Excerpt:

Obama administration [is].. pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the “robo-signing” scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Evidence reveals that it was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes. If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail — fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion.

Browns analysis indicates that a major part of Wall Street has been involved in a huge financial scam that precipitated the financial crash in 2008.

The analyses of Brown and others indicate that the Wall Street bankers were very well aware of the fraudulent nature of their actions and their actions, as revealed by Brown, indicate that they have been trying to systematically cover up their criminality. This means that these people acted fraudulently, well aware of the high risk of throwing millions of people into severe suffering that an economic crash brings about.

Wall Street – why an accumulation of sociopaths occurred

In the blog “Why companies decline..“, I argued that certain selective mechanisms brought about the tendency for emotionally insecure people with Survival-Orientied Behhavior to accumulate in “mature companies”, brining about a risk of decline.

Many Wall Street bankers seem to have an utter egoistic greed, ruthlessness, severe lack of empathy and responsibility, traits typical of the most severe degrees of SOB-behavior, see “An especially unsuitable trait of a leader” – which in common language is called sociopathic demeanor.

The accumulation of such people in Wall Street is not surprsing, as people with such traits are especially prone to compensate for their great insecurity (as explained in “Why companies decline..“) by seeking  jobs in an place that enables high incomes and power.

In turn, the accumulation of people with pronounced SOB automatically leads to a “company culture” accepting dishonesty and irresponsibility. Any kind of actions, however socially irresponsible or fraudulent, are accepted for satisfying the greed of these people as long as they can be shrouded in a system whose criminal nature is not immediately evident.

People with healthy brain function (Balanced Emphatic Behavior) bringing about social responsibility, high level of ethics, empathy and adherence to high ethical standards cannot thrive in such an environment. No doubt a few may have been there hoping to manage to work without committing fraud, but such people are most unlikely to make any successful career because fraud has apparently been a key precondition for success. Most probably, as testified by some former Wall Street employees, they are likely to be sickened by the ruthless greed of their companions – a normal reaction of any person with healthy brain function, bringing about emphatic, responsible and honest behavior.

Conclusion

In Wall Street, the accumulation of people with more or less pronounced sociopathic tendencies appears not to be a coincidence. It appears to be the consequence of a vicious circle where socially irresponsible fraudulent behaviour has become accepted as means for success. This social environment has eliminated psychologically healthy, responsible and emphatic people and has led to the accumulation of people with criminal tendencies as proven by recent analyses.

It is reprehensible and dangerous that the American governmnent now supports a process that would protect these criminals.

In stead, for a sound economic development, it is necessary to clean up Wall street from criminal elements, however high-seated they are (be it CEOs and other leaders of major banks), because otherwise their great economic power, combined with their shorthsighted greed, irresponsibility and bad judgment will inevitably throw the US as well as the world into new financial crises (see also “Economical crisis – impaired brain function a major cause“).

Swedish Air Force planes

The Swedish airforce realized this and developed the Defense Mechanism Test (DMT)  which has proven to be very successful in eliminating people who are unable to keep calm under heavy stress. The consequence was a dramatic decrease of flight crashes.

DMT should definitely be used for selecting all private pilots as well even if the job in general is less stressful than that of a combat pilot.

The inadequate pilot behavior in the Air France crash – due to stressful behavior?

Part of the Air France plane

I think the Air France flight 447 crash in the Atlantic in 2009 illustrates the great importance of “crash-proof” pilots who can keep the mind cool under heavy stress.

It seems that inadequate pilot behavior under stress was a perhaps decisive factor causing the accident (especially as Air France has maintained that the pilots did have the training to handle this kind of situations). The pilot seems to have acted in a stereotypical way, repeating the same inadequate response of lifting up the nose of the plane (because it was sinking) in stead of doing the counter-intuitive, but correct, opposite thing, to lower the nose of the plane, which would have saved them according to the analysis of the accident. This is very typical of mind “blowout” under high stress, causing the inability to apply learned knowledge in an adequate and insightful manner. It was exactly this kind of behavior that caused the high rate of fighter plane crashes in the Swedish Airforce before DMT was used for selection. Such mistakes dramatically disappeared after DMT was introduced for pilot selection.

I find it remarkable that the test has not been used more widely in spite of its proven usefullness.

Why are inadequate tests still used?

The reason why several air forces as well as private aviation companies still use traditional tests may be due to some conservatism in test psychologists as well as of lack of appreciation of the difficulty of detecting stress-proneness.

The Swedish Air Force has been more realistic, finding that conventional psychological tests are much too insensitive to reveal such hidden disturbances. After having 20-25 crashes every year in spite of using the best tests available, and psychologist interviews in addition, they realized that a different test approach is necessary. This proved correct and the result was a dramatic decrease to a few accidents per decade and these were mostly due to mechanic problems.

It is time for test psychology to learn from the Swedish Air Force in stead of holding on to inadequate testing methods. Otherwise it is only a matter of time before more accidents due to inadequate pilot behavior occur.

A number of civilian crashes may have occurred due to defense mechanisms

It seems reasonable to suspect that a number of flight accidents in private aviation have occurred due to inadequate pilot behavior under stress, although this has not been discovered to my knowledge (but I have not been reading all crash reports).

Polish Tu-154 crash

For example, the crash of the Polish flight Tu-154, killing the president and several top people, seems suspicious. It is hard to believe that a pilot who is mentally well balanced and clear-minded because of freedom from defense mechanisms would have carried through an attempt to land in spite of serious warnings from the airport due to the difficult weather conditions. It seems that he may have bagatellized or misinterpreted the information so as to find it OK to carry trough a landing that was too risky. This is exactly the kind of behavior that defense mechanisms bring about. And it was exactly this kind of behavior that disappeared in the Swedish Air Force through the selection of pilots free from defense mechanisms.

