Case Study: Psychopath at Work | "Successful Psychopathy"

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel well this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can look at a case study involving factorable and psychopathy in the workplace so I think this is really getting it the idea of the successful psychopath so a case where somebody's ability to manipulate and be charming resulted in them having success now a case study typically refers to a situation where a clinician documents their experiences in treating a client they do this with the clients consent but it can also be when a consultant is hired by an organization to identify problems and recommend solutions and that's what we see in this particular case study this case study was published in 1995 I've included the reference for this article in the description for this video now as this article discusses this case there is a recognition of the apparent narcissism at work here but there's more of an emphasis on the psychopathy it's an exceedingly interesting case because of the way the narcissism and the psychopathy play out on so many levels so I'll first go through the details of the case study that I'll provide my analysis of it so the consultant who made the case report was involved in organizational study so he was really looking at how different people in the company interact and their personalities probably looking at team-building aspects as well so he had an exceptional vantage point and access to different key people in the organization for over a year he attended department staff meetings held a number of face-to-face meetings with key people was part of team-building sessions as well as several companies social functions he also had access to applications background checks resumes performance appraisals and a number of other documents related to employees the main focus of this case report is an employee who was referred to as Dave and of course details have been modified to protect identities so Dave worked for a successful electronics company in the United States a company that was started by a small number of highly motivated individuals who thought panniers in the electronics business the company developed and sold a unique electronic product Dave first came to the attention of the consultant when the consultant was meeting with Dave's supervisor who is referred to as Frank and the report Frank referred to Dave as his problem employee and noted that day's behavior was strange offensive erratic and disruptive Dave was in his mid-thirties articulate and attractive it was indicated in a report that he had a degree from a university I'm going to assume this was a bachelor's degree he was married for the third time and had four children when Dave was interviewed he did exceptionally well so when he was interviewed for the job originally everybody was impressed with him he came across as enthusiastic energetic creative and having a lot of technical knowledge which would have been attractive to a company like this making a good first impression is actually incredibly common with factor one psychopathy and with grandiose narcissism right away things started to go wrong though with Dave's employment two weeks into working for the company he barged into Frank's office indicating that one of the administrative assistants should be fired because she didn't demonstrate adequate respect for him when Frank looked at the administrative assistant side of story he saw that she indicated that Dave was condescending rude and mad at her because she wouldn't drop everything to cater to him Dave did make positive impressions early on though as well he arrived early to work and stayed late a behavior that's widely visible the type of behavior that influences a large number of people so Dave impressed a lot of people but Frank was not impressed we see that Frank confronted Dave about one of Dave's reports that was plagiarized and they've responded to that accusation by saying it really wasn't wise to reinvent the wheel it was a waste of his time this is a common excuse we see by people who are psychopathic and narcissistic they do this to cover up for laziness they say something like well I don't want to redo work that's already been done by the people but there's a difference between that and plagiarizing like taking something and pretending it's your own is different than looking at other work and giving credit for it right so again they're not really too subtle in this approach they've also know that many of the projects that he was assigned or beneath him and when he wasn't interested in a particular project he would conveniently forget to work on it other disruptive behavior included leaving meetings in the middle to take important phone calls indicating that meetings were a waste of time and showing up late and unprepared for meetings when he was put in charge of a project he would dominate the discussions and would verbally bully other workers so that they would agree with him he preferred one-on-one conversations to discussing things and meetings this is also pretty common when working with psychopathy and narcissism this is done so that the end of the tool can conveniently forget conversations change stories and falsely accuse people without being held accountable it's a red flag when somebody in this type of setting doesn't want to communicate when witnesses are present right it indicates that something is being hidden and again leaves them the opportunity to remember a different version of the truth as they put it which I find interesting because the truth doesn't have versions right the truth is what it is interestingly Dave had another side to him though he would pledge to his co-workers that he would repay favours he would pay compliments to his coworkers and he would ask them to forgive his bad behavior so in a sense this is clever from day's point of view he doesn't want to necessarily invalidate the feelings of everybody that he works with they know something is wrong with him they know his behavior is unacceptable and the flat out deny how unacceptable it is might be too much of a reach so we see a tactic here where he admits some wrongdoing in order to keep people on his side so he's planning it somewhat careful he's aggravating antagonistic but also looking for forgiveness again trying to strike some sort of balance in the midst of the psychopathology now Frank endured they used bad behavior for three months before speaking to him about the tension in the department the negative emotions and how Dave really didn't want to take on a lot of new projects when confronted by Frank Dave responded by acting surprised he couldn't believe that anybody thought there was a problem with him he did not take responsibility for being disruptive so when he's talking to Frank he didn't but again we see that he tries to strike some balance with some of the other people in the department and we also see that he said that his aggression and fighting were necessary in order for him to achieve something great so here we see Frank makes two