This topic may seem a bit odd for WorkPuzzle, but stick with me—I think you’ll find it beneficial. Over the last few weeks, two clients have requested information about this topic. So, I felt compelled to distribute some knowledge about psychopaths to our clients and readers. Hopefully, this will prevent or minimize your exposure to these dangerous people who can wreak havoc on both your business and personal life.
Do you really need to be worried about psychopaths? It is not something I would lose sleep over, but chances are you’ve come in contact with a psychopath at some point in your career and you probably will do so again. Experts estimate that between 0.5% and 1% of the population fit this diagnosis. This means there are roughly 250,000 psychopaths (outside of prison) in the United States alone.
Professionally, I have performed psychological evaluations on well over 100 psychopaths during my career, and I unknowingly attempted therapy on three high-functioning psychopaths before figuring out their condition. I have also had the displeasure of trusting two psychopaths in my business network. The first was a former boss who was a well-respected and gregarious leader. The second was a financial advisor. In both cases, these individuals eventually left a wake of devastation in the lives of everyone I knew who trusted them in the context of a business relationship.
I’m sharing this information in hopes that you can avoid some of the pain I’ve experienced personally and have seen others experience because of these people. I’ve come to the conclusion that spotting a psychopath and then extracting yourself from any relationship you may have with such a person is a skill that could save years of heartache for you, your co-workers, and perhaps your family.
There is a great deal of misunderstanding regarding psychopaths. In essence, they are people who don’t care about the irreparable harm they cause their victims. They lack any empathy for their victims. They have no conscience. No guilt. No shame.
The common thing people think of when they picture a psychopath is a serial killer. Serial killers are indeed psychopaths, but this accounts for a very small percentage of the total. Some criminals are psychopaths. In fact, many lower IQ psychopaths end up in prison. But, even the prisons contain only a small percentage of the overall number of psychopaths.
The type of psychopath you would be most likely to encounter is termed a “high-functioning” psychopath. High-functioning psychopaths can be very successful, appear confident, calm, and seem have their act together. In fact, most psychopaths are actually more engaging than the average person. They can be charming, knowledgeable and quite believable.
The primary characteristic that distinguishes a psychopath from the general population is that they are insatiable liars and skilled manipulators. The reason for the masterful lying is that they feel absolutely no shame or guilt about the deception. No regrets. In fact, science is discovering, through recent brain scans, that psychopaths don’t feel much of anything, with the exception of becoming quite irritated when things don’t go their way.
Because they are such skilled manipulators, they are exceptionally good at figuring out your weaknesses, exploiting those weaknesses, and feeling absolutely nothing regarding their actions. Even when their efforts are stymied, they usually return to test your willingness or gullibility to go one more round.
When research is conducted on psychopaths, they’ve been shown to repeatedly convince people they are worthy of trust. Inexperienced interns often describe a psychopath as “one of the wisest, most humorous and engaging men (most psychopaths are men) they have ever met.”
What does this mean for each of you? I’ll answer this question with two warnings:
- Don’t get overly paranoid and begin suspecting everyone around you is a psychopath! And, don’t begin rumors out of pure speculation.
- Take what I will teach you about this topic seriously enough to be able to identify someone with this condition when it’s appropriate. And when you do have strong evidence that someone is a psychopath, stay away from them. They can’t hurt you if you don’t trust them.
In the next edition, I’ll describe in much more detail how to spot a psychopath through a specific set of characteristics. I will also describe some interesting research regarding the lack of emotion that is routinely characteristic of psychopaths.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you’re an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the “comments” link below.
