We love our high-functioning psychopaths

Work was murder.... 

A recent piece in The Economist asked the question whether or not psychopathy is an evolutionary aberration.

The article suggests that “prisons are packed with them. So, according to some, are boardrooms.” To anyone who has experience of either or both places, neither is a shocking proposition.

The Deptford Croppy is neither a stranger to the penal system, nor to the Square Mile and can therefore assert with some authority that while the prison system is a place that reeks obviously of mental illness; the sociopaths that do the most damage to society work in the City and it’s easy to see why they flourish there.

“The combination of a propensity for impulsive risk-taking with a lack of guilt and shame (the two main characteristics of psychopathy) may lead, according to circumstances, to a criminal career or a business one,” suggests The Economist.

It’s the blank and dead-eyed lack of empathy, the acceptable view that decency is a vulnerability to be ruthlessly exploited. I’ve really only seen that brought into such sharp relief in two environments: prison and business.

Of course the truth is that psychopathy is a continuum, a spectrum along which we all register (with the majority of us thankfully scoring pretty low). Sometimes, up towards the middle however it can be pretty hard to tell.

By extension of that same logic, psychopaths will also work themselves out along a spectrum ranging from law-abiding at one end to ‘one-man crime-wave’ on the other according to a number of factors.

Very often, socio-economic factors are the big determinants in whether or not your particular brand of psychopathy thrives. ‘A blue-collar criminal steals your wallet while a white collar criminal steals your pension’ ran a recent Spectator ad campaign... Intellect is another major influence; contrary to the fantasies of the media, most real world psychopaths are not handsome Ted Bundy-like charmers anymore than they are all slow-witted Ed Gein monsters. The reality is more prosaic.

Our value system in a market economy encourages and rewards ruthless risk-takers. As long as they can pass themselves as moderately human they are even celebrated. No doubt about it, we love our high-functioning psychopaths; from Hello! to the FT, we fete them everywhere.

 “Ask a psychopath what he is supposed to do in a particular situation, and he can usually give you what non-psychopaths would regard as the correct answer. It is just that he does not seem bound to act on that knowledge.” Sound like anyone you know?