It is time for Civilian Aviation companies to increase the psychological safety level to that of the Swedish Air Force. Don’t listen to conservative test psychologists, go by the experience from Sweden that clearly proves that they are wrong in not recommending the abandonment of traditional inadequate testing methods.

For example, Elaine Sihera, emotional health author:

Racist people tend to feel insignificant,      isolated, wronged and unloved and they    remedy that feeling of exclusion by blaming  someone else for it…

I agree with all this, but below I will suggest that these characteristics have a common denominator.

.

A functional brain disorder

Racistic traits and behavioral tendencies can be explained as an expression of a brain response that is elicited by fear.

• Threat automatically elicits the Stress Response in the brain, which switches on the Survival-Oriented-Behavior (SOB) pattern that is governed by midbrain centers. Some common features of SOB are
  • Aggressiveness, ruthlessness, tendency for brutality
  • Impulsiveness, difficult to control anger
  • Lack of compassion, empathy
  • Strong egoism (a key survival feature)
  • Dishonesty, unreliability, low ethical standards (due to inconsiderate egoism and lack of empathy)
• People that are emotionally insecure are especially prone to feel threatened in ordinary life conditions. Weak self-confidence is stronly associated with emotional insecurity.
• Emotional insecurity comes from traumatic or disharmonious (parental conflicts, divorce, lack of love etc) childhood conditions.
• The most pronounced form of this disturbance is, the Authoritarian Personality. Its key traits are caused by their great insecurity and anxiety, which brings about conscious or subconscious strategies to reduce or suppress anxiety by increasing the feeling of security. The most important strategy is predictability-increasing behavior which includes:

• Intolerance and aggression against unfamiliar behavior. Such behaviors feel unpredictable, and therefore they evoke uncomfortable feelings of insecurity and anxiety in insecure persons. This tends to cause aggressive coping behavior such as:
• Rejecting, scapegoating or harrassing unfamiliar persons - people from other ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, and others whose behavior deviates from familiar patterns and norms.
• Strong allegiance to conventional norms. The insecure persons tend to be strongly adherent to conventional norms, because these provide a framework that increases predictability. Actually, they tend to obey the prevailing norms very ambitiously, because this increases the chances of being widely accepted in society (or at least the part of it they want to identify themselves with), which increases their feeling of security. From the conventionalism follows:
• Resistance to unfamiliar or unconventional ideas. The need for predictability causes a resistance to anything that can change familiar conditions in society.
• Proneness for prejudices. The rigid adherence to preformed opinions is a kind of defense mechanism that helps to fend off (anxietyprovoking) unfamiliar ideas or views that challenge the world view that the person has established.
• Avoidance of ambiguity. Ambiguous and complex information enhances the sense of insecurity greatly. Therefore these person want to simplify their perception of the world so as to have few nuances, either black or white, either good or bad, etc
• Preference for authoritarian beliefs and ideologies. To increase the sense of security and predictability, the person prefers ideologies and creeds that provide simple and authoritative answers to world problems. Therefore they are prone to religious dogmatism and fundamentalism, as well as political (left or right) extremism including racistic ideologies.

For more, see  The Authoritarian Personality

and Survival-Oriented-Behavior

Peer pressure and propaganda are not primary causes

Some believe people can become racists through peer pressure, parental upbringing and propaganda.  I do agree that people with Survival-Oriented-Behavior or Authoritarian Personality are likely to fall prey to racistic propaganda and peer pressure.

But I don’t believe that this can bring about the behaviors above without the presence of mid-brain-dominated Survival-Oriented-Behavior or Authoritarian Personality disorder. This is because when the brain is not midbrain-dominated, it is forebrain-dominated, which brings about the Balanced-Emphatic-Behavior pattern (see next heading).

Such people are fundamentally emphatic and loving, resistant to dehumanizing influences. Their behavior is not the result of “good upbringing” or “strong adherence to positive values”, but the consequence of brain function pattern that is fundamentally different from the SOB pattern:

There are many documented examples of people who have resisted intense systematic propaganda and peer pressure, for example in Nazi Germany. Among these, the German businessman, Oskar Schindler, who took great presonal risks in saving over 1500 jews from the gas chambers, is most famous because of the film “Schindler’s list“.

Balanced-Emphatic-Behavior, the opposite of SOB

This is a behavior pattern that appears when the forebrain dominates the behavior which occurs when the stress-level is low because of a high threshold to stress. Some of its key traits are:

• Friendliness – does not use aggression as a means of solving issues.
• Strong empathy. “Good heart” – cares for the suffering and difficulties of unfortunate.
• Mental stability, calmness, “coolness” even under pressure,
• Tolerance. Positively accepts people of other races and cultures, however unfamiliar and “unpredictable” they are, and finds it interesting and stimulating to interact with them.
• Altruistic (un-egoistic).
• High moral standards, trustworthy, avoids lies for achieving his goals.
• Strong integrity, holds on to his convictions even under pressure.
• Inner security – can handle the unexpected. BEB persons are fundamentally secure and take unpredictable and unexpected situations as stimulating challenges without any impairment of mental performance because there will be no interference from the survival centres.

