Corporate Psychopaths Research Articles

Greed is good? Assessing the relationship between entrepreneurship and subclinical psychopathy

Despite the stereotype of entrepreneurs as corporate psychopaths, there has been little research on the overlap between individual differences in entrepreneurship and subclinical psychopathy. In line with this issue, the current study investigated whether primary and secondary psychopathy are linked to a measure of entrepreneurial tendencies and abilities, as well as entrepreneurial activities and achievements. Participants were 435 working adults. Structural equation models revealed that individual differences in entrepreneurial tendencies and abilities were positively related to primary psychopathy, but unrelated to secondary psychopathy. Secondary psychopathy did not predict entrepreneurial activity; primary psychopathy predicted some entrepreneurial outcomes, albeit modestly, providing partial support for the ‘corporate psychopath’ stereotype. Implications for entrepreneurship research and practice are discussed.

Taming big data and corporate psychopaths

Taming big data and corporate psychopaths

Neuropsychological profiles of members of organized crime and drug-traffic organizations

Neuropsychological profiles of members of organized crime and drug-traffic organizations Feggy Ostrosky, Karina Cecilia Borja, César Romero Rebollar, Karla Ximena Díaz GalvánLaboratory of Neuropsychology and Psychophysiology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, MexicoAbstract: Members of organized crime and drug traffic organization have developed a hierarchical model of association while participating in the production, distribution, and commercialization of drugs and defense of their territory. The nature of these organizations leads to extremely violent acts, similar to those performed by psychopathic delinquents. Eighty-two incarcerated male offenders – members of these organizations – were assessed and later classified according to the role they played in the organization: kingpins, money launderers, protectors, enforcers, and distributors/producers. These individuals were paired to a control group of 76 nonincarcerated healthy male volunteers from a community sample. We obtained their psychopathic profile and frontal lobe functioning using the Psychopathy Checklist, Revised (PCL-R), PCL-R score, and the Frontal Lobe and Executive Functions Battery. Kingpins and enforcers were considered as psychopaths across the entire range, while the money launderers fit in the description of successful psychopathy, and interesting contrasts were observed within the groups in the PCL-R factors. The orbitofrontal cortex was the functional area affected in the inmate sample, being more detrimentally affected in the most violent samples, thus providing a useful measure of psychopathy and violence of unimpaired criminals. An objective classification of incarcerated criminals will allow us to distinguish between neuronal and cultural psychopaths and sociopaths, which will help us establish adequate readaptation programs. Social issues were also determinants: it was found that in the environment where these criminals grew up, there is a broad acceptance and validation of lifestyles characterized by the accumulation and showing off of material values over intellectual and social values, which in addition to drug consumption trigger the development of aggressive and violent personalities. Readaptation programs must strengthen cognitive abilities, which are normally diminished in these individuals, and encourage a lifestyle with an “integral wealth perspective” that values not only economic but also personal, social, familial, labor, and cultural assets.Keywords: psychopathy, violence, executive functions, orbitofrontal regions

Amygdala dysfunction attenuates frustration-induced aggression in psychopathic individuals in a non-criminal population

Individuals with psychopathy have an increased tendency toward certain types of aggression. We hypothesized that successful psychopaths, who have no criminal convictions but can be diagnosed with psychopathy in terms of personality characteristics, are skilled at regulating aggressive impulses, compared to incarcerated unsuccessful psychopaths. In this block-designed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we sought to clarify the neural mechanisms underlying differences in frustration-induced aggression as a function of psychopathy in non-criminal populations. Twenty male undergraduate students who completed a self-report psychopathy questionnaire were scanned while they completed a task in which they either could or could not punish other individuals who made unfair offers of monetary distribution. Individuals with high psychopathic tendencies were less likely to make a decision to inflict costly punishment on people proposing unfair offers. During this decision-making, psychopathy was associated with less amygdala activity in response to the unfairness of offers. Moreover, the amygdala dysfunction in psychopathic individuals was associated with reduced functional connectivity with dopaminergic-related areas, including the striatum, when punishment was available compared to when it was unavailable. The possibility that levels of psychopathic traits in a regular population were milder than in incarcerated populations cannot be ruled out. The findings indicate that amygdala dysfunction underlies affective deficits of psychopathy. We propose that the insensitivity of the amygdala to the affective significance of social stimuli contributes to an increased risk of violation of social norms, but enhances the ability to attenuate impulses toward maladaptive aggression in successful psychopaths.

