APA Citation
Babiak, P., & Hare, R. (2006). Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. Regan Books.
Summary
Industrial psychologist Babiak teams with psychopathy expert Hare to expose how psychopaths operate in corporate settings. They describe the "organizational psychopath"—not the criminal stereotype, but the charming, manipulative individual who climbs corporate ladders while leaving destruction in their wake. The book details the psychopath's playbook: identifying and manipulating "pawns" (useful people), discarding "patrons" (depleted protectors), and neutralizing "police" (those who see through them). Corporate environments, with their emphasis on confidence, risk-taking, and results, may actually select for psychopathic traits—explaining why estimates suggest psychopaths are four times more common in senior management than in the general population.
Why This Matters for Survivors
If you've worked with someone who charmed leadership while terrorizing subordinates, who took credit for successes and assigned blame for failures, who seemed to leave a trail of damaged people—this book describes what you witnessed. Understanding the corporate psychopath explains why HR didn't help (they were charmed too), why the person kept getting promoted (manipulation looks like leadership), and why you felt crazy (gaslighting is their specialty). The book validates your experience while providing framework for recognition and protection.
What This Work Establishes
Psychopaths thrive in corporations. Psychopathic traits—charm, manipulation, risk-taking, callousness—can be advantageous in corporate settings. Estimates suggest psychopaths are four times more common in senior management than in the general population.
The corporate psychopath playbook. Babiak and Hare describe how psychopaths categorize people (pawns, patrons, police), build protective networks, manipulate colleagues, and climb hierarchies while leaving destruction behind. Their behavior isn’t random but strategically designed for advancement.
Organizations enable psychopaths. Corporate structures—emphasis on confidence, tolerance for “difficult” high performers, HR processes that favor documentation over pattern recognition—often protect rather than remove psychopaths. The problem isn’t just individual bad actors but systemic vulnerabilities.
Recognition is protection. Understanding how corporate psychopaths operate helps potential targets recognize manipulation early and protect themselves. You can’t reform a psychopath, but you can avoid becoming their next pawn.
Why This Matters for Survivors
Your workplace nightmare has a name. If you’ve worked with someone who charmed leadership while abusing subordinates, who took credit and assigned blame, who left a trail of damaged people—you encountered a corporate psychopath. The book validates that your experience was real and provides framework for understanding it.
Why no one believed you. Corporate psychopaths are skilled at managing impressions. Leadership sees charm; victims experience cruelty. HR may have been cultivated as patrons. The psychopath controlled the narrative while you looked like the problem. This isn’t your failure—it’s their expertise.
Why they kept getting promoted. Their manipulation looks like leadership, their risk-taking looks like confidence, their ability to appear unaffected by criticism looks like strength. Corporate metrics often can’t distinguish genuine competence from psychopathic performance.
Protection through understanding. Recognizing the patterns—the categorization of people, the charm offensive followed by exploitation, the blame-shifting—helps you protect yourself in future workplaces. You can’t change them, but you can avoid becoming their next target.
Clinical Implications
Assess workplace experiences in trauma presentations. Patients presenting with work-related anxiety, depression, or PTSD may have been targeted by corporate psychopaths. Assessment should include exploration of workplace relationships and recognition that the workplace itself may have been traumatic.
Validate the corporate psychopath experience. Patients often doubt themselves—surely someone so successful couldn’t be that manipulative? Providing framework for understanding corporate psychopaths validates their experience and reduces self-blame.
Support realistic expectations. Patients hoping the psychopath will be exposed or removed often face disappointment. Clinicians can support realistic assessment: corporate psychopaths often succeed despite (or because of) their behavior. The patient’s goal should be self-protection, not justice.
Address impact of organizational betrayal. When organizations protect psychopaths over victims, the betrayal compounds the direct harm. Treatment should address both the psychopath’s abuse and the institution’s failure to protect.
How This Work Is Used in the Book
Babiak and Hare’s research appears in Chapter 14: The Corporate Narcissus:
“The ‘organizational psychopath’ doesn’t fit criminal stereotypes—they’re charming, confident, apparently successful. Babiak and Hare describe their playbook: identifying useful ‘pawns,’ cultivating powerful ‘patrons,’ and neutralizing ‘police’ who see through them. Corporate environments, with their emphasis on confidence and results, may actually select for psychopathic traits.”
