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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Yet engineers tend not to be sociopaths, while that's common in top management.

Not according to my taste in beer, black coffee and gin and tonic (https://www.popsci.com/psychopaths-may-prefer-bitter-foods)

> while that's common in top management

I've heard that before. It smacks of confirmation bias promulgated by envious people.

No, it's reasonably well accepted. See [1][2]. The trouble is, there's considerable overlap between the traits needed for becoming a leader and sociopathy.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-dis... [2] https://www.cio.com.au/article/537320/how_recognise_deal_wor...

Your first link says 3%. That's not "common". The study's sample size was 203, a pretty low number for statistical confidence.

I have no doubt it is "reasonably well accepted" that it is "common" for business leaders to be psychopaths, because it's what people want to believe, but the cited evidence for it doesn't show that at all.

I respect your remark about the small sample size but there aren't that many CEOs out there, would you not agree?

There are quite a bit more. Every corporation has a CEO, and there are lots and lots and LOTS of smaller corporations. Also, the claim was for "top management", and that's another order of magnitude.

With 203 samples, all it would take is a couple people one way or the other to get that 1% rate of the general population. How accurate is the test, even? There's also selection bias in who consents to the test - I wouldn't consent to a psychoanalysis test because of privacy issues. Lastly, I bet a few of the participants were able to see what the researchers were driving at and had a bit of fun with the answers.

I.e. the conclusion is simply junk science, even setting aside the notion that 3% makes it "common".

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