Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by disregard for the rights of others, lack of empathy or remorse, and grandiosity. Although the world’s prisons are full of people who fit this description, not all psychopaths are in jail. In fact, a surprising number can be found in the corner office.

Q: For most people, the word psychopath brings to mind criminals like Charles Manson. How does this term apply in the business world?
A: In the business world, a better term for psychopath is swindler or confidence man – a person who is bright, charming, flirtatious, and fun, but utterly ruthless and with no capacity for guilt.

Q: How have changes in the typical career, specifically the frequency with which people change jobs, affected the rate of occurrence of psychopaths in leadership positions?
A: Psychopaths are very clever, and usually get caught when former victims begin to compare notes. In high mobility careers, it is hard to catch them because there is almost never a critical mass of former victims who can compare notes.

Q: When people describe the characteristics of a great leader, charisma often makes the list. Why do we find charismatic people so alluring?
A: What’s one person’s charisma is another person’s poison. Many liberals find Obama charismatic; conservatives tend to find him incompetent. The French thought Napoleon was charismatic; the English thought he was a worm. The Germans thought Hitler was charismatic; others had different opinions.

Q: Are women charismatic in different ways than men? Do they carry equal risk?
A: I don’t like to get involved in discussions of sex differences because they usually result in trouble. But my sense is that men equate female charisma with sex appeal. You would have to ask women what they think charisma is in other women. My sense is that women don’t find other women charismatic. Women are more competitive than men.

Q: What is the dark side of charisma?
A: Selfishness and betrayal – when the charismatic person works his or her magic for personal and selfish reasons.

Q: What kind of impact can these leaders have on business?
A: The data suggest that, in business, charisma is equal to narcissism, and that narcissistic CEOs are almost always bad for business.

Q: What can companies do to prevent putting a psychopath in charge?
A: Ask the people who used to work for the person to evaluate him or her. Subordinates always see through these people; senior people are always charmed by them.

1. The agenda to be executed should make sense to those who must execute it — people should be persuaded that the agenda is worth following.

2. Someone needs to be held accountable for getting itdone — explicit, as opposed to diffuse responsibility.

3. The person who is accountable for getting it done needs to be a person who can get things done. The best estimate is that well over half of the managers in any organization “can’t get anything done.”

4. There needs to be some possibility that by the time it gets done, someone senior in the organization will still care — as opposed to the attention of the senior people having shifted on to the next problem du jour.

5. There should be a payoff for the person responsible for getting it done, as opposed to finishing the project and having it ignored.

I have been interested in the problem of self-deception (doing things for reasons that we don’t properly understand or acknowledge) my entire adult life. Writers as diverse as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and JP Sartre thought self-deception was the primary source of human misery. They also argued that people should try to overcome their self-deception for moral reasons – self-deception is the cause of most bad behavior. In everyday life, self-deception most often appears as hypocrisy.

I have also been interested in evolutionary theory my entire adult life, but my views on evolutionary theory tend to depart from the conventional wisdom as set forth by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides. A central assumption of their view is that the mind is modular, that different components of the cognitive system evolved to solve different problems and that the degree to which these different mental modules communicate is an open question, and in many cases they may not.

Robert Kurzban recently published a book, Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite, applying this mainstream evolutionary thinking to the problem of self-deception. Elliott Spitzer, the disgraced former Governor of New York, provides a good example of the problem. Spitzer notoriously campaigned publicly against prostitution while allegedly privately employing call girls with enthusiasm. The mainstream view of evolutionary psychology (Kurzban) explains Spitzer’s hypocrisy by arguing that his moralistic module didn’t communicate with his lust module. I think there are two problems with this argument.

First, the modular theory of the mind bears an eerie resemblance to 19th century phrenology. But more importantly, it seems wrong-headed. Karl Lashley (1890-1958) proposed what he called the law of mass action, based on a great deal of careful research on the actual workings of rats’ brains. The law of mass action maintains that the brain operates as an organized whole; specific thoughts are distributed across the brain and somehow become organized to generate appropriate solutions or behavioral responses. Lashley is generally credited with showing that the brain is much more complex than earlier researchers realized. But more importantly, it seems intuitively obvious that inputs from the various sensory systems feed into some kind of central processing unit which organizes the data, and generates appropriate responses. Otherwise, how could an organism coordinate thought and action and survive?

