Is your boss a psychopath?

[Entsuropi]

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html

Interesting article. Thoughts?

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

This looks like a ripoff of a quiz/article I read in a buisiness magazine a few months ago.  It has the same points as well as the same title.  I think the magazine was at least a year old when I read it.  So the real question is "Is you entertainment immoral?"

And the real answer is "yes."

.

[The Jade Knight]

Sounds like they're talking more about sociopaths than psychopaths...

[Archon]

Psychopathy and sociopathy are the same thing.

[scAri]

I watched that video he mentions, The Corporation, in my Propaganda class (a.k.a. ENG 101) and I am now predisposed to think very poorly of anti-anything diatribes like this.

[Archon]

I don't put much stock in this article either. It seems to me that too many people now look to blame their problems on big organizations like corporations. By no means am I saying that all corporations are ethical, but they are still composed of people. People have rights in this country, and that includes the people who run corporations.

Then Hare came out with a startling proposal. He said that the recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs were screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"

This is absolutely ridiculous. Hare is clearly playing to the crowd, ignoring the fact that this type of screening would go against the right to privacy that everyone in this country should be entitled to. Just because someone has risen through the corporate ladder, it gives other people the right to be involved in their private affairs? It is these kinds of ideas that receive too much credence from our government, and that are gradually turning our country into a socialist state.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

I agree.  We screen police officers and teachers because they work for the government, and it is part of their contract to have things like drug testing, background checks, etc. done.  A CEO is either working for himself or a private company.  It's not the same thing.  Essentially saying that we can give CEOs manditory psychological screenings is the same thing as saying we can give every human being, willing or not, psychological screenings.

MOD: Personally, I'm not against giving everybody manditory psychological screenings.  But it should be one way or the other, and since it isn't practical to give everybody manditory psychological screenings, it shouldn't be allowed to give CEO's manditory psychological screenings.

[JP Dogberry]

MAD PRIDE!

[The Jade Knight]

Psychopathy and sociopathy are not the same thing, though they are often used interchangeably, which is too bad.

Taken from an article published by a prof at NCWC:
"APD is the most common type [of this sort of behavior], afflicting about 4% of the general population.  Sociopaths are the second most common type, with the American Psychiatric Association estimating that 3% of all males in our society are sociopaths.  Psychopaths are rare, found in perhaps 1% of the population."

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

A sociopath is somebody who can't tell the difference between the truth and what they think is the truth, namely, somebody who believes whatever they say is true.  You'll see this in a lot of cases involving unmotivated murder.

A Psychopath is just somebody who is not mentally stable, usually in a dangerous or harmful manner.

Essentially, a sociopath is a smaller category of psychopath, but they aren't exactly the same thing when speaking psychologically...or at least that is the impression I am under.

[Fellfrosch]

From what I understand (based on reading a serial killer history website...which I do fairly often...for no reason....), sociopathy is specifically related to a person's capacity to relate to others. Sociopaths lack the ability make personal connections in the same way that normal people make them; they require more stimulus in order to get excited, and they are inherently outsiders because they don't (and can't) see themselves as part of anybody else. Confusing fantasy and reality, as you described above, is much closer to psychopathy.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

I commonly get confused, and confuse things, and confuse others.  It's likely that one of the previously mentioned happenings happened.

[Entsuropi]

MOD: Personally, I'm not against giving everybody manditory psychological screenings.  But it should be one way or the other, and since it isn't practical to give everybody manditory psychological screenings, it shouldn't be allowed to give CEO's manditory psychological screenings.

Why not? We give such screenings to cops, doctors and teachers because of the harm they can inflict. They could directly affect people if they were dangerous. CEO's can indirectly affect far more people than any cop could hope to. From the perspective of how much damage can be caused to society, it is clear that CEO's are the most dangerous.

[Spriggan]

I don't think it should be a federal law, just because I don't think it's the government's job to do that kind of thing, however I wouldn't object if businesses to do it themselves.  Also Fell has a point, a mentally unstable person wouldn't be able to deal with the pressures of getting to the top let alone staying a CEO.

[42]

Actually a mentally unstable person could get to the top quite easiliy.  A lot of over-achievers are mentally unstable--using accomplishments to make up for their own insecurities. Look at Howard Hughes.

The thing about mental stability is that it's not an all-or-nothing kind of thing. It tends to come for just portions of a person life, not their entire life, and often just for certain aspects of his or her life. And mental stability is horribly inconsistent.