J Bus Ethics (2012) 107:399408 DOI 10.

1007/s10551-011-1049-9

Psychopaths at Work? Implications of Lay Persons Use of Labels and Behavioural Criteria for Psychopathy
Carlo Caponecchia Andrew Y. Z. Sun Anne Wyatt

Received: 11 July 2011 / Accepted: 13 September 2011 / Published online: 1 October 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract In attempting to explain or deal with negative workplace behaviours such as workplace bullying, the notion of workplace psychopaths has recently received much attention. Focusing on individual aspects of negative workplace behaviour is at odds with more systemic approaches that recognise the contribution of individual, organisational and societal inuences, without seeking to blame a person(s) for their behaviour or personality disorder. Regarding a coworker as a psychopath is highly stigmatising, and given the relatively low prevalence of psychopathy in the community, is likely to be incorrect. Sources promoting the notion of workplace psychopathy provide lists of diagnostic criteria and appear to encourage the perception that it is common. This research examines how lay persons use behavioural criteria consistent with psychopathy and the label psychopath in relation to a coworker. 307 Australian workers completed an online survey concerning their experience of workplace bullying, which also asked them to rate a coworkers behaviour on a range of scales to assess perceptions of psychopathy. Rates of psychopathy, when using labels and behavioural criteria,

were found to be much higher than scientic estimates of prevalence, for both participants who had been bullied and those who had not. A higher proportion of non-bullied participants classied a coworker as a psychopath when using the label psychopath, compared to when using behavioural criteria. The notion that there are psychopaths in every workplace should be treated with caution to ensure that the potential for misdiagnosis and stigmatisation do not cause further harm in situations of unacceptable workplace behaviours. Keywords Psychopathy Workplace bullying Stigmatisation Mis-diagnosis Prevalence

Introduction Workplace Bullying Workplace bullying is a signicant problem worldwide. While debate regarding some elements of the criteria for bullying persists, it is widely accepted that for behaviours to be categorised as bullying they must be repeated and unreasonable (Einarsen et al. 2003; Branch et al. 2007). To help distinguish between situations of concern to health and safety and more innocuous behaviours, the notion that the behaviours must cause or have the potential to cause harm in order to be considered bullying, has become a regular inclusion in workplace bullying prevention guides (e.g. Worksafe Victoria 2009; Workcover NSW 2008). Researchers have abandoned creating comprehensive lists of bullying behaviour (Rayner 2007), however, the behaviours can include social and physical isolation; withholding of information or resources; undermining behaviour; undue public criticism; malicious gossip; assigning unreasonable

C. Caponecchia (&) School of Aviation, The University of New South Wales, Level 2, Old Main Building K15, UNSW, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia e-mail: carloc@unsw.edu.au A. Y. Z. Sun School of Risk and Safety Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Level 1, Old Main Building K15, UNSW, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia A. Wyatt Wyatt Consultants Pty Ltd., P. O. Box 608, Springwood, NSW 2777, Australia

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workloads or deadlines; and excessive monitoring of work (Rayner and Hoel 1997; Irish Health and Safety Authority 2001; Worksafe Victoria 2003). Estimates of the prevalence of bullying vary with measurement methods and denitions, but recent Norwegian research places the gure at 6% of the working population (Nielsen et al. 2009). Australian gures are between 15 and 26% (Australian Public Service Commission 2007; State Services Authority of Victoria 2008, 2010; Tasmanian State Services Commissioner 2006), though these include industry-based research which does not always distinguish between harassment and bullying (see Caponecchia and Wyatt 2009). Bullying is a workplace stressor (Rayner 1998) and has been shown to result in several symptoms, including depression and anxiety, symptoms of PTSD, sleeplessness, nausea and fatigue (Einarsen and Mikkelsen 2003; Irish Health and Safety Authority 2001; Namie and Namie 2000). Among compensated workplace injuries, bullying contributes to psychological injuries which incur a disproportionate level of cost for their incidence. In 20062007, stress claims, of which bullying is a part, accounted for 7% of all Australian government workplace injury claims, but 27% of all costs (Comcare 2007). Bullying contributed to estimated annual costs to organisations of $AUD10million per year, through lost productivity associated with workplace stress (Australian Productivity Commission 2010) Preventing and managing workplace bullying without causing further harm is therefore important. Approaches to Workplace Bullying As a complex and multi-determined issue, several levels of analysis are possible in workplace bullying research and practice (individual, work group, organisational), as are various stages of intervention (for example, prevention, rehabilitation and counselling). In Australia, bullying is usually viewed as a health and safety hazard (Lyon and Livermore 2007; Johnstone et al. 2008, 2011), and failing to protect employees from bullying can be prosecuted under the general duties to provide a safe workplace or system of work (e.g. Worksafe Victoria 2010). Consistent with the view that bullying is a health and safety hazard, recommended strategies for dealing with it take a systems approach. The contribution of individuals, such at the target and the person displaying bullying behaviours is recognised, but this is done in a systemic manner, where the context of the work environment, organisational and cultural variables are taken into account (Caponecchia and Wyatt 2011). Systemic views of the contributing factors to workplace bullying are highlighted in the international bullying literature (e.g. Einarsen et al. 2003; Salin 2003),

