Psychopaths on the Top

When people think of psychopaths, they immediately think of Ted Bundy the notorious serial killer or the show Criminal Minds. However, many would be shocked to know that psychopathic traits are quite common in business managerial positions. The sort of “ruthlessness” may be an important quality for those in high business positions, but most people would not think of it as psychopathic tendencies.

While there are the typical psychopathic serial killers we know, the psychopaths that are excited by images of pain tend to have a low IQ unlike the common perception. “Despite the media’s invariable lurid use of the term,” there are actually different types of psychopaths and not all of them commit acts of violence. In fact, research conducted at the University of Huddersfield discussed the types of factor one and factor two psychopaths. 

In the study, a group of people showing psychopathic tendencies were presented with images of people who were recovering from natural disasters or young children crying. The people with the factor one psychopathic tendencies showed a lack of emotion. On the other hand, the factor two psychopaths that we are commonly exposed to showed an excitement through those images. However, the factor two psychopaths were typically of lower intelligence. This basically led to the discovery that those showcasing the factor one psychopathic tendencies had exceptional intelligence. They had the ability to be charming but lacked empathy and emotions as in the case with people in the top positions of businesses. In fact, these psychopaths were intelligent enough to hide their true feelings! They could alter their emotional response making it difficult to actually detect the problem.

While it may seem a little relieving that there are different types of psychopaths out there, the fact that some can go undetected is quite unsettling. While businessmen are known to be ruthless to get to the top, it makes one wonder what kind of people are actually in leadership positions. Not only that, but if a person with a high intelligence were to have such psychopathic tendencies, it becomes all the more difficult to treat the person.

Research conducted at Yale University by Dr. Baskin- Sommers and her colleagues discussed how current remediation offered for suffering psychopaths is not effective. In fact, it makes the psychopaths more manipulative if anything. Cognitive remediation is a new treatment method in consideration for psychopaths as most psychopaths fail to consider contextual information. Changing their neural patterns would help them become more conscious of their behaviors. Whiles this type of remediation was basically targeted for those psychopaths with lower IQs, the question that arises is would this work for psychopaths with higher IQs? Since conventional methods don’t work on psychopaths with low IQs, it would make sense that those with higher IQs who are already able to manipulate their emotions would barely be affected by traditional treatment. Yet the greater question is, would this new form of remediation even work for those with higher IQs since it focuses on neural patterns or would these intelligent business leader psychopaths manipulate this remediation as well? While as unsettling as it may all sound, the important thing to realize is that there are different types of psychopaths and with time active research will provide better treatments.

Sources:

Baskin-Sommers, A.R., Curtin, J.J., Newman, J.P. (2014). Altering the cognitive-affective dysfunctions of psychopathic and externalizing offender subtypes with cognitive remediation. Clinical Psychological Science.

University of Huddersfield. (2014, September 8). There could be an increased number of psychopaths in senior managerial positions, high levels of business, research shows. Science Daily. Retrieved December 9, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140908120716.htm