Psychopaths Make Great CEOs
...Hare is also the author of the definitive psychopath test—Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)—which has become the SAT for diagnosing nutjob behavior. Throughout decades of research, he’s found that many corporate leaders score way above average.
Actually, alarmingly high. While studies suggest that about 1 percent of the general population qualifies as genuinely psychopathic, Hare believes that about 4 percent of people with substantial decision-making power can be classified as such, and their influence is outsized. Hare even tells Ronson he wishes he’d spent less time studying psychopaths in prison and more time studying those who work in the markets. “Serial killers ruin families,†Hare says. “Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.†Although Ronson leans heavily on Hare’s research, he explains that other psychologists feel the same way. “The higher you go up the ladder,†says Martha Stout, a former Harvard Medical School professor and author of The Sociopath Next Door, “the greater the number of sociopaths you’ll find there.†(Ronson uses the terms socio- and psychopath interchangeably.)
To test the thesis, Ronson visits “Chainsaw†Al Dunlap, former chief executive officer of Sunbeam and author of Mean Business, who is both celebrated and reviled for his ability to fire people in large numbers. Ronson finds him at his Florida mansion, which is decorated with sharks and lions and panthers and eagles and hawks, and a lot of gold. Naturally, Ronson brings with him a copy of the PCL-R. Dunlap scores pretty high...
...As wardens have long known, Ronson explains, psychopaths are incurable. Their deformity is physical—a temporal lobe of their brains does not seem to transmit or respond to normal emotional cues, such as fear or a terrible product launch. It’s almost a relief to know there is a physical difference that allows so many CEOs to stare into a camera and say they won’t be cutting the dividend, right before they cut the dividend.
Psychopaths have other advantages, too. According to Ronson, they learn to mimic emotion to manipulate their victims. “Try to teach them empathy and they’ll cunningly use it,†he writes. To such monsters, therapy is grist and workplace harassment videos are little more than training tools. There is nothing to do, really, but lock them up, or put them in charge....
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-stack-the-psychopath-test-by-jon-ronson-07212011.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/
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