Do Psychopaths Perform Better in High Stress Work Environments? The Moderating Effect of Work Stress on Individuals With ASPD

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_11How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Job Performance; Psychopaths; Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD); Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R); Occupational Stress; Work Stress Questionnaire (WSQ)

Abstract

Individuals with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or by its layman term ‘psychopaths’ are often perceived in a negative light. However certain studies reveal that psychopaths perform better under an abusive boss. Surprisingly, psychopaths reported improved well-being, more positive emotions, and lower levels of anger under the constant torment of an abusive supervisor, in contrast to non-psychopathic employees. The rationale for this phenomenon stems from the fact that psychopaths lack both empathy and fear, and therefore are insensitive to emotionally aversive stimuli. Non-psychopaths who could not endure the strain of the hostile work environment would resign and only the psychopaths were left behind to survive and flourish over the long-term. Despite previous literature shedding light on the possibility of psychopaths thriving in an aversive work environment or under an abusive leader, as at the time of writing there are a sparsity of studies that observe the moderating effect of work stress on a psychopath’s job performance. The current paper therefore proposes a conceptual framework whereby psychopaths are said to perform better in a high stress high-pressure work environment, and in contrast perform worse in low stress low-pressure work environments. The possible implications being that psychopaths are more resilient to aversive stimuli and can still stay focused and undistracted in a hostile work environment.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Teh Hong-Leong
AU  - Ng Shwu-Shing
AU  - Lai Ka-Fei
AU  - Norhayati Md Isa
AU  - Farhana Hanim
AU  - Shanthi Nadarajah
AU  - Hatijah Md Salleh
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/28
TI  - Do Psychopaths Perform Better in High Stress Work Environments? The Moderating Effect of Work Stress on Individuals With ASPD
BT  - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Business, Accounting, Finance and Economics (BAFE 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 129
EP  - 134
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_11
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-968-1_11
ID  - Hong-Leong2025
ER  -