and include examining aspects of leadership, organisational policy and procedures that may condone or limit bullying, and the quality and implementation of complaint procedures and training programs. In contrast to a system-wide view, some approaches to workplace bullying focus on the individual level, such as on the characteristics of the target or alleged perpetrator(s). Personality characteristics of the target and the alleged perpetrator are thought to have a role in bullying, but more longitudinal research is needed for a better understanding of these relationships (Matthiesen and Einarsen 2001). Some authors have attempted to typologise bullying behaviour, and label the bully according to their preferred mode of action (for example, the self-absorbed bully, the thrill seeking power-hungry bully, Spindel 2008; Kohut 2008; the ghost bully, the echo bully, Mueller 2006); and as various animals, based on their modus operandi (including the wolf, gorilla, spider, piranha etc., Field 2010). A label that is increasingly used in workplace bullying situations is workplace psychopath. Approaches that label individuals for alleged unacceptable behaviours require greater scrutiny, regarding their validity, their efcacy, and the unintended side-effects they can have on workplace relationships. The current study aims to assess the implications of the use of the term workplace psychopaths and the diagnostic criteria with which it is often accompanied. Psychopaths at Work Psychopathy is a personality construct characterised by affective, interpersonal and behavioural features, including a lack of remorse and empathy; impulsiveness and irresponsibility, egocentrism, manipulation and deception, and unethical and antisocial behaviours (see Neumann and Hare 2008). Psychopathy has frequently been studied in prison populations, where the prevalence estimates are between 7.7% of male prisoners (Coid et al. 2009a) and 27% of homicide offenders. Around 0.6% of the general British population (Coid et al. 2009b), and 1.2% of the United States population (Neumann and Hare 2008) are thought to warrant a possible diagnosis of psychopathy, making it quite rare. Cultural differences in test scoring and interpretation (Cooke 1995), the use of different cut-off scores, and differences in the expression of psychopathy cross-culturally may affect these rates (Cooke et al. 2004). There are several controversies surrounding the concept of psychopathy, including the appropriateness and reliability of tools used to diagnose and measure it; the efcacy of treatments; the potential for psychopaths to engage in violence; and the potential for psychopaths to change their behaviour (see Edens 2006). Debate continues over the appropriateness of diagnosing psychopathic individuals with antisocial personality disorder according to the

