Research on criminal psychopathy began in the early nineteenth century, starting with Phillip Pinel (Millon, Simonsen, Smith, & Davis, 1998). More recently, a need to identify and examine corporate psychopaths has emerged. Corporate psychopaths are responsible for numerous scandals revealed in businesses, politics, and the legal system. Corporate psychopaths are more frequently discovered holding specific career positions (i.e. politicians, professors, lawyers, and CEO’s; Mullins-Sweatt, Glover, Derefinko, Miller, & Widiger, 2010). Although research has been conducted regarding the career positions frequently held by corporate psychopaths, the college majors preceding these careers (i.e. political science, criminal justice, business, and finance) has not been examined. Adams (2005) explained that …show more content…
However, many corporate psychopaths have surfaced in the last few decades through various scandals, such as the Watergate scandal; the bankruptcy of Enron, which resulted in the loss of 60 billion dollars from investors and 4,500 jobs; and numerous scandals involving Attorney General Eric Holder, including concealing acts of terrorism, threats to freedoms of speech and press, and trafficking weapons. Boddy (2005, 2011) found that the presence of corporate psychopaths was highly correlated with instances of bullying, coercion, dangerous work conditions, and human rights violations, which hindered productivity and job performance. Pardue et al. (2013) referred to these crimes, as well as other crimes frequently committed by corporate psychopaths (e.g. fraud, embezzlement, forgery, and tax evasion) as invisible crimes because they are often committed in private settings and are typically motivated by financial gain. As portrayed in the examples above, corporate psychopathy is a growing problem negatively affecting the workplace and the