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 PowerHere'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.
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.
".....psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people...."
ReplyDeleteWe found the 1%!
One of the best reading material on this is Ponerology: The Study Of Evil
ReplyDeleteQuote:
“Experience has taught the author that evil is similar to disease in nature, although possibly more complex and elusive to our understanding. Its genesis reveals many factors, pathological, especially psychopathological, in character, whose essence medicine and psychology have already studied… [A] comprehension of the essence and genesis of evil generally makes use of data from [biology, medicine, and psychology]. Philosophical reflection alone is insufficient.” (Lobaczewski, 98)
Like a color blind man incapable of distinguishing red from green, a small minority of the human population cannot experience or fully comprehend the normal range of human emotions. And like those color blind who may conceal their condition by using the correct words while not understanding their meaning (e.g., the top traffic light is “red”, the bottom is “green”) - so does this minority conceal their condition by playacting an emotion's exterior signs (facial expressions, exclamations, body language). However, they do not actually experience the emotion in question. Their deception is revealed in the laboratory, where they respond to words like DEATH, CANCER, DISEASE, as if they were DAY, CREAM, or PAPER. They lack the ability to comprehend the emotional “punch” that certain words contain. They use others’ emotional reactions as cues, and they adjust their behavior to portray the correct ‘emotional’ behavior. (Hare, 129-30)
These individuals are known as psychopaths. Not only can they not feel the pain of others, they often seem to deliberately cause others pain. Lobaczewski refers to this disorder as an “essential psychopathy” to distinguish them from others with deficits in their genetic/instinctual endowment, essential psychopathy being the most severe and disturbing.
Many so-called “antisocial individuals” acquire similar characteristics in their life-time, whether caused by brain damage to certain areas of the brain, or functionally, because of close contact with and influence by such individuals. Lobaczewski terms such individuals characteropaths. The vast majority of both these groups cannot change. The acts that we call evil (especially on a macrosocial level) can be traced back to this deviant minority of human beings and the effects of their actions on their family, friends, and society.
The pdf is online Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski
I've often thought this. It's amazing to see some confirmation. It also explains the way they sequester themselves from society at large.
ReplyDeleteI've also heard that wealthy families placed their mentally ill children with the Church in earlier days.
OMG Clonal.
ReplyDelete