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders (DSM-IV; APA 2000), as this is currently the only diagnosis available (see Hare 1996; Hicklin and Widiger 2005). Despite these problems with the psychopathy concept, various popular sources describe workplace psychopaths, who exhibit extremely negative behaviours towards others at work. These are largely based on anecdotal or case study evidence (Boddy 2011). A variety of emotive terms are used to describe individuals allegedly responsible for these behaviours, including monsters and snakes (Clarke 2005; Babiak and Hare 2006). These sources have become quite popular, gaining substantial media and online attention (e.g. Adonis 2011; Australian Broadcasting Coorporation 2005; Burns 2005; de Waal 2009; DuplicityConsulting 2009; Ronson 2011; Silkstone 2007; Sullivan 2010). There is no denying that some individuals in the community can be classed as psychopaths, and that these people go to work. The behaviours displayed by psychopaths do show some similarities to typical bullying behaviours, which results in psychopathy being used as a description or explanation of a range of unacceptable workplace behaviours. Overstating the relationship between psychopathy and workplace bullying, or using psychopathy to describe or explain workplace bullying, can result in several signicant problems. The rst major problem concerns inated perceptions of prevalence. The fact that books aimed at the popular market are available on the subject of psychopaths at work implies that they are a major concern. Indeed, Clarke (2005) suggests that Everyone, at some stage in their life is highly likely to encounter a psychopath, whether it be a colleague at work, a person living in your street, or the con artist who knocks at your door. (p. 2) Clarke (2005) indicates that the prevalence of psychopathy is between one and three per cent. No indication of the origin of this gure, nor any clarication as to whether it is a general population or working population estimate, is provided. As indicated earlier, prevalence rates in the non-incarcerated population are closer to 0.61.2% (Coid et al. 2009b; Neumann and Hare 2008). Capitalising on the sensationalism, and compounding the perception that psychopaths are common, media sources have suggested that it is likely that there is a psychopath in every workplace (Sullivan 2010), and provided checklists to discover whether ones boss is a psycho (Silkstone 2007). The second major problem lies in the potential for misdiagnosis. Clarke (2005) and Babiak and Hare (2006) do caution readers against diagnosing others with psychopathy, yet the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy are pro vided. It appears nave to expect people to not attempt to diagnose their co-workers once this information has been

provided, along with suggestions that psychopathy is common. Other similar resources are available as popular texts that implicitly encourage lay persons to diagnose others in their workplace with psychological disorders (e.g. McGrath and Edwards 2009). Of course, diagnosis of any disorder should only be performed by appropriately trained personnel. Relatedly, the third major problem is concerned with the effects of labelling someone a psychopath, quite independently of any lay or professional attempt at diagnosis. The stigma associated with the label psychopath in the lay population means that calling a co-worker a psychopath has signicant negative ramications for all stakeholders (Edens 2006), and could even trigger defamation proceedings. It may be that the prospect of labelling others who display unacceptable behaviours may underlie the popularity of the approach: identifying ones difcult coworker as having something fundamentally wrong with their personality might help one cope with the bad behaviour endured (Caponecchia and Wyatt 2008). However, such labelling can preclude the development of a more reasonable strategy to resolve the situation, and victimise someone regardless of the truth or otherwise of the accusation. A recent study on workplace psychopathy linked the presence of psychopaths at work to the incidence of workplace bullying (Boddy 2011). That psychopathy and bullying are related, or co-occur, is not that surprising given the possible overlap between some of the behaviours in both concepts. As indicated earlier, workplace bullying comprises many typical behaviours, but Boddy (2011) used a single behaviour as an index of workplace bullying (witnessing unfavourable treatment of others), which may have inuenced the results. Further, employees ratings of their managers levels of psychopathy were used, without controlling for employees experience of bullying in a systematic manner. Our research compares the use of labels and criteria for psychopathy while taking these issues into account. While it is clear that not everyone who uses bullying behaviour is a psychopath, there is a real danger that people will be thought to be psychopathic as a consequence of mis-applying the notion of workplace psychopaths to other unacceptable behaviours at work. Lay people now have information that suggests that workplace psychopaths are common, and they have criteria against which to assess them. Little empirical data is currently available on this popular and potentially damaging trend in dealing with unacceptable workplace behaviours. By examining the use of such information in an experimental sample, it may be possible to reect on the implications of the workplace psychopaths notion for how organisations should approach unacceptable workplace behaviours.

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This study aimed to examine how people use the label psychopath, as well as behavioural criteria relevant to psychopathy. We also sought to examine how frequently people would rate others in their workplaces as psychopaths, and to compare this with current estimates of the prevalence of psychopathy in the general population. Our rst hypothesis was that participants who were classied as being bullied (using the standard test in the eld) would be more likely to rate others as psychopaths than non-bullied participants. Our second hypothesis was that participants ratings of the prevalence of psychopathy at work would be greater than current population estimates, when using both diagnostic criteria and the label psychopath.

