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Weeding Out Corporate Psychopaths
Given the state of the global economy, it might not surprise you to learn that psychopaths may be controlling the world. Not violent criminals, but corporate psychopaths who nonetheless have a genetically inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from feeling normal human empathy.
Scientific research is revealing that 21st century financial institutions with a high rate of turnover and expanding global power have become highly attractive to psychopathic individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and the companies they work for.
A peer-reviewed theoretical paper titled “The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis” details how highly placed psychopaths in the banking sector may have nearly brought down the world economy through their own inherent inability to care about the consequences of their actions.
The author of this paper, Clive Boddy, previously of Nottingham Trent University, believes this theory would go a long way to explain how senior managers acted in ways that were disastrous for the institutions they worked for, the investors they represented and the global economy at large.
If true, this also means the astronomically expensive public bailouts will not solve the problem since many of the morally impaired individuals who caused this mess likely remain in positions of power. Worse, they may be the same people advising governments on how to resolve this crisis.
To tackle this problem, we must instead examine this rare and curious condition, and why recent corporate history may have elevated precisely the wrong type of people to positions of great power and public trust.
Unfeeling, but not insane
Psychopathy should not be confused with insanity. It is best described by Robert Hare, global expert and psychologist, as “emotional deafness” — a biochemical inability to experience normal feelings of empathy for others.
This shark-like fixation on self-interest means that psychopaths often feel a clear detachment from other people, viewing them more as sheep to be preyed upon than fellow humans to relate to. For instance, psychopaths in prison often use group therapy sessions not as a healing process, but as an opportunity to learn how to simulate normal human emotions.
Studies on twins have revealed that psychopathy shows a strong genetic signature and there remains no effective treatment. Recent research has linked the condition to physical abnormalities in the amygdala region of the brain.
Only a small subset of psychopaths become the violent criminals so often fictionalized in film. Most simply seek to blend in and conceal their difference in order to more effectively manipulate others. This frightening condition has existed throughout human history, though likely in a marginal and socially parasitic way.
While psychopaths are often portrayed by Hollywood as brilliantly clever, a hypothetical race of Hannibal Lecters would likely perish since they lack the ability to trust each other. Put another way, the human race — a relatively weak, slow, hairless tropical primate — has succeeded so spectacularly in every ecosystem on the planet not because we are so bad, but because we are so good.
Most dangerous 1 per cent
The human ability to build social capital means that people can cooperate and trust each other. We can reliably predict the behavior of others even if we have never met them. Social capital is the glue that holds together our communities, complex societies, large institutions and the economy. The one and only superpower possessed by psychopaths is their ruthless ability to spend the social capital created by others.
Scientists believe about 1 per cent of the general population is psychopathic, meaning there are more than three million moral monsters among normal United States citizens. There is emerging evidence that this frequency increases within the upper management of modern corporations. This is not surprising since personal ruthlessness and fixation on personal power have become seen as strong assets to large publicly traded corporations (which some authors believe have also become psychopathic).
However, appearance and performance are two different things. While psychopaths are often outwardly charming and excellent self-promoters, they are also typically terrible managers, bullying co-workers and creating chaos to conceal their behavior.
When employed in senior levels, their pathology also means they are biochemically incapable of something they are legally required to do: act in good faith on behalf of other people. The banking and corporate sector is built on the ancient principle of fiduciary duty — a legal obligation to act in the best interest of those whose money or property you are entrusted with. Asking a psychopath to do that is like recruiting a pyromaniac to be a firefighter.
The folly of mixing psychopathy and senior corporate management has been borne out by recent history. At the end of the last decade, numerous banking institutions representing hundreds of years of corporate financial stability ceased to exist within a few short months due to the reckless acts of a few individuals — none of whom has ever been charged with a crime.
And therein lies the rub. As ruthless as psychopaths are, their pathology dictates that they will ultimately act to the detriment of the organizations and investors they are paid so well to represent.
Fertile for psychopaths: New corporate culture
If this theory is correct, how did this become such a crisis in recent decades? Boddy suggests that corporations have changed from relatively stable institutions where psychopaths would have a difficult time concealing themselves, to highly fluid organizations where it is much easier for them to disappear within the chaos in their wake.
