The chances of your boss being psychopathic are relatively high, you know that?

The corporate world is a jungle and all the time you have to fight to survive. In this context, who gets along better: the most docile and carefree animal or the most aggressive and strategist? Speaking of strategies, aggressiveness, and the power of persuasion and manipulation, tell us: are they typical traits of psychopaths? If you add a little bit of coldness and lack of empathy to the recipe, the package is even more complete.

Psychopaths are closer than we think, and you may have already interacted with one - to be more precise: there is just over a 20% chance that your boss is a psychopath, after all this type of personality likes power and not measures efforts to achieve the desired position.

Being in senior positions shows us that psychopaths tend to be professionally successful people. Because of their lack of empathy, however, they may end up leaving the work environment with a more toxic climate.

Leadership Psychopathy

This high rate of CEO psychopathy worries the authors of the research that arrived at this result, precisely because psychopaths can use unethical techniques to achieve their goals. The research, released by the Daily Mail, was promoted by Bond University in Australia, and also by the University of San Diego in the USA.

Basically, scientists counted psychopathy traits on 261 entrepreneurs, concluding that 21% of these individuals fit within the psychopathic spectrum. In terms of the general population, 1% are psychopaths - among those arrested, one in five can be considered psychopaths as well.

An interesting fact about psychopathic leaders is that this rate has increased a lot since the 2008 world economic crisis. Studies about the relationship between psychopathy and good resourcefulness in the business world, however, are not current: in 1941 the psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley had already suggested that psychopaths are more professionally successful, albeit in the short term.

Features

For Cleckley, psychopaths are hybrid creatures who wear a mask of normalcy, but behind their charm they hide an egocentric personality with dishonesty, lack of guilt, and concern for others - for the psychopath, only their life. it matters.

According to the researchers involved in this latest study, the results show that psychological testing is required within companies so that psychopathic traits can be identified. For Nathan Brooks, Bond's forensic psychologist, the problem is that most companies focus on analyzing skills, not personality traits. According to him, the character of the candidate should be evaluated first.

Experts say successful psychopaths are insecure and self-centered, maintaining their charm and good surface image. Being manipulative, they can cause intrigue and cause people to fight each other. In business terms, this kind of leader has a very negative effect on your team.

Card Manipulators

Psychopaths tend to have a broader view of their abilities so that they think they are superior beings. Impulsive and lacking in stimulation, they often lie a lot, even because they manipulate the people around them. They catch the attention of the individuals they live with, and they often find them intriguing, but they can't explain why.

Because they know how to mimic emotions, they can easily forge feelings, which is why they change their mood quickly and easily. To earn people's trust, they offer to do favors and tell false secrets. Once trust is gained, they know they can ask for favors in return. Do you know anyone like that? When in doubt, be careful.