Second, the propensity to reflect on one’s actions and to compare them with internalized norms is an individual differences variable. People with low scores on HPI Adjustment and high scores on HPI Prudence are prone to intensive self-examination and self-criticism. People with high scores on HPI Adjustment and low scores on HPI Prudence are not prone to self-examination. Spitzer fits the second pattern to perfection.

But evolutionary theory provides a straightforward alternative account. In every social living species, cheaters or free-riders inevitably emerge. Free-riders participate in the benefits of social living – cooperation, group support, shared food – but act selfishly and contribute nothing to the welfare of the larger social group. Parenthetically, I think politicians are the free riders of democratic society. Social interaction is about impression management. Hypocrisy is the free-rider’s solution to the problem of how to endorse altruistic values while behaving selfishly. And it is worth noting that Elliott Spitzer was a career politician. 

The future of the US (and world) economy depends on the activity of entrepreneurs, who create businesses, jobs, and wealth. Although, as Adam Smith noted, they do this for perfectly self-centered reasons and the fact that others profit from their activities is of no interest to them. Adam Smith was speaking from personal experience, and if he were alive today, he would still need to speak from experience, because applied psychology knows little about the psychology of entrepreneurship in an empirical way—although interest in the subject has begun to emerge. What happens when they are in charge? The bottom line is that they make disastrous managers.

Writers from Drucker to Christensen note that the essence of entrepreneurship is “creative disruption” – tearing up the old to make way for the new. In addition, these writers suggest that the characteristics of entrepreneurs closely resemble the characteristics of creative people in general; these involve:  making statistically unusual associations; challenging conventional wisdom; observing standard practices closely; networking; and constant experimentation. This suggests that the literature on creativity will hold some insights regarding the characteristics of entrepreneurs. 

Barron provides an old but hard-to-improve-upon summary of the empirical literature on the personality characteristics of highly creative people (writers, mathematicians, architects, etc.). Making an early version of the distinction between the bright side and the dark side of personality, Barron notes that highly creative people score high on measures of normal personality. In terms of the FFM, creative people are above average on Adjustment, Sociability, and Openness, and somewhat below average on Conscientiousness and Agreeableness – so they make a strong first impression.  But, as Barron stated: “The evidence is convergent from a number of sources: creative individuals are very much concerned about their personal adequacy, and one of their strongest motivations is to prove themselves.” And this statement is the key to the dark side of these people who, as a group, receive high scores on the MMPI and on the Hogan Development Survey. They are driven, edgy, impatient, volatile, and unconcerned with their impact on subordinates.  

This profile has several implications for thinking about entrepreneurial managers. First, because they make a strong first impression, they will do well in front of various audiences, including search committees, but also customers. As leaders, they make a good visible face of the organization, and this is often quite important. Second, the essence of leadership involves building a team. Because these people tend to bully and intimidate their subordinates, they are, by definition, poor leaders. Third, as managers rise in organizations, their duties change. Entry level managers need good team building skills, while middle managers need good bridge building and implementation skills. But CEOs and top level leaders need good judgment, because their decisions set the direction for their business. Entrepreneurs are most needed, and probably function best, at the top of organizations. We refer to this as “the Apple Paradox”: Steve Jobs is a very difficult person with minimal leadership skills, but he is a marvelously successful CEO—because of his astute decision making. 

The bottom line of this discussion is that entrepreneurs are hard to live with but successful businesses can’t live without them. The quandary is somewhat resolved by the fact that entrepreneurs dislike working for other people and, although they tend to make poor organizational citizens, they tend to avoid becoming organizational citizens. 