For more, see “Balanced-Empthatic-Behavior“

The cure of racism

What needs to be done is to eliminate that dehumanizing SOB pattern that is dominated by the lower level brain centers that we have in comon with reptiles and similar low-level animals (some brain scientists call it the “reptile brain”). We need to restore the dominance of the forebrain, the seat of the finest human traits, the Balanced-Empthatic-Behavior.

Psychologists know from experience that this is really difficult to achieve with conventional psychoterapy that takes many years to bring about a development in the direction of Balanced-Empthatic-Behavior.

The medical director of Oregon state prison indicates a solution, finding that a special technique brings about empathy in criminals who are known to commonly have pronounced SOB if not Authoritarian Personality disorder.

This observation is by far not unique. There is a wealth of evidence proving that Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a very effective means for transforming people from Survival-Oriented-Behavior to Balanced-Empthatic-Behavior.

For example a world-renowned american psychiatrist, professor Norman Rosenthal, former chief scientist at the National Institute of Health in the US has documented the effects of TM in his book “Transcendence“. He says about the scientifically well documented stress-reducing effects of TM:

Professor Norman Rosenthal

“if TM were a pill, it would be a billion-dollar blockbuster.”

Norman Rosenthal, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry, retired chief scientist at NIH

Source: Huffington Post interview

More about Transcendental Meditation (TM) :

• TM website
• A new approach to human development

Conclusion

The understanding how stress alters behavior provides a unifying basis for understanding racism, as its behavioral elements are characteristic of the pattern of brain functioning ellicited by stress, the “Survival-Oriented-Behavior “. The key causal factor is emotional insecurity that upholds chronic stress and consequent SOB that brings about the hostility, intolerance and lack of empathy characteristic of racistic behavior.

Therefore, racism cannot really be eliminated without transforming people from the SOB-pattern to the behavioral pattern of “Balanced-Emphatic-Behavior” which is prevalent when a person consciously or subconsciously does not feel threatened.

I have found good reasons to believe that a so far overlooked stress-related mechanism may be the root cause of the problem in perhaps a majority of cases, although of course other factors may contribute. This can be solved and thereby the decline can be prevented.

This understanding is based mainly on:

• My experiences as an Occupational Health consultant, which included working for a multinational company
• Experiences from 7 years as an advisor and appeal court expert witness in hundreds of occupational health cases of a major association of labour unions (often I got an insight into the workings of the management when I investigated the court case.)
• Discussions with some top level business consultants who have been involved in reanimation attempts of failing companies.
• My experiences since over 30 years from dealing with stress-related disorders as well as from research on chronic stress and its effects.

Three phases of a company life cycle

[Diagram copied from Bersin&Associates with permission]

This is the “classical” pattern based on the experience from many companies.

1. In the upstart, the company is in a creative, entrepreneurial phase where there is a significant risk for failure.
2. Thereafter comes the maturity phase where it has established itself on the market and functions in a stable and adequate way when it comes to satisfy the needs of the market. The company has turned into a safe workplace for the employees.
3. This is sooner or later followed by a decline phase ending in company death unless radical measures are taken. A key factor in the decline here seems to be a loss of creativity, flexibility and alertness to the market trends, resulting in too late or inadequate adaption to changing market conditions requiring creative renewal or change of the product range. Some consultants dealing with this problem have found that the declining company has lost its creative freshness and has turned bureaucratic.

To prevent decline, managements have tried moving top managers to different positions, employing new company leaders, dividing the company into smaller, independent units, retraining the managers, using manager coaching etc. Mostly these measures had had only partial, if any, success.  The reason is that they have not addressed what I think is the root cause in most cases.

The overlooked difference

At the basis of experiences and observations as declared above, I am proposing that a decisive factor leading to decline is a change in the psychological setup of managers seeking employment in the company.

For reasons explained below, companies in the entrepreneurial growth phase tend to attract people with lower stress-proneness than those who are attracted to companies in the maturity phase.

Therefore,  there gradually occurs an increase of managers with a psychological setup that causes stress-related suboptimal brain functioning.

Entrepreneurial phase

In the entrepreneurial phase, people who like challenges, daring to take the risk of loosing their job due to project failure are most likely to thrive in the management. Such people tend to be significantly more  creative, secure, confident than the average person. They tend to have a low anxiety level, caring more about stimulating work conditions than money and a safe job. These traits are characteristic of Balanced-Emphatic-Behavior (BEB) which is associated with low stress-proneness. For full understanding of this article, I recommend you to read about BEB here if you have not read about it before.

Maturity phase

Not until the company reaches the maturity phase, people who prefer stable, successful companies will want to get employed.

Such people are more likely to be insecure (weak “emotional basic trust”) with proneneness for conscious or suppressed anxiety . Insecurity makes people care more about status, high income, and safe employment  because this reduces their anxiety. Such people tend to be less creative, more rigid, more assertion-orientied (prestige/status-fixed), overtly or covertly aggressive and more or less dishonest. These traits are characteristic of Survival-Oriented-Behavior (SOB) which is not an inherited trait, but an aquired disorder associated with high-stress-proneness. I recommend you to read about SOB here if you have not read about it before.

For reasons explained below, BEB people are less likely to seek employment in a company that has reached the maturity phase.

The invisible start of the decline

I am suggesting that the decline starts when the there is an increase of SOB-dominated people in the management to such an extent that the BEB-people loose influence. Such a change would not be obvious, even to those in charge of employing peopole, because the SOB problem is mostly concealed. Even the SOB-persons themselves are mostly un aware of or don’t recognize their problem.

