It seems Christian Bale’s character as a driven (and manically psychotic) investment broker in American Psycho, may not be too much of a stretch away from the truth if this study is anything to go by.
It seems Christian Bale’s character as a driven (and manically psychotic) investment broker in American Psycho, may not be too much of a stretch away from the truth if this study is anything to go by.
Powerful CEOs and businessmen have also been portrayed as psychopaths in film and TV and now it seems there may be a tangible link between the two.
According to a study in the Personality and Individual Differences journal, people who study business and economics are more likely to be psychopaths than students taking on other subjects.
Over 400 students who were about to study a range of subjects, including psychology, politics, business economics and law, were asked to sit this slightly scary sounding test.
Interestingly, the study was carried out just before the students embarked on their choice of course, to wean out any differences in personality which could be put down to the particular subject’s ‘socialisation effects.’
Fascinatingly, they found psychology students scored much lower – on the likelihood of being a psychopath scale – compared to business and law students.
Assessing their findings, they concluded, certain personality traits play ‘at least part,’ of this decision making process.
The results are clearly not definitive at this stage, but an intriguing link has been made nonetheless…
I probably wouldn’t worry too much about your boss yet though, unless you know he’s pretty savvy with chainsaw or an axe that is…