The US economy is dragging and unemployment rates are at historically high levels, but this too shall pass. Carnevale, et al. suggest that the so-called Baby Boomers are rapidly leaving the labor market, and that by 2018, the US will face a serious shortage of people having the necessary expertise for the economy. This raises a couple of interesting questions. One concerns what the employers of 2018 will regard at the necessary expertise. A second question concerns what the high demand jobs will be in 2018.

Some people think that training in science, math, engineering and technology is critical for future employment. But it turns out that graduates of prestigious liberal arts schools like Amherst and Pomona have little trouble finding good jobs. Moreover, high tech companies place relatively little value on content knowledge, they are more interested in a candidate’s career potential (employability). Wagner reports that relatively few jobs actually require using mathematics, and that American executives mostly complain that new applicants are unable to grasp new situations and express themselves clearly – if applicants have “good attitudes” (employability), companies like General Electric can teach them what they need to know. Finally, salaries for well-trained engineers top out at around $130,000; thus, when ambitious engineers approach age 40, they try to move into sales or management. So much for technical skills training.

The first large scale study of what employers want was conducted by the US Department of Labor; the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) surveyed business owners, union officials, public employees, managers, and private sector workers to determine the performance demands of modern employment. The SCANS’ survey identified five broad categories of critical competencies as follows:

1. Being able to identify and allocate resources
2. Being able to work with others
3. Being able to acquire and use information
4. Being able to understand complex inter-relationships
5. Being able to work with a variety of technologies

The Department of Labor has always focused on cognitive ability as the key to employment, so identifying the ability to work with others as important is noteworthy.

Organizations used to recruit job applicants primarily through newspaper want ads, which reflected what employers want in new hires. Hogan and Brinkmeyer subscribed to newspapers from each demographic region of the US for six months, and clipped every major employment ad (N=6326). They then content analyzed the ads. Among their key findings: Interpersonal skills were considered essential for 71% of the jobs involving client contact, 83% of the jobs involving subordinate interaction, 84% of the jobs requiring management interactions, and 78% of the jobs requiring coworker interaction. Clearly, from the employers’ perspective, the most important single characteristic impacting employability is interpersonal skill. We doubt that these findings will change very much over time – the content of jobs may change, but a good employee is a good employee.

Boudreau, Boswell, and Judge report that ratings for “employability” during the hiring process predict compensation levels after people are on the job. This suggests that hiring and operational managers respond to the same aspects of an employee’s behavior, which is obviously something other than pure job performance. Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden show that the essence of employability is socially desirable behavior on the job – and by extension during the hiring process. Scores on their measure of social desirability predicted promotions, income, and time spent unemployed. This points to an important link between employability and career success – the link concerns the ability to put on a socially desirable performance during both hiring interviews and subsequent social interaction at work. Hogan & Shelton describe socially desirable behavior as a role performance designed to allow people to fit in and get along with those with whom they must interact. The evidence clearly indicates that the ability to put on a socailly desirable performance is associated with  a wide range of positive career outcomes, although academic psychology chooses to ignore this finding.

Employability and Career Success depend on behaving in socially desirable ways. To do this requires specific competencies:

1. Seeming smart
2. Seeming compliant and conforming
3. Seeming sensitive (interpersonal skill)

Job performance is largely defined in terms of supervisors’ ratings; in very general terms, supervisors like employees who seem smart – and this explains the consistent correlations between cognitive ability and job performance. Supervisors also like employees who are compliant, obedient, and conforming – and this explains the consistent correlations between measures of Conscientiousness and job performance. Finally, supervisors like employees with interpersonal skill – because they are rewarding to deal with.

This model also explains why so many high IQ people are unemployable. Some, despite their high IQs, don’t seem very smart based on the kinds of choices they make. Others are independent, non-conforming, and insubordinate. And still others are irritable, challenging, and disputatious – not rewarding to deal with.

As for the workforce future, consider the table presented below and its consequences:

Ten Occupations with the Greatest Growth Increase 2008 – 2018
(US total projected job growth = 10.0%)
US Bureau of Labor Statistics

We see three major consequences of these trends. First, selection will continue to be an important line of business, and the table contains the selection categtories of the future. Second, a key component of employability is flexibility, and that concerns being willing to consider employment in jobs other than those for which one has been trained. And third, interpersonal skill will be important for retention in any of these jobs.

