average. That doesn't necessarily mean they need to weeded out, excluded, treated, etc.

The hard question is: at what point is not a normal and adaptive difference in personality, vs. a disorder that must be weeded out? And who is in that position to do so?

It's tempting to look at something like the 2008 financial meltdown and chalk it up to a bunch of psychopathic banking CEOs. I think that's a bad idea for two reasons.

First, it can inhibit a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the root causes of problems. We run the risk of not addressing the real causes, stuff blowing up again, and then just blaming it on psychopaths again. Cycle, cycle.

Second, it runs the risk of demonizing skills or personality traits that might actually be valuable in business.

When you're making decisions by numbers, you might sometimes have to set aside or reduce the emotional content of your decisions.

When leaders try to give people everything they ask for, they create unsustainable systems, because there are not infinite resources in the world. And things change; innovation eats old products and business models. And then when the system collapses into bankruptyc or mass layoffs, the leaders left holding the bag are accused of making psychopathic decisions.

Whereas as less empathetic leader (or more disciplined, if you want to put a positive spin on it) might have made more economically sustainable decisions in the first place.

thenomad• 12 years ago

" People with actual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder do not laugh about it; they are in deep distress about it."

This is extremely important. "OCD" has become a joke to many, but it's a horrible, debilitating mental condition to those who actually suffer clinical OCD.

Oddly enough, Cracked came out with one of the best articles I've seen explaining why OCD is so very far from a laughing matter: http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-no-one-tells-you-about-...

oldmanjay• 12 years ago

The title might be more than a little sensationalist, since it's based on this sentence

It raises the possibility that large numbers of ruthless risk-takers are able to conceal their level of psychopathy as they rise to key managerial posts.

which is a pretty good indication that the paper drew no such conclusion at all.

silentvoice• 12 years ago

Did I read this right?

The thesis was: Psychopathy may be correlated with higher IQ.

Tests were done, except the psychopathic responses were recorded on the lower IQ responders, not high IQ responders.

Conclusion: High IQ psychopaths faked their emotions to keep their cover - thus confirming the thesis...???

dang2• 12 years ago

This post was killed by user flags.

Increased numbers of psychopaths in senior managerial positions?

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