The title of the book written by Katarina Fritzon, Nathan Brooks, and Simon Croom is both enticing, striking the reader’s curiosity for its skillful analysis of research findings, and unsurprising, revealing predictable conclusions. Corporate psychopathy: Investigating destructive personalities in the workplace brings to mind the countless white-collar scandals that have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and books, for as long as one can remember, in the form of retrospective reports of how crimes were committed and why they were not stopped before their catastrophic outcomes became inevitable. In this category, so many names, stories, and anecdotes come to mind that one would prefer not to recall any of them for the anguish they have caused to their victims. Undoubtedly, no much consolation comes from knowing that the culprits, at some point, were stopped. As time goes by, white-collar scandals, such as the Ponzi scheme concocted by Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford, the Enron accounting scandal perpetrated by a few shady characters with powerful political connections, or the hiking, in 2015, of the price of a lifesaving drug by 5,000 percent overnight carried out by Martin Shkreli (the so-called “pharma-bro”), remain both predictable (due to the hindsight bias) and stunning (due to their sheer magnitude and duration). Every time a new corporate scandal appears in the news, it fosters the same mixed reactions, albeit it still captures the public’s attention, in the same way as a car crash attracts the attention of bystanders. Spectators want to know the details of what happened, and how and why it happened while they are witnessing the devastation it brought onto others. The same curiosity may be expected from the reader of Corporate psychopathy: Investigating destructive personalities in the workplace. Can this book reveal what psychopathic dispositions exist in the workplace and their impact, as well as how to detect them and prevent their presence?

   Corporate psychopathy: Investigating destructive personalities in the workplace is a well-written book that gives the reader a wealth of details regarding the tools used to assess psychopathy, as a syndrome and as varied sets of dispositions. Yet, the real issue that the authors cleverly investigate is the extent to which there is a distinction between the psychopathy of individuals who have murdered innocent people without experiencing guilt (e.g., Ted Bundy), and the psychopathy of professionals in the workplace who have committed frauds (white-collar crimes). According to the FBI’s website, white-collar crimes “are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and are not dependent on the application or threat of physical force or violence. The motivation behind these crimes is financial—to obtain or avoid losing money, property, or services or to secure a personal or business advantage”. This definition focuses on behavior and key intent rather than dispositions. The authors of Corporate psychopathy: Investigating destructive personalities in the workplace offer an elaboration of this definition by clarifying that overly violent and non-violent psychopaths are defined by a set of common traits and, at least, one main difference. Namely, they share a lack of concern for others and an overriding interest in their well-being. Both are cunning, manipulative, and calculating, thereby making instrumental offending their main staple. The latter, however, exhibit greater executive functioning, thereby being able to obtain professional success in their chosen domain of operation, as well as shielding themselves from detection and arrest. Of course, there are other features, such as fearlessness, and an overriding concern for dominance, but the evidence of commonality or differentiation is less clear-cut. 

The authors must be commended for having carried out an analytical examination of the findings of a considerable number of studies whose assessment methodologies and samples of participants tend to vary greatly. The authors must also be commended for their sensible and data-driven conclusions, such as that the expression of psychopathic dispositions varies in different samples, but that criminal samples and business samples can be distinguished, mostly based on the latter’s ability to function reasonably well within the business ecosystem they chose for their professional lives. 

The authors devote considerable attention to the workplace. They ask whether there are suitable assessment tools for detecting psychopathic dispositions in the workplace. A systematic review of personality inventories (e.g., the Myers-Briggs Typology Indicator, the Big Five, and the HEXACO), risk-assessment measures (e.g., the Hogan Development Survey and the Limits), and integrity assessment tools (e.g., the Giotto, the Moral Disengagement Measure, and the IP200) ensue. Following their review, the authors conclude that available assessment tools, to be used in the hiring and retention of employees, are less than ideal. Then, the authors discuss the Corporate Personality Inventory-Revised (CPI-R), which is also a self-report measure consisting of statements regarding oneself that are contextualized to reflect a business environment and that require a true or false response. In an attempt to bypass psychopaths’ predilection for deception, they added to the CPI-R a third-party report section, which asks test-takers to bring to mind a senior colleague with whom they had difficulties when answering similar questions. Through these tools, they identify three main features of psychopathy in the workplace: boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. Yet, one of the issues not thoroughly addressed is that the currently available assessment measures are generally self-report measures that can be easily manipulated, thereby leading to misrepresentation if a person is cunning, manipulative, calculating, and has enough education to understand how these measures work. Other forms of assessment that bypass an individual’s executive functions and focus on largely automatic behaviors may be much more effective. For instance, the micro-expressions (i.e., unintended emotional “leakage”; Porter et al., 2011) of job candidates could be measured while they participate in simulations of problematic issues in the workplace where they are expected to operate. Although individuals with psychopathic dispositions may be less expressive and can feign emotions more convincingly, they may still be outliers when unintended emotional “leakage” is measured compared with individuals who do not possess such dispositions. Another issue not thoroughly addressed by the authors involves the features of business ecosystems, which may offer a fertile ground to the very dispositions that are deemed psychopathic.

In Corporate psychopathy: Investigating destructive personalities in the workplace, the authors also examine the impact of psychopathy on the workplace. The guiding assumption is that individuals’ dispositions can, to a certain degree, predict behavior at work. In their final chapter, they examine remedies to minimize or avoid entirely the costs of hiring individuals with psychopathic dispositions who have the non-negligible potential to damage a business, including its assets, employees, and stakeholders. They offer some advice on hiring, but their sensible suggestions are faced with the difficulties of predicting behavior in a particular setting (i.e., workplace) from dispositions that can be faked by a clever con artist. 

All in all, Corporate psychopathy: Investigating destructive personalities in the workplace is an informative, evidence-based text on the efforts of dedicated scholars to understand the manifestations of psychopathy. It illustrates a work in progress that may one day lead to assessment tools that more convincingly not only detect specific dispositions but also have greater predictive validity for the behavioral manifestations of such dispositions. Yet, its content is likely to be of great interest to students and educators whose studies encompass the areas of personality psychology, clinical psychology, and law. Undeniably, it is a must-read book!

Maura Pilotti, Ph.D.

Categories: Psychology

Keywords: business, psychology