The Relationship among Psychopathy, Emotional Intelligence, and Professional Success in Finance

Abstract

The current study examined the relationship between psychopathic traits, emotional intelligence, and professional success in finance. The literature suggests that possessing certain psychopathic personality traits and emotional intelligence can be conducive to advancing professionally in the financial sector. It was hypothesized that interpersonalaffective psychopathic traits and emotional intelligence would be associated with one another and would also show positive associations with professional success. Fifty-five individuals employed at financial institutions in the New York metropolitan area completed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, and answered questions about their employment and income. The current sample showed significantly higher levels of interpersonal-affective psychopathic traits than those reported in other community samples and significantly lower levels of emotional intelligence than those found in a comparison sample. Although interpersonal-affective psychopathic traits were not significantly related to emotional intelligence, impulsivebehavioral traits were negatively related to emotional intelligence. Interpersonal-affective psychopathic traits were related to higher annual incomes and were predictive of higher corporate ranks.

The exploration of subclinical psychopathic subtypes and their relationship with types of aggression in female college students

“…Two-factor structures have been noted across self-report psychopathy assessment instruments (Benning et al, 2003;Levenson et al, 1995) and accumulating research supports the validity of psychopathy in various non-forensic samples (e.g., Benning et al, 2005;Falkenbach, Poythress, Falki, & Manchak, 2007;Howe, Falkenbach, & Massey, 2014;Malterer, Lilienfeld, Neumann, & Newman, 2010). Falkenbach, Stern, and Creevy (2014) recently published MBCA findings in which psychopathic subtypes in students differed on psychopathy factors, anxiety, borderline personality disorder (BPD), aggression, and affect.…”

Criminal and Noncriminal Psychopathy: The Devil is in the Detail

“…Fearless dominance was found to significantly predict the income bracket of $100,000 to $200,000, with higher scores found for this level of income compared to the less than 100,000 and over $200,000 groups (Howe et al, 2014). No significant differences were observed for total psychopathy or subscales for corporate rank.…”

“…There are many pathways to the development of psychopathy, including the dual and moderated pathways as discussed by Benning et al (2018) and Hall and Benning (2006). These pathways It is evident that the manifestation of psychopathic traits has been found to vary across contexts and samples examining psychopathy, with differences observed between criminal and business samples (Board & Fritzon, 2005;Brooks, 2017;Howe et al, 2014). While the difference between types of psychopathy can be identified at the trait level, there is a lack of research exploring behavioural and physiological differences between criminal and noncriminal psychopathy.…”

“…In contrast, Hare (1999Hare ( , 2003 Hare, Lykken (1957 and Karpman (1941Karpman ( , 1948 detailed primary and secondary psychopathy, which were characterised by differences in emotionality and psychopathy trait patterns. The emergence of recent research investigating noncriminal psychopathy has proposed that psychopathy is characterised by positive adaptive features, suggesting that the right constellation of psychopathic traits could lead to success in the community (Broad & Fritzon, 2005;Dutton, 2012;Howe et al, 2014).…”

“…Due to variations in assessment methodologies and samples, consensus is yet to be reached in establishing baseline prevalence rates of psychopathy in business settings. For example, the occurrence of psychopathic personality in corporate settings has been suggested to range between 4% and 20% (Babiak et al, 2010;Fritzon et al, 2016;Howe et al, 2014). These figures, while higher than the approximate one percent found in the general community (Hare, 1999), fall in between the community base rate and the level of psychopathy identified in offender populations (15 to 25 percent; Hart & Hare, 1996).…”