The impact of corporate psychopaths on corporate reputation and marketing

This paper briefly discusses why Corporate Psychopaths, as one particularly pernicious type of dysfunctional leader, should be of interest to marketers. One reason is because of the negative impact of Corporate Psychopaths on some of the antecedents of Corporate Reputation. The paper discusses how Corporate Psychopaths through their direct action and via their example to others, undermine some of the key drivers of corporate reputation such as good communications, job satisfaction and corporate social responsibility. The paper discusses past research which found that in the presence of managers who are Corporate Psychopaths, a corporation's levels of perceived corporate social responsibility, good communications and commitment to employees go down. Simultaneously, levels of conflict and organisational constraints go up. The negative impact of the presence of Corporate Psychopaths in an organisation is discussed and the implications for marketers are drawn out. The paper finishes by hypothesising that the presence of Corporate Psychopaths will probably affect some of the other areas of marketing that influence corporate reputation as well. This includes levels of marketing service provision and delivery, marketing orientation, job related stress, marketing ethics and management credibility and trustworthiness. The paper calls for further research into how Corporate Psychopaths influence these important areas of marketing management.

The Identification of Negative Emotions Through a Go/No-Go Task

This study compares the performance, when identifying negative emotions on facial expression, of male offenders (n = 62) with a high level of psychopathy (n = 25) with other criminals with a low level of psychopathy (n = 37), as well as other “successful psychopaths” (n = 12) and non-criminals with a low level of psychopathy (n = 39) in order to clarify the negative emotional processing of offenders and non-offenders that are either high or low in psychopathy. The participants were assessed on a Go/No-Go paradigm in which subjects had to respond to the facial expressions of fear, sadness, and anger. The psychopathy level was obtained by Factor 1 of Hare’s PCL:SV. Both psychopathic groups, criminal and non-criminal, showed worse performance than their non-psychopathic counterparts on the identification of fear and sadness. An overresponsivity to both anger and fear was common to criminals, psychopaths, and non-psychopaths. These results reinforce the idea that psychopathy is related to a poor ability to identify fear and sadness in facial expressions independently of its manifestation in criminal behavior. In turn, a misidentified response pattern, characterized by an overresponsiveness for fear and anger, is common to both psychopaths and the criminal groups, and it appears to be the characteristic that distinguishes the three groups under study from non-criminal non-psychopath controls.

P3 event-related potentials and childhood maltreatment in successful and unsuccessful psychopaths

Although P3 event-related potential abnormalities have been found in psychopathic individuals, it is unknown whether successful (uncaught) psychopaths and unsuccessful (caught) psychopaths show similar deficits. In this study, P3 amplitude and latency were assessed from a community sample of 121 male adults using an auditory three-stimulus oddball task. Psychopathy was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised ( Hare, 2003) while childhood physical maltreatment was assessed using the Conflict Tactic Scale ( Straus, 1979). Results revealed that compared to normal controls, unsuccessful psychopaths showed reduced parietal P3 amplitudes to target stimuli and reported experienced more physical abuse in childhood. In contrast, successful psychopaths exhibited larger parietal P3 amplitude and shorter frontal P3 latency to irrelevant nontarget stimuli than unsuccessful psychopaths. This is the first report of electrophysiological processing differences between successful and unsuccessful psychopaths, possibly indicating neurocognitive and psychosocial distinctions between these two subtypes of psychopathy.

Successful Psychopaths: Are They Unethical Decision-Makers and Why?

Successful psychopaths, defined as individuals in the general population who nevertheless possess some degree of psychopathic traits, are receiving increasing amounts of empirical attention. To date, little is known about such individuals, specifically with regard to how they respond to ethical dilemmas in business contexts. This study investigated this relationship, proposing a mediated model in which the positive relationship between psychopathy and unethical decision-making is explained through the process of moral disengagement, defined as a cognitive orientation that facilitates unethical choice. The results of the study supported this model, and implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Empathy in Leadership: Appropriate or Misplaced? An Empirical Study on a Topic that is Asking for Attention

Leadership has become a more popular term than management, even though it is understood that both phenomena represent important organizational behaviors. This paper focuses on empathy in leadership, and presents the findings of a study conducted among business students over the course of 3 years. Finding that empathy consistently ranked lowest in the ratings, the researchers set out to discover the driving motives behind this invariable trend, and conducted a second study to obtain opinions about possible underlying factors. The paper presents the findings of both studies, as well as literature reviews on the differences between management and leadership, a historical overview of leadership, a reflection of 21st century leadership, the ongoing debate on the effects of corporate psychopaths on ethical performance, and scholars’ perception on empathy in corporate leadership. The findings indicate the need for a paradigm shift in corporations as well as business schools in regards to leaders’ required skills, and suggest a proactive approach from business faculty to change the current paradigm.