References available

Critics of personality measurement make two claims. The first is that personality measures yield only modest to non-significant validity coefficients. To support this claim, critics typically cite Guion & Gottier’s view that “there is no generalizable evidence that personality measures can be recommended as good or practical tools for employee selection.” But what did Guion really think? I spent two days with him in 1984 talking about this. He said that personality is the most important factor influencing occupational performance. He also said that, despite its obvious importance, the data justifying the use of personality measures were weak and that was his point. Hogan and Holland show that validity coefficients for well constructed personality measures are only slightly smaller than those for measures of cognitive ability.

The second criticism is that personality measures are “…vulnerable to faking.” One problem with this criticism is that the definition of faking is incoherent. There is an ordinary language definition, and there is a psychometric definition. Philosophers repeatedly point out that the ordinary language definition makes no sense. For example, child-rearing concerns teaching children to balance their natural impulses against cultural norms, and to fake when appropriate. Successful adults know how to fake appropriately—because you can’t have a career by consistently telling people what you really think. Good manners and hypocrisy are the same; as Jean-Paul Sartre famously noted: “Sincerity is a very carefully constructed performance.”

Psychologists have studied faking for over 60 years using psychometric methods. That research converges on two robust conclusions. The first is that there are two distinct forms of psychometric faking. One is usually called “self-deception”—a tendency to make unlikely claims about oneself (“I have a good sense of humor”). Virtually everyone says “True” to this item, but it is not true for 66% of the population. Are they faking? The other form of psychometric faking is usually called “impression management”—a tendency to endorse items that can’t be true (“I have never told a lie”). When people endorse items like this, they must be faking. As Uziel notes, faking research should focus on “…social desirability scales that aim to measure conscious lying and other deception.” I will come back to this point shortly.

The second conclusion from 60 years of faking research is that the two dimensions of faking—self-deception and impression management—are trait like. They show the same temporal stability as any other trait measure; in twin studies, these measures have the same heritability coefficients as any other trait measure; and they predict substantive performance variance. Consider Table One, which presents meta-analytically derived estimates of the correlations between the two dimensions of “faking” and the standard dimensions of the Five-Factor Model. The correlates of self deception look like a “getting ahead” profile, and the correlates of impression management look like a “getting along” profile. Uziel provides a detailed review of the literature surrounding measures of impression management, and shows conclusively that these scales predict social effectiveness: greater life satisfaction, less aggressive behavior, stable and lasting marriages, and overall favorable interpersonal relations. Measures of impression management predict social effectiveness and not faking.

K=11; N=2304

There is a consistent empirical literature which shows that, when asked to fake, people can alter their scores compared to a “non-fake” condition. The real question, however, is whether people fake when completing personality measures as part of a pre-employment screening process. J. Hogan, Barrett, and Hogan show that on a second trial, with incentives to fake, the scores for 95% of real job applicants stay the same. For the 5% whose scores change, 2.5% increase their scores beyond the standard error of measurement, and 2.5% decrease their scores. In addition, the former are more socially effective than the latter.

The ordinary language definition of faking is incoherent. Psychometric measures of faking predict important social outcomes. And the data show quite clearly that real job applicants don’t change their scores when retested in high stakes employment situations where they have every incentive to fake.

The data are quite clear: employee engagement is the “g” factor in organizational life. Engagement, which is easy to measure, predicts every important organizational outcome at both the individual and the group level. Higher levels of engagement bring better financial results in terms of lower turnover, lower absenteeism, higher productivity, and higher customer satisfaction. When organizations pay attention to engagement, they make more money.

Nonetheless, the base rate of bad management in corporate American remains pretty steady at about 65%. Why do managers destroy employee engagement and corporate profitability? The answer, I fear, is that many managers in most organizations are focused on doing what it takes to advance their own careers with little regard for the welfare of the overall organization. Developing engagement is a long term, strategic undertaking; promoting one’s career is often a short term, tactical activity based on “targets of opportunity.”

