by Guest » Sun Jul 10, 2005 6:14 pm
With thanks to "the market guy" who blends a career in psychology with a fascination and a sideline with investing and studying investments:
There is a journal published by the American Psychological Association called PsycCritiques that offers reviews of books and films. The June 22, 2005 edition includes an article titled, “Psychopathy or Sociopathy? A Review of The Corporation.” It’s authored by Bradley Smith and Eric Green. Have a look:
This documentary is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power and Profit, written by one of the film's coauthors, Joel Bakan (2004). The documentary has won some prestigious awards, including the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, one of the top honors at this well-regarded film festival. Overall, it may be worth the 145 min to watch this film, but consistent with its very long running time, much of this movie is excessive and would have been improved by some greater restraint. Indeed, if we were required to select a single word to describe The Corporation, we would chose the word overdone.
The opening of The Corporation is the first of several instances in which the movie is overdone. Specifically, in the first few minutes the audience is bombarded with a litany of corporate logos one after another. At first this is dazzling, then interesting, but ultimately annoying. Basically, the filmmakers overdid this effect. When the barrage of logos stops, The Corporation presents some examples of corporations recently in the news for their bad behavior, such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and Arthur Andersen. The filmmakers splice together a montage of CEOs and other corporate executives who have been charged with or indicted on a variety of civil and/or criminal charges and paraded in handcuffs in front of national media. This gets rather tedious after a few cases, and once again a potentially stimulating part of the movie is overdone and becomes rather numbing. However, the documentary improves as the filmmakers present an interesting collection of narrative interviews with 40 CEOs and executives from a variety of industries, economists, academics, and a host of other corporate critics.
Perhaps the main question posed in the documentary is “Are these deviant corporations and their leaders truly representative of the business world today, or are they just a few bad apples?” The bad apples concept provides another opportunity for the filmmakers to go over the top. They present a barrage of TV, movie, and graphic art footage that addresses the notion of bad apples. As with the opening, we found this to be initially amusing but ultimately tedious and banal. In the words of the great quantitative psychologist Jacob Cohen (1990), sometimes less is more.
The relevance of The Corporation to psychologists, other than its intriguing social justice concepts, is the application of the concept of psychopathy in the formal diagnostic sense to corporations. The filmmakers suggest that individual psychodiagnostic criteria are relevant because legal jurisprudence in the United States has led to corporations having similar legal status to persons. The Corporation presents this legal status of corporate personhood as an abuse of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution: The State is prevented from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws” (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R. Co., 1886). This decision, according to the filmmakers, allowed corporations to stray from what were once limited—both in time and breadth—incorporation charters based on the promotion of public welfare (e.g., railroad construction).
Expanding on this idea of corporations as legal persons, the film takes extreme liberty in answering the question, “What type of person is the corporation?” In addressing this question, four case studies are presented as evidence that corporations meet the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ([DSM-IV] 4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems ([ICD-10] 10th ed.; World Health Organization, 1992) diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder, including reckless disregard for safety of self or others, deceitfulness, failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, callous unconcern for the feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, and incapacity to experience guilt. Thus, The Corporation presents the pseudoscientific conclusion that American corporations can be diagnosed as psychopaths, a conclusion we think that most second-year clinical psychology students know to be improper use of DSM-IV criteria.
One of the problems with The Corporation's diagnostic process is that symptoms are taken from separate individual corporations, then applied to corporations as a whole. This is the intellectual equivalent of labeling all teenagers as conduct disordered on the basis of identifying three individual teens who exhibit symptoms of this disorder (i.e., a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel). Not only is it incorrect to label all corporations as psychopaths, it is not internally consistent in the movie because the filmmakers present at least one case study of a corporation that is not psychopathic (and could have presented more). Thus, from a methodological standpoint, the biased sampling of corporations presents a potentially misleading view of corporations in general.
