Could Hannibal Lecter be an Accountant?

Dr Kevin Dutton the Oxford based research psychologist in 2012 authored The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success where he looked at both the positive and negative sides of the personality characteristics that result in people being somewhere on the psychopath spectrum.

You are probably now thinking of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs or Michael Myers in Halloween or The Joker in The Dark Knight? Charles Manson, Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer?

Or maybe closer to home you are now thinking of some friends or business associates.

The characteristics of a psychopath include: glib and superficial charm, grandiose sense of self worth, need for stimulation, pathological lying, lack of remorse or guilt, cunning/manipulativeness, callousness/lack of empathy, shallow emotions, parasitic lifestyle, poor behavioural controls, sexual promiscuity, early behavioural problems, lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, failure to accept responsibility for own actions, many short-term relationships, juvenile delinquency, revocation of conditional release, and criminal versatility.

The following are the professions which apparently have the most psychopaths and the least:

But why?

Most of the professions on the right require human connection, dealing with feelings and most of them don’t offer much power. Psychopaths, by their very nature, would not be drawn to or be very good at these things.

On the other hand, most of the roles on the left do offer power and many require an ability to make objective, clinical decisions divorced from feelings. Psychopaths would be drawn to these roles and thrive there.

But why CEO’S?

In 2005, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon of the University of Surrey conducted a survey and concluded that money, power, status, and control— each the preserve of the typical company director, and each a sought-after commodity in and of itself— together constitute an irresistible draw for the business-oriented psychopath as he or she ventures ever further up the rungs of the corporate ladder.

But wouldn’t people notice these traits?

No. Because when business leaders have them, we give them different names:

While accountants are firmly based in the least likely column it is worth noting that a large number of CEO’s in public and large private companies are Chartered Accountants and exhibit many of the leadership traits noted above.

Eat your heart out Hannibal!!

Related Article:   10 Tips to Build a Good Management Team