Research shows that the principle factor driving employees’ decisions to quit an organization is their immediate boss, and the most important factor affecting employees’ relationships with their boss is integrity. Thus, managerial integrity is at the core of employee engagement. With regard to the archetypal dimensions underlying managerial behavior, structure and consideration, integrity is most highly correlated with consideration and essentially unrelated to structure. This means that integrity is associated with being considerate. How can we measure managerial integrity?

Virtually every competency model used to evaluate managerial performance contains an entry for integrity; that is to say, virtually every organization claims to believe that managers should have integrity. Asking people to rate the integrity of managers turns out not to work. On the one hand, research shows that in most competency reviews the managerial cohort gets its highest ratings for integrity; individual managers rarely get low ratings for integrity. Rob Kaiser reports a study in which all 340 managers in an organization got high ratings for integrity but that 10% of them were subsequently indicted for fraud. On the other hand, bad people are good at disguising their naughtiness; actually observing someone seriously misbehaving is a very low base rate phenomenon. Thus, behavioral ratings for integrity lack integrity.

Kaiser suggests an alternative method for evaluating integrity. He begins with Walter Mischel’s distinction between strong and weak situations. Strong situations provide clear cues for behavior, which then suppress individual personality. Weak situations provide ambiguous cues for behavior, which then potentiates individual personality. Dealing with one’s boss is a strong situation, but dealing with one’s subordinates is a weak situation. Subordinates are, therefore, better able to observe bad managerial behavior than are the bosses of the managers.

Kaiser suggests asking subordinates to estimate the likelihood that their manager will lie, bully, betray, deceive, demean, procrastinate, shout, grope, or dehumanize them. Subordinates are able to do this quite easily and subsequently give many managers poor ratings for integrity, and these estimate-based ratings predict a variety of leadership outcomes including employee engagement. Kaiser notes (correctly) that this process amounts to evaluating a manager’s reputation, which I believe is the best personality data we can possibly gather. Kaiser also notes that the politics of many organizations make it difficult to use these kinds of ratings, but politics aside, the data clearly indicate that: (1) employees know which managers do and do not have integrity; (2) employee ratings of managerial integrity predict employee engagement; and (3) organizations would be well advised to pay attention to this kind of data—if they care about overall profitability.

Personality psychology concerns three questions. First, in what important ways are people all alike? This question involves analyzing the nature of human nature. Second, in what important and systematic ways are people all different? This question concerns individual differences. The third question concerns how to measure, in a reliable and valid manner, important individual differences in personality? These measures can then be used to predict practical outcomes—e.g., job performance, career and financial success.

But why are personality data so useful? The reason is simple: (1) The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior; (2) A person’s personality (defined in terms of observer’s ratings) is the summary of that person’s past behavior; so that (3) Personality (defined in terms of observers’ ratings) is the best data source we have regarding a person’s future behavior. Our assessments are keyed into observer ratings and provide an objective way to predict a wide variety of life outcomes, including life expectancy, marital satisfaction , substance abuse, and career and financial success.

The principal statistic used in our research (as well as research in economics, sociology, and medicine) is the Pearson correlation coefficient (r). The value of r can range from -1 (a perfect negative association between two variables) to 0 (no relationship between two variables) to +1 (a perfect positive association between two variables). The validity coefficients found in most medical research are below .20. For example, the correlation between smoking and contracting lung cancer within 25 years is .08; the correlation between taking ibuprofen and reduced pain is .14. Typical validities in psychological studies tend to be higher. For example, the correlation between applicants’ scores in a personnel selection interview (which is an inefficient form of personality assessment) and subsequent job performance is .30, and the correlation between IQ scores and school grades is .70. Our research over the past 30 years has produced validity coefficients that are significantly higher than those typically found in published medical or economic research.

Personality and industrial/organizational psychologists use correlation coefficients to predict individual differences in peoples’ present or future performance. The best way to interpret a correlation is in terms of hits and misses. Imagine we have tested 200 sales candidates on the HPI Ambition scale, and then hired all of them; Figure 1 shows the expected percentages of high and low performers as a function of the validity of the ambition scale, using validities of .00, .20, .30, and .50.
 

