Psychology forum
Re: Psychopaths in working life |
mike
15-08-2007 02:48
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To suggest psychopaths are not present in large companies is VERY naive young lady.
Let me pose a question to you. Let's say you are the head of a large multinational food company. You use a food additive which is proven to result in increased sales of your food item but which is known to have detrimental effects on the consumers health. You know if sales increase while you are CEO, you will receive a handsome bonus on top of your already generous salary. You love your kids, or at least everybody thinks so. You are a well liked and an upstanding citizen in your community and drive expensive cars. You are like the people you surround yourself with, so you fit in very well. So, you give the green light, use the additive.
Are you a sociopath, a psychopath?
Turns out, the food additive contributes directly to autism. Since your large corporation began using this food additive, other companies followed your lead. Some wanting increased profits, some fearing loss of their market share.
Over time, some astute individuals bring to light the issue and there is a mild uprising over it. I say mild uprising since several of your company's board members are also board members of large media companies so in their better (financial) interest they are able to squelch "too much" reporting of the issue. You're pretty clever so you go to your local buddy, the congressman. The two of you talk it over and pretty soon, the FDA allows you to change the name of your money making "food additive" so that the growing negative press associated with your "little money maker" doesn't affect your sales, or profits. d**n, you're smart.
So, over a ten year period or something like that, results show the rate of autism has increased from 1 in 1000 children, to 1 in 163, but you keep using it.
These are human lives permenently and irrevocably altered, not to mention the impact on the families and their hopes and dreams shattered.
Are you a sociopath or a psychopath?
You don't want to feel like the worthless human being that you are, so you contribute to charitable organizations and causes. The media reports your alturism to the masses and boy do you look good as a result of all the panpering you give yourself.
We haven't discussed the companies consumption of natural resources and the fact you moved your plants out of country because you wanted to escape EPA regulation which stopped you from dumping toxic waste products into the local streams. "It's just too darn expensive" you say to handle the waste properly - "besides, I won't get my bonus if we incur all that extra expense." The action resulted from an unusually high rate of cancer and birth defects in the area surrounding your plants coming to light in the media.
It was actually known many years earlier, but being as smart, well liked, influential, and hell I'll say it, rich as you were (and d**n are you good looking - like a stuffed pig - with all that money dripping off of you), you were able to influence local government officials who profitted from the presence of your company in their towns. But, now that the issue has "publicly" reached the EPA, even your congressman buddy can't suppress the evidence any longer for fear of looking like the criminal he is.
You feel sorry for the poor abnormally developed three eye'd children and families of deceased cancer victims. You make a public apology and are forced to pay restitution to the victims. (But your fellow board members make sure your public apology doesn't get "too much" reporting of the issue in the media) so the public in general remains ignorant about it. By the way, your crime pays handsomely since your actions saved the company billions of dollars over the years, and you received some of hte most generous bonuses on record for it, the Federal courts only slapped your hands when it awarded the victims one tenth of one percent of your ill-gotten profits. Good going! setting an example for others to follow. With billions in the balance, what's a few hundred million dollars to smooth things out in your favor.
There is an added benefit. Since you've invested heavily in pharmaceuticals, (you heard it was the next "high-tech" sector of the stock market with your buddies lobbying to block free-trade and competition to maximize profits of key drug companies), the parents of all those kids with abnormal development - as a result of your "little money maker" are going to need medication to be normal like you, or so they'll be told. Presto! You've got the midas touch.
You and all your board members realize the overwhelming potential to go down in flames financially if "too many people" get wind of this sort of thing, so you lobby your President, you know he's a player, and he works to inact reform to protect you and your buddies - for a tiddy little sum.
On a side note, the mother of the three eye'd kid goes to the President but can't get in. In her desperation to get attention she crosses a security line and is shot dead. The Press Secretary spins it off as a "terrorist" attempting to attack with 50 bls of explosives, pointing to a picture of a pulge at her stomach - tumor.
The underdeveloped country you relocated your plants to allows you to continue dumping toxic waste in the streams because it to wants the dollars your company will bring to it, so you continue dumping toxic waste into the streams in that country.
There is a documentary which performs a character profile on Corporate America. I don't remember the name of it at the moment, but I'd recommend you watch it.
