It is possible that there is some connection between being a psychopath and being a CEO, but I have no good evidence of it, and it is also possible that being CEO of a large company increases anti-social behavior patterns (as a lot of people are out to get you). The interesting question is whether psychopaths are more likely to become CEOs. Your second link didn't seem to appreciate the main message that Ronson described in his book; they just made passing mention of it.
> About 1% of the human population are psychopaths. But CEOs are four times more likely to be psychopaths than the average person, according to journalist Jon Ronson. He spent two years researching this, and published a book titled “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry.”
So the cited article suffers from the same ambiguity. I wonder what Jon Ronson actually wrote. Google was not helpful :(
It has been known for a while that there is a link between leadership and severe mental health issues [1]. Unfortunately this is how a lot of organisations are being built and how they are fluorishing.
"The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred."
And I personally think if you examine ceos of highly successful companies, the ratio will be higher than 1 in 5.
Sure it's ONE study. But it actually makes sense. You don't get to the top in modern corporate world (especially hyper competitive one like the tech) without being slightly crazy.
I've placed a hold with my local library to check it out.
Until I have a chance to read it, that appears to be an argument against attempting to diagnose an individual without significant psychiatric observation, which is a noble goal. But assuming the citation of the book in the article is correct, then there appears to be a link between psychopathy and being a CEO. Is your contention that this finding is incorrect or that we need to be careful in how we interpret the finding?
>p.s. It has been shown that the psychological profile of top-criminals and CEO's are remarkably alike.
For very liberal definitions of "has been shown". It's been shown that CEOs score more highly on a diagnostic of psychopathology than the general public but those diagnostics were designed for use on people with presumed diagnoses of psychopathic disorders, scoring highly on them without a prior probability of having such a disorder is dubious way of finding people who are psychopaths.
I remember reading something a few years ago that criticized the use of the term psychopath because it wasn't defined in a rigid way and the definition basically tracked the general populations general fears. And because we as a society are afraid of corporations now, CEO's become the target, and possibly the baseline, for the definition of psychopath.
I'm sure that many CEOs share a certain personality type, but to claim that most CEOs have a serious mental disorder seems ridiculous to me.
I don't know if there's been a lot of rigorous academic research on the topic or not, but there have been a handful of articles in the pop business press, talking about the connection between being "CEO material" and displaying the traits of a psychopath. For example:
Both estimates suggest that psychopaths are far more prevalent in corporate management than in the general population — about 3.5 to 12 times more. And they may be even more common in the top office, with one analysis finding that one in five CEOs could be a corporate psychopath.
I can't speak to the methodology of the study in the article, but it appears that the author of The Psychopath Test found that the rate was 4x the general population[1], so I feel like the argument still stands
I read half or quarter of top 500 public companimy ceos are considered psychopaths clinically. I think for anyone to reach such high level of achievement, you are crazy to begin with.
Many 'successful' people who make it to ceo are more likely to be a psychopath according to the article. And I would describe these actions of the men who are more likely to be psychopath, not normal.
"Roughly 4% to as high as 12% of CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits, according to some expert estimates, many times more than the 1% rate found in the general population and more in line with the 15% rate found in prisons."
It's tough to read this article because it's trying to support a particular point, and not really exploring an idea. Like all psychological diagnoses, psychopathy is a set of traits/behaviors that are on a scale between "all people some of the time" and "some people all of the time".
So if you skip the article's agenda, and explore the idea, it's kind of interesting. Psycopathic traits are "persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits." (thanks wikipedia)
It isn't surprising at all that successful CEOs exhibit some of those traits more than most people. I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse", even if those feelings are temporary. Firing people is terrible, and if _I_ felt the full weight of that horribleness while it was happening I'd never be able to do it.
And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all.
What's more interesting than recognizing these, though, is the difference in how they're applied. Execs who are decent people and execs who aren't apply them differently (and decent people who aren't capable of being CEOs might not apply them at all).
I've spent a lot of time worried about my own traits. Am I decent person if I can fire people? Am I a decent person if I can't work for someone else? Am I a decent person if I'm so worried about my own work-happiness that I risk my family's well being by quitting objectively good jobs? Hopefully!
There is definitely a correlation between being psychopathic and CEO. I don't know if either is a direct result of the other or if it's a third quality, but the statistical correlation is certainly there and has been known for a while.
reply