Ethical leadership: global challenges and perspectives

Ethical Leadership in a Global World, and a Roadmap to the Book PART I: PERSPECTIVES ON THE NATURE OF THE CHALLENGE Corporate Psychopaths CEOs and Corporate Social Performance CEOs and Financial Misreporting Life at the Sharp End PART II: PERSPECTIVES FROM AROUND THE WORLD Inclusive Leadership in Nicaragua and the DRC A New ideal Leadership Profile for Romania Virtue-based Leadership in the UK and Nigeria Chinese Folk Wisdom: Leading with Traditional Values Leading Ethically: What Helps and What Hinders PART III: PERSPECTIVES FOR THE FUTURE Beyond Compliance A Moral Compass for the Global Leadership Labyrinth Spiritually Anchored Leadership Global Ethical Leadership and the Future

Subtypes of psychopathy in the British household population: findings from the national household survey of psychiatric morbidity

Cleckley asserted in 1941 that psychopathic personalities are found in the community as well as prisons. Subtypes of abnormal personality may be identifiable in the general population using contemporary measures of psychopathy. Cluster analysis of PCL:SV scores using the four-facet model with a representative sample of 624 adults aged 16-74years living in households interviewed in the second of a two-phase survey in Great Britain. Analysis confirmed an optimum 5-cluster solution and existence in the general population of prototypical or criminal psychopaths, non-psychopathic habitual criminals, and "successful psychopaths". Two additional clusters were identified, one uniquely characterised by impulsive/irresponsible (Facet 3) items and the other by social failure associated with low scores on each facet. The study confirmed previously hypothesised and two new subtypes of psychopathy within the general population. This prototypical classification may compliment existing typologies during clinical assessment following further refinement.

The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis

This short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the Global Financial Crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis. The paper presents a theory of the Global Financial Crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations, in particular, have had a major part in causing the crisis. This paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses significant ways in which Corporate Psychopaths may have acted recently, to the detriment of many. Further research into this theory is called for.

Corporate Psychopaths, Bullying and Unfair Supervision in the Workplace

This article reports on empirical research that establishes strong, positive, and significant correlations between the ethical issues of bullying and unfair supervision in the workplace and the presence of Corporate Psychopaths. The main measure for bullying is identified as being the witnessing of the unfavorable treatment of others at work. Unfair supervision was measured by perceptions that an employee’s supervisor was unfair and showed little interest in the feelings of subordinates. This article discusses the theoretical links between psychopathy and bullying and notes that little empirical evidence confirms the connection in management research. The sample of 346 Australian senior white collar workers used in the research is described as is the measure of behavior for identifying psychopaths. The findings are then presented and discussed showing that when Corporate Psychopaths are present in a work environment, the level of bullying is significantly greater than when they are not present. Further, that when Corporate Psychopaths are present, supervisors are strongly perceived as being unfair to employees and disinterested in their feelings. This article concludes that around 26% of bullying is accounted for by 1% of the employee population, those who are Corporate Psychopaths.

Corporate Psychopaths and organizational type

This paper looks at one of the members of the ‘dark triad’ of managers with malevolent personalities and investigates whether Corporate Psychopaths are to be found at greater levels of incidence in any particular type of organization. The paper introduces the topic of research into the characters of leaders and explains why this is important. It then discusses who Psychopaths and Corporate Psychopaths are in comparison with the other members of the ‘dark triad’; Machiavellians and Narcissists. The paper discusses some of the theoretical implications of having Corporate Psychopaths in organizations and then presents some evidence that they are to be found at greater incidence levels in financial service institutions and the civil service rather than in primary industries and retail services. The paper looks at the implications of the presence of Corporate Psychopaths in terms of lower levels of corporate social responsibility and mentions that Corporate Psychopaths also influence productivity and organizational constraints. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Morphological alterations in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in unsuccessful psychopaths.

Although deficits in several cortical and subcortical structures have been found in psychopaths, it remains unclear whether the neuropathology differs between subgroups of psychopaths (i.e., unsuccessful and successful). Using both traditional and novel image analyses methods, this study aims to reveal gross and subtle morphological changes in the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in unsuccessful and successful psychopaths. Volumetric segmentation, cortical pattern matching, and surface-based mesh modeling methods were used to examine prefrontal and amygdala structures in 16 unsuccessful psychopaths, 10 successful psychopaths, and 27 controls. Significant reduced gray matter volume and cortical thickness/surface shape in the middle frontal, orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala were found in unsuccessful psychopaths but not successful psychopaths, compared with controls. This study provides the first evidence of greater prefrontal and amygdala structural deficits in unsuccessful psychopaths, which may predispose them to poor behavioral control and impaired decision-making, thus making them more prone to convictions.