“(The) whole corporate and employment environment changed from one that would hold the Corporate Psychopath in check to one where they could flourish and advance relatively unopposed,” Boddy writes. “As evidence of this, senior level remuneration and reward started to increase more and more rapidly and beyond all proportion to shop floor incomes and a culture of greed unfettered by conscience developed. Corporate Psychopaths are ideally situated to prey on such an environment and corporate fraud, financial misrepresentation, greed and misbehavior went through the roof, bringing down huge companies and culminating in the Global Financial Crisis that we are now in.”
Boddy is not hopeful that the current round of expensive public bailouts will solve the problem. If psychopaths have in fact installed themselves in the upper reaches of the world’s financial institutions, their genetic deficiency dictates that their greed knows no bounds. They will continue to act in anti-social, remorseless ways, amplified by their enormous corporate influence until the institutions they represent and perhaps the entire global economy collapses. Obviously, more academic research in this area is urgently needed.
Boddy concludes his recent paper with this grim prediction:
“Writing in 2005, this author . . . predicted that the rise of Corporate Psychopaths was a recipe for corporate and societal disaster. This disaster has now happened and is still happening. Across the western world, the symptoms of the financial crisis are now being treated. However, this treatment of the symptoms will have little effect because the root cause is not being addressed. The very same Corporate Psychopaths, who probably caused the crisis by their self-seeking greed and avarice, are now advising governments on how to get out of the crisis. That this involves paying themselves vast bonuses in the midst of financial hardship for many millions of others is symptomatic of the problem. Further, if (this theory is correct) then we are now far from the end of the crisis. Indeed, it is only the end of the beginning. Perhaps more than ever before, the world needs corporate leaders with a conscience . . . Measures exist to identify Corporate Psychopaths. Perhaps it is time to use them.”
Time has come for testing
Boddy’s last statement contains a kernel of hope. If our world has become chaotic due to institutionalized psychopathy, imagine how much better it could be if such dangerously impaired individuals were excluded from positions of power and influence.
Precedence exists for dealing with such situations. Randomized workplace drug testing became the norm in the 1980s. At the time, civil libertarians strongly objected on the basis that it violated personal privacy protections. However, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1989 that such testing was constitutional and now about 25 per cent of Fortune 500 companies routinely require their employees to submit to such tests.
Perhaps investors at major financial institutions should require that senior level managers submit to established tests to ensure they are not psychopathic. This is not an issue of civil liberties since the precedent has already been well established regarding drug impairment in the workplace. Likewise, it is not a regulatory issue since private shareholders have every right to demand that executives demonstrate they are not biochemically impaired and therefore unable to carry out their fiduciary duties on behalf of investors. If corporate boards are hiring psychopaths as executive management, they are not carrying out their due diligence and could be held legally liable for their oversight.
Companies should also consider providing employees with specific whistleblower provisions to expose potential psychopaths in the workplace. A 2010 study by Boddy showed that corporate psychopaths caused more than one quarter of all workplace bullying, though they accounted for only one per cent of the workforce.
Besides being traumatic and humiliating to other workers, this bullying is also very expensive. Boddy calculated that bullying by corporate psychopaths cost companies in the U.K. more than £3.5 billion per year in lost productivity and attrition. Extrapolating these results to the United States, these deviant individuals are responsible for more than $35 billion in direct annual losses to U.S. businesses.
Politicians, too?
And what about elected officials? There is no higher standard of trust in our society than standing for public office. Campaigning politicians are expected to submit to almost absurd levels of scrutiny about their private lives, character and personal relationships. Should not candidates begin providing voters proof that they are medically capable of acting in the interests of the public that may elect them?
The Occupy Wall Street protesters demanding an end to the reign of the “1 per cent” may have unwittingly stumbled on the crux of the issue. Science tells us that 99 per cent of humans have normal emotional function. One per cent are psychopaths. We ignore that truth at our peril.
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86 Comments so far
Show AllMy calendar says today is November 24th, not April 1st.
