Are all Entrepreneurs Psychopaths?

Are all entrepreneurs psychopaths? Once again, there could be a discrepancy between the scientific evidence and laypeople's views, which may just reflect another urban legend. Sadly, however, there is very little psychological research on entrepreneurship. Indeed, our own review of the scientific literature revealed that very few psychological studies have managed to coherently define and reliably assess individual differences in entrepreneurship.

The problem, then, is relying almost exclusively on unrepresentative case studies (Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch if you are in the UK, Donald Trump and 50 cents if you are in the US -- and these are just a few examples). The truth is that people's idea of an entrepreneur is as close to a psychopath as their idea of an artist is to a psychotic or clinically depressed person. In our view, people differ in entrepreneurial potential just like they differ in height, IQ or sociability: it is not that some are smart and some are tall, but that some are smarter, taller, or more sociable than others.

What then is the connection between entrepreneurial tendencies and psychopathic tendencies? if you watched American Psycho, or non-fiction films like The Inside Job, it wont be easy to persuade you about the good qualities of entrepreneurs. Then again, chances are you believe entrepreneurs are just greedy people who embrace the pursuit of selfish material goods at the expense of pro-social or altruistic life choices.

Yet the only thing we know for sure about entrepreneurship is that it is linked to pro-active creativity; indeed, more entrepreneurial people are more likely to come up with innovative solutions to problems; they create value through innovation and are less likely to work for others than for themselves (which is why they grow by starting their own businesses). Here is where the psychopathic tendencies may play a role indeed. for example, if you hate the idea of working for others, you may have problems with authority -- in my case, that is why i went into academia.

The other thing that we may know about individual differences in entrepreneurship is that they relate to a variety of personality traits, from ambition to risk-taking and maybe even impulsivity. in a recent study, however, we found that entrepreneurial success was positively related to individual differences in emotional intelligence (which is negatively related to risk-taking and impulsivity).

But for sure the call is still out there about the degree to which more and less entrepreneurial people differ in psychopathic or "dark-side traits"; this is why we designed our latest online study, which you can complete in less than 10 minute -- it will give you feedback on both your entrepreneurial potential and your psychopathic tendencies. Our goal is to test not only the relationship between these two major personality traits, but also the degree to which successful entrepreneurship may benefit or suffer from a psychopathic, narcissistic, or machiavellian personality.

In an era where managers have somehow managed to deserve the worst reputation ever, is it possible that the personality traits that pre-dispose people to poor management skills (e.g., selfish, impulsive, egotistic, pathologically ambitious, improvised risk-taking) actually contribute to more entrepreneurial success? find out here. we will be commenting on the results in a few weeks time.