The reason why a shift may occur towards SOB-dominance can be understood from a social-psychological viewpoint:

BEB-people are by nature non-assertive, non-aggressive and thrive in a a positive, friendly atmosphere that enables them to apply their creativity without unnecessary restrictions and bureaucratic formalities.

When SOB people enter the company, they do so in order to increase their incomes (thereby their security) and make a career. So they are intent on aggressively asserting themselves.

When SOB people are approaching leading positions, they may not hesitate to use unfair and unethtical methods to bypass the BEBs.

The critical conflict transforming the company

When SOB people have reached leading positions,  subordinate BEB people tend to leave the company. This occurs for different reasons.

SOB people are “bureaucracy-minded” – they want full control and thereby they tend to restrict the flow of creativity and innovation in the company. This is because SOBs want maximum security, and therefore resist change – they feel secure and fine when things are as usual. Therefore they tend to consciously or subconsciously resist innovative solutions. This creates frustration in BEB persons who commonly are the main innovators in the company.

Moreover, the SOBs experience BEB persons as potential threats in their competition for higher positions because of the greater brilliance and creativity they have. So the BEB-persons experience that they are less appreciated if not suppressed by their new SOB-superiors.

As BEBs are not career-minded and assertive, and prefer constructive and friendly cooperation in a creative, non-bureaucratic atmosphere, they tend to leave the company when SOBs are taking over.

For the same reason, the likelihood for new BEB people to seek employment will decrease the more there is of SOB-dominance. BEB people are usually good at grasping the situation quickly and realistically and are likely to avoid seeking employment when sensing the rigid, anti-creative and bureaucratic mentality in a SOB-dominated company.

The probability for SOB-dominance to occur in a company is considerable, because most people in modern societies are more or less in the SOB state, see footnote “Airforce experiences about SOB”.

The most harmful personality setup

The most pronounced SOB persons have a setup that is especially harmful to a company. These people are anxiety-laden to a considerable extent. They are often unaware of their anxiety or can effectively conceal it even to skilled psychologists as well as in common psychological tests (this was the reason why the Swedish Airforce developed “Defense Mechanism Test“, a test that effectively reveals this disturbance that makes pilots prone to make dangerous mistakes under stress).

Such greatly disturbed people are of the so called “Authoritarian personality type“. Their anxiety and related inner insecurity creates a strong urge in them to maximize the sense of security by being “in control” of their situation. Therefore, they aggressively fight for arriving at the very top of the organization, the position of greatest control. Often they skilfully hide these tendencies until they reach the goal.

I don’t think power corrupts, I think power reveals a corrupt mind – which becomes manifest when he is safely established. It is not a coincidence that many dictators are typical exponents of the Authoritarian personality disturbance, often to an extreme degree.

Their strong need to establish outer security makes them abhor unpredictability in every sense. They want maximally possible bureaucratic control and precise, inflexible planning.

They want people to conform and to obey orders without questioning them.

They love people of the same kind, because they are conformistic and therefore predictable. They want people who don’t think independently, but follow orders slavishly without questoing them.

 ”I don’t want men who think; I want men who know.” 

Emperor Julius Cesar (who decided what they should know without questioning it).

They tend to have a strong aversion for BEB people because their creativity and selfconfidence makes them think independently, questioning management decisions, and behave in a non-conformistic way. This creative unpredictability evokes considerably anxiety in the Authoritarian type who therefore wants to get  rid of BEB-people.

As BEB-people are unaggressive, they don’t take strife, but tend to leave an organization or a department where an Authoritarian type is in top.

For more about the Authoritarian personality type, see “An especially unsuitable trait” .

The destructive effects of SOB dominance

Gradually, with an increasing SOB dominance, or quite rapidly if an authoritarian SOB type acquires the CEO position, the psychological setup of people in the management is likely to shift from BEB-dominated to SOB-dominated persons.

Thereby, the company looses its creative competence more and more. The BEBs who remain, find increasing difficulties to influence the policy and business strategy of the company and to make the leadership accept their innovative ideas.

Moreover, the SOB persons, and especially the extreme (authoritarian) SOB type, have important weaknesses that increase the risk for precipitating a decline. Their avoidance of unpredictability makes them rigidly conservative, resisting change in every sense. They tend to force their plans and strategies on to reality rather than to adapt to the situation in a realistic way. Therefore they tend to be too late in making decisions necessary for adaption to changing market and competition conditions.

In addition, their brains work suboptimally, with less clarity of mind and with faltering judgement, especially because of defense mechanisms that make them prone to underestimate or misinterpret threats (see Defense Mechanism Test). So they tend to make important mistakes that may further enhance the progression of the decline.

Major companies run the greatest risk

These companies are most likely to targeted by the most disturbed authoritarian SOB types. The reason is that this mentality brings about a strong prestige- and status-orientation. Also famous companies create the greatest feeling of safety in these neurotically security-seeking types. As described in my article on the authoritarian type, they are, since childhood, experts on making themselves popular and are highly skilful and dishonest manipulators (because such strategies, when successful, increase the feeling of being “in control” and secure).

Their strong suppressed anxiety has pressed them to study extremely hard so as to lay the foundation for a top position (mentally sound BEB persons are unlikely to expose themselves to such incredible hardships – if they are highly successful in school, it is due to their brilliance). With their impressive qualifications and charming and winning demeanor they can rapdily manipulate themselves up through the hierarchy (I have seen such cases going all the way to the top in a few years). When they reach the top, they are likely to kick out BEB-persons very soon and consolidate SOB dominance at all levels of management and so the company runs the risk of rapid decline, which is difficult to prevent unless a wise board understands that this charming and highly qualified CEO is the cause of the trouble, although he has been skilfully been able to conceal that, being an expert manipulator and liar, convincingly blaming everybody else.