The documentary "The Corporation" came to pretty much the same conclusion. And the irony is that these folks, instead of being isolated and treated for their disorder are elevated to the highest ranks of power and influence in society.
Here's a quote from the German psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer that I've posted here before:
"The psychopaths are always around. In calm times we study them, but in times of upheaval, they rule over us."
That quote, my friend is definitely a keeper...
I keep running into contexts that prompt me to repeat the following quote, as dreary and distasteful as I find its implications.
So, herewith journalist Ron Suskind's 2004 quote from "a senior adviser to Bush", reportedly Karl Rove:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
________________________
I trust that the relevance to Kretschmer's sublime quote is obvious, but just to belabor the point: plug in "the psychopaths" for the "we" in the phrase "...and when we act, we create our own reality" .
Indeed, it seems that "we"-- at least, some of "us"-- can study them in vitro, even while they rule over us in situ.
I think your quote more strongly implies narcissism rather than sociopathy. But yes, the two conditions are mutually complimentary and therefore exhibit strong correlation.
I would say that Barbara Bush is a text book example. Read, "Bush on the couch".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_on_the_Couch
I have witnessed psychopathic behavior of 1%ers in the workplace, where they surround themselves with ass kissers who meekly accept the psychotic behavior. This creates a perverse class structure where the privileged few stomp on anyone who gets in their way. They are convinced they are better than the rest of us. Most of these assholes belong to The Heritage Foundation and The Federalist Society.
The Environment we call "Capitalism" rewards the psychopath. The overall number in the population likely increases. While there likely a genetic component research has also shown that the social environment can act about an organism to cause genetic change.
As example it has been shown that high levels of stress in a parent can affect a childs DNA. Is it a great leap to suggest that the lack of empathy expressed in a Society that worships *I* over all others can also affect the DNA of the children born in that society?
The Military is another realm in which the psychopath is rewarded. Research has shown that many of those often seen as "heroes" have the traits of a psychopath.
They are heroes because they LIKE to kill and tthe Military loves this type and promotes that behaviour.
Darwin observed that finches can change their physical structure in a couple of quick generations (change bills from long slender bug catchers to short stout seed crunchers) to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
Why not behavior/instinct/memory?
As a student of several psych modalities, one of which involves reading faces, eye movement,and hand gestures, you may rest assured that this article is spot on. The funniest and most recent picture of lying, scared to death, and desire to hide, was Nancy Pelosi's reaction to Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes spot. I was ROTFLMAO. If you look at the faces and their eyes don't stop or if they get a glassy kill stare (like this guy) you have got a psychopath and the greed and lust for power is a repercussion of their own miserable personal internal disturbed minds.
How do you clean up the enviroment when they have already achived prominance?? Just look back to 2008... The banking system was destroyed! Then bailed-out by other phycopaths with our Pensions, savings, and futures!! Same as Greece! >^^<
Ayn Rand was the chief psychopath who gave them all pseudo intelectual cover.
Koalaburger -- I was about to add that they even their own quite popular 'moral' philosopher in Ayn Rand. It's fascinating to watch a resurgence of interest in her approach to philosophy among right-leaning politicians and financial elites.
Alan Greenspan, who has probably done as much to cater to the 1% as anyone in modern economics, is perhaps her most noteworthy disciple.
Paul Ryan, the right-wing budget slasher, is one of her better known exponents in the GOP.
http://swampland.time.com/2011/06/03/paul-ryans-ayn-rand-problem/
It is fascinating to watch nominally Christian right-wingers try to reconcile their New Testament with their copy of 'The Virtues of Selfishness'.
In modern Amerikan capitalism I am betting on psychopathology triumphing over the Sermon on the Mount.
Very interesting essay.
It's laughable, I met her in the 60's and listened to her talk to a small group of people in a private setting. If the right knew what she really thought of their greedy manners, they wouldn't flaunt her so much. She was as much a socialist as the rest of us. She just had a different way of looking at the right to make a buck.BUT IT WAS A BUCK, not zillions taken from the mouths of children, and she sure as hell did not support war. She was very much against all forms of violence, hardly a place the right can claim.
