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198 SNAKES IN SUITS
Cowboys Not Wanted
Are psychopaths particularly well suited for dangerous professions?
David Cox, a psychology professor at Simon Fraser
University, doesn’t think so. He studied British bomb-disposal
operations in Northern Ireland, beginning his research with the
expectation that because psychopaths are “cool under fire”
and have a strong “need for excitement” they would excel at
the job. But he found that the soldiers who performed the exacting
and dangerous task of defusing or dismantling IRA
bombs referred to psychopaths as “cowboys”—unreliable and
impulsive individuals who lacked the perfectionism and attention
to detail needed to stay alive on the job. Most were filtered
out during training, and those who slipped through didn’t
last long.
It is just as unlikely that psychopaths make good spies, terrorists,
or mobsters, simply because their impulsiveness, concern
only for the moment, and lack of allegiance to people or causes
make them unpredictable, careless, and undependable—likely to
be “loose cannons.”
Psychopaths’ emotional poverty—that is, their inability to feel
normal human emotions and their lack of conscience—can be mistaken
for three other executive skills, specifically the ability to make
hard decisions, to keep their emotions in check, and to remain cool under
fire. Making hard decisions is one of those management tasks that
executives have to do on almost a daily basis. Whether it is to choose
one marketing plan over another, litigate or settle a lawsuit, or close a
manufacturing plant, all major decisions have emotional components
that must be dealt with. Nonpsychopathic executives are often required
to suspend their own emotional reaction to events in order to
be effective. They have feelings, but the constraints of their jobs often
preclude them from sharing them with others, except family
members or close confidants. Of particular importance, as dictated
by some business realities, is appearing cool and calm in the midst of