Do Psychopaths Make Good Hedge Fund Managers? (2024)

FAQs

Do psychopaths make good leaders? ›

Successful leaders who score high in psychopathy know how to make the most of their innate charm, focus, mental toughness and acuity, fearlessness, and mindfulness, say experts like Prof Dutton. These types of women naturally do well on Wall Street and in the financial world.

Investment fund managers score highly on extraversion, meaning that they rely on external stimuli to be happy, such as people or exciting surroundings. They also tend to be high on the measure of conscientiousness, which means that they are methodical, reliable, and generally plan out things in advance.

In fact, it may be that the degree of boldness correlates closely with whether someone with traditionally psychopathic traits can make their life a success. Other psychopathic traits can also benefit people in certain careers: Meanness, for example, often shows itself as a lack of empathy.

The key factors associated with the successful psychopathy construct were fearlessness, stress immunity, social potency, normal or superior cognitive performance, professional achievement, stable socioeconomic status, leadership, pride, and aversion to punishment during conflict.

One psychopathic CEO of a charity, for example, caused higher staff turnover and a decline in revenue. Another study found that, despite their charm, psychopaths cause counterproductive behavior, bullying and conflict in the workplace and lower employee well-being.

Results showed that individuals with psychopathic tendencies were slightly more likely to become leaders, but were less likely to be seen as effective leaders. This was especially true when ratings were made by their followers.

The day for hedge fund managers is very long and full of stressful hours. The end of the market day doesn't necessarily mean that they are done for the day. Many hedge fund managers run positions in overnight markets so they will need to monitor those trades, often late into the night.

Hedge fund managers often have a master's degree or even a Ph. D. in finance, mathematics, economics, financial engineering, quantitative finance, programming, marketing, or business administration. Others have advanced degrees in a specialty such as engineering or accounting.

Additionally, individuals scoring high on interpersonal features of psychopathy were significantly more intelligent than those scoring high on antisocial features, but less intelligent than those scoring low on both psychopathy features (the “non psychopathy” group).

Are psychopaths born or made? ›

Although both biological and environmental factors play a role in the development of psychopathy and sociopathy, it is generally agreed that psychopathy is chiefly a genetic or inherited condition, notably related to the underdevelopment of parts of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and impulse control.

The lower on the scale a psychopath is, the more likely they are to develop some sort of love for people such as family members. Psychopaths are much less likely to develop deep bonds with others, however. Interestingly, psychopaths may still want to be loved even if they are almost incapable of truly loving another.

Overall, psychopathy was related to both pleasure-seeking and a desire for relative social positioning. Individuals scoring higher in psychopathy placed more value on seeking power (but not necessarily personal achievement), financial success, and acquiring material possessions.

Psychopaths have been found to have weak connections among the components of the brain's emotional systems. These disconnects are responsible for the inability to feel emotions deeply. Psychopaths are also not good at detecting fear in the faces of other people (Blair et al., 2004).

Many psychopathic individuals tend to display traits that are widely associated with effective leadership, such as charisma, persuasiveness, and creativity. Psychopaths can often be very successful for this reason, especially if they are high-functioning ones who are able to avoid detection over the long term.

Social dominance and dominance motivation in psychopathy subtypes. We hypothesize that for psychopathic leaders the most important motivation to seek out leadership roles is that these positions enable them to fulfill their need to dominate and control other people (Fennimore & sem*ntelli, 2016; Palmen et al., 2019).