Straight through and through psychopath in the financial world is milton the turd friedman whose 'unfettered global market' continues to wreak havoc around the world which accounts for the 1% being the only ones whom enjoy that life simply by being consciencelessly capable of preying on the 99%. Proving to me that money is a huge motivator for a person to turn psychopathic. But the savings and loan crisis certainly was a boon for these psychopaths even though some did do time for their crimes. But and here is where politics shows its psychopathic side, it should not go without notice the high profile names of the keating 5 who never spent a day in jail for their conspiratorial part in that financial terrorist attack in savings and loans shenanigans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
As the author of this piece points out, based on their physical characteristics H. sapiens were not likely to survive. Of course, the species survived and proliferated enormously because of its innate intelligence, ruthlessness and cruelty. The ability of psychopaths to rise to the top of large organizations like governments and corporations should be of no surprise to anyone. After all, these traits are what enhanced the species' ability to eliminate any competition that other bipeds, such as Neanderthals might have posed 35,000 years ago.
Spot on. Humans have been deceived by their religious institutions into believing that "being good and doing right" are human traits of value. In fact, evolution only rewards traits that aid survival. Hence, deception, lying, cheating and, yes, psychopathy may indeed help one survive, and thrive, even though it does not help the group survive. Evolution is about individuals, not groups. Culture, on the other hand, is about groups and group survival, but American culture has fallen victim to, and is being held hostage to, psychopathology. I would bet the farm that behind every major CEO is a very dirty past.
"Evolution is about individuals, not groups."
That's a point of debate in the community of evolutionary scientists.
The religious institutions, with their false doctrines, are populated by sociopath's. They are readily evident on TV. They create unhealthy shame to manipulate their congregations of fools for donations. Their is enough healthy shame in the lives of most people, me anyway, but the phony preachers never bother to define the subjects they preach about.. God is never defined for instance. What god purportedly does is offered as a definition but it is not. The Garden of Eden encounter is about unhealthy shame, creating the shame of nudity where shame didn't exist in one moment and became heinous the very next moment. This is unhealthy shame which enables unscrupulous shameless preachers to prey on their congregations for money,. They would be the last to want to talk about shame and will not hesitate to cast unhealthy shame onto others to deflect attention from themselves.
The problem here is one of accurate detection. What psychological test exists that offers 100%, or even 80%, accuracy in detecting psychopaths?
Don't believe in the testing industry? How un-American.
I had similar thoughts. The skills that enable psychopaths to emulate honest empathy and emotions in interactions with people also allow them to emulate these traits when tested. What is needed is a more objective "behavior-based" criterion, looking at how corporate executives' actions and decisions create profit for themselves at the expense of others. Or better yet, a corporate culture that is inherently unfriendly to psychopaths.
Let's change the way we do business.
An fMRI-scan is a pretty good way of finding out who's who, AFAIK. I thought we could DNA-test the bastards, but apparently not (http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.com/2011/11/gene-for-empathy.html).
They haven't been marginal in the past, how else do you explain systematic and willful manipulation of Middle Ages peasants? The runaway egoism of the upper classes in Rome? The rise and fall of so many dynasties in China? All that wealth and privilege at the expense of starving masses. Look at North Korea right now, the problem is not that they exist, the problem is that they run amok if no-one stops them. This article is patently false on a number of premises.
Bad premise, bad conclusion.
The key is not to get rid of them, we kind of need their lack of emotionalism now and again, we just need to change the rules to make the system unfun for them. Torture them a bit, maybe play now you see it now you don't with currency reforms. Bring back Depression era banking reforms.
They want to have an inappropriate relationship with all of our wallets, sort of like that coach with little boys. Name them, shame them, call them out and humiliate them for their egregiously bad behavior. You can... make them give back all the stuff.
This article, while it might mean well, can result in nothing more than a modern day witch hunt. Doesn't the idea of crimes based on the opinion of one person of another person's thoughts bother you? Crimes based on a person's perception of another person's potential?
