What comes to mind when you picture a psychopath? A crazy ax-murderer? Psychopaths don’t always fit that mold. The clinical diagnoses is a person who has shallow emotions or lacks empathy. Sounds like corporate America is loaded with them!
Kevin Dutton, a research psychologist at the University of Oxford, has dedicated much of his life to studying the brains of psychopaths and he’s been able to piece together a list of the most likely professions psychopaths end up in. Is your career on the list
1. CEOs
Corporate America is loaded with brutal metaphors. When you succeed, it’s because you were cutthroat and ended up making a killing, and now you’re known as a shark. Doesn’t that just sound like a wonderful place for a psychopath? I’m sure plenty of CEOs are great people… but several studies suggest that 4% of CEOs qualify as psychopaths. That’s 4x as many people as in the general population.
2. Lawyer.
There are lots of heartless lawyer jokes, but there may be some credence to them. Many lawyers exhibit signs of psychopathy, which makes lying, cheating, and obsessing with profit nothing to bat an eye at. As one lawyer he interviewed said:
“Deep inside me there’s a serial killer lurking somewhere. But I keep him amused with cocaine, Formula One, booty calls, and coruscating cross-examination.”
3. Media (Radio/TV)
Makes sense right? Obviously, not everyone in the media industry scores high on the psychopath meter, but if you think of some of the most prominent psychopathic personalities in our world right now, it all seems to make sense.