If the validity coefficient for the Ambition scale in predicting sales performance is 0, then 50 of the new hires with above average Ambition scores will be high performers and 50 will be low performers (a validity coefficient of 0 implies that the prediction based on test scores is no better than chance). If the validity coefficient is .20, then 60 of the new hires with high Ambition scores will be high performers and 40 will be low performers, whereas 60 of the new hires with low scores will be low performers and 40 will be high performers. If the validity coefficient is .30, then 65 of the new hires with high scores will be high performers and 35 will be low performers; conversely 65 of the new hires with low scores will be low performers and 35 will be high performers. If the validity coefficient is .50, then 75 of the new hires will be high performers, and 25 will be low performers, etc. Thus, validity coefficients allow us to estimate how much better than chance (50%) we can predict performance (e.g., if r = .20, then we will predict 10% better than chance or we will make the correct prediction in 60% of the cases; if r = .60, then we will predict 30% better than chance or we will make the correct prediction in 80% of the cases).

The importance of this becomes obvious when we consider that the top 25% of employees in any job or profession will contribute 400% more than the bottom 25% of employees. The major point, however is that validity coefficients are the primary index for estimating the practical significance of any test.

Psychologists define unconscious biases in terms of memories that people repress or drive out of consciousness but that continue to influence their lives in various ways—inexplicable fear of heights or closed spaces or spiders. For psychologists, unconscious biases are almost always pathological in some way.

 Psychologists have never convincingly demonstrated the existence of their kinds of unconscious biases, but sociologists can easily demonstrate the effects of, for example, a good work ethic on a person’s income. The MVPI builds on this sociological model of unconscious biases. Peoples’ core values determine their behavior in ways that they often don’t realize. For leaders, core values shape what they pay attention to and what they ignore, the kinds of subordinate behavior of which they approve, or of which they disapprove. A person’s performance as a leader will be improved by some understanding of his/her unconscious biases.

Recognition: Wanting to be the center of attention, assuming that other people need attention as much as you do, and not understanding modesty.

Power: Wanting to win and make a difference, assuming that other people are as competitive as you, and disliking people who lack a winning attitude.

Hedonism: Wanting to have fun and share experiences, assuming that other people are as fun seeking as you, and not understanding people who are overly serious.

Altruism: Wanting to help those who are disadvantaged or victimized, assuming that others are as concerned about them as you, and not understanding the need for self-reliance.

Commerce: Wanting to acquire concrete symbols of success, assuming that others are as materialistic as you, and not understanding people who are indifferent to money.

Aesthetics: Wanting to be in attractive environments, assuming that others care as much about quality as you, and not understanding people who lack a sense of style.

Science: Wanting to solve problems with logic and data, assuming others care as much about finding the right answers as you, and not understanding irrational or intuitive decisions.

Recent events in politics and business again show the importance of personal integrity in everyday affairs, especially at the leadership level. Our analysis of the psychology of integrity suggests that the topic, although a crucial element in human affairs, is somewhat more paradoxical than it might appear at first blush.

In Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Carl Jung describes meeting Albert Schweizer (1875-1965), the legendary theologian, organist, philosopher, and physician known for founding a hospital for the poor in Gabon. Schweizer received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, and by anyone’s standards qualifies as a great moral figure. Jung reported that he spent two days prying at Schweizer, trying to find the neurotic underpinnings for his moral nobility, and he could find nothing. Then Jung noted that he met Schweizer’s wife, and Schweizer’s narcissism was revealed. Similarly, Erik Erikson wrote a psycho-biographical study of Mohandas Ghandi, the “great-souled father” of modern India, the man who invented non-violent civil disobedience as a way of protesting political oppression, and virtually everyone’s prototype of a great moral figure. Erikson was so disgusted by Gandhi’s hypocrisy and narcissism that he almost abandoned the project. Mother Theresa similarly fails to hold up well under close moral scrutiny.