The greatest danger to the company is that, if a pronounced SOB person is the CEO, he may, due to defense mechanisms or because of his strong prestige-mindedness, actively conceal or bagatellize serious threats and problems both to himself and to the board, so that decisions to make necessary changes to save the company occur too late.

Effective decline prevention

Obviously a completely different approach than conventionally taken is necessary to solve the decline problem. Reorganizing, “relearning” or reshuffling directors does not address this kind of problem.

1. Identifying SOB-type managers

What one obviously needs to do is to identify the most problematic SOB cases in the management and eliminate them from a leading position until their problem has been cured (conventional psychoterapy takes decades to solve such problems, but there are much faster solutions). As said, above, the experience at the Swedish airforce has shown that conventional psychological tests and psychologist interviews are not sufficiently sensitive to reveal SOB cases. The developed a test that has turned to be very effective, see “Defense Mechanism Test (DMT)”.

I am suggesting a test battery that most likely will effectively detect the SOB condition. This includes  DMT, that actually already has been used for selecting people for top management, although its initial and major use has been to select people for combat pilot training. This test may be reliable enough and has had an impressive reliability record in the Swedish airforce that has used it since 40 years. Yet, I suggest an additional test, based on brain scanning which probably would be an effective complement to the DMT, see “SOB-test“. Careful testing is important not to confuse SOB with superficially similar behavior, see footnote “Pitfalls in detecting SOB”.

Confidential interviews with selected employees may add some valuable information when it comes to find out who are creating most trouble.

2. Employing BEB-type managers

While detecting the key problematic elements in the company, already the search for BEB people for the management needs to be started.

It is likely that, with the establishment of a BEB-dominated management at all levels, the decline problem will solve automatically unless also many of the employees are SOB, which may be the case if the problem has been there for a long time. To ensure success I think it is wise to use all possible means to catalyze the reversal of the trend.

A problem is that good BEB-types are few and they are not very interested in taking on a SOB-dominated company unless the company shows a clear “disease insight” and declares that it wants to give him full support in creating BEB-dominance.

3. Establishing a BEB-supportive company culture

It is useful to change  the psychological climate, the “company culture”. SOB dominance is likely to have affected it in the direction of a negative “SOB-mentaliy” (anti-creative, rigid, formalistic, bureaucratic, hostile, egoistically self-assertion-oriented, more or less uncooperative etc).

To facilitate a rapid turnabout of the situation, it would be useful to establish a company culture that is “BEB”-supportive. This means creating company policies and informal norms that support constructive, friendly cooperation, mutual support, creativity, flexibility, adaptability etc. Not the least, such a culture would increase the likeliness that BEB-types will want to work at the company.

4. Increasing the sense of security

Also, it is valuable to optimize the sense of security of all employees  (caring leadership, safe employment rules, generous vacation policies, support of and constructive cooperation with trade unions etc). This may help reduce the stress level of the employees although the major factor deciding the stress level is the stress-proneness which is not affected by changes in outer condtions.

The global furniture company IKEA appears to be a good example of this, and its policy may be an important reason for its great success.

5. The most effective measure – transforming SOBs into BEBs

The most powerful method for thoroughly transforming a company would logically be to reduce the stress-proneness in the employees, thereby reducing SOB and increasing BEB.

There are some methods claiming to do so, but I am aware of only one technique that has a solid and extensive documentation proving that it really does so, along with concrete workplace experience confirming that it works in practice. 

It is Transcendental Meditation (TM). The Swedish Airforce, using Defense Mechanism Test, reported that TM decreased the SOB level in one year to an extent that, at best, could be achieved by 20-30 years of psychotherapy according to Dr. Thomas Neumann, who developed the test, see article. This technique differs importantly from other mediation techniques and is easy to learn and to apply. Most importantly, it takes little time (20 min) of daily practice for achieving significant results.

No other method has reported similar profound and rapid effects on stress tolerance,  see experiences from companies confirming positive effects of TM. As the technique is easy to learn, and rapidly brings about notable effects it seems to be a practical and realistic measure for solving the “company degeneration problem”. A great advantage, making it useful in all contexts,  is that it is not a “teaching”, but a practical technique, not requiring any change in life style or conceptions of life.

It is natural that it takes time for a new and revolutionary method to become accepted, especially when it comes from another culture. However, in recent years, Transcendental Meditation has become more and more accepted by the mainstream. An example of this is that the British government has decided to fully finance a private school, using Transcendental Meditation as an important element for developing the students. Three countries have decided to apply Transcendental Meditation in their public schools as part of the curriculum (Guatemala, El Salvador and Paraguay) and large schools in several other countries are using TM. A famous psychiatrist, former NIH advisor, professor Norman Rosenthal, who has recently published a book “Transcendence” about the benefits of Transcendental Meditation,  said in a Huffington Post interview:

“If TM were a new prescription drug, conferring this many benefits, it would be a billion-dollar blockbuster.”

Considering the documented ability of TM to reduce SOB, often suprisingly rapidly, it would be more economical,  humane and practicable to transform the SOB people in the company, than to kick them out, especially as it is really difficult to find BEB-type replacements. Of course, for the top positions, it is advisable to employ solid BEB-s who have already established that state. The dismissed SOB-type top managers could be given the opportunity to remain in some kind of non-influential honorary or advisory position, provided they accept to heal their SOB problem and they can be promised to regain their career when cleared by SOB-testing.

