Doing business and working with Senior Sociopaths

Some senior sociopaths are in jail and many are parasites, living off of a partner or family member. But millions of senior sociopaths are in the workplace, causing havoc with co-workers, customers and sometimes bringing down the company (think Bernie Madoff). If you’re working with senior sociopaths in any context, watch your back.

My new book, Senior Sociopaths — How to Recognize and Escape Lifelong Abusers, is now available here on Lovefraud and on Amazon. It’s based on surveys that I conducted with Lovefraud readers. Most survey respondents described romantic partners or family members, but 62 described a work colleague or business associate. It was not a pleasant experience.

Sociopathic behavior at work

I asked survey respondents to describe the senior sociopath’s behavior at work. Here are the top responses (N=42):

• The individual manipulates others in the organization — 81%
• If anything goes wrong, the individual blames someone else — 76%
• The individual cannot be trusted — 74%
• The individual causes turmoil among co-workers — 69%
• The individual has people above him or her in the organization fooled — 62%
• The individual promises but does not deliver — 60%
• The individual is a bully — 55%
• The individual takes credit for work that others did — 55%
• The individual has violated policy or the law, but has gotten away with it — 55%

So what does this look like on the job? Here are a few quotes from survey respondents:

• He stopped my promotion by lying to our superiors. I was transferred to another office to be away from him and he went over our manager to the CEO to have me returned to the previous office working under him again.
  
• I watch her love bomb anyone she perceives as being potentially useful to her in the future. If she has a complaint with higher-ups she dupes other coworkers into complaining to the boss so she can stay in her role as nice and fun. For her amusement she suckers nice people into doing things for her that she is very capable of doing herself.
  
• He is very deceitful and manipulative. He refused to do the work as discussed. He hides information so people cannot make informed decisions.

Business plus personal relationships

An additional 283 respondents had both business and personal relationships with the senior sociopaths. Some were both romantic partners and business partners. Some worked for family members.

Although purely business involvements with sociopaths are damaging, business and personal relationships combined are downright destructive. For example, here’s some of the harm survey respondents said they endured:

• Lost money — 59% of business relationships, 71% of business plus personal relationships
• Emotional abuse — 69% of business relationships, 95% of business plus personal relationships
• PTSD — 47% of business relationships, 72% of business plus personal relationships
• Life threatened — 12% of business relationships, 29% of business plus personal relationships

Can senior sociopaths control their behavior?

All survey respondents were asked to rate the index individuals’ traits of antisocial personality disorder/psychopathy according to the scale published in the first draft of the DSM-5. Approximately half of respondents, in all relationship categories, completed the trait rating question. Usually, the trait data broke down like this:

• The most widespread traits were manipulativeness and deceitfulness.
• Other traits related to antagonism — callousness, aggression, hostility and narcissism — were rated as “extremely like that” or “moderately like that” at high levels, often 80% to 95%.
• Traits related to disinhibition — irresponsibility, recklessness and impulsivity — were not as common, with about half of survey respondents saying the index individuals were “mildly like that” or “very little or not at all like that.”

In reviewing the data related to work colleagues and business associates, I noticed an anomaly — only 53% of respondents said the index individual exhibited extreme or moderate hostility. Why was this figure so much lower than usual?

Examining ASPD/psychopathy traits

To explore this question further, I broke out the ASPD/psychopathy trait data according to the type of relationship. I found that the romantic partners and family members of sociopaths reported the highest scores for ASPD/psychopathy. Manipulativeness was consistent across relationship groups, but there was less consistency in the other traits.

What does this mean?

I don’t know for sure, but one possibility may be that sociopaths are capable of moderating their behavior when necessary — such as in a work environment. They can often behave civilly enough, or keep their manipulation subtle enough, to hold on to their jobs.

Romantic partners, spouses and family members saw more of their sociopathic traits. Either those respondents were around the sociopaths more, or the sociopaths simply did not bother to camouflage their behavior at home.

Or, perhaps sociopaths simply treat the people closest to them the worst.

If you’re living with, or working with, senior sociopaths, you need to educate yourself. Senior Sociopaths — How to Recognize and Escape Lifelong Abusers is available in the Lovefraud Store and on Amazon.