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...Original article: "The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis" by Clive R. Boddy, Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 102, Number 2, 255-259.
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...
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...
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)...
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.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Psychopathological 1%?
"Weeding Out Corporate Psychopaths" by Mitchell Anderson, published on Thursday, November 24, 2011, by the Toronto Star:
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4 comments:
That explains a lot (and a convenient percentage figure- although it’s unlikely everyone in the upper 1% is a psychopath). A chapter in R. Jonson’s Psychopath Test, (named for Hare’s psychopathy checklist) highlights a line in an old Sunbeam Corp. research report that reads: “P/E on Nxt FY: 27.5X.” Jonson notes that while prose like that makes most people yawn, those familiar with the formula understood that it meant that if the CEO could “squeeze out overhead and expenses [i.e. people’s livelihoods], the earnings will shoot up and investors who get in early will make a killing.” That’s just what he did and in the end killed an entire town but that’s not how it read in the company’s annual report or news reports either. Perhaps as the OWS movement continues to occupy our consciousness corporate activities will be exposed in a new light and the missing human factor will be added to that equation.
Hi JT,
I'll change the title because of course not everyone in the top-earning 1% are psychopaths...our predicament is much more complex...
Thanks for your thoughtful clarification!
JD
I liked the first title a lot. It was exciting, etc. (but the new title is fine too). I just meant that it was an interesting coincidence that the percentage figures were the same and that's all.
I changed it back. It's definitely a more colorful, catchy title!
However I did not want to deny the existence of and/or dehumanize empathetic, philanthropic people who happen to be born into the 1%, or empathetic, very smart people who worked their way into the 1% before so much of Wall Steet investment banking became as corrupted to the extent it is now, or the empathetic people who are committed to enabling socially useful projects that can only be funded through investment banking.
The new title sounded too academic :)
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