key mistakes waiting three months to address the behavior and listening to Dave's excuse about aggression being necessary and then failing to take action right so Frank fails to take action on an important point it's not like Dave said that arguing or disagreeing or necessary those are necessary he specifically used the word aggression so that really should have stood out to Frank as the consultant was interviewing different people in the organization many mentioned Dave as a source of conflict describing him as immature self-centered unreliable rude and irresponsible but at the same time saying he was intelligent enthusiastic and creative most of his co-workers liked him initially but then they began to distrust him and some people felt sorry for him interestingly though his co-workers didn't want to report him or get him in trouble so we see more mistakes here that allow Dave to continue to remain at the company nobody wants to rock the boat and some of the people feel sorry for him you can feel sorry for somebody and understand what's going on in terms of psychopathology but still hold them accountable for their actions and we see this is difficult for people in work situations from the interviews with these co-workers we hear a lot of interesting details about interactions that Dave had he attempted repeatedly to take equipment home from the company and when he was confronted by security he told them he was too important to be questioned about it he developed a close relationship with a young female security guard who worked in the early evening a middle-aged staff assistant and a professional from another department who apparently was actually completing a number of Dave's assignments so Dave did make enemies of the company but he also made friends his superficial charm was not effective on some people but it was effective on others another interesting part here when the executives were interviewed they mentioned that Dave was somebody with management potential however they couldn't identify any accomplishments that Dave had made so essentially they felt like he was appropriate for management without any logical reason to feel that way so they too became victims of his charisma a review of Dave's application indicated that he had lied about his educational experiences he justified his behavior by suggesting he was just using terms in different ways so it sounds like he represented that certain courses he took were actually majors that he took right so he may have had like one course and he made it sound like that course was actually a major so he did clearly lie on his application he was confronted about undocumented charges so he used company money to buy things for himself or at least buy things without approval he indicated that when a company wants receipts for purchases like that it's a symptom of a sick organization so blame-shifting here in terms of theft or potentially theft now when Dave himself was interviewed he described himself as intelligent honest a strong leader someone who brings a team together and he said that he was the reason that the department was successful so we see a lack of insight here or just flat-out deception so he broke teams apart but pretended like he brought them together he clearly lied but said he was honest so we don't really know here if he recognizes that he's not the different things that he says he is and is deceiving or if he truly believes he's all these things now of course he could have been intelligent but as I mentioned with these other things he clearly had behaviors that indicate otherwise when problems were pointed out in day's behavior and his interview he indicated that Frank was the real problem so Dave believed that Frank should leave the company and that Dave should take over Frank's position evidently he made that same suggestion directly to Frank so this brings us to a point where it appears like Dave is going to get in some real trouble with the company he already was disrupted and people were upset but now it seems like he's been caught frank discovers that dave has started his own business on the side and was using company materials and doing some of the work for that company on company time Frank collected all the evidence he needed to prove that this was the case and he went to his supervisor so this is Frank's boss the director and the director tells Frank that Dave has been complaining about Frank since Dave joined the company right so behind Frank's back we see that Dave has been telling stories to Frank's boss now after listening to Frank's side of the story the director does come to believe that Frank is telling the truth and Dave is lying and the Dave is stealing from the company so again it seems like Dave is now caught Frank his direct supervisor catches him and Frank's boss the director believes him so is this it for Dave does he finally get fired from this company as it turns out no the director takes the information to the president and the vice president the company and they tell the director that Dave is a high potential employee and he needs to leave them alone so Dave managed to get to the right people just because somebody is higher ranking in an organization has no bearing on their intelligence and their ability to detect psychopathy and narcissism so there's no reason to believe that people higher up in a company are going to be resistant to psychopathic and narcissistic charm now about two weeks later Frank was transferred to another area and Dave was promoted information that was gathered from individuals who worked with Dave after Dave's promotion indicated that day's behavior became even worse they said he really seemed to be in love with himself and even developed a swagger in his walk now as part of the consulting process Dave himself was tested with psychometric instruments one I'll refer to here specifically was the psychopathic checklist revised also known as the pcl bar now to understand the results we have to take a quick look at factor 1 versus factor 2 psychopathy factor 1 psychopathy is also called primary psychopathy it has characteristics like grandiosity pathological lying manipulation superficial charm and a lack of empathy a lack of guilt and a lack of remorse now factor to psychopathy which is also called secondary psychopathy we see characteristics here like a parasitic lifestyle sensation-seeking impulsivity irresponsibility a failure to have long-term goals criminal activity and a failure to control one's behavior when the factor 1 scale Dave's score was 15 out of 16 possible points so when compared to inmates and forensic patients he was of the 97th percentile one factor to psychopathy he scored eleven point six out of 18 possible points which put him at the 41st percentile for inmates and the 49th percentile for forensic patients so this is an individual with fairly strong psychopathic tendencies especially on factor one and it seems evident that he has a number of pronounced narcissistic characteristics as well he managed to use both psychopathic and narcissistic characteristics to actually move