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Are Psychopaths Running The World? Or The Company You Work For? Here’s A Handy Checklist.

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Often when we think of the word psychopath, we think of deranged serial killers that are hopefully locked up in prison for life.

While there are many psychopaths who kill for reasons that are unfathomable to most of us and who are indeed in prison, there is an even greater number roaming free in our society and often using their condition to their advantage in any way possible.

In fact, it is very likely that you know some – they might even be your colleagues.

Most of us do not know or work with any serial killers, at least not that we are aware of. So, what exactly is a psychopath and how can we define them? The dictionary definition is as follows:

“A person suffering from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.”
As you can probably tell, a lot more than just serial killers will fit into this broad definition. In fact, according to Canadian psychologist Dr. Robert Hare, a world-renowned expert on psychopathy, an estimated 1% of the Earth’s population is psychopathic and around 25% of the population of male inmates at federal correctional facilities are psychopathic.

Psychopathic Traits

It is important to note that, in contrast with the popular image of the ‘deranged psycho,’ psychopaths tend to be very well composed, take good care of their appearance and are very charming (think of Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho). Because of this you may have a difficult time spotting them out, as they are masters of deception and are able to fake a lot of the qualities that define regular people. Some other psychopathic traits, according to Hare’s Psychopath

  • Glib and superficial charm
  • Grandiose estimation of self
  • Need for stimulation
  • Manipulative and cunning
  • Complete lack of remorse or guilt
  • Pathological lying
  • Have a parasitic lifestyle, often latching onto and taking from others
  • Have a history of early behavioral problems
  • Overly impulsive
  • Are very irresponsible
  • Unable to accept responsibility for actions
  • Unable to commit to long-term relationships
  • History of juvenile delinquency
  • Display criminal versatility
  • Experienced a “revocation of conditional release”
  • Lacks realistic long term goals
  • History of promiscuous sexual behavior
  • Have poor behavioral controls
  • Are callous and lack empathy
  • Have a “shallow affect” (psychopaths show a lack of emotion when an emotional reaction is appropriate.)

You can actually rate yourself to find out if you are psychopath. On each criterion, the subject is ranked on a 3-point scale: (0 = item does not apply, 1 = item applies somewhat, 2 = item definitely applies). The scores are summed to create a rank of zero to 40. Anyone who scores 30 and above is most likely a psychopath. Hare has used this test and checklist to detect which inmates are psychopaths.

Snakes In Suits

What many of us don’t realize is that psychopaths actually thrive in the corporate world. Hare has actually co-authored a book with Dr. Paul Babiak on this topic entitled, Snakes In Suits: Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office. Psychopaths manipulate others to accrue power, sometimes pitting them against each other in an attempt to divide and conquer. They are often attracted to bigger, dynamic corporations with very little structure or supervision. They generally don’t work well in teamsbecause they don’t like to share information or skills and it brings them joy to watch others fail. They are addicted to power, status and money. Sound familiar?

Sadly, the corporate world is set up to favor psychopathic traits such as fearlessness, dominant behavior and immunity to stress. Because of this, psychopaths often find themselves in these types of positions, and then have an easier time climbing the corporate ladder and obtaining positions of great power. This is where they can do real damage to society.

Are Psychopaths Running The World?

Not only as corporate heads do psychopaths find success in our modern-day society, but also within our governments and political system — often as front-line politicians. This may come as a shock to you, but when you really look at some of the atrocities that are taking place on our planet, and if you’ve ever wondered how things that are so inhumane could actually be happening, well, therein lies your answer.

When you consider the war, genocide, senseless murder of civilians, treatment of the indigenous cultures of the world, chemicals in our food, air and water supply, acts of “terrorism”, war crimes and so many other unjust and cruel actions which are often instigated by our political leaders, it becomes easy to see how psychopaths actually fit the requirements for these types of roles quite well. As mentioned before they are masters of deception, pathological liars and often quite charming.

Many soldiers go to war and because they are conditioned to believe that they are fighting an enemy in the name of peace. They do as they are told and commit these heinous acts against other human beings. The reason why so many soldiers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder is because it is not within human nature to murder other humans, and especially innocent civilians

We already know how many politicians are crooked, but perhaps its time to start looking at them with the psychopath checklist in mind so that we can be better equipped to protect not only ourselves but our society from their malicious acts.

But Can’t We Help Them?

It is natural for anyone who is an empath or those involved in spiritual work to have compassion for these individuals and feel compelled to help them overcome their psychopathic behavior. However, most research has pointed towards the understanding that psychopaths are born, not made and therefore cannot be cured. This is one of the main differences that separates sociopaths from psychopaths. Another is that sociopaths have a conscience, albeit a weak one, and will often justify something they know to be wrong. By contrast, psychopaths will believe that their actions are justified and feel no remorse for any harm done. Sociopaths are made, and have a higher likelihood of overcoming their condition. However, many of those with sociopathic behavior will find themselves in similar corporate positions.

Hare’s research discovered that by attempting to heal or help a psychopath, you might actually be strengthening their cunning abilities, as they will find a way to manipulate you into believing that they are remorseful and understand how their actions were wrong.

The best we can do is learn to recognize the traits of psychopaths and be sure to stay clear of their actions and behaviors to protect ourselves from the wake of their inevitable destruction.