But there are some interesting ideas here. The notion of viewing corporations as psychopaths on a case-by-case basis is intriguing. As we shall argue below, psychopathy may not be the appropriate psychological construct for describing corporate behavior. That is, although the psychopathic designation might be a useful tool in confronting corporations in legal venues, in a discussion of diagnostic and treatment issues it might be more appropriate to consider some corporate behavior as sociopathic. Our government and corporate culture should be able to come up with standards that encourage prosocial behavior and punish sociopathic behavior that is exhibited by individual corporations.
On the surface, the overt behavioral expression of psychopathy and sociopathy may look similar, but there are presumably underlying etiological differences that would have divergent implications for prevention and treatment. Basically, psychopaths are thought to possess unique temperaments or personalities characterized by organic, emotional, or cognitive deficits that resist adaptive socialization, whereas the behavior of sociopaths is thought to result from poor socialization by maladaptive environments. Thus, the roots of psychopathic behavior may be primarily endogenous, whereas that of sociopathic behavior may be primarily environmental (Smith, in press).
Understanding the distinction between psychopathy and sociopathy could have made the film's portrayal of corporate behavior more interesting and technically appropriate. For instance, the filmmakers point out that the conditions that contribute to many corporate misdeeds are a direct result of the legal requirement that the only legitimate goal of a corporation is to make money for stockholders. Presumably it is illegal for corporations to consider other outcomes, such as employee welfare or a healthy environment, as corporate performance goals. If this is the case, then corporations are not inherently deviant; rather, our society has created social and legal constraints on corporations that reinforce the single-minded pursuit of profit. From this perspective, corporations are fitting a social niche that could be removed or corrected by changing laws and roles of corporations in our society (e.g., returning to more limited incorporation charters). Moreover, we should remind the audience that not all corporations can be described as sociopaths.
Psychopathy, Sociopathy, and the Corporation
The Corporation hints at some potential solutions to the bad behavior of corporations but does so in a rather pessimistic manner. Such pessimism might be appropriate given the poor prognosis of psychopaths. However, we are optimistic given our propensity to describe corporation behavior as sociopathic rather than psychopathic.
The notion of sociopathy suggests some possible insights and solutions to corporate misbehavior that are missing from The Corporation. As cited in Smith (in press), psychopathy expert David Lykken (1995) sorts criminal behavior into a three-part framework on the basis of the offender's psychological health. According to this framework, criminal behavior can be unrelated (or at least not directly related) to an offender's existing psychological condition, directly related to the psychotic state of an offender at the time of the crime, or directly related to the offender's diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). It is important to note (because the filmmakers did not) that the DSM-IV does not consider psychopathy or sociopathy to be a distinct diagnostic classification. From this perspective, individuals considered to be psychopaths or sociopaths should meet criteria for ASPD but not necessarily the other way around. But this is a picky point about nomenclature; some more interesting implications follow.
Psychopaths are thought to be one of two types, representing differences in their ability to express genuine empathy and remorse (Smith, in press). Primary psychopaths, for instance, do not exhibit the ability to express empathy or concern for other people that is not rooted in self-gain. In this sense, a psychopath could be charming and convey empathy to others but only as means to a selfish end. In this film, corporations are portrayed as primary psychopaths. The filmmakers highlight examples of corporate greed at the expense of individuals and communities, attempting to demonstrate that corporations act with reckless disregard for the safety of self or others and callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
Unlike primary psychopaths, secondary psychopaths may be capable of genuine concern for others but tend to overfocus on rewards rather than on punishments. Newman (1987) referred to this type of behavior as the “reward-dominant” response. Citing Cleckley's proposition that the behavior of psychopaths is not due to an intellectual deficiency, Wallace and Newman (2004) emphasized that psychopaths understand what is considered adaptive behavior in most situations. However, they argued that an information-processing deficiency hinders psychopaths from being able to automatically shift their attention from a particular goal-directed behavior to secondary cues in the environment, thereby preventing them from engaging in self-regulation (control process).
