Search icon

Life

02nd Sep 2018

The one sign that your work colleague might be a psychopath

Jade Hayden

Take care, lads.

There’s nobody you spend more time with in this world than your workmates.

You see them in the morning, you see them in the evening, you see them when you go on a night out and are regrettably just after your downing your eighth jagerbomb.

They really are everywhere.

It’s probably safe to go ahead and assume then that you’d know if one of your workmates was a psychopath.

And if you don’t, don’t worry about it because there’s a pretty easy way to tell if they are or not.

The Journal of Business Ethics has published a study that details the most common sign that somebody you work with is a psychopath – that they like working under a horrible boss.

Makes sense in fairness… who would be into that?

The group conducted two studies which showed that some psychopaths thrive under abusive supervisors.

In this case, an abusive supervisor is someone who is rude, invaded their employees’ privacy, and spreads gossip.

It makes sense that majority of people find these kinds of bosses very stressful and not ideal indeed, but Dr Charlice Hurst said that psychopaths are actually pretty into it.

She wrote that there are two kinds of psychopaths – primary and secondary – and that both of them thrive beneath people who are abusive in the workplace.

She said:

“People who score high in primary psychopathy lack empathy and are cool-headed and fearless. They don’t react to things that cause other people to feel stressed, fearful or angry.

“Secondary psychopaths are more hot-headed and impulsive. We found that primary psychopaths benefit under abusive supervisors.

“Relative to their peers low in primary psychopathy, they felt less anger and more engagement and positive emotions under abusive supervisors.”

Understandably, these finding aren’t all that good news for companies.

After all, a workforce consisting of a lot of high-performing psychopaths wouldn’t really get anyone anywhere.

The study included data from 419 volunteer manager profiles.