Data from Board & Fritzon (2005). The authors investigated how managers compare to a clinical sample (psychopaths) on various traits, here particularly histrionic personality traits.
| 95% CI for Mean Difference | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| t | df | p | Mean Difference | SE Difference | Lower | Upper | Cohen's d | SE Cohen's d | |||||||||||
| Histrionic personality index | 7.184 | 354 | < .001 | 4.450 | 0.619 | 3.232 | 5.668 | 1.219 | 0.219 | ||||||||||
| Note. Student's t-test. | |||||||||||||||||||
We can report that managers scored significantly higher than psychopaths on histrionic personality disorder, t(354) = 7.18, p < .001, d = 1.22.
| Group | N | Mean | SD | SE | Coefficient of variation | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Histrionic personality index | Managers | 39 | 13.330 | 3.480 | 0.557 | 0.261 | |||||||
| Clinical | 317 | 8.880 | 3.670 | 0.206 | 0.413 | ||||||||
The results show the presence of elements of PD in the senior business manager sample, especially those most associated with psychopathic PD. The senior business manager group showed significantly higher levels of traits associated with histrionic PD than the clinical sample. Board and Fritzon (2005) conclude that:
At a descriptive level this translates to: superficial charm, insincerity, egocentricity, manipulativeness (histrionic).
Remember, these people are in charge of large companies. Suddenly a lot of things make sense.