If you’re looking for evidence in the sense of a team of experts conducting the appropriate battery of tests on a random sample of wealthy businessmen to estimate the rate of psychopathy, then no, such evidence does not exist. However, there appear to have been studies performed that secretly embedded psychological profile questions into questionnaires given to businessmen and tried to estimate the rate of psychopathy that way. I found one claim by Paul Babiak that up to 1 in 25 business leaders may be psychopaths (as opposed to ~1% of the general population), but I haven’t been able to find the actual study.
Off my own bookshelf, Robert Hare has a chapter on white-collar psychopathy in Without Conscience.
A fourth of (1 in 25) is ~1%, or about the prevalence cited for psychopathy in the general population, so if we assume the same definition of psychopathy those odds are pretty good, I’d say. They’d only not fall into that range if business leaders are less likely to be psychopaths, which isn’t an absurd proposition but also isn’t one I’ve seen any evidence for.
First you imply that the “actual frequency” is a feature of the territory—I’m not sure about that at all (the underlying “feature” is likely to be a continuum with a semi-arbitrary threshold imposed by a map).
But the real question we’re discussing is not what the absolute frequency is. The real question is whether sociopaths are more frequent in “business leaders” than in general population. I don’t have any hard data, so I have to rely on priors. My prior would be that the frequency of sociopaths would be lower in “business leaders”.
The reasoning for that goes as follows. Not all sociopaths are high-functioning—some (a lot?) are just mean, grumpy, bitchy common people with not high IQ. Low-functioning sociopaths won’t make it into business leaders—they are much more likely to go e.g. into military forces and/or law enforcement.
High-functioning sociopaths are pretty rare, I think. For them the natural habit would be politics as that’s where a power-hungry charming liar can get the biggest payoffs. Some will be business leaders—Steve Jobs is the prime example—but I don’t think there will be many of those.
Don’t forget that using psychiatric terms as derogatory labels is standard operating procedure :-) “Idiot” used to be a clinical diagnosis, so was “cretin”, “imbecile”, etc. etc.
High-functioning sociopaths are pretty rare, I think.
But, historically, most of the data on sociopaths comes from the ones who end up in jail or therapy. Apart from the recent research, which you are rejecting on the grounds that it contradicts the older data, And your hunches, on which topic...
I don’t have any hard data, so I have to rely on priors.
.....or ’handwaving” as it’s unsympathetically known.
The issues with psychopaths in the workplace is that they’re very good at finding high-ranking patrons to protect them:
What interested Babiak most about this case was the fact that while those closest to him were convinced of Dave’s manipulations, irresponsibility, and lack of integrity, those higher up in the organization had been convinced—by Dave—of his management talent and potential.
-- Robert Hare, Without Conscience Ch. 8
By the time someone complains about the psychopath, upper management has already gotten an earful about how awful the psychopath’s coworkers are and how badly they stifle his ability to shine. Psychopaths are good manipulators. Hare mentions how even he, one of the foremost experts on psychopathy, still gets taken in by them.
First you imply that the “actual frequency” is a feature of the territory—I’m not sure about that at all (the underlying “feature” is likely to be a continuum with a semi-arbitrary threshold imposed by a map).
This is correct. The Psychopathy Checklist does have an arbitrary cutoff point.
Data was collected from 203 participants at the management/executive level in seven companies. Paul Babiak does consulting work and was able to get the cooperation of the organizations involved. He was able to carry out actual interviews and had access to personnel files and various performance appraisals. In addition he was able to observe the individuals at work and interview their coworkers. Based on this information he completed the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised on each participant (consulting with Robert Hare where necessary). It was discovered was that nine participants had a score of 25 or more, which is associated with psychopathy. This comes out to about 1 in 25.
Note: the average scores on the PCL-R were lower than those found in the general public, but the number of psychopaths was higher.
The paper points out the difficulties involved in getting the necessary cooperation to carry out a large-scale study. A sample size of 203 is rather small to get an accurate result.
one claim by Paul Babiak that up to 1 in 25 business leaders may be psychopaths
Given that he says that “In fact, you could be living with or married to one for 20 years or more and not know that person is a psychopath” and “This makes it almost impossible to distinguish between a genuinely talented team leader and a psychopath” I have to ask what kind of a definition for a “psychopath” is he using.
The Guardian article commits the mortal sin of not naming the study or its year or coauthors, so I can’t be sure about this, but when I search Google Scholar for Paul Babiak, I find this 2013 paper by Babiak et al. (Search its title for the full text; I can’t get the link to behave.)
It seems primarily to be about methodology, and gives means and correlations on its own scale but doesn’t venture a conversion to more conventional measures; but when you get right down to what it’s doing, it’s based on anonymous assessments of respondents’ bosses collected through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, each consisting of 20 questions on a 5-point scale. If this is the method that the study behind the Guardian article is using, I’m very skeptical of its diagnostic validity. Among other things.
