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Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work

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Nacchinarkiniyan

Nacchinarkiniyan

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Let's say you're about to hire somebody for a position in your company. Your corporation wants someone who's fearless, charismatic, and full of new ideas. Candidate X is charming, smart, and has all the right answers to your questions. Problem solved, right? Maybe not.

We'd like to think that if we met someone who was completely without conscience -- someone who was capable of doing anything at all if it served his or her purposes -- we would recognize it. In popular culture, the image of the psychopath is of someone like Hannibal Lecter or the BTK Killer. But in reality, many psychopaths just want money, or power, or fame, or simply a nice car. Where do these psychopaths go? Often, it's to the corporate world.

Researchers Paul Babiak and Robert Hare have long studied psychopaths. Hare, the author of Without Conscience, is a world-renowned expert on psychopathy, and Babiak is an industrial-organizational psychologist. Recently the two came together to study how psychopaths operate in corporations, and the results were surprising. They found that it's exactly the modern, open, more flexible corporate world, in which high risks can equal high profits, that attracts psychopaths. They may enter as rising stars and corporate saviors, but all too soon they're abusing the trust of colleagues, manipulating supervisors, and leaving the workplace in shambles.

Snakes in Suits is a compelling, frightening, and scientifically sound look at exactly how psychopaths work in the corporate environment: what kind of companies attract them, how they negotiate the hiring process, and how they function day by day. You'll learn how they apply their "instinctive" manipulation techniques -- assessing potential targets, controlling influential victims, and abandoning those no longer useful -- to business processes such as hiring, political command and control, and executive succession, all while hiding within the corporate culture. It's a must read for anyone in the business world, because whatever level you're at, you'll learn the subtle warning signs of psychopathic behavior and be able to protect yourself and your company -- before it's too late.
Click to expand...

eBook (PDF): Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare
 
quote:
the “ABCs” of Psychopathy: No Anxiety; No Bonds; No Conscience. They also illustrate how the corporate world is increasingly a “target rich” environment for psychopaths.

By the term “corporate world”, they mean not only corporations, but other entities and institutions we increasingly find corporatized: politico-legal, sociocultural, educational, religious, etc..
 
Years of research on prison populations bear out the criminality

and violence implied by the term
psychopath. We now know that both

male and female psychopaths commit a greater number and variety of

crimes than do other criminals.

quoted from the pdf.
 
Psychopaths have a great sense of superiority and entitlement,

and think nothing of helping themselves to property that belongs to

others. Their
grandiose sense of self-importance leads them to believe

that other people exist just to take care of them. Because they see

most people as weak, inferior, and easy to deceive, psychopathic con

artists will often tell you that their victims deserved what they got.

Sometimes their sense of superiority is so great that they will say that

they are conferring a
gift by letting their victims support them. This

is obvious in the many cases of cult leaders who are charlatans or

outright psychopaths, but can be seen in more subtle cases as well.

This condescending air toward others comes across as cocky and egotistical

to many observers, but, as we will discuss below, some may

find this behavior somewhat charming, even charismatic.
 
this story has nothing to do with what followed in the investigation mentioned in the pdf.

Interviews with team members, observations from coworkers

in other departments and other management, and review of relevant

human resources documents provided a preliminary picture

of what was happening. Many members of the team felt that one

of its members was the primary cause of its problems, but were

afraid to come forward. They reported to me, privately, that this

individual circumvented team processes and procedures, caused

conflict, acted rudely in meetings, and did more to derail progress

than to promote it. He often showed up late to meetings, and

when he finally would arrive, he hadn’t completed the tasks he

was assigned, routinely blaming others for his failures. Some suggested

that he bullied, even threatened, team members who did

not agree with him. At every turn, he undercut the leader’s role

on the team, who also happened to be his boss.

Some other members of the team felt differently, though.

They told me that he was a solid performer whose ideas were

both creative and innovative. This group of supporters said that

he was a true leader and contributed toward the team’s objectives.

A few members of the management committee even commented

that they thought this person had the potential for

promotion into a management position someday. Depending on

whom you were speaking with, you would get a different picture

of this person. It was as if these groups of coworkers were describing

two different people instead of one. The behaviors of

this individual and the different reactions of the various team

members—that is, the split between supporters and detractors—

suggested that something more than mere office politics and in
 
mORE FROM THE BOOK>

Female psychopaths effectively use society’s expectations

about female behavior to their own advantage. But, more than

most women, they also are able to break out of the traditional

sex-role stereotypes, to go beyond conventional boundaries. This

is readily apparent among female offenders, where the prevalence

of psychopaths is almost as high as it is among male offenders.

The variety and severity of criminal acts performed by

these women, as well as their capacity for cold-blooded violence,

are similar to those committed by their male counterparts.
 
Practice Makes Perfect

Hare consulted with Nicole Kidman on the movie
Malice. She

wanted to let the audience know, early in the film, that she was

not the sweet, warm person she appeared to be. He gave her the

following scene: “You’re walking down the street and come

across an accident at the corner. A young child has been struck by

a car and is lying in a pool of blood. You walk up to the accident

site, look briefly at the child, and then focus on the grief-stricken

mother. After a few minutes of careful scrutiny, you walk back to

your apartment, go into the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror,

and practice mimicking the facial expressions and body language

of the mother.”
 
this book is wicked!

Unless caught and prosecuted for breaking the law, psychopaths

suffer little consequence for the physical, emotional, psychological,

and financial abuses they leave behind. The sad fact is that few

victims—coworkers, partners, and spouses—report them to the authorities

(or to their friends, for that matter) because of the shame

they feel for being conned. Even in large firms, such as banks and

brokerage houses, frauds and scams sometimes are not reported for

fear of damaging the reputation of the firm. Psychopaths know and

use this to their advantage. Others are too intimidated by fears of

reprisal or litigation to speak up, being thankful that the psychopath

simply is no longer in their life but has moved on to some other unfortunate

person or firm.
 
a subheading!!

“I Felt Like I Was Lunch”

In
Without Conscience, Hare noted that many people feel uncomfortable

in the presence of a psychopath, whom he described

as a social predator. Although most people can’t quite put their

finger on what bothers them, many comment that they were bothered

by “a predatory stare and empty eyes.”

In a recent study, researchers J. Reid Meloy and M. J. Meloy

studied the reactions of mental health and criminal justice professionals

concerning their “physical reactions” while interviewing

psychopathic offenders or patients. The reactions were varied

and included sensations and feelings that were gastrointestinal

(queasy stomach, feeling of illness), muscular (shaky feeling,

weakness), cardiovascular (pounding heart), pulmonary (shortness

of breath), perceptual (watchful, couldn’t look in the eyes),

and dermatological (skin crawled, goosebumps). Many reported

feelings of general anxiety, being ill at ease, repulsion, fascination,

and stimulation. Some reported that they wished to flee the

scene or that they felt as if they were about to become lunch.
 
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