I blame a society that punishes future whistle blowers instead of recognizing their value in putting a stop to bad behavior.
The fact that this behavior transcends time and space (history and geography) actually supports the author's argument that the behavior is genetic.
He also said:
"This frightening condition has existed throughout human history, though likely in a marginal and socially parasitic way."
Marginal is the key word here. He built a case that they have risen to a new prominence. and I do not agree given many volumes of egregiously bad past behavior sitting on my bookshelf.
I agree with you on this point, Puck, and I think it's an important observation.
I've noticed that many well-meaning people commit a simple error of logic when thinking about corruption in government and business. They see that most of the people they interact with in their everyday lives are basically decent and honest, or at least not outright psychopaths (in the sense used in this article). They then wrongly extrapolate their personal experience to conclude that the majority of those in positions of power are basically decent and honest, with just a few being lying crooks.
The mistake in this method of reasoning is clear: although those who are ruthless and greedy for power and wealth form a minority of the population, their greed drives them to seek positions of power, and their ruthlessness relieves them of ethical constraints that would limit the means at their disposal for achieving the power and wealth they seek. Because of these factors, it's natural to expect a high concentration of ruthless and avaricious people in the highest positions of power.
To put it more simply, we should expect to find mostly psychopaths at the places where psychopaths like to be. As you said, this has been true throughout human history. Our country's Constitution was nothing more than an attempt to impose countervailing forces to prevent an accumulation of power in the hands of psychopaths. Predictably, the psychopaths attacked our democracy in order to eliminate the barriers to unlimited power and wealth. It's up to us to reign them in and to keep them from preying on society. This is precisely what the Occupiers are trying to teach the world.
To cut to the chase: If your hunting ducks, go looking for a lake. If you see something that moves like a duck, sounds like a duck, and looks like a duck, your probably not looking at a moose.
Very true. Psychopaths maybe difficult to detect but psychopathic behavior is not difficult to identify, you have to have measures in place so that it has a limited effect.
excellent article, greed and commercialization of all life is killing the planet.
"If psychopaths have in fact installed themselves in the upper reaches of the world’s financial institutions, their genetic deficiency dictates that their greed knows no bounds. They will continue to act in anti-social, remorseless ways, amplified by their enormous corporate influence until the institutions they represent and perhaps the entire global economy collapses."
it isn't a secret, a very few people do run our planet and they have little concern for any person or thing that gets in their way.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed%20-the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
it's clear where the power lies and what motivates the rulers. the question is how do we, the masses, wrestle the power away from the psychopathic repitillians that have taken over our planet ?
it's like a bad episode of dr who.
...peace...
Rather like organic gardening, the key is not to destroy one species but rather to cultivate it's natural enemies. Be tolerant of your naturally occurring whistle-blowers instead of trying to snuff them out of existence.
The problem is that Wall Street and D.C. provide perfect environments for these psychopaths to thrive. So naturally there will be a disproportionate number of Psychopaths in both D.C. and Wall Street. Lobbyists are probably made of of mostly paychopaths, along with lawyers and media stars.
America has become a corporation. We are no longer being run as a country. Like any corporation we now have a bottom line. Profit above all else. Obama is the CEO. Congress is the Board of Directors. Wall Street is Research and Development. The media is its Public Relations Department. The military is its Legal Department. The universities are the Human Resources Department. Hollywood is its Marketing Department. Lobbyists are the Sales Department. Big Pharma is the Medical Department. The Judicial System judges are the shareholders. And the Supreme Court is the father of the first corporate citizen, Wall Street Jr. We the people are now the employees. Corporations don’t have citizens. To increase those profits all of our infrastructure is for sale as the corporation privatizes America. With psychopaths running the corporations we don't stand a chance.
Hoa binh
America IS a corporation. What they told all of us in K-12 was BS.
The US is defined as a corporation in (28 USC 3002):
(15) "United States" means -
(A) a Federal corporation;
(B) an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity
of the United States; or
(C) an instrumentality of the United States.
http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/28/VI/176/A/3002
Bravo! Couldn't have said it better myself.
