Could my boss actually be a psychopath?

I just finished listening to a radio interview and the guest on the show was talking about psychopathy. I had always thought this was a pseudoscientific or at least a disputed idea in psychology. But when the guest went through the list of characteristics that defined a psychopath I immediately thought of an old boss I’d worked under. They seemed to tick every box.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my time with this person, wondering why they were the way that they were and why they treated me and others so poorly. I’ve spoken with friends with similar experiences with similar bosses, and we’ve come up with complex theories (and occasionally even excuses). But could the answer be simpler? Could it be that they were born incapable of feeling empathy?

The interpretation of what defines psychopathy is somewhat disputed, but it’s certainly possible your boss could fit the bill.Credit: John Shakespeare

I passed your question on to Dr Caroline Moul, an associate professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. Her response was incredibly thorough and really insightful. I’ve included as much as I can in the column.

“Psychopathy certainly isn’t pseudoscientific, but I can understand this perspective as it is a topic that promotes both interest and misrepresentation in the community. It is somewhat disputed, though. There are several different ways of defining psychopathy,” she says.

Moul said that the first is from a forensic psychology or criminology perspective. The second, often used in clinical psychology, looks at personality traits and interpersonal style. The third is more focused on personality research and tends to consider psychopathy as being part of a “dark triad” which includes narcissism and Machiavellianism.

Associate Professor Moul’s research falls into the second category. She is particularly interested in the genetic, neurological and cognitive-mechanistic reasons underlying psychopathic traits.

It can be very difficult to determine if someone has high levels of psychopathic traits from their behaviour alone.

“While psychopathic traits are certainly a significant risk factor for engaging in antisocial and criminal behaviour, they do not dictate this outcome. An individual can have high levels of these traits – that is, low levels of empathy, a general disregard for the feelings of others and low levels of guilt – and still be a friendly, upstanding citizen. Other internal and external factors at play can protect against negative outcomes,” she says.

“It is also false to say that people with high levels of psychopathy ‘are unable to feel empathy’ or ‘don’t feel fear’. These sorts of messages oversimplify something that we know from research may have quite subtle origins. For example, evidence suggests that people with high levels of these traits are less able to identify negative social emotions such as fear and sadness in others.”

Far from pointing to a person being ‘born bad’, Associate Professor Moul explained that psychopathic traits may be the result of “minor deficits in basic cognitive processes that, over time and development, can cascade into the personality features and interpersonal style of someone we would identify as a psychopath”.

She used the example of a toddler playing with children of the same age, intentionally hurting a playmate and then staring at them as they cried. This is not a manifestation of psychopathy. In fact, it’s quite common, simply a child learning how to be a social being.

“If [that] young child failed to notice the impact of their behaviours more often than another, it is understandable that they may be delayed in developing the appropriate social response,” Associate Professor Moul says.

“Now, if you mix in other factors such as parents resort[ing] to harsher parenting techniques, school-teachers that might label the child as difficult or a trouble-maker and so treat them differently, school friends that might laugh at a joke made at another’s expense and so reinforce bullying behaviours for an instigator who is blind to the distress of the victim, it isn’t difficult to see how antisocial, psychopathic behaviours might be more likely to develop in this child.”

So, why did your boss treat you so badly?

“Antisocial behaviour can have many different causes and rationales. It may be that [they] did indeed have high levels of psychopathic traits and had developed into what would be termed a workplace psychopath’,” she says.

“They may have learned that treating others poorly facilitated their own career. Without strong feelings of empathy for others or guilt for causing negative outcomes for others, they would be more likely to come to that conclusion.”

“On the other hand, perhaps they were very anxious and alleviated this by controlling their environment (including staff) as much as possible. Or maybe they had low self-confidence and felt that they needed to act tough to gain respect from others.“

In other words, it can be very difficult to determine if someone has high levels of psychopathic traits from their behaviour alone as the disorder can only really be defined by the individual’s own internal experience of social emotions.

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