When white collar criminals turn to fatal violence: The impact of narcissism and psychopathy

Abstract

The present article takes as its point of departure Perri's view, according to whom the impact of personality traits such as psychopathy and narcissism has unduly been omitted in research on white collar criminality. However, this article argues that although such factors have an important role to play in some cases when white collar criminals turn violent in order to prevent the detection of their felonies, they constitute neither the necessary nor the sufficient conditions for white collar criminals to commit murders. This means on the one hand that, although potentially increasing the risk for violence, these traits are not by themselves sufficient as the triggers of violent acts and can function so only under certain social‐contextual circumstances. However, such personality traits are not by themselves necessary, as there can be empirical cases of fraud detection murder committed by white collar criminals lacking them. This position is supported by both a logical analysis of Perri's main arguments and by empirical evidence, consisting of a few real‐life cases of Scandinavian white collar criminals who have “turned red.”

Financial Delinquency: Overarching Personality Dispositions and Circumstantial Risk Factors

“…The majority of the empirical work in this realm has been focused on psychopathy. The type of psychopathy found to be associated with white-collar offences (Alalehto & Azarian, 2018;Collins & Schmidt, 1993) is manifested in a dubious life style, impulsiveness, outbreaks of violence, risk-taking and antisocial leanings , with no acceptance of responsibility and no setting of long-term goals (Hare, 1994). Perri (2016) points to particularly dominant psychopathy in instances where white-collar offenders become red collar criminals (resorting to murder in response to a fear of exposure).…”

“…He claims that the perception that white-collar offenders are not violent is mistaken (Perri, 2011). Alalehto & Azarian (2018) and Perri (2011) identify a subcategory of white-collar criminals who under certain conditions, especially when faced with the possibility of being tracked down, resort to violence or even murder. Collins and Schmidt (1993) sampled 300 white-collar criminals and found evidence of a psychopathic tendency reflected in the absence of responsibility, unreliability and violation of norms.…”

Forensic accounting

“…Psychopathy on the other hand, does not lead an individual to commit or engage in fraud, but affects the way he/she rationalize his/her acts and behaviour (Murphy and Dacin, 2011;Harrison et al, 2018). Being antisocial, aggressive, and irresponsible does not increase the likelihood of behaving unethically, but in some cases increases the possibility that a white-collar crime involves violence (Alalehto and Azarian, 2018). Other personality traits that proved to affect one's attitude include agreeableness, conscientiousness, anomie, openness to experience, hedonism, and integrity (Blickle et al, 2006;Holtbrugge et al, 2015;Van Akkeren and Buckby, 2017;Ugrin and Odom, 2017;Van Scotter and Roglio, 2018).…”