Leaders without ethics in global business: Corporate psychopaths

Abstract This paper introduces the concept of Corporate Psychopaths as ruthless employees who can successfully gain entry to organizations and can then get promoted within those organizations to reach senior managerial and leadership positions. What little empirical research currently exists supports the view that Corporate Psychopaths are more commonly found at senior levels of organizations. This paper presents further empirical evidence that supports this view. It discusses how, in a quantitative sample of 346 white‐collar workers, in 2008, research using a psychopathy scale identified greater levels of psychopathy at more senior levels of corporations than at more junior levels. The paper goes on to propose that this is a universal issue that can pose various ethical problems for corporations because of the ruthless, selfish and conscience‐free approach to life that Corporate Psychopaths have. Other ethical issues are to do with their moral accountability and with the problems associated with the possibility of screening employees for psychopathy. The paper reviews the literature on psychopathy and concludes that while psychopaths appear to be universal in occurrence, they may well be environmentally limited in their possible actions in more collectivist societies. However, the global spread of western, individualistically oriented corporations may pose a threat to any collectivist societies in which they operate. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The search for the successful psychopath

There has long been interest in identifying and studying “successful psychopaths.” This study sampled psychologists with an interest in law, attorneys, and clinical psychology professors to obtain descriptions of individuals considered to be psychopaths who were also successful in their endeavors. The results showed a consistent description across professions and convergence with descriptions of traditional psychopathy, though the successful psychopathy profile had higher scores on conscientiousness, as measured within the five-factor model (FFM). These results are useful in documenting the existence of successful psychopathy, demonstrating the potential benefit of informant methodology, and providing an FFM description that distinguishes successful psychopaths from unsuccessful psychopaths studied more routinely within prison settings.

The Influence of Corporate Psychopaths on Corporate Social Responsibility and Organizational Commitment to Employees

This study investigated whether employee perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) were associated with the presence of Corporate Psychopaths in corporations. The article states that, as psychopaths are 1% of the population, it is logical to assume that every large corporation has psychopaths working within it. To differentiate these people from the common perception of psychopaths as being criminals, they have been called “Corporate Psychopaths” in this research. The article presents quantitative empirical research into the influence of Corporate Psychopaths on four perceptual measures of CSR and three further measures of organizational commitment to employees. The article explains who Corporate Psychopaths are and delineates the measures of CSR and organizational commitment to employees that were used. It then outlines the research conducted among 346 corporate employees in Australia in 2008. The reliability of the instrument used is commented on favorably in terms of its statistical reliability and its face and external validity. Results of the research are described showing the highly significant and negative influence of Corporate Psychopaths on all of the measures of CSR and of organizational commitment to employees used in the research. When Corporate Psychopaths are present in leadership positions within organizations, employees are less likely to agree with views that: the organization does business in a socially desirable manner; does business in an environmentally friendly manner and that the organization does business in a way that benefits the local community. Also, when Corporate Psychopaths are present in leadership positions within organizations, employees are significantly less likely to agree that the corporation does business in a way that shows commitment to employees, significantly less likely to feel that they receive due recognition for doing a good job, to feel that their work was appreciated and to feel that their efforts were properly rewarded. The article argues that academics and researchers in the area of CSR cannot ignore the influence of individual managers. This is particularly the case when those managers have dysfunctional personalities, or are actually psychopaths. The article further argues that the existence of Corporate Psychopaths should be of interest to those involved in corporate management and corporate governance because their presence influences the way corporations are run and how corporations affect society and the environment.

Successful and unsuccessful psychopaths: A neurobiological model

Despite increasing interest in psychopathy research, surprisingly little is known about the etiology of non-incarcerated, successful psychopaths. This review provides an analysis of current knowledge on the similarities and differences between successful and unsuccessful psychopaths derived from five population sources: community samples, individuals from employment agencies, college students, industrial psychopaths, and serial killers. An initial neurobiological model of successful and unsuccessful psychopathy is outlined. It is hypothesized that successful psychopaths have intact or enhanced neurobiological functioning that underlies their normal or even superior cognitive functioning, which in turn helps them to achieve their goals using more covert and nonviolent methods. In contrast, in unsuccessful, caught psychopaths, brain structural and functional impairments together with autonomic nervous system dysfunction are hypothesized to underlie cognitive and emotional deficits and more overt violent offending.

Corporate psychopathy: Talking the walk

There is a very large literature on the important role of psychopathy in the criminal justice system. We know much less about corporate psychopathy and its implications, in large part because of the difficulty in obtaining the active cooperation of business organizations. This has left us with only a few small-sample studies, anecdotes, and speculation. In this study, we had a unique opportunity to examine psychopathy and its correlates in a sample of 203 corporate professionals selected by their companies to participate in management development programs. The correlates included demographic and status variables, as well as in-house 360 degrees assessments and performance ratings. The prevalence of psychopathic traits-as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and a Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL: SV) "equivalent"-was higher than that found in community samples. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that the underlying latent structure of psychopathy in our corporate sample was consistent with that model found in community and offender studies. Psychopathy was positively associated with in-house ratings of charisma/presentation style (creativity, good strategic thinking and communication skills) but negatively associated with ratings of responsibility/performance (being a team player, management skills, and overall accomplishments).