There's A 20% Chance Your Boss Is A Legit Psychopath, According To Research — How To Tell For Sure
Now you can be sure.
HI_Pictures | Shutterstock If you've ever thought, "My boss is a total psychopath," there's a one in five chance that you're right. In a 2017 study by Nathan Brooks, a forensic psychologist working out of Bond University, over 20% of the 261 CEO participants in their study had traits that could be defined as "psychopathic". Yes, that's one in five.
So what makes a person a psychopath? The characteristics associated with being a psychopath are insincerity, superficiality, and an inability to empathize. Psychopaths can feel fear, but they lack the ability to recognize true danger.
There's a 20% chance your boss is a legit psychopath.
Based on what he found in his study, Brooks thinks that employers should start screening potential employees based on their personality type rather than just their specific skill set.
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Because personality type isn't factored into how places hire staff, it has allowed, in Brooks' estimation, for "successful psychopaths" to achieve high-ranking levels of success. Unfortunately, being a psychopath also means that you're more likely to engage in illegal or unethical behaviors as long as it benefits you.
Roughly 1% of the overall population right now is made up of psychopaths, so how are so many psychopaths becoming people's bosses? Well, for one thing, certain jobs tend to attract more psychopaths than others. Their personality type is well-suited to the field of politics, extreme sports, and business. (Yay for blogging! Fewer psychopaths!)
If your boss is a psychopath, you'll notice a core set of traits.
Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Elmhurst College, William Hirstein, Ph.D., explained that psychopathy is rooted in genetics, and there is a core set of traits that are often linked to people diagnosed as psychopaths: They are uncaring, have a lack of emotions, specifically shame, guilt, and embarrassment, irresponsible, distorted speech, and insincerity, overconfident, impulsive, selfish, and violent.
As Hirstein added, these traits don't all have to be displayed simultaneously, but psychopaths tend to exhibit all these traits as situations arise. What's important to note is that sometimes psychopathy can be the result of lived experience and might not be quite as severe as in cases that are solely genetic.
Still unsure if your boss falls into an official diagnosis? You could try getting them to take this quiz.
Many psychopaths can be extremely charismatic and charming, and have personality traits that ultimately abandon them the longer they stay in one particular role.
Brooks says that the businesses he studied and the CEOs who ran them were the most interesting in that they mimicked the infrastructure of a prison. The CEO is the warden, his inner circle the security, and his workers the prisoners.
Yeah, that's right. So the next time you have a bad day and you're telling people how your boss is a psychopath and your job is like serving a life sentence, you've got the science to back up your statements. It's not hyperbolic in the slightest!
I don't know about you, but I've definitely had my share of bosses who fit the bill for being a psychopath as described by Brooks in this study. I once had a boss who made everyone spend the night in the building because he wanted to make sure we'd all be on time the next day when the city was due to be hit with a massive snowstorm.
That said, I've definitely lucked out too, working primarily in publishing in the arts. While those fields definitely attract their own breed of crazy, it's a much more approachable kind of madness than having to deal with an unethical tyrant.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer and the former Senior Editor of Pop Culture at Newsweek with a passion for lifestyle, geek news, and true crime.
