Test for Psychopaths

A test reported by the BBC in 2004 suggested it could shed light on how to find psychopaths lurking in non-violent environments, such as your place of work:

Professor Robert Hare, of the University of British Columbia says “corporate psychopaths'” arrogance and focus helps them succeed.

They may also be superficially charming, prone to fly into rages and likely to take credit for colleague’s achievements.

[…]

“There’s lots of evidence that people who are highly motivated, highly successful – particularly in finance and business – have some of these psychotic traits.

“These are people who are extremely focussed on achieving their goals, and who are not too concerned about other people’s feelings.

“There are other people who have very narcissistic traits; they want to be centre-stage and their needs have to be put first.”

He added: “People do say that you’re a psychopath if you’re violent and a successful businessman if you’re not.”

That apparently led someone to propose a Bush Poll. It turns out 84% of people who used the test diagnosed the President of the US as a psychopath.

FINAL RESULTS: Out of 6,595 evaluations submitted, the average score is 32.3850. Discarding both high (40) and low (1) scores produces 5,540 submissions with an average of 31.0404.

4,499 respondents out of 6,595 (68 percent) rated President Bush’s public behavior as consistent with that of a psychopath by submitting evaluations with scores over 30.

A score higher than 30 supports a diagnosis of psychopathy (25 in some studies — 5,566 [84 percent] placed Bush in this category).

[…]

Forensic studies of prison populations have reported average scores of around 22 on PCL-R; “normal” control populations show an average score of around 5.

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