We Can All Buy Much More With Our Earned Incomes Than Ever Before: The Myth Of American Middle Class Stagnation.

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For a quarter century now there has prevailed the myth of American middle-class economic stagnation. Specifically, this myth holds that ordinary Americans’ living standards hit a peak in the mid-1970s and have remained stagnant ever since.

As with many myths, this one rests on a superficially plausible foundation. Adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the average real hourly wage earned by workers classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as “production and nonsupervisory” peaked in January 1973 and did not again hit that height until December 2018. But at the most recent reading, June 2019, this hourly wage is again below, by two cents, its January 1973 level.

On its face, this statistic does indeed seem to reveal economic stagnation for ordinary Americans.

Truthful Statistics Can Easily Mislead

But as careful critics have pointed out, this statistic (and each of the many others used to tell the stagnation myth) is seriously flawed. For example, these wage data do not include fringe benefits.

More fundamentally, these data create a statistical illusion. The average wage can remain unchanged or even fall even though each individual’s wage rises. As women and immigrants have entered the workforce in greater numbers over the past several decades, their doing so pulled down the average wage because the wages of a disproportionately large number of these workers are below the average.

It’s as if you calculate the average height of your children each January 1st and discover, when you include in this year’s calculation the height of your bouncing baby girl born on December 31st, that your children’s average height is lower than it was on January 1st of last year. You obviously don’t call the pediatrician in a panic to report that your children are shrinking. You understand that the average height is pulled down by the addition of a new, below-average-height child to the population for which the average is calculated.

Everyone is taller than they were last year (including, by the way, the newborn), yet the average height is lower. At least some of the apparent stagnation of real wages is a mere statistical illusion of this sort.

An even deeper problem with this statistic is that the CPI overstates inflation. And in overstating inflation, too much of the rise over time in nominal wages is classified as mere inflation rather than recognized as a real increase in pay.

One way to get around this problem is to use a more accurate inflation adjuster. Yet a more radical means of avoiding the problem is to do away altogether with the need to adjust for inflation.

Work-time Costs

Michael Cox and Richard Alm, in their still-relevant 1999 book, Myths of Rich & Poor, reasoned that a good measure of changes in real wages is the amount of time a person must work to earn the income necessary to buy goods and services. If the amount of work time required to earn the income necessary to buy a representative bundle of household goods and services is today the same as it was decades ago, then the stagnationist tale is true. But if the amount of work time required has fallen, then there is very good reason to doubt claims of economic stagnation.

And so Cox and Alm went to work. They, for example, divided the nominal price of a pair of jeans in 1973 by the nominal wage earned by an ordinary worker in 1973 to determine how much time that worker had to toil back then to earn enough money to buy a pair of jeans. Then making the same calculation for a pair of jeans today, Cox and Alm determined if jeans became more expensive or less expensive when measured by the amount of work time a typical worker must work in order to acquire a pair of jeans.

Doing this calculation for a number of ordinary consumer goods and services, Cox and Alm found that the typical American worker in 1999 earned real wages much higher than were earned by his or her counterpart a quarter-century earlier.

Impressed by this simple but brilliant method of measuring changes in real wages, a few years ago I purchased – using eBay – a Fall/Winter 1975 Sears catalog. (Readers who, like me, were born before the mid-1970s will remember that Sears back then was the great retailer to middle America. Its motto was “Sears has everything!” which wasn’t much of an exaggeration.) Using the nominal average hourly wage of production and nonsupervisory workers in 1975 – $4.73 – I divided the price of each of hundreds of the products offered for sale in the 1975 Sears catalog by this wage.

While I didn’t perform this calculation for all of the thousands of goods listed in the catalog, I did do so for a sample of over 400 goods. In my large sample I found only one good that costs more work time today than in 1975: men’s work boots. For all of the other goods in my sample – including, but not limited to, clothing, household appliances and furniture, recreational equipment, and auto supplies – the amount of time that a typical American worker today must work to earn enough income to buy those goods is less than in 1975, and in most cases it is much less.

Here’s a small sampling of my findings done a few years ago (which you can explore in more detail here). I have since updated these findings to 2019; the trend of falling work-time costs continues.

– In 1975 a ten-cup drip coffee maker cost the ordinary American worker almost 8 hours of work time; today it costs that worker only 45 minutes.

– In 1975 a pair of all-cotton jeans cost 1.5 hours of work time; today it costs 20 minutes.

– In 1975 a car battery cost 9 hours of work time; today it costs 3.6 hours.

– In 1975 a microwave oven cost 93 hours of work time; today a microwave oven of similar size and power costs 6 hours.

– In 1975 an automatic dishwasher cost nearly 50 hours of work time; today a dishwasher costs 12 hours.

– In 1975 an exercise bike cost 16 hours; today it costs 5 hours.

– In 1975 a low-priced standard-size electric washer-dryer combo cost 70 hours of work time; today this combo costs about half that, at 36 hours.

What’s even more revealing about browsing today the 1975 Sears catalog is what is not in it – such as, for example, a television with a remote control. there are lessons to be drawn from what that catalog from middle-class Americans’ alleged golden age does not contain.

Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research

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