Are Economists Psychopaths?

Being an economics major, writing about such a topic is to expose the dark side of our very own psychology.

Bit of a disclaimer – I am not a psychopath, or at least I believe so. But when it comes to defending oneself, who wouldn’t? 

It was in one of the econ lectures I attended during college when the professor made a case for economists exhibiting psychopathic tendencies or just being psychopaths. But due to a lack of causality, as correlation does not consistently lead to causation, it could have been possible that people with psychotic tendencies chose to be economists and not the other way around.

Due to my congenital curiosity – or maybe, psychoticism – I went a step ahead to find the source of this claim. What I found was a study in Psychonomics, which belongs to the field of experimental psychology.

The Dark Triad Across Academic Majors is a 2017-study by Vedel and Thomsen, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. With a statistical approach, it shows that the Dark Triad traits – Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism – in students of economics, business and law are associated with the desire for power and social status in the workplace. These aspirations, the study hypothesizes, draw Dark Triad individuals towards such occupations.

As these Dark Triad traits are expressions from psychology, scientific distinctions among them are anew to my acquaintance. To clear the air of ambiguity, below are some quick definitions.

Narcissism is excessive self-involvement causing a person to ignore the needs of others. About everyone sporadically engages in such behavior, but people with a narcissistic personality disorder or NPD have personalities that are characterized by intense self-involvement leading to a chronic disregard for others.

Machiavellianism refers to a personality trait wherein a person is so focused on their interests that they will manipulate, deceive, and exploit others to achieve their purposes. 

Finally, psychopathy describes a set of personality traits associated with a lack of emotional sensitivity and empathy. Being impulsive, carrying a superficial charm, and insensitivity to punishing consequences are some of the behavioral attributes of psychopaths.  

What is interesting is that these traits were accurate at the time of enrollment into these courses, eliminating any possibility of socialization being a cause of such personality changes. What we arrive at is the aspect of personality traits being a deciding factor for academic majors. Although socialization effects might not transform one’s personality within a few years, it would make for a good idea for further research. 

Do psychopaths then choose to be bankers, businessmen, and economists? It is not unknown that models in microeconomics assume rationality as a characteristic of an economic agent in a market. They act in their self-interest to maximize profits and minimize costs. 

Organizational research suggests that individuals in the corporate world exhibit manipulative and self-serving behavior; hence the term corporate psychopaths describe them best. These dark qualities help them succeed in leadership roles. Authoritativeness with Narcissism brings about a sense of entitlement and bold actions in executives. 

The motivation for leadership and willingness to reach the pinnacle of power are the qualities associated with Machiavellianism. This evidence showcases individuals choosing economics and business, as opposed to political science and psychology, are desirous of power and status. Such education choices, leading to successful corporate career paths, show already existing psychopathic tendencies. 

The study further shows how these academic majors score on another set of Big Five personality traits – Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness. 

Students of economics and business scored higher on extraversion – implying outgoing and socially confident – but relatively lower on other traits – implying restrictive, non-agreeable, and insensitive nature – when compared to students opting for law, humanities, and psychology. 

However, this dark-bright study is biased toward economics as a money-minded academic choice and prospective profession. Not all people studying economics are the same or take up similar professional roles. 

With new fields emerging within economic research and advisory functions, it is moving towards being broad-based – like how Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was considered the primary indicator of growth, but now it hardly is alone. We ought to measure and compare Gross Domestic Product per capita, Gini coefficient for inequality, with a ton of indices on democracy, corruption, poverty, wages, market prices, inflation, and so on. Similarly, conventional economics is branching out to more receptive and incisive fields of feminist economics, development economics, behavioral economics, environmental economics, etc. 

It is very well possible that economists or students opting for economics have become empathetic, sensitive, and, if not entirely, at least relatively agreeable over time. In conclusion, not all economists are psychopaths, but a part of them might be, as it were. In a way, I do not belong to the latter; I am the sane one.