John M. Grohol, PsyD Founder & Editor-in-Chief, has published a rebuttal of the story The Financial Psychopath Next Door, which appeared in in the March/April issue of the CFA Magazine. I cited that article in my post Psychopaths On Wall Street. His rebuttal is called Untrue: 1 out of Every 10 Wall Street Employees is a Psychopath. He called me out in that article, which requires that I publish this clarification. Quotes within quotes are highlighted.
Last week, more than a few news agencies and blogs picked up the story that “one out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a psychopath.” This immediately caught my attention, because as a researcher, I found the statistic intriguing because it was so out of whack with the incidence of psychopathy in the general population.
But in trying to research where this statistic came from, I stumbled upon a symptom of what’s wrong with a lot of journalism today.
I can summarize the problem in one word — laziness. Many (most?) journalists nowadays take “experts” words for whatever claims they make, without ever bothering to check them out independently.
Alexander Eichler, a “business reporter” at The Huffington Post, started this news cycle by making the claim in his article, “One Out Of Every Ten Wall Street Employees Is A Psychopath, Say Researchers:”
One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is likely a clinical psychopath, writes journalist Sherree DeCovny in an upcoming issue of the trade publication CFA Magazine (subscription required). In the general population the rate is closer to one percent.
Eichler isn’t suggesting 1 out of 10 Wall Street employees is a psychopath — he’s just passing along something he read in another magazine (note, it’s a magazine, like People, not a scientific journal). Eichler’s point of his blog entry is simply to regurgitate what DeCovny (2012) wrote in her article. Here’s what DoCovny, a freelancer, actually wrote:
Studies conducted by Canadian forensic psychologist Robert Hare indicate that about 1 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent. And Christopher Bayer believes, based on his experience, that the rate is higher.
When DeCovny was contacted about the statistic, she replied:
Christopher Bayer, a psychologist I interviewed for the article, told me about Hare’s study, so he should be able to point you in the right direction. Christopher provides therapy to Wall Street professionals. He’s also finishing up a book on this topic.
It’s great that Christopher Bayer is a therapist who treats Wall Street professionals. However, I could find no research he’s authored in this topic area. So while his opinion is duly noted, it really isn’t in the same league as empirical scientific data. The two should never be confused.
Hare, on the other hand, is a famous researcher who has made a career in studying psychopaths, has published dozens of scientific studies on the topic, and developed the preeminent checklist that is used in most psychopathy research. The latest version of this checklist is called the Psychopathy Checklist — Revised (PCL-R, Hare & Neumann, 2006).
Here’s the problem — many journalists and reporters nowadays just rely on professionals to make a claim, and don’t ever challenge or bother to verify the claim. I’m not sure why this is, but it seems to be the new defacto standard...
I did what any journalist writing about a famous researcher should do before saying he said something that seems a little “out there” — I contacted Hare to ask him about this data. Here’s his response to the claim that 1 in 10 (10 percent) of financial industry employees is a “psychopath:”
I don’t know who threw out the 10% but it certainly it did not come from me or my colleagues.
The article to which you refer describes a sample of “203 corporate professionals selected by their companies to participate in management development programs.” The sample was not randomly selected or necessarily representative of managers or executives, or of the corporations in which they work.
The approximately 4% who had a PCL-R score high enough for a research description as psychopathic cannot be be generalized to the larger population of managers and executives, or to CEOs and the “financial services industry.”
So to be crystal clear here, one out of every ten wall street employees is NOT a psychopath....
And in what Hare did find, he’s careful to note that it was preliminary research done on a small, non-representative sample, using research criteria (not clinical criteria) in just seven U.S. companies (out of the tens of thousands of companies in America). Hardly anything one should be drawing broad conclusions from, much less say something derogative about an entire industry.
Here are just a smattering of the links who repeated this information without bothering to do the journalistic legwork it would’ve required to check on these facts before re-publishing them:
[some other stories]
Business Insider: The Shocking Statistic About Psychopaths On Wall Street
Decline of the Empire: Psychopaths On Wall Street
(Let’s see how many of them print either a clarification or retraction of their news story.)
I did cite Yahoo's Business Insider story quoting Sherree DeCovny's article without checking with Dr. Robert Hare to see if he was quoted accurately by Christopher Bayer, who was DeCovney's source. I'm sorry! Mea culpa.
That said, my original post doesn't depend on the claim that 10% of those working on Wall Street are psychopaths according to Hare's checklist (PCL-R). My post was about the existence of such people, the threat they pose to the rest of us, and how to recognize them when you see them. If you take that claim out of my post, the main point of the essay would be unchanged. I'm certainly not going to retract the post. (I wonder if Mr. Grohol even read it.) Hence this clarification.