Calling them psychopaths is too generous, lets just call them out for the criminals they are. Saying their mentally deranged allows for a medical cure and I'd prefer to have many of them treated instead to the less gentle treatments of Dr. Guillotine and associates.
The percentage of psychopaths in the overall population is closer to 4%.
Just like the percentage of financial Elite is 4% of the general population, not the '1%' popularized by the Occupy movement.
The neat thing is, the total US population is about 5% of the world's population (consuming more than 25% of the world's resources), and has an observably higher number of psychopaths in it's population.
Could this be taken as demonstrable evidence that the US, it's Capitalist puppet Police State government, and it's insane self-absorbed, self-important, self aggrandizing media driven pseudo-culture is a concentration of the world's psychopathic population? Wouldn't that mean that US foreign policy could finally be treated as a severe mental illness, proven to be dangerous to others, and therefore NEEDS competent evaluation and corrective measures to ensure the safety of the rest of the world?
"This frightening condition has existed throughout human history, though likely in a marginal and socially parasitic way."
Yes, but only if you think religion is marginal. I'm good with the parasitic part.
"a biochemical inability to experience normal feelings of empathy for others." And I'm not sure but, maybe the ADA might prevent you from 'discriminating' against these guys, unless you can show it's sort of like a flying and colorblindness thing.
"Given the state of the global economy, it might not surprise you to learn that psychopaths may be controlling the world. Not violent criminals, but corporate psychopaths who nonetheless have a genetically inherited biochemical condition that prevents them from feeling normal human empathy." -- Mitchell Anderson
I take serious issue with the idea that the psychopaths, about whom the author is speaking, are NOT violent. What about the wars and legal precedence they conjure up with the policies they write and establish as law to which "we the people" are forced to obey? People here in the U.S. and people around the world die every day -- hundreds and thousands of people every day -- due to the policies of this country. Economic violence is NO different than any other kind of violence. 45,000 people die each year in this country because they don't have any health insurance, or they don't have enough insurance or they don't have the right kind of health insurance, or the health insurance company refuses to pay up when illness is detected.
Every time I think of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc., etc., my heart breaks for the families who have lost homes, children, mothers, fathers, a way to earn a living, etc. 500,000 children died in Iraq during Bill Clinton's presidency due to so-called nonviolent sanctions. No one notices when people starve to death. These are crimes, and they are as violent as if the U.S. had dropped bombs on them -- which, of course, the U.S. did, too, throughout the Clinton presidency.
I agree with SEAGLASS -- let's call them what they are: CRIMINALS!! These men, and some women, too, lie, cheat and steal their way to the top. And, there is plenty of evidence. However, the justice department does NOT have the will to do the right thing.
In 1972, David Halberstam wrote the book, THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST, and he was questioning, and suggesting that we questions those in positions of power, and those who make decisions that effect each day of our lives. Are the "best and the brightest" really the "best and the brightest?" The title was meant with irony, and, maybe, even with a hint of sarcasm.
Very good points for consideration.
Let's see -- that's pathological liars, thieves, brutes, etc. who have control of
the monster-sized corporations; and those corporations' being sheltered
in a pseudo-judicial doctrine of corporations-as-people; and corporations-
as-people being protected as beneficiaries of the Bill of Rights. If our lives
in America were a card game, we'd realize pretty quick that the deck we're
dealt is stacked for the benefit of the hustlers in the game. What should we
do? Expressing myself in terms of such a card game, I'd say: Quit playing
that game; We've been playing in a game we can't win. However, if we the
past suckers quit playing the game -- and quit loosing our money -- then the
game stops. Starve the corporate beasts. Hustlers don't like to play with
other hustlers.
This post was quickly written, and the metaphor is of course not perfect.
Others are free to be critical of what I've expressed. I don't have time to
think more about the problem(s) now. Happy Thanksgiving.
Quickly written but absolutely right.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and to all as well :-)
These psychopaths have always been with us. Homer portrayed them as the crowd of suitors in the House of Odysseus in the Odyssey. He also detailed their inevitable destruction, as justice comes home to swiftly strike them down ...
