"we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths"

[phantom power]

Cut to a pleasantly warm evening in Bahrain. My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.

He then makes an astonishing confession: "At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles."

Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.

Mr Ronson spoke to scores of psychologists about their understanding of the damage that psychopaths could do to society. None of those psychologists could have imagined, I'm sure, the existence of a bank that used the science of spotting them as a recruiting mechanism.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/brian-basham-beware-corporate-psychopaths--they-are-still-occupying-positions-of-power-6282502.html

[salvorhardin]

1. Earlier thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002109387

[NathanTheGreat]

2. Makes sense

Probably a good idea for recruiting...find a person who cares more about his own goals than other people, someone who has no moral problem stepping on someone else, someone who can see the ends without caring how to get there.

Sounds like good qualities for a bank executive or serial killer...so I guess I should be happy that there are all of those jobs out there for the nutjobs of the world.

Or maybe they actually kill more people as bank executives...I think a study is needed.

[applegrove]

3. Plus psychopaths teach people how to behave in a psychopathic way such as 'baiting' enemies and such

[undeterred]

4. Wow, just wow.