Is your co-worker a risk-taker? Impulsive? Fearless? Charming? Does your co-worker lack empathy or a sense of remorse?
Well, depending upon your field, your co-worker might actually be a psychopath.
Kevin Dutton is an Oxford psychologist and author of?The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success. In the book, Dutton compiled a list of careers in which psychopaths are over-represented, meaning where rates of psychopathy dwarf the national percentage of qualified psychopaths (1 percent).
In the spirit of Dutton’s findings, here are four careers in which your boss or co-worker may be a psychopath.
CEO
One of my favorite episodes of Futurama is “Future Stock,” in which a man from the 1980’s who was cryogenically frozen is thawed and takes control of Planet Express when the shareholders turn on Farnsworth.
The man, called “That Guy” throughout the episode, is a caricature of 1980’s excess and Wall Street executives. He’s modeled after Gordon Gekko.
Several studies have been done on CEO’s and have determined that four percent — four times the national psychopathic population — qualify as psychopaths.
They say to succeed in business, one needs to be?cutthroat –?a?shark. Essentially, you must be devoid of empathy and take risks.
Salesperson
Speaking as someone who has worked in sales, one of the tactics we use is to “find your pain.” That is the actual term.
Pretty sadistic, isn’t it?
“Finding the pain” is a common sales strategy. When you walk into a store or you inquire about a service, the things you say and expressions you make activate receptors in the brains of salespeople, ultimately prompting them to use those words and expressions as a means to manipulate you into consenting to the purchase or the service.
To thrive in sales, one must already be manipulative. The industry cradles that trait and refines it.
Clergy
The Catholic Church’s decades-long scandals with pedophile priests are pretty much common knowledge. The Church has lost over $3 billion in payouts to victims and its efforts to hide the abuse are about as conniving and narcissistic as it gets.
Consider, for a moment, the wealth accrued by megachurches and television evangelists. Christianity is, according to (mythical?) Jesus, a pious, giving faith, yet Joel Osteen, senior pastor at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, has an estimated net worth of $40 million. Pat Robertson, host of?The 700 Club, is estimated to be worth between $200 million and $1 billion. He also has a goddamn diamond mine!
Religion is a profitable enterprise. Religion provides a slew of people attracted to the faith for various reasons and who are willing to shell out their time and money for the good word.
Religion is mankind’s greatest scam and greatest sin against itself.
Chef
I wouldn’t necessarily refer to celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsey as “sane” individuals, and because of this, I find them to be perfect examples of psychopathy within the culinary arts. They are artists who use food as a medium. They work long hours. They are constantly being judged by the people they feed.
In Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,?Anthony Bourdain recalls a wedding party that arrived at his restaurant immediately following the ceremony. According to Bourdain, the restaurant’s chef, Bobby, and the bride “celebrated” her nuptials behind the restaurant.
“While her new groom and family chawed happily on their flounder fillets and deep-fried scallops just a few yards away in the Dreadnaught dining room, here was the blushing bride, getting an impromptu send-off from a total stranger. And I knew then, dear reader, for the first time: I wanted to be a chef.”
