Searching for Snakes in Suits
Psychopathy is considered to be one of the most enjoyable mental disorders in clinical psychology. It’s a personality disorder characterized by traits such as lack of empathy, superficial charm, antisocial or impulsive acts, and pathological lying. Their lack of disregard for society and the rights of others allow them to actively pursue goals in ways that are not constrained by morals and rules. Often, they use tactics involving manipulation and exploitation to further increase the chances of getting what they want. In doing so, these individuals can often run into legal trouble for a variety of reasons; sometimes the consequences of their actions can have devastating results. A famous example is the case of Ted Bundy, a convicted serial killer from the United States that used his charm and well-groomed attire to lure women on the street for his own sadistic desires.
The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was developed by Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare as a tool to help assess the presence of psychopathy within individuals. The current psychometrics of the PLC-R include two similar (but separate) dimensions: Affective/Interpersonal Core and Antisocial Behaviour. There are 20 items in total, and they are scaled from 0–2. As it ranges from country to country, a cutoff score of 30 in the United States is necessary to establish a diagnosis of psychopathy.
Yet, while keeping all of this in mind, it’s important to consider those that possess psychopathic traits but are non-criminalized. In fact, these individuals can go on to lead productive, successful, and functional lives in society. Co-authored by Hare and Paul Babiak, “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work” illustrate how successful individuals in our society endorse tendencies of being shallow, manipulative, and exploitative to meet their goals. The authors stated that businessmen and lawyers, who often have to make tough decisions in the face of dilemmas, are more likely to meet criteria for psychopathy.
It’s incredibly difficult to get an accurate measure of what the prevalence rate is in the general population of non-criminalized psychopathy. Hare reported that 4% of corporate professionals meet criteria for psychopathy, but concluded that the sample was biased. As a larger and more diverse sample, the length and method of distribution is vital to ensure full validity and reliability of the test. The PCL-R already suffers from issues with false positives and inter-rater reliability. It’s also important to consider cultural norms, in which values such as individual success and competition are endorsed in North American society. It’s important to develop more accurate measures for those that surround these individuals, both in their personal and work life, who experience more subtle forms of consequences in manipulation and exploitation by these individual. The notion of harm (i.e. to what degree, what context, relation to societal values, etc…) needs to be further specified and categorized to provide a more accurate depiction of psychopathic tendencies and account for its variations in hyper-competitive environments and beyond.
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