Historical Context
Published in 2006, Snakes in Suits appeared as corporate scandals (Enron, WorldCom, Tyco) raised questions about how apparently successful executives could cause such destruction. The book provided psychological framework—these weren’t ordinary people who made bad decisions but individuals with distinctively disordered personalities operating in environments that enabled them.
The book extended psychopathy research from forensic to corporate settings, revealing that psychopaths don’t all end up in prison. Many apply the same traits—charm, manipulation, callousness—in contexts that reward these qualities. The research has influenced both academic understanding and practical approaches to identifying and managing workplace psychopaths.
Further Reading
- Babiak, P., Neumann, C.S., & Hare, R.D. (2010). Corporate psychopathy: Talking the walk. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 28(2), 174-193.
- Boddy, C.R. (2011). Corporate Psychopaths: Organisational Destroyers. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Hare, R.D. (1999). Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. Guilford Press.
- Pfeffer, J. (2018). Dying for a Paycheck. Harper Business.
- Sutton, R.I. (2007). The No Asshole Rule. Business Plus.
About the Author
Paul Babiak, PhD is an industrial and organizational psychologist who has spent decades studying psychopaths in corporate environments. His research has focused on how psychopathic individuals operate in business settings and how organizations can protect themselves.
Robert D. Hare, PhD is the world's leading authority on psychopathy and developer of the PCL-R. His collaboration with Babiak extended psychopathy research from forensic to corporate settings, revealing that psychopaths don't all end up in prison—many thrive in boardrooms.
Together, they brought decades of research to bear on a phenomenon that had been observed but not systematically studied: the successful organizational psychopath.
Historical Context
Published in 2006, *Snakes in Suits* appeared amid increasing interest in corporate ethics following scandals like Enron and WorldCom. The book provided psychological framework for understanding how apparently successful executives could commit such destructive acts. It shifted discussion from individual bad actors to examining how corporate structures might select for and enable psychopathic behavior.
Frequently Asked Questions
A corporate psychopath is someone with psychopathic traits (superficial charm, manipulation, lack of empathy, absence of remorse) who operates in business settings rather than criminal ones. They use the same traits—charm to seduce, manipulation to control, callousness to discard—but in organizational contexts. They may be successful by corporate metrics while leaving destruction in their wake.
Psychopaths excel at interviewing—they're charming, confident, and tell interviewers what they want to hear. Once hired, they build networks of patrons (powerful protectors) while manipulating others. Their risk-taking and superficial confidence can look like leadership. By the time their destructiveness becomes apparent, they've often moved on or built too much political capital to remove.
Babiak and Hare describe psychopaths categorizing people as: Pawns (useful for information or access, to be exploited), Patrons (powerful people to cultivate for protection and advancement), and Police (those who see through them, to be neutralized or destroyed). Understanding this categorization helps explain seemingly inconsistent behavior—different treatment for different people based on their utility.
Research suggests 4-12% of senior managers show significant psychopathic traits, compared to ~1% in the general population. Possible explanations: corporate environments reward traits like risk-taking, confidence, and toughness that overlap with psychopathy; psychopaths are attracted to power; and their manipulation skills help them climb hierarchies. Selection and attraction effects compound.
Strategies include: thorough background checks including reference verification, structured interviews less susceptible to charm, 360-degree feedback to capture subordinate perspectives, attention to patterns of interpersonal conflict, and cultures that don't excuse poor behavior from high performers. Most importantly: believing victims who report manipulation and abuse.
HR often sees the charm side—the psychopath presents well to authority. Victims are often seen as the problem (they're stressed, not performing, creating conflict). The psychopath may have cultivated HR as patrons. And HR processes often favor documentation over pattern recognition—psychopaths are skilled at avoiding documentation while causing harm.
There's overlap, but narcissistic leaders crave admiration and are wounded by criticism, while psychopaths are more indifferent to others' opinions—they care about advantage, not approval. Narcissists can form some genuine attachments; psychopaths' relationships are more purely instrumental. Both can be destructive; they're destructive differently.
Strategies include: trust your instincts when charm feels manipulative, document everything, build relationships outside the psychopath's influence, don't share vulnerabilities that can be exploited, and be willing to leave. Most importantly: understand that you can't reform them—the only winning move is distance.