Compared with primary psychopathy, this concept of secondary psychopathy may better represent the link between individual and corporate behavior that the filmmakers attempt to create. But as we will argue, it is not the best. Just as Wallace and Newman (2004) found that psychopaths have difficulty shifting their attention from goal-directed behaviors to secondary environmental cues, the filmmakers also make a case for corporate information-processing deficiencies that lead to maladaptive behavior. For example, the film presents a strong case for the single-minded focus corporations have when it comes to profit making. According to the Wallace and Newman (2004) perspective on psychopathy, corporations overfocus on producing dividends for investors to the point that they cannot perceive ongoing or potential damage to the environment, the community, and/or its workforce.
But even this connection in the area of overfocusing does not make the case for psychopathy. Instead, we would have preferred that the filmmakers presented some corporate behavior—or corporations on a case-by-case basis—as sociopathic rather than psychopathic. As previously mentioned, psychopathy is believed to have predominantly endogenous roots, whereas sociopathy is believed to have predominantly environmental roots. Searching for a causal social factor responsible for sociopathic behavior, Lykken (1998) passed on common indicators such as poverty and joblessness and settled on parental malfeasance. Patterson, Reid, and Dishion (as cited in Smith, in press) agreed. They claimed that insufficient parental monitoring and discipline could lead children to develop conduct problems that hinder adaptive socialization and result in associations with deviant peer groups such as gangs. Lykken (1998) presented a similar argument, pointing to what he called a “contagion model” of sociopathy whereby children of ineffective (or absent) parents are more at risk of adopting the beliefs and practices of peers, typically deviant peers.
Concluding Thoughts
Our point is that “bad parenting” is probably a better explanation of inappropriate corporate behavior as opposed to psychopathy. As presented by the filmmakers, corporations in general suffer from poor parental monitoring. That is, what were once limited incorporation charters have been expanded over the years via legislative action and judicial decisions, thus creating a corporate environment that solely rewards profit-seeking behavior with relatively few restrictions. Corporations now face temptation to join a race to the bottom to ship jobs overseas and to less regulated zones in search of reduced costs, sometimes at the expense of workers at home and abroad. This is reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies (Allen & Hook, 1990) in which unsupervised children run amok on a deserted island. However, the corporate culture is actually encouraged by the legal and social climate.
Thus, the solution here is not changing the individual; rather, the solution is to create a healthier, prosocial business climate. Perhaps some consultation from the societal managers in Walden Two (Skinner, 1976) would be appropriate. Given that these mythological managers are not available, maybe concerned citizens can take action and attempt to change the deviant environment that currently steers corporations toward the dark side. Lykken (1998) suggested three possible measures for preventing human sociopathy that may apply to the prevention or reduction of corporate sociopathy: parental guidance (i.e., improved regulation), alternative rearing environments (i.e., introduce multiple performance outcomes rather than a sole focus on maximizing share holder earnings), and incapacitation of deviant individuals (i.e., revocation of charters for offending corporations that show callous disregard for others).
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References
Allen, L. M. (Producer), & Hook, H. (Director) (1990). Lord of the flies [Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures.
Bakan, J. (2004). The corporation: The pathological pursuit of power and profit. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Cohen, J. (1990). Things I have learned (so far). American Psychologist, 45, 1304-1312.
Lykken, D. T. (1995). The antisocial personalities. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lykken, D. T. (1998). The case for parental licensure. In T. Millon, E. Simonsen, M. Birket-Smith, and R. D. Davis (Eds.), Psychopathy: Antisocial, criminal, and violent behavior (pp. 122-143). New York: Guilford Press.
Newman, J. P. (1987). Reaction to punishment in extroverts and psychopaths: Implications for the impulsive behavior of disinhibited individuals. Journal of Research in Personality, 21, 464-480.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R. Co., 118 U.S. 394. (1886).
Skinner, B. F. (1976). Walden two. New York: MacMillan.
Smith, B. H. (in press) Psychopathy and crime. In Encyclopedia of criminology. New York: Taylor and Francis.
Wallace, J. F., & Newman, J. P. (2004). A theory-based treatment model for psychopathy. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 11, 178-189.
World Health Organization. (1992). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (10th ed.). Geneva, Switzerland: Author.