Nominating a Reference Person Participants were asked to nominate one person who they have worked with, who showed the worst interpersonal behaviours. Data on this persons gender, position in the organisation relative to the participant, and whether they were employed in the participants current or previous workplace were recorded. Participants were asked to make ratings on several scales about this same reference person throughout the survey. Behavioural Checklist A behavioural checklist was developed to assess use of criteria indicative of psychopathy. Items were developed from material available in Neumann et al. (2007) regarding the interpersonal, affective and lifestyle dimensions of psychopathy (see Appendix A). The antisocial dimension of psychopathy was not included, because it was reasoned that participants could not reliably provide information about aspects of their reference persons early childhood behaviour problems, juvenile delinquency, or criminal history (see Neumann et al. 2007). In clinical settings, these aspects of psychopathy are usually assessed through interview and assessment of case history les. Participants were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed with the reference person being described by items on the checklist on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. An additional response of not sure was also included. Total scores higher than one standard deviation above the mean were taken as an indication of psychopathy. Word-Rating Scale and Psychopath Labelling Question A word-rating scale was developed to assess the degree to which positive, negative and neutral words would be used by participants to describe the reference person. In a preliminary study, 30 participants were asked to rate adjectives on a ve-point scale from very negative to very positive, given that the adjective was used to describe a person at work. Responses for each word were averaged, and words were ranked from positive to negative. The eight most positive, negative and neutral words were then selected for inclusion in the word-rating scale. A threepoint scale was used to indicate whether the participant thought the word was an appropriate or inappropriate description of the nominated target, or that they were not sure (see Appendix B). Word-rating total scores for negative, positive, and neutral words were calculated for each participant. An additional question (termed the labelling question, hereafter) assessed the degree to which the participant agreed that the reference person was appropriately labelled

Method Participants 307 participants completed the survey (161 females and 40 males, with 106 failing to declare demographic information). Most participants (20.4%) were aged 5054 years, followed by 16.4% aged 4549; 15.4% aged 4044; and 12.4% aged 3539. Only 21% were aged 1834, and 4% over 60 years. Materials Assessment of Bullying The 22-item Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQR) was used to measure workplace bullying. It has reliability estimates consistently over alpha = .90 (Einarsen et al. 2009). Without mentioning the word bullying, the NAQ-R measures exposure to bullying by asking respondents to indicate the frequency with which they have experienced acts considered to represent bullying in the last 6 months (response scale: never; now and then; monthly; weekly; daily). An additional question asks people to indicate whether they have been bullied. The denition of bullying which accompanies this question was amended from the NAQ-R version to match that used in guidance material in the jurisdiction, as follows: Generally, to be called workplace bullying, behaviours must be: repeated, unreasonable, and cause harm (or have the potential to cause harm). One-off incidents are not referred to as workplace bullying. Using the above denition, please state whether you have been bullied at work over the last six months. The response scale was the same as used for this question in the NAQ-R (no; yes, but only rarely; yes, now and then; yes, several times per week; yes, almost daily).

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as a psychopath, on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Procedure Participants were recruited for an online survey using advertisements placed on Google ads. Web-based data collection is recognised as being as reliable as more traditional forms of data collection (Denscombe 2006). The advertisements were limited to locations in Australia. The study was billed as a Workplace behaviours study, so as not to bias the respondents to those who had been bullied in the past. Keywords used to place the advertisement on Google search pages and partner sites were similarly innocuous, including workplace, workplace behaviour, work and job. After reading the study information and consenting to be involved, participants completed the survey online, beginning with the NAQ-R. Participants were then asked to complete the behavioural checklist, with respect to the reference individual whom they nominated earlier as having displayed the worst interpersonal behaviours at work. The order of the word-rating scale and labelling question were counterbalanced across participants, so that the labelling question did not systematically inuence the word-ratings and vice versa. At the conclusion of the data collection phase, data were exported and analysed using SPSS-18. There are several methods by which to classify people as being bullied using the NAQ-R (see Nielsen et al. 2009). The consideration of different methods was important for this study because of the hypothesised difference between bullied and non-bullied participants. Two widely used methods employed here comprise: The operational method (Nielsen et al. 2009; Mikkelsen and Einarsen 2001): participants who experience at least two acts from the NAQ-R weekly or more often over the previous six months are classied as bullied; and The self-perceived bullying method (sometimes called perceived victimisation see Nielsen et al. 2009; Salin 2001): participants responding yes to having been bullied on question 23 of the NAQ-R, given a denition of bullying, are classied as bullied. Ethical approval for the study was granted by the UNSW Human Research Ethics Advisory Panel H, reference number 08/2009/24.