If you’re looking for evidence in the sense of a team of experts conducting the appropriate battery of tests on a random sample of wealthy businessmen to estimate the rate of psychopathy, then no, such evidence does not exist. However, there appear to have been studies performed that secretly embedded psychological profile questions into questionnaires given to businessmen and tried to estimate the rate of psychopathy that way. I found one claim by Paul Babiak that up to 1 in 25 business leaders may be psychopaths (as opposed to ~1% of the general population), but I haven’t been able to find the actual study.
Off my own bookshelf, Robert Hare has a chapter on white-collar psychopathy in Without Conscience.
Given the evidence that Babiak is relying on, how high would you estimate the odds of his estimate being within a factor of 4 of the actual frequency?
A fourth of (1 in 25) is ~1%, or about the prevalence cited for psychopathy in the general population, so if we assume the same definition of psychopathy those odds are pretty good, I’d say. They’d only not fall into that range if business leaders are less likely to be psychopaths, which isn’t an absurd proposition but also isn’t one I’ve seen any evidence for.
First you imply that the “actual frequency” is a feature of the territory—I’m not sure about that at all (the underlying “feature” is likely to be a continuum with a semi-arbitrary threshold imposed by a map).
But the real question we’re discussing is not what the absolute frequency is. The real question is whether sociopaths are more frequent in “business leaders” than in general population. I don’t have any hard data, so I have to rely on priors. My prior would be that the frequency of sociopaths would be lower in “business leaders”.
The reasoning for that goes as follows. Not all sociopaths are high-functioning—some (a lot?) are just mean, grumpy, bitchy common people with not high IQ. Low-functioning sociopaths won’t make it into business leaders—they are much more likely to go e.g. into military forces and/or law enforcement.
High-functioning sociopaths are pretty rare, I think. For them the natural habit would be politics as that’s where a power-hungry charming liar can get the biggest payoffs. Some will be business leaders—Steve Jobs is the prime example—but I don’t think there will be many of those.
Don’t forget that using psychiatric terms as derogatory labels is standard operating procedure :-) “Idiot” used to be a clinical diagnosis, so was “cretin”, “imbecile”, etc. etc.
But, historically, most of the data on sociopaths comes from the ones who end up in jail or therapy. Apart from the recent research, which you are rejecting on the grounds that it contradicts the older data, And your hunches, on which topic...
.....or ’handwaving” as it’s unsympathetically known.
The issues with psychopaths in the workplace is that they’re very good at finding high-ranking patrons to protect them:
-- Robert Hare, Without Conscience Ch. 8
By the time someone complains about the psychopath, upper management has already gotten an earful about how awful the psychopath’s coworkers are and how badly they stifle his ability to shine. Psychopaths are good manipulators. Hare mentions how even he, one of the foremost experts on psychopathy, still gets taken in by them.
This is correct. The Psychopathy Checklist does have an arbitrary cutoff point.
All right. Thanks for sharing that.
I’m still curious about Epictetus’ estimate of Babiak’s claim’s accuracy.
Found an actual study.
Data was collected from 203 participants at the management/executive level in seven companies. Paul Babiak does consulting work and was able to get the cooperation of the organizations involved. He was able to carry out actual interviews and had access to personnel files and various performance appraisals. In addition he was able to observe the individuals at work and interview their coworkers. Based on this information he completed the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised on each participant (consulting with Robert Hare where necessary). It was discovered was that nine participants had a score of 25 or more, which is associated with psychopathy. This comes out to about 1 in 25.
Note: the average scores on the PCL-R were lower than those found in the general public, but the number of psychopaths was higher.
The paper points out the difficulties involved in getting the necessary cooperation to carry out a large-scale study. A sample size of 203 is rather small to get an accurate result.
Given that he says that “In fact, you could be living with or married to one for 20 years or more and not know that person is a psychopath” and “This makes it almost impossible to distinguish between a genuinely talented team leader and a psychopath” I have to ask what kind of a definition for a “psychopath” is he using.
I suppose that would be one that relies on complex tests administered by a professional.
The Guardian article commits the mortal sin of not naming the study or its year or coauthors, so I can’t be sure about this, but when I search Google Scholar for Paul Babiak, I find this 2013 paper by Babiak et al. (Search its title for the full text; I can’t get the link to behave.)
It seems primarily to be about methodology, and gives means and correlations on its own scale but doesn’t venture a conversion to more conventional measures; but when you get right down to what it’s doing, it’s based on anonymous assessments of respondents’ bosses collected through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, each consisting of 20 questions on a 5-point scale. If this is the method that the study behind the Guardian article is using, I’m very skeptical of its diagnostic validity. Among other things.