Summary

A change of the traits in top management people can cause the transformation of a company from success to decline and death. I think this is the most common reason for this problem.

This transformation occurs when the creative, flexible, secure and non-assertive entrepreneurial type “BEB” personalities, that are attracted to the company managment in the risky start phase, get “crowded out” in the maturity phase by people who seek employment because they want security and prestige. These people are not very creative, insecure, aggressive and assertive career-seekers with rigid minds (“SOB-types”). So with “SOB-dominance” the company looses its “vital nerve”, the creativity, flexibility and adaptability. The probability for this to happen is considerable, not only because SOB-s are attracted to successful companies, but because most people in modern societies are more or less in a SOB-condition.

Especially if a new CEO is employed who is of the most unsuitable kind (authoritarian type) there is a risk for rapid company death because he may tend to delay necessary measures to a too late stage due to faltering judgement because of defence mechanisms that prevent a realistic assessment of the situation.

If SOB- dominance is the cause, which I think mostly is the case, the decline of a company can most effectively be prevented through proper measures aimed at shifting from a dominance of  SOB-type managers to BEB-type manager dominance. This effect could be further enhanced by creating a BEB-supportive company culture.

The most effective way to revert the situation, would however be to use a method for developing BEB dominance in the employees. A technique that has solidly documentated effects in this respect is Transcendental Meditation (TM) and experience from companies using it confirms that it works well  in practice. See for example: “Performance in the workplace“.

Discussion

[This section is in a build-up phase, based on feed-back i got. The formulations are preliminary]

It may be objected that competition from new, better products, may be an important contributor to decline in some cases. No doubt this may be true, but on the other hand,  a vital company with strong financial means is likely to be well updated in this regard.

A creative (BEB-dominated) company is likely to be able to develop new products that keeps them “ahead of the pack”, provided the company has enough financial power to develop new competitive models or to switch to other innovative products . Steve Jobs of Apple computer I think is an excellent example of this when he used the Mac and Ipod experience for entering the mobile phone business in a situation when the computer section did not show a significant growth potential.

So the key issue is still mental (BEB/SOB) in this case – the ability  flexibly adapt to, or to forsee a change of the market situation – it is here that a creative and flexible BEB-dominated company has a great advantage over the conservative an uncreative SOB-dominated one.

I have experienced that in some cases when I have pointed out an obvious case of this kind, the people involved completely fail to understand, it is lika a mentally ill person who is unable to realize he is ill. I think this may be an ominous sign, that may indicate, according to my experience, a dangerous level of SOB dominance, because this brings about mental rigidity with a resistance to changing views and understandings even before fairly obvious signals. Psychological Defense Mechanisms that are active in the SOB condition are likely to contribute to an unrealistic appraisal of the situation, because they make people bagatelize, distort or ignore information that generates conscious or subconscious anxiety.

As BEB is possible to identify and to develop, I think this should be a major issue in all companies not only for preventing decline but for enabling continued and growing success because it depends on creativity, flexibility, realism and dynamism – that all are BEB-traits.

Addition oct 8 2011

Political parties run the same risk

For obvious reasons precisely the same transformation from  open democracy to totalitarian rule may occur in a political party, especially when its leader has achieved a ruling position in the country and it seems secure not to hide his totalitarian intentions any more. There are numerous examples of democratic parties whose leaders, when achieving a ruling position as a president or prime minister have developed totalitarian rule. In western Europe, where the democratic tradition is strong, it is more likely that this does not occur. In stead it is more likely that the party declines in an analogous way as an “overmature” business, losing its appeal due to lack of creativity and adaptability as a result of being abandoned by BEB people.

hr

Footnotes

Airforce experiences of SOB

In the 1970-ies I became involved in a project dealing with SOB cases in the Swedish Airforce. Their experience was that almost all flight crashes occurred because the pilot panicked. The very best psychological tests were unable to detect this weakness. So every year there was over 20 flight crashes due to “pilot errors”. A new test was developed, “Defense Mechanism Test ad modum Neumann”. It turned to be 100% effective. Since this test was introduced, flight crashes became very rare,  a few a decade and almost never due to pilot errors.

It is interesting to note that, out of 8-900 applicants, the airforce has had difficulties in finding sufficient numbers to fill the annual quota of 20 non-SOB combat pilot trainees.

The airforce tested the effect of Transcendental Meditation (TM) with DMT, and found that it had a remarkable ability to heal SOB.

For more see:

• “Defense Mechanism Test“.
• “Research on Transcendental Meditation (TM) at the Swedish Airforce“

Pitfalls in detecting SOB

Conclusion

Copyright 2011, Jaan Suurkula.

I remember a drastic example used to support this opinion. It was about experiences from chaotic war situations where the social structures had collapsed. It was observed that many usually well-adjusted people behaved in an appalling ruthless and hyperegoistic way, looting, stealing, battering etc. The philosophers took this as evidence for their social-context-related morality theory. However there is another, more likely explanation of this asocial behavior.

As described in the article “Survival-Oriented-Behavior” (SOB), the brain is wired so that when one feels threatened, primitive areas in the middle of the brain take over the control over ones behavior. It virtually becomes “dehumanized”, with the survival instinct as the key orchestrator of behavior.

In a pronounced SOB-state, that is elicited by such severe dangers as in a war situation, the person becomes hyperegoistically oriented at ensuring his own survival without caring about anybody else, in the worst case not even about the family. This brings about precicely the primitive, aggressive, ruthless and amoral behavior observed in war and other situations of great danger.