the remaining ve states and territories each accounting for less than six percent of the sample. This parallels the pattern of population density in Australia (see ABS 2009). Participants had been employed by their current employer for an average of 5.9 years (SD = 6.4), and worked in their current role for an average of 5.6 years (SD = 6.8). The majority of participants worked in the health and community services industry (28%), followed by other industries (25%) and the education sector (18%). 61% of the reference persons nominated by participants were female. Most (73%) were employed at the participants current workplace. 67% were employed at a higher level of the organisational hierarchy than the participant; 19% at the same level, while 14% were employed at a lower level. Comparison of Bullied and Non-Bullied Participants According to the operational and self-perceived classication methods, a large proportion of the sample was classied as having experienced bullying. These proportions differ from typical rates of bullying, suggesting either that bullying was very common, or that the total sample was biased towards those who had been bullied. To account for this, a more conservative method of classication was implemented, where participants scoring higher than one standard deviation on the NAQ-R total score were classied as being bullied. This was termed the high-score method. This resulted in a lower proportion of participants being classied as bullied. Table 1 indicates the number of participants classied as bullied and non-bullied according to these criteria. A series of one-way ANOVAs were performed to assess whether bullied and non-bullied participants differed on the behavioural checklist total scores, total word-rating scores and the labelling question (see Table 2). The pattern of results was consistent across the methods for classifying participants as bullied. Participants who were classied as being bullied scored the reference person signicantly higher on the behavioural checklist compared to non-bullied participants. Bullied participants also showed a signicantly higher level of agreement that the reference person was appropriately labelled as a psychopath compared to non-bullied participants, and scored them signicantly higher on negative words and neutral words. There were no signicant differences in ratings of positive words between bullied and non-bullied participants. Rated Prevalence of Psychopathy: Checklist Versus Labelling In the total sample, 13.4% of participants rated the reference person as scoring higher than one standard deviation above the mean on the total behavioural checklist score. However, 41.2% of the total sample agreed, or strongly

Results Sample Characteristics 42% of the participants were from the state of New South Wales, with 20% from both Victoria and Queensland, with

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404 Table 1 Numbers of participants classied as being bullied using different criteria Method of classication Operational Bullied Non-bullied 199/307 (64.8) 108/307 (35.1%) Self-perceived 207/302 (68.5%) 95/302 (31.5%)

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High-score 53/307 (17.3%) 254/307 (82.7%)

Table 2 Comparison of mean ratings of reference persons by bullied and non-bullied participants Dependent variable Behavioural checklist Method of classication Operational Self-perceived High-score Psychopathy label Operational Self-perceived High-score Negative words Operational Self-perceived High-score Neutral words Operational Self-perceived High-score Positive words Operational Self-perceived High-score Bullied participants mean rating of target 48.281 48.709 51.902 3.313 3.371 3.745 14.398 14.391 16.440 12.890 12.891 14.000 10.545 10.584 10.360 Non-bullied participants mean rating of target 43.833 42.391 45.696 2.861 2.681 3.036 12.267 12.022 13.087 11.941 11.822 12.265 10.574 10.489 10.595 F p

11.557 22.925 14.306 8.237 18.834 13.073 18.835 22.180 30.354 5.000 5.992 10.680 .007 .063 .257

.001 .000 .000 .004 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .026 .015 .000 .936 .801 .613

agreed that the reference person was appropriately labelled a psychopath on the labelling question. The ratings of psychopathy by non-bullied participants were examined alone because consistent with our rst hypothesis, they were less likely to be biased than those of bullied participants. Similar results were found for non-bullied participants across all categorisation methods (see Table 3).

Discussion As expected, compared to non-bullied participants, those who had been bullied scored their reference person higher on the behavioural checklist, the psychopath labelling

question, and on negative and neutral words. This nding justies the examination of ratings from non-bullied participants to better assess the way lay persons use labels and criteria for workplace psychopathy. Other recent ndings regarding the presence of psychopaths at work when bullying occurs (e.g. Boddy 2011) may be in part explained by bullied persons being more likely to rate a coworker as a psychopath, or score them more highly on criteria consistent with psychopathy. Consistent with the second hypothesis, participants rated the prevalence of psychopathy in the workplace as much higher than current scientic estimates of the prevalence of psychopathy in the general population. This was the case for bullied and non-bullied participants when considering