There is a larger problem of assumption, such as people thinking "oh, they wouldn't do that," or "you're one of those conspiracy nuts."
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
emerson
15-08-2007 03:07
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Hmmm, do you mean they would possess some inner integrity which allows them to lie about some things, but which would prevent them from lying about other people's feelings, or value?
As one of the other "posters" previously mentioned, they lie as so many people do.
Are Psycho & sociopaths not motivated at times, not emotionally driven at times?
How could you know if a psychopath had absolutely no feeling about or for other humanbeings? Because when asked they said so? Do they have dreams of love and tenderness or all their dreams about bad things?
I realize the text books may say they don't, but did God etch that in stone? or is that just a convenient belief repeated to psychology students to simplify their lessons, or make it possible to dissemenate other "incorrect beliefs" about our fellow humans?
I've read a lot of psychology discussions about people, which mostly reflects a very academic, detached and impersonal frame of mind. This is no way to learn about human psychology, and if you haven't a clue about yourself, you stand no chance in h#ll of putting any detached impersonal lesson into it's proper context.
If psychology was at such a great level of enlightenment about the human condition, why do we still need prisons? I'll answer this one for psychology; because it is hereditary; because it is neurological; because it is chemical; because it is some other excuse we use for our lack of self-awareness and understanding of ourselves and others; because we went to school for a long time and want to keep up the apearance I did not waste all that money and time for nothing; because I want to be somebody; because I don't have a better answer; because being a doctor gives me status; because it makes me feel good to believe I am better than others. (Ah... you, not me.)
I apologize to the psychological profession for the sarcasim, but not for the truth of it.
Why are we (I exclude myself, not that I don't slip up once in a while) still compelled to externalize our inner conflicts, thoughts and feelings and persecute others for it? Why do our courts cater to and perpetrate this mentality?
In my former profession, it was easy to observe where knowledge ended, and ego started. Ego, demanded the individual be recognized as having complete knowledge. The individual was completely unaware of this, and believed themselves (there ego) dispite evidence to the contrary, and at the expense of an openness to learning the additional knowledge missing It was always the other person who didn't know.
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
lanod
15-08-2007 03:35
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"CompGeek"]The way that we know that people with CU traits have no feelings about other humans is by neroscientists running brain imaging machines and reviewing the activation in the emotion sections of the brain. They have found that in people with CU traits there is really no brain activity in the emotion section of the brain when diff. stiumli are presented, such as a fatal car crash or a person being shot. The activation in this region is on par with the activation that is present when they were shown a clip of a person bouncing a ball off of a wall...
The reason why people speak academically and seem detached is because as a psychologist you must remain emotional detached in some sense otherwise emotion will start to cloud your judgement about diagnoses, prognosis, and treatment... it is similar to why surgeons will not operate on family members, they are too emotionally involved, they are more apt to make a mistake.
Psychology really isn't a great enlightenment about the human condition per se. It is merely the best understanding that we have about the human mind and human behavior. It is not a perfect science, but then again nothing in the medical field .
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Re: Psychopaths in working life |
ciara
15-08-2007 03:37
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The response to my questions are overwhelming. I didn't want to appear as though I was picking on you CompGeek, but since you were the only one with an opinion, well... so where are all the "shrinks" and learning to be "shrinks" here?
Is there silence because there is no arguement which can be supported, or is it silent because you (anyone) have withdrawn into learned "survival" behavior? Wrestling with inner demons? Externalizing those inner demons?
No opinion? No knowledge?
Is this a demonstration of "detachment" learned from emotionally distant parents? Learned response to a subjectively perceived tyrant? Afraid of being expossed? Afraid to speak your mind? Cat got your tongue? Cat scratch fever?
Does any one agree?
Anybody have any constructive, life sustaining, life enhancing, positive ideas about what a great country could do with 12 trillion dollars?
Comp, if you read back thru what I wrote and what the other poster's wrote, you will see that you failed to consider all the information put forth, but rather choose (maybe it wasn't conscious) to respond to only a portion of the facts given. As an ignorant lawyer once said to me, "version of the truth." A "version of the truth" is no truth at all, but, that's just like a lawyer isn't it, manipulating!
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