![]() "Their spirits will enable you to succeed. Sharks." He pointed at a sculpture of four sharks encircling the planet. "There's a lot of gold here, too," I'd been prepared for the gold, having recently seen a portrait of him sitting on a gold chair, wearing a gold tie with a gold suit of armor by the door, and a gold crucifix on the mantle piece. Al's statements may reveal a belief that the world is made up of predators and prey, that it would be foolish not to exploit weaknesses in others. This was ice and fire from the Bob Hare psychopath checklist. Everything I did, I had to go make happen."Ĭunning, manipulative, I wrote in my reporter's note pad. I have a great belief in and a great respect for predators. He's wearing a casual jacket and slacks, and looking tanned, healthy. "Lions," said Al Dunlap, showing me around. There were crystal lions, and onyx lions, and iron lions, and iron panthers, and paintings of lions, and sculptures of human skulls. Stone lions and panthers with teeth bared, eagles soaring downward, hawks with fish in their talons, and on and on, across the grounds, around the lake, in the swimming pool health club complex, in the many rooms. This first obviously strange thing about Al Dunlap's grand Florida mansion and lavish manicured lawns was the unusually large number of ferocious sculptures there were of predatory animals. I didn't mention in the email that psychiatrists call that brain anomaly psychopathy. Dunlap, are literally fearless, because the amygdala doesn't shoot those signals. The theory goes that very highly successful people, like Mr. It's basically all to do with the amygdala shooting signals of fear down to the central nervous system. I said there's a theory shared by neurologists all over the world that the brains of certain highly successful people literally work differently to ordinary people's brains. I emailed his personal assistant-cum-bodyguard, Sean Thornton. With each plant closure, the Sunbeam share price soared, reaching an incredible $51.00. And on and on, turning communities across the American south into ghost towns. Dunlap went on a year-long rampage across rural America, firing 12,000 employees, and closing plants in Shubuta and Bay Springs and Laurel, Mississippi, and Cookeville, Tennessee, and Coushatta, Louisiana. On the July 1996 day that Sunbeam's board of directors revealed the name of their new CEO, their share price skyrocketed, from $12.50 to $18.63. Even though he was always telling journalists about his wise and supportive parents, he didn't turn up at either of their funerals. His first wife charged in her divorce papers that he once threatened her with a knife and muttered that he always wondered what human flesh tasted like. They referred to his poor behavioral controls. But they took the plunge with Dunlap anyway. All the other CEOs cited were dead or in prison, and therefore unlikely to sue. He fired people with such apparent glee, that the business magazine Fast Company included him in an article about potentially psychopathic CEOs. A few weeks later, he closed the Mobile plant down, firing everyone. "Why would you want to stay at a company for 30 years?" Dunlap said, looking genuinely perplexed. At a plant in Mobile, Alabama, for instance, he asked a man how long he'd worked there. There were countless stories of him going from Scott plant to Scott plant firing people in amusing, sometimes eerie ways. ![]() His name was Al Dunlap, and he'd made his reputation closing down plants on behalf of Scott, America's oldest toilet paper manufacturer. And so, they offered the job to someone quite unique, a man who seemed to actually, unlike most humans, enjoy firing people. The board of directors needed a merciless cost-cutter. ![]() And then he learned about a former chief executive of Sunbeam, the toaster and appliance company. And so, he tried to find a business leader who might prove this true or false. Ronson wondered if that could possibly be true, that so many business leaders might have psychopathic traits. ![]() 1% of the general population tests as psychopath, 25% of the US prison population, which makes sense, I guess, and 4%- 4%- of business leaders. It really is everywhere if you start to look for it. He started seeing all kinds of people as psychopaths. He also went to a seminar, to learn to administer the test himself, which had an unfortunate effect on Jon. In his research, Jon met with Bob Hare, who created the test. Jon Ronson has a new book out about the psychopath test. Today's show is all about the psychopath test, created by Bob Hare, used around the world by courtrooms, and prisons, and this week by us as well. ![]()
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