Table 3 Psychopathy ratings on the labelling question and behavioural checklist by non-bullied participants Total behavioural checklist score Proportion scoring the reference person greater than one standard deviation above the mean Non-bullied (operational method) Non-bullied (self-perceived method) Non-bullied (high-score method) Total sample 10.8% 9.5% 9.8% 13.4% Labelling question Proportion who agree or strongly agree that the reference person is appropriately labelled a psychopath 33.7% 27.5% 37.6% 41.2%

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both the label psychopath and high scores on the behavioural checklist. Further, a greater proportion of nonbullied participants agreed that the reference person was appropriately called a psychopath than the proportion scoring them highly on behavioural criteria consistent with psychopathy. These results have implications for how we treat the notion of workplace psychopaths in organisational policy and procedures regarding unacceptable workplace behaviours. In the case of bullied workers, the results are consistent with the idea that the experience of being bullied may creates a readiness to attribute another persons bad behaviour to a stigmatising personality disposition. Encouraging the perception that workplace psychopaths are common in workplaces could lead to a signicant number of people (whose behaviour may or may not be unacceptable in the context) being falsely attributed a stigmatising personality disorder. This may be particularly the case when employees have experienced bullying. The nding that disinterested (non-bullied) participants label someone as a psychopath, at a much higher rate compared to when using high scores on behavioural criteria for psychopathy, is a real concern. The over-use of the label psychopath by non-bullied participants does not appear to be due to suggestion, or the tendency to conrm assertions that were presented to participants. Post-hoc tests suggested that those who agreed with the label of psychopath were consistent in their view, as reected in their word ratings of the target. Compared to those who disagreed with the use of the label psychopath, non-bullied participants who agreed with the label also scored the reference person signicantly higher on negative words (F1 = 27.161, p = .000) and neutral words (F1 = 9.914, p = .002). The relative conservatism when using behavioural criteria may be explained by the criteria making people think more carefully about the reference persons behaviours, rather than using a range of individually held notions of what it is to be a psychopath. The apparent disconnect between lay conceptions and formal scientic conceptions of the personality prole is not that surprising, and would likely also be the case for other psychological conditions. However, this disconnect becomes a concern when people are encouraged to think that psychopaths are all around them and that they are easily identied (e.g. by popular books and media reports). Conventional wisdom would argue against providing diagnostic criteria for psychological disorders to lay or untrained persons. These results suggest that if the notion of workplace psychopaths must be promulgated in workplaces, then providing behavioural criteria more akin to diagnostic material would result in a more conservative assessment compared to a mere labelling approach. This would indeed be an unprecedented step. Accordingly, these

ndings highlight the caution with which any suggestion of psychopathy in the workplace should be handled. This work also highlights other problems associated with allowing the idea that workplace psychopathy accounts for a large proportion of unacceptable behaviour at work to go unchallenged. Erroneous or vexatious complaints of unacceptable behaviour in the workplace are anecdotally cited as reasons the reluctance of organisations to take steps to prevent such behaviours. There is a fear that awareness training and other interventions will result in spurious claims, which cost time and money, and can damage peoples reputation. The nding that such a high proportion of non-bullied individuals labelled others as psychopaths to a high degree is a concern in the context of false-positive reporting. Increased frequency of extreme, false-positive reports of unacceptable behaviours could result from continued or increased characterisation of negative behaviours at work as psychopathy. Should the notion of workplace psychopaths become more widely embraced, there are further implications for the prevention and management of unacceptable behaviours. A disproportionate focus on personality dimensions as an explanation for unacceptable behaviours could mean that developing and improving interventions that deal with wider organisational and cultural factors is not prioritised. The notion of that workplace psychopathy is common provides an opportunity for organisations to ignore the contribution that their policies, procedures and job design has to generating a climate in which bullying or other unacceptable behaviours can occur. Allowing this to occur would be inconsistent with the systemic approaches to managing psychosocial risks that are becoming more widely endorsed and implemented around the world (e.g. Leka et al. 2011).

