Morse provides a description of children with attachment disorder, and notes the other “person” they resemble:
The classic case of the attachment disorder is a child who does not care what anyone thinks of him. The disapproval of others does not deter this child from bad behavior because no other person, even someone who loves him very much, matters to the child. He responds only to physical punishment and to the suspension of privileges. The child does whatever he thinks he can get away with, no matter the cost to others. He does not monitor his own behaviour, so authority figures must constantly be wary of him and watch him. He lies if he thinks it is advantageous to lie. He steals if he can get away with it. He may go through the motions of offering affection, but people who live with him sense in him a kind of phoniness. He shows no regret at hurting another person, though he may offer perfunctory apologies.
As he grows into adolescence, he may become a sophisticated manipulator. Some authors refer to this kind of a child as a “trust bandit” because he is superficially charming in his initial encounters with people and can deceive them for long enough to use them. In the meantime, his parents, and anyone else who has long-term dealings with him, grow increasingly frustrated, frightened, and angry over the child’s dangerous behavior, which by this time may include violence, arson, and sexual acting out. As the parents try to seek help for their child, they may find that he is able to “work the system.” He can charm therapists, social workers, counselors, and later perhaps even judges and parole officers. This child is unwilling even to inconvenience himself for the sake of others.
Who is this child? Why, it is homo economicus–rational, calculating, economic man, the person who considers only his own good, who is willing to do anything he deems it in his interest to do, who cares for no one. All of his actions are governed by the self-interested calculations of costs and benefits. Punishments matter; loss of esteem does not. As for his promises, he behaves opportunistically on every possible occasion, breaking promises if he deems it in his interest to do so. [15-16]
It should go without saying, any economic theory which makes predictions, especially predictions in aggregate, based upon the assumption that everyone is a sociopath is probably not going to be terribly reliable.
I’m reading Thinking Fast And Slow and the same point is made there, that classical economic models make predictions based on assumptions about human behaviour that almost anyone psychologist would reject.
Dan, it’s a fantastic book and I found several of its insights about herd-steering moves in boards to be remarkably applicable to my blogging about certain controversial firings.
The more research gets done on cognitive biases, the actually physical limitations to focus and attention, and the propensity of humans to rely on system 1 more than system 2 the less plausible I find the level of rational agency some libertarians and objectivists seem to think people ought to be operating under. If willpower and attention are linked to glucose levels, as some recent research has begun to suggest, who could possibly glucose-binge enough to obtain an Objectivist’s ideal level of rational agency?
Woe to Objectivists who get diabetes?
Earlier this week, I faced the suggestion that business people are sociopathic. I was wondering where she got this notion, and this post is perhaps a clue.
Sociopathic behaviour and the successful operation of businesses are antithetical. Business functions on the basis of trade arrangements whereby two self-interested parties share in relationship of trust that results in the increased happiness of both parties. To be sure, when sociopathic people are involved in such relationships, then it can definitely destroys trust and ultimately the trade relationship.
Any good business man knows that he must make his clients happy. There is nothing sociopathic about that. If he makes his client happy, it will lead hopefully to his own happiness, and accomplishing his own self interests. Consider the worker who wants to make his boss happy and hopes that he will get a pay raise. This is the opposite of sociopathic behavior. A sociopath would do nothing to make her boss happy, but then would expect a pay raise and begin to criticize her boss if he refuses to dole out more cash.
If one could qualify this, by saying that certain sociophatic people who run businesses as fraud (such as banksters), it would not be offensive. But to suggest that all economic relations are essentially sociopathic is absurd. Good functioning economies require social cohesion which ultimately the sociopaths would undermine.
The problem isn’t that self-interested humans lead to well functioning economies, it is rather that too many sociopaths have important positions of power which then leads to the destruction of the entire economic system.
Peter,
This post is not speaking so much of businesspeople (or, more generally, people working in the economy), but of an abstraction that most modern economists use when making their predictions, namely, “economic man”. This abstraction is, by definition, a person whose only motivation is the maximization of utility. What this ignores is that, in fact, most people are not sociopaths, and therefore care about more than just maximizing their own utility when living in the world and working in the economy. More specifically, at minimum, most people also treat their family as ends in their acts, and not just means to their own utility.
But economists nowadays ignore that or try to explain love for family in such a way as to make everyone calculating sociopaths. But they are not.
None of this is a comment on what normal people do in the economy; in fact, my point is that most people are not sociopaths, as your comment elaborates.
@Andrew, thanks for your explanation. Two comments: (1) Economists are all about the abstract and are detached from reality–except of course the Austrian school. (2) where did my psychology major friend get her notion that business people are sociopaths? She must have heard it somewhere–may be at school, from her sociopathic teachers.
(1) This is actually a feature of all economics downstream from Adam Smith, including the Austrians. (2) Possibly from the book mentioned in this interview: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/
“A sociopath would do nothing to make her boss happy, but then would expect a pay raise and begin to criticize her boss if he refuses to dole out more cash.”
Respectfully I would submit that you don’t have very much experience with sociopaths if that’s what you think they would do. A sociopath is not an idler and will go to great lengths to get what they want. This might include putting long hours, but it might also include subtly undermining their coworkers through everything from casual gossip to outright sabotage, but always with an eye to getting the approval of the boss – if that’s what they need. Very often you can have long string of dealings with a sociopath without realizing that that’s what they are – I know because I have been duped by at least two of them in my lifetime.
I know a sociopath who is an idler.
I suppose anti-social and asocial behaviour has many different manifestations, all of which lead to a break down of social relationships. These co-workers of yours–there still great friends, right?
A CEO (and I’ve known a very successful CEO) can maintain a good business relations over a long time only if he is able to maintain a good business relationship with his clients. This seems to me antithetical to sociopathic behaviour. On the other hand, those who commit fraud (I’ve read about these in the paper), may pretend to be good people, but one day may end up in jail or at least should be there. That seems to me to destroy social cohesion is definitively sociopathic behavior: consider Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, or the Social Security System ponzi scheme.