But it has also been observed that even under the greatest danger and stressful conditions some rare persons have been able to avoid dehumanization and have, through their humane, caring and calm demeanor, been able to calm and uplift the people around him.

This behavior, that we call “Balanced-Emphatic-Behavior” is the opposite to SOB. Evidently some people have the ability to resist even a high level of stress and so uphold BEB.

This pattern, including the ability to remain calm even under the most severe stress,  was already described in ancient Vedic scriptures as characteristic of the highest levels of human development. In modern times, the psycholgist Abraham Maslow was one of the first to rediscover this personality pattern which he called “self-actualization”. Brain research has found that this pattern appears when the prefrontal brain dominates behavior.

Some of its characteristics are:

Modern developmental psychology has followed up Abraham Maslows work and today the state of self-actualization, with characteristics as above, is well established.

It has been observed that people with damage in the frontal brain areas due to trauma or disease can drastically change their demeanor from more BEB style to SOB style. Some cases of well-adapted persons with frontal brain tumors have even turned ruthless and criminals. Damage to frontal brain areas is a is actually found in many criminals.

On the other hand, criminal people who have learnt a technique that effectively increases stress tolerance have turned compassionate. Their recidivism has decreased considerably. In one study of high security prisoners that were followed for 3 years after release, there was an almost 50% lower recidivism than among controls. This is the more remarkable as such people mostly are heavily entangled in criminal networks from where it is difficult to escape. Below you find a video with a statement of the chief physician of Oregon state prisons illustrating this point (inserted because I think you may find it hard to believe it):

Conclusion

An objection that some might have against any selection of leaders is that it is “undemocratic elitism”.

Undemocratic?

As clearly demonstrated in other posts, Survival-Oriented-Behavior (SOB) undoubtedly spells disaster. See especially “Economic crisis – impaired brain function a major cause?” and “The inability to cooperate on global warming“.

Mankind needs to decide wether it is wise to hold on to a democratic principle that allows virtually any person be appointed to a leading position in society irrespective of mental suitability. If you doubt that this is necessary, please read the two articles linked to above.

I think there is a democratic solution to this issue:

Grant the right to every person to apply for political or financial top positions. But introduce a requirement that they must undergo a test for suitability.

Already there are some limitations regarding eligibility to political positions in many countries (a common requirement is that a person must not have been convicted for a major crime). So this does not run counter to democratic tradition.

If this is solution is not accepted one has to ask oneself – what is more important – democracy at any cost or saving the society and the world from continued progress into an even worse situation than what has already been caused by SOB behavior?

Elitistic?

I completely agree about the dangers and unsuitability of endorsing elitism in the sense that some kind of self-elected “elite” declares itself most suitable to run a country or the economy. A dreadful example of this is the statement by David Rockefeller:

The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.

June 5, 1991, Bilderberger meeting in Baden Baden, Germany [Source: Dr. Dennis Cuddy, A Chronological History of the New World Order

This claim was especially absurd considering the key role this “elite” has played in causing the present serious world economic crisis through its irresponsible behavior, see “Economic crisis – impaired brain function a major cause?”.

The great difference is that I am proposing a democratic procedure for selecting persons especially suitable for top leadership. These persons would be able to prevent such serious world crises that have been brought about by exactly that kind of persons who would not be eligible through this selection procedure.

A consensus is required in society about the obvious fact that SOB persons are worse than unsuitable for top political, decision-maker and financial positions.

Considering the tremendous damage to the world that they already have caused in every respect there should not be any hesitation to agree upon the proposed principle that only psychologically suitable (non-SOB) persons should be allowed to occupy key positions.

A key factor is a more or less constant state of concious or subconscious anxiety. This anxiety is so uncomfortable that the person consciously and subconsciouly does everything possible to reduce it. We have mentioned the use of defense mechnisms (see “Stress and mind”) that makes the person subconsciously distort, belittle or ignore anxiety-provoking impressions.

To reduce anxiety there is also a strong need to increase the sense of security by seeking predictability in the life situation.

A most problematic predictability-increasing-strategy is Control-demanding behavior. This may cause a strong greed for power, because “being on top” increases the sense of security. The strong drive for control also brings about a craving for complete submission in subordinates. From this follows a tendency to favor authoritarian power-ideologies as a justification for ones own urge for power.

Some other expressions of predictability seeking behavior are (all need not be obvious):

• Resistance to unfamiliar or unconventional ideas.
• Strong allegiance to conventional norms.
• Tendency to be prejudiced.
• Intolerance to dissent among subordinates.
• Intolerance and aggression against unfamiliar behavior.
• “Either-or”- mentality.
• Preference for authoritarian beliefs and ideologies or extreme religious creeds.
• Suspiciousness (paranoia in the worst case).
• Preference for violence.

In electing top officials, it is important to ensure that clearly unsuitable persons are not chosen. The present nomination and election procedures are not suitable for this purpose. There are scientific methods that easily could manage that. So why not require every candidate to be tested before he is nominated?

There are strong reasons to consider this option, because stressful, so called “survival-oriented-behavior” (SOB) brings about bad judgment, lack of foresight and is associated with “psychological blinders” that limit or distort perception when the situation is experienced as threatening (see “Stress and mind”). This disturbance is very common and is not always apparent.

Objective assessment

It is possible to objectively assess the degree of survival-orientation including detecting “psychological blinders”, the defence mechanisms. For detecting them, there is a method developed for selecting Air Force pilots, the “Defence Mechanism Test” (DMT).