Brilliant article and a great thread. I would suggest IQ tests for politicians as well as 'psychopathy tests'.
This is a great article, on a subject that is quite relevant but rarely discussed. We try to solve problems, cooperate by discussing the points, the consequences of a subject - whether something is sustainable or not, whether something kills people or not - and psychopaths do not care about the points because psychopaths do not care about consequences.
Unfortunately, the article is somewhat misleading. "Psychopath" is not, I don't think, a word with a solid definition, although there is a real push at this time to make it one, and it is a push to which I have no objection.
Sociopaths, or those with anti-social personality disorder, comprise 4% of the population, not one percent. Psychopath is a word that is sometimes used to describe the absolute worst of the sociopaths, the infamous murderers and political leaders and other monstrous personalities.
There are also narcissists, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders, and about seven other personality disorders. The OCPD are the most common. In 2001 a study was conducted to determine the percentage of personality disorders in the population. The conclusion was a tiny fraction under 15%. A later, more conservative study, I think 2008, still placed the number at 10%.
There is another solid percentage of the population who could not meet the criteria for personality disorders, but they nontheless are very high on the spectrum of behaviors. They are not totally lacking in empathy, conscience and a sense of responsibility, but they are quite limited in their display of these traits. After studying this subject at length, my guess is that the real number of people who are problematic in the world because they lack these crucial components is around 20%, or about twice the number of personality disorders within the general population, due to that portion of the people who are high on the spectrum of behaviors.
They all have that unholy trinity of a vacuum in their brains and psychic makeup where there should be something - they entirely lack conscience, empathy or a sense of responsibility for how their behavior affects other beings. Our problems are much larger than the one percent of the population, catchy as the slogan is.
We are, in fact, the problem, and I would hesitate to call us "good." Maybe a lot of us are neutral, and subject to immediate pressures (see the Milgram study). Even when those pressures are life destroying, like war and environmental degradation and trashing the planet and nuking it to death, we can easily cave, hence our problems on the larger scale.
Psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, predators all, they are our children, our siblings, our parents, our teachers, our clergymen, our spouses. They are, as Martha Stout wrote, next door.
Uncool as it may be perceived, I find religion very interesting and in fact, when seen as allegorical and symbolic when appropriate, it explains a great deal about our psychic landscape.
"Sociopaths, or those with anti-social personality disorder, comprise 4% of the population, not one percent."
Maybe so, but whoever conceived the very elegant 1%/99% designation is a genius. That says so much with so little and is so immediately understandable that it has caught on like wildfire, and has the potential of becoming a permanent fixture in many languages (if it hasn't already).
It's not only elegant, it's true. One percent has maintained control over resources that, in any fair environment, would benefit far more people. The heirs of Walmart must have no conscience whatsoever to profit at the truly "obscene" level that they do while depriving employees of the most basic of benefits. It is staggering.
There is a real 1%-99% breakdown.
Unfortunately, we're in far deeper doo-doo than that. The 1% could never get as far as it does without a lot of all kinds of allowances from far more of the population.
I am glad to see the language of psychology used increasingly to describe the people who are "bringing us down." I have been using the words "sociopath" and "psychopath" for years to describe not only corporate "leaders" but politicians. As a society we have allowed those who are developmentally arrested to take over because the very stage of their arrested development is an aggressive stage and society has not been willing to "check" this aggression, but the time has come.
Here is something I wrote on this a few years ago. http://www.healingmagic.org/articles/Narcissism.pdf
Empathy is formed in the very earliest process of infant bonding to a caregiver. Literally the brain's nervous system grows in response to caring relationships, and if this is missing during that critical time, the child will grow up unable to feel the emotional responses of others. This can happen either in extreme neglect, or, ironically, in extreme abundance where the parents are preoccupied with their own needs and give the child plenty of "things" but not enough consistent. personal contact. The conclusion is WE MUST TAKE CARE OF THE CHILDREN.
This book by the psychiatrist Bruce Perry, titled "Born for Love", gives a very good explanation of examples of how this can happen.
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Born-Love/?isbn=9780061987670