Melissa Hogenboom — Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch

Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on at will, according to new research....

Christian Keysers from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and senior author of the study, said it could change the way psychopathic criminals were viewed.

"The predominant notion had been that they are callous individuals, unable to feel emotions themselves and therefore unable to feel emotions in others.

"Our work shows it's not that simple. They don't lack empathy but they have a switch to turn it on and off. By default, it seems to be off."

The fact that they have the capacity to switch empathy on, at least under certain conditions, could have a positive side to it, Prof Keysers said.

"The notion psychopaths have no empathy at all was a bleak prospect. It would make it very hard for them to have normal moral development 

"Now that we've shown they have empathy - even if only in certain conditions - we can give therapists something to work with," Prof Keysers told BBC News.
But he explained that it remained unclear how this wilful capacity for empathy could be transformed into the spontaneous empathy most of us have.

BBC News
Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch
Melissa Hogenboom | Science reporter

Sociopaths in power — Psychopaths on Wall Street

Read it at Business Insider

The Shocking Statistic About Psychopaths On Wall Street
by Sam Ro
(Posted by Warren Mosler at The Center of the Universe)

Read it at The Independent (UK)
Brian Basham: Beware corporate psychopaths – they are still occupying positions of power
(h/t Dimm in a comment at Warren's)

Read it at National Science Foundation
Close Family Ties Keep Microbial Cheaters in Check, Study Finds

(h/t Roger Erickson in a comment at Warren's)

Read it at Trends in Genetics February 2011, Vol. 27, No. 2

The cooperative amoeba: Dictyostelium as a model for social evolution

Si. I. Li and Michael D. Purugganan

(h/t Roger Erickson at link above)

Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (2005)

Read it at AlterNet

Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author and Inspiration to Right-Wing Leaders, Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killer

by Mark Ames

Wikipedia: Praise, criticism, influence, and renewed popularity [of Ayn Rand]

For more details on this topic, see Bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

Over the years, Atlas Shrugged has attracted an energetic and committed fan base. Each year the Ayn Rand Institute donates 400,000 copies of works by Ayn Rand, including Atlas Shrugged, to high school students.[6] According to a 1991 survey done for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Atlas Shrugged was situated between The Bible andM. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled as the book that made the most difference in the lives of 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members surveyed, with a "large gap existing between the #1 book and the rest of the list". [49] Modern Library's 1998 nonscientific online poll of the 100 best novels of the 20th century[50][51] found Atlas rated #1 although it was not included on the list chosen by the Modern Library board of authors and scholars.[52]  

In 1997, the libertarian Cato Institute held a joint conference with The Atlas Society, an Objectivist organization, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged.[53] At this event, Howard Dickman of Reader's Digest stated that the novel had "turned millions of readers on to the ideas of liberty" and said that the book had the important message of the readers' "profound right to be happy".[53]

The C-SPAN television series American Writers listed Rand as one of twenty-two surveyed figures of American literature, though primarily mentioning The Fountainhead rather than Atlas Shrugged.[54]  

Rand's impact on contemporary libertarian thought has been considerable, and it is noteworthy that the title of the leading libertarian magazine, Reason: Free Minds, Free Markets, is taken directly from John Galt, the hero of Atlas Shrugged, who argues that "a free mind and a free market are corollaries". 

The Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises admired the unapologetic elitism of Rand's work. In a private letter to Rand written a few months after the novel's publication, he declared, "...Atlas Shrugged is not merely a novel. It is also (or may I say: first of all) a cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society, a substantiated rejection of the ideology of our self-styled "intellectuals" and a pitiless unmasking of the insincerity of the policies adopted by governments and political parties... You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you."[55] 

Acclaim has not been unanimous. Nobel Prize winning economist and liberal commentator Paul Krugman alluded to an oft-quoted quip[56] in his blog: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."[57]

"I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that Atlas Shrugged has had a significant effect on their business decisions, even if they don't agree with all of Ayn Rand's ideas."– John A. Allison, former CEO ofBB&T [6]

 In the late 2000s, the book gained more media attention and conservative commentators suggested the book as a warning against a socialistic reaction to the finance crisis. Conservative commentators Neal Boortz,[58] Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh[59] have offered high praise of the book on their respective radio and television programs. In 2006 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas cited Atlas Shrugged as among his favorite novels.[60]

RepublicanCongressman John Campbell said for example: "People are starting to feel like we're living through the scenario that happened in [the novel]... We're living in Atlas Shrugged", echoing Stephen Moore in an article published in The Wall Street Journal on January 9, 2009, titled "Atlas Shrugged From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years".[61]

The sales of Atlas Shrugged have since then sharply increased, according to The Economistmagazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon.com's top-selling books on January 13, 2009 and that its thirty day sales average showed the novel selling three times faster than during the same period of the previous year. With an attached sales chart, The Economist reported that sales "spikes" of the book seemed to coincide with the release of economic data. Subsequently, on April 2, 2009,Atlas Shrugged ranked #1 in the "Fiction and Literature" category at Amazon and #15 in overall sales.[62][63][64] Total sales of the novel in 2009 exceeded 500,000 copies.[65]

Psychopaths in charge?

Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”

As a result, Boddy argues in a recent issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, such people are “extraordinarily cold, much more calculating and ruthless towards others than most people are and therefore a menace to the companies they work for and to society.”

Read it at Washington's Blog

Psychopaths Caused the Financial Crisis … And They Will Do It Again and Again Unless They Are Removed From Power

Here's the part I like best:

A senior UK investment banker and I [were] discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.

He then makes an astonishing confession: “At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles.”

Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.

Now that is really a jawdropper. That's like recruiting criminals.

This explains Bill Black's finding about control fraud underlying the financial crisis. It also accounts for Ayn Rand's philosophy, which is basically psychopathological, and it is documented that she modeled here heroes on real life psychopaths.

The post goes on to show that many politicians fit the profile, too. The problem is the selection process in these institutions that biases selection toward psychological dysfunction.