up in the organization some people like Frank and Frank's boss were able to see through Dave's mask they were able to see him as he really was although not soon enough other individuals like the President and Vice President were completely fooled they saw what they wanted to see they confused Dave's antagonistic nature with ambition his narcissism with confidence and his emotionality with creativity many of Dave's co-workers who are at his level recognized Dave's behavior as unacceptable but Dave managed to create conflicts between his co-workers which kept them busy fighting each other instead of focusing on him for example when a co-worker would tell Dave a rumor about another co-worker Dave would corroborate that story so he was really stoking the fire there he was creating chaos and just sitting back and watching it happen all the while able to get away with his bad behavior a number of the lower ranking staff members were deceived as well but there might be other reasons why they believe Dave or tolerated him some were probably afraid of him worried that he power others may have believed that Dave could help them as he did make those types of promises he would tell them that he would put in a good word for them with the higher-ups in the company and of course he exaggerated how well he knew the higher-ups in the company so Dave had a strategy to trick everybody that he need the trick and a way to neutralize the people that he could not deceive so there are a few other important learning opportunities featured in this case study I'll go through these one by one first point we see a lack of understanding here about narcissism and this really hurt this employer they were unable to appreciate the pattern and Dave's behavior second point we have to look at who started the company they were ambitious sensation seekers willing to take risks they probably saw Dave as somewhat similar to them they appreciated aggression and they did not appreciate the value of social skills Third Point we see a strong overlap here between factor 1 psychopathy and grandiose narcissism there are many similarities including grandiosity the lack of empathy manipulation and the superficial charm fourth point there seems to be this idea that Dave was actually a superior psychopath they didn't have a pronounced pattern of antisocial behavior yet of course he did he was just able to hide in plain sight Dave was literally stealing from the company so there was criminal behavior fifth point the people who were able to see through the mask didn't act fast enough it's not just accuracy that matters speed matters to all so why didn't Frank's boss the director immediately go to Frank when Dave accused Frank of being a bad supervisor the time to handle that accusation was right then so we see many mistakes here even by the people who would eventually see what was happening the sixth point the executives overvalued positive traits and used them to negate negative traits or they interpreted clear signs of negative traits as potential signs of positive traits so either way we see flawed logic here with the executives the 7-point the cleverness of Dave really can't be overstated to complain about a supervisor in advance he really laid the foundation for staying out of trouble later now a lot of times with psychopathy and narcissism we don't know if it's really being clever or just being lucky the characteristics themselves lead the person to manipulate so it's not really clear if they always plan it out really carefully or they're just following their feelings right so most of the time it's by a combination of both other examples of cleverness of course would include that he corroborated suspicions that his co-workers and superiors had about other employees he used people's tendency to gossip against them and just in general his use of multiple manipulation strategies based on who he was interacting with in the company right it really does seem to have a organized feature to it right like he did kind of think it through but again you could just been following his narcissistic and psychopathic feelings that brings me to the eighth point and the last key point I think from this case study everybody liked Dave immediately but some people liked him in the long run as well psychopathic and narcissistic individuals will always have friends in an organization no matter how long they're there and no matter how many people they offend there are just some people that refuse to see it or refuse to take action so what would be the clinical diagnosis in the situation well of course there's no way to know for certain without seeing somebody in person but based on the information available if I were to speculate what could be happening in a situation like this I would say antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders he seemed to meet the full criteria for both of these disorders so this brings me to the last question here could this happen today this case report was published in 1995 so presumably the events featured in the report took place maybe one or two years before that is there any way something like this could happen these days my answer would be absolutely and I think this does actually happen with some regularity which is disappointing considering how much more information there is available these days about psychopathy and narcissism compared to 1995 there's not simply a higher level of awareness we also know so much more about what patterns to expect so it's hard to believe that these old tricks would work but they do this really stresses the continued need for research and raising awareness about the problems of psychopathy and narcissism in the workplace who knows what kind of damage Dave ended up doing in that higher position that he had and who knows how much higher he went up in that company right there's really no limit with somebody who's psychopathic and narcissistic so those are my thoughts in this case study again I thought this one was particularly interesting it had so many really clear dynamics that the workers in this company were missing and the action that was taken wasn't taken soon enough to stop Dave the psychopathic and narcissistic employee so really just a number of great learning opportunities packed into one case report I know whenever I talk about topics like psychopathy and narcissism there will be a variety of opinions please put any opinions and thoughts in the comment section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 122,117

Keywords: Factor 1 Psychopathy, primary psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, callous, unemotional, manipulative, pathological liar, fearless dominance, lacking in remorse, narcissism, narcissist, narcissistic, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable, narcissistic personality disorder, personality disorder, manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, jealousy, special, unique, fantasy, entitlement, grandiosity, requires admiration, lack of empathy

Id: YR0BHqHirCQ

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020