Limitations Several limitations are evident in this work. The rates of bullying observed in this study were higher than what would be expected in the international literature using the NAQ-R and the operational method of classifying participants as bullied. Cultural differences may account for this in part, but it is also possible that participants from particular industries which are known to have a bullying problem in Australia (e.g. health and education; Garling 2008; Riley et al. 2011) encouraged their colleagues to complete the questionnaire, as the health and education sectors were among the top industries represented in the study. Care was taken to ensure that a more random sample was selected, by advertising the study through Google ads using terms that did not indicate what the study was about. However, this potential bias did not affect the results

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substantially, because the responses of those who were not bullied were examined. A formal clinical diagnosis was not required for the purposes of this study, nor was it possible with lay persons. We intended to assess how people use these criteria consistent with psychopathy with reference to real people with whom they work, rather than to obtain a formal diagnosis. It is possible that the proportion of reference persons might have been formally diagnosable as psychopaths was higher than normal in this study, but there is no reason to think that this would be the case. Overrepresentation of true psychopaths is unlikely given the extreme gures observed: up to 38% of the sample who had not been bullied agreed that the reference person was appropriately labelled as a psychopath. Allowing participants to nominate a reference person who displayed the worst interpersonal behaviours at work may have introduced some variability. In making this assessment, participants may have focused on different issues (for example, poor personal hygiene as opposed to unacceptable behaviours), depending on their workplace experiences. Though this method could introduce inconsistencies, it has ecological validity: it allows an assessment of how participants would use behavioural criteria and labels for a real person that they have worked with, rather than a hypothetical person or vignette, with which they have no emotional involvement. Should future research employ vignettes demonstrating independently veried levels of psychopathy, it would be interesting to compare ratings of psychopathy between vignettes and real people from the participants experiences.

implies that psychopaths are the rule when considering unacceptable workplace behaviours, rather than the exception. Clearer communication of prevalence should help avoid potential vilication and false-positive reporting. Greater awareness and collaboration on identifying how different classes of unacceptable workplace behaviours relate to one another would help advance this research eld. There are ethical issues regarding negative impacts on peoples lives and careers, where one class of negative workplace behaviours is treated as though it were another, more serious class altogether (and vice versa). A continuum of behaviours, for example, from rudeness and incivility (Milam et al. 2009) at one end, through to bullying, workplace violence and psychopathy at the other, would help contextualise the nature and prevalence of these behaviours (see also Crawshaw 2009, for a discussion of the need for standard nomenclature). This is consistent with other papers which have argued for the need to distinguish between the concepts of bullying, harassment, violence and discrimination, because of the ways in which they can be differently identied and acted upon (Caponecchia and Wyatt 2009). The concept of workplace psychopathy could easily be added to these distinctions to assist individual employees, managers, and human resources personnel to more effectively and conservatively administer claims of unacceptable behaviours, without risking further harm.

Appendix A Behavioural Checklist

Summary and Conclusions This study found that a high proportion of non-bullied workers would rate their coworkers as psychopaths when asked if this was appropriate, and that the use of behavioural criteria resulted in more conservative assessments. Lay ratings of psychopathy were much higher than scientic population estimates. These results question the use of approaches that purposefully or inadvertently encourage the perception that psychopaths are common in workplaces, and provide formal diagnostic criteria of psychopathy for use by lay persons. They further question the wisdom of any approach to unacceptable behaviour at work that labels or stigmatises individuals (for example, bullies, monsters, or snakes). While psychopaths may be present in workplaces, the low prevalence of psychopathy in the general population should be clearly identied in any communication about workplace psychopathy. Popular material on this issue

Think about the one person who you chose as showing the worst interpersonal behaviours at work. Please indicate the degree to which you agree with the following descriptions of that person. The person The person The person The person The person The person The person The person worth The person The person The person The person The person is manipulative shows glibness or supercial charm is a pathological liar lacks realistic, long-term goals shows a lack of remorse or guilt is callous, shallow, or lacks empathy is unwilling to accept responsibility has a grandiose (exaggerated) sense of selfis impulsive has a need for excitement and stimulation has a parasitic lifestyle is responsible (reverse scored) shows supercial emotions

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Appendix B Words Used in the Word Ratings Scale

Negative A psychopath A liar Threatening A monster Psychotic A bully A snake A control freak A bastard Schizo Neutral Difcult Erratic Antisocial Nuts Crazy Outrageous Challenging Shy Traditional Stoic Positive Smart Efcient Fair Caring Courteous Reliable Generous Honest Wise Approachable

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