Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work by Paul Babiak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Inmates in Charge of the Asylum

Snakes in Suits describes what most of us already know about corporate organisations, namely that there are an awful lot of nasty people who can make life miserable. Many of these are clinically psychopathic. But knowing how to identify the psychopaths and documenting how many there are in managerial positions just isn’t possible. Nor would it make much difference if we could. What we have at the moment is merely a (unstable) description of a condition and its putative aetiology:

“Psychopathy is not solely a product of social and environmental forces. Genetic factors play an important role in the formation of the personality traits and temperament considered essential to the disorder. However, its lifelong expression is the result of complex interactions between biological/temperamental predispositions and social forces.

The authors provide a range of suggestions, mainly for the HR department, that they believe will help spot psychopaths before they are hired. But these suggestions are the result of anecdotal case studies and professional intuition alone and don’t amount to much in the corporate milieu. Despite the authors claims that progress has been since the first suggestion of the issue in 1941 (by Hare in fact), no practical results have been forthcoming.

The disease of corporate psychopathy is largely invisible except to the people who experience it directly. And it is likely to remain so for several reasons. In the first instance the so-called diagnostic criteria used to identify carriers are vague and unstable. As far as I am aware, for example, the three main diagnostic tests (PCL:R, PCL:SV, and PCL:YV) have not even been tested against each other, much less against non-criminal or other non-institutionalised populations.

Further, the ‘factors’ in each test are frequently overdetermined and could point to a number of conditions in the so-called Dark Triad of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism among many other disorders. So diagnosis is a linguistic game of ‘traits’. For example:

“The difference between psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder is that the former includes personality traits such as lack of empathy, grandiosity, and shallow emotions that are not necessary for a diagnosis of ASPD.”

From a purely epistemological viewpoint the classification of mental disorders therefore becomes meaningless except to clinicians. As a corporate employee, how would I distinguish empathy in a candidate? In any case, do I really care that the boss who is bullying the entire department is psychotic or merely anti-social?

Moreover spotting these traits outside of intensive psychiatric settings is simply impossible. Psychopaths are master impersonators who can outwit even experienced professionals much less typical HR managers.

And of course the self-referential problem of psychopathy in corporate organisations is inherently insurmountable. If the hypothesis that a substantial number of corporate executives are psychopathic, particularly at senior levels, is true, then who is likely to commission relevant research in the area? And even if useful criteria were developed, just imagine the potential legal liability.

Given the nature of the disease itself - hidden, manipulative, clever, remorseless - proving a diagnosis in court for the rejection of a candidate or the termination of an executive is a punt no intelligent CEO would take (presuming he or she wasn’t psychopathic!). According to some, psychopathic traits are just the ticket for improving corporate performance. What judge would dare step into the quagmire of such an arbitrary assessment of qualifications?

So I suppose we are all stuck with the casual torture of corporate existence. It’s just another one of life’s inadequacies to deal with. Psychopaths, like the poor, are always with us.

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