As it turns out, we don't know how many of those working in "financial services" test out as psychopaths for research purposes because nobody, including Dr. Hare, has done the research. We do know that 4% of 203 corporate professionals selected by their companies to participate in management development programs "passed" the test, which is about 4 times the percentage in the general population. In fact, the only person in this mess intimately involved with those on Wall Street—Christopher Bayer is a therapist who treats Wall Street professionals—thinks the incidence of psychopathology on Wall Street may be higher than 10%.
But let's move on to important things. I'll expand on the remarks I made last Sunday.
If corporations are people—the law of the land says they are, which enables them to buy politicians— then in my considered judgement most corporations are psychopaths. Bill Hicks (a pseudonym) writes story after story on The Downward Spiral about ruthless, remorseless layoffs which leave entire American communities destitute. These layoff are the result of purely financial decisions designed to maximize profits and benefit shareholders, which in my book is a form of pathological behavior in so far as the consequences for the "little people" affected are rarely (if ever) considered. If you are fucking people over for money, and the corporation itself is not at risk, you are mentally ill in my book.
And despite rumors to the contrary, responsibility for such decisions is not diffuse within these corporations. The usual story says that "a decision was made" (agentless passive voice). Screw that. Specific individuals make those decisions, and we are right to wonder what's going through their minds when they do so. In so far as we are talking about people without a conscience, we are right to wonder how they sleep at night. Like a baby, I assume, secure in the knowledge that they have discharged their fiduciary responsibilities. If they are not sleeping comfortably, if they have a conscience and it bothers them, why are they still working for these corporations? Let's call such behavior what it is—immoral, heartless, just plain wrong, pathological.
In view of these considerations, if it is not obvious in 2012 that a significant portion of those working on Wall Street are crazy in the sense just described—anyone who is not asleep has seen story after story about fraudulent derivatives trading in mortgage-backed securities which blew up the "financial services" industry and the economy—then I don't know what is obvious at this point.
So I could care less that one person (Eichler) quoted another person (DeCovny) who quoted another person (Bayer) who falsely cited some research (Hare). Financial fraud is rampant on Wall Street. This knowledge is freely available to anyone paying attention. If you want the details, read William K. ("Bill") Black on the subject.
Those who perpetrate this sort of fraud are not paragons of psychological health, though that is not how people generally view it. I think that's extremely unfortunate. You may think my definition of mental illness is too broad. I don't think it is. If my definition is too broad, then I guess those fraudsters on Wall Street are psychologically A-OK, just like the guy next door—he was such a nice man, a good neighbor—whom we were surprised to learn killed his whole family before shooting himself in the head last night. Or maybe he was distraught because the corporation he works for just shipped his job overseas and he can't make the payments on that fraudulent mortgage he was suckered into signing off on. Either way it goes, somebody is crazy.
Mr. Grohol thinks the current research is "hardly anything one should be drawing broad conclusions from, much less say something derogative about an entire industry." I beg to differ. There is little current research, but there is plenty to evidence which permits us to say something derogatory about the "financial services" industry, and broadly speaking, American corporate culture. When was the last time Mr. Grohol read a newspaper or a good financial blog? Perhaps he knows about financial fraud, but he's withholding judgment until some as-yet-undone scientific research confirms that this fraud actually occurred and we are indeed fucked.
That's sarcasm, Mr. Grohol. And so is this
Perhaps John M. Grohol thinks Rush Limbaugh should undergo extensive psychological testing to determine if he really is mentally unbalanced.
And unless humankind suddenly gets a clue about why the Human Condition is so fucked up—we have met the enemy and he is us—all of this pathology is going to help drive our species right off that looming 21st century cliff. That's the bottom line, and Mr. Grohol prattling on about "bad journalism" and "laziness" is not going to get us anywhere or change the situation. I am wondering who is "lazy" and who is not in this mess.
I am glad to have this opportunity to expand on the remarks I made in my original post, but I've got to stop here because I'm due back on the planet Earth.
Have a nice weekend.
The late, great Joe Bageant had a perfect term he used to describe the people whom you are talking about: The Bastards. Coincidentally, I'll actually have a post on my blog tomorrow morning about the recent activities of yet another such Bastard, which proves your point about how these corporate decisions are obviously NOT made in a vacuum.
Posted by: Bill Hicks | 03/09/2012 at 11:41 AM