Book: Snakes in Suits

[tagryn]

Finished going through the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work". Not terribly impressed; the authors, a pair of psychologists, make the pheonomena of psychopaths and sociopaths at work seem a lot more common than it is - they admit in the preface its a pretty rare occurence, but then go through 300+ pages describing how to spot one. Most distressingly, in the preface they put in a disclaimer that all the examples in the book are "composites" of typical cases, but not real examples they had experience with. Then, each chapter opens with a story including at least one socio/psychopath, then uses that story to describe a particular trait of such in the workplace. I didn't find it a particularly convincing maneuver in this case, and worry that folks who skip over the preface may take the examples at face-value, rather than made-up scenarios.

Overall, somewhat entertaining work of pseudo-fiction, but not much of a contribution to psychology.