This test was developed because defence mechanisms are a major reason for crashes, as they make the person ignore or distort reality under pressure, for example ignoring a blinking red lamp or thinking it is in reality green. In Sweden, the frequency of Air Force flight crashes became almost zero after the introduction of this test.

Because of its reliability and effectiveness, it is now used for pilot selection in several countries. DMT is also being used for selecting top managers. It is obvious that using it for selecting “crash safe” presidents would benefit the Nation greatly.

The suitability of the president candidates must be assessed

It is absurd that United States, the most creative and technologically advanced country in the world, holds on to the outdated and unreliable method of selecting the president only on the basis of his ability to raise money, to make a good impression in the media and to debate well.

Of course, the presidential campaign should remain, but what I mean is that at the stage of nominating the presidential and vice presidential candidates, the nominees must be tested for suitability. Thereby it can be ensured that no unsuitable persons is nominated.

This is especially important now that the country faces an extremely serious economic crisis that requires a high level of intelligence, creativity and an excellent judgment enabling the president to assess and handle the very complex economic situation in a realistic and constructive way.

It is evident that it is of vital importance to exclude any candidate with significant indications of being prone to stressful behavior that incapacitates his ability to make balanced and intelligent decisions and predisposes for aggressive and emotionally unstable behavior that might unnecessarily precipitate major wars.

Considering this, I suggest that both Senators Barack Obama and McCain as well as their vice presidential candidates submit themselves to testing, and that the result is presented to the American people well before the presidential election.

For more, see the articles “Top leaders must be tested.

Signs of impaired brain function appear to be common in leaders involved in the financial crisis. The signs are typical for the effects of chronic stress, which suppresses higher brain centers responsible for intelligence, judgment, foresight, ethics and emotional balance.

It will be argued that this may have been a major contributory factor to the present world crisis.

The behavior of top financial and political leaders

Financial commentators describe the behavior of American bankers and financial institute leaders in a strikingly similar way. It struck me that the pattern is typical of stress-related brain dysfunction.

Some illustratory quotes (headings set by me):

[Gigantic fraud by a former NASDAQ chairman]

[Bernard Madoff's].. story that for decades he ran his gigantic fraud by himself is unbelievable…damage done to so many smaller investor/savers, so many pension funds, so many charities…Madoff, his own businesses aside, was a major figure in the world of investments, of stocks and bonds and securities and exchanges. If the former chairman of Nasdaq is a crook, whom do you trust?

Nicholas von Hoffman, a Pulitzer Price Author of 13 books, including “A Devils Dictionary of Business”.

____________________

[Crooks selling loans and doing accounting fraud in major banks]

“we find a perfect combination of financial and real estate fraud on a magnitude that helped establish some of America’s great founding fortunes, creating dynastic wealth that has survived down to the present day.”

Many of these loans are outright fraudulent. And they are being sold by crooks. Crooks who work for banks. Crooks who use accounting fraud .

Michael Hudson Economist, Wall street financial analyst. Research professor at the University of Missouri.

____________________

[Out of control greed, massive fraud and irresponsible investments caused the present crisis]

[The preseent crisis is the] result of out-of-control greed for easy profits. Massive fraud to get them…Knowing Fed moral hazard will cushion them if they do…Fueling a housing bubble. Outsized consumer debt, and irresponsible investments free from government oversight. Fraudulent ones involving multi-trillions of dollars…Partnering with government to make it easy. Risking a global economic meltdown as a result.

Stephen Lendman Financial analyst.

____________________

“I used to think of Wall Street as a financial center.
I now think of it as a crime scene.”
– Filmmaker Danny Schecter, Plunder (2009). Trailer here:

____________________

For more about the severe criminality of the Wall Street financial leaders as well the corruption of the control organs, see the additions in the end of this blog.

____________________

These quotes are representative of the widespread consensus among financial experts that criminally fraudulent actions at a large scale occurred in top financial circles. The quotes indicate  the presence of the following traits in the financial and governmental leaders involved in the activities that precipitated this crisis.

• irresponsibility,
• lack of foresight,
• dishonesty
• lack of empathy
• hyperegoistic greed

The behavior indicates impaired brain function due to stress

As explained in greater detail in my article “Stress and mind”, stress impairs the functioning of the brain to an important extent and “dehumanizes” people.

It suppresses the higher brain centers in the forebrain, that enable foresight, intelligence, and good judgment. Due to stress, the primitive midbrain centers govern behavior, leading to the following behavioral pattern (compare with the list above):

• irresponsible
• shortsighted
• dishonest
• unempathic
• hyperegoistic

An extreme form of egoism is insatiable greed for political power or money. An extreme form of this kind of behavior is called psychopathy. Actually, the callous ruthlessness, irresponsibility and dishonesty of the people involved here can hardly be found in others than mere psychopaths.

Chronic stress is very common

You may be surprised that the mentioned disturbance could be common in top leaders. But chronic stress is a very common problem.

Not until recently the real scope of chronic stress has been fully appreciated. Formerly it was believed that stress was mainly temporary, evoked by external factors, but the new insight is that the increase of the stress hormone level is continuos in many people. For example, it is now generally accepted in science that the major diseases are associated with chronic, persistent stress, including hypertension, where the connection is especially strong with 70% of all Americans having hypertension at the age of 70.

It is an established fact that persistent stress affects the brain so negatively that even anatomic changes have been found, for example in the metabolic syndrome (associated with hypertension and adult-onset diabetes) and the post-traumatic-stress-syndrome.

So it is not, after all, surprising that the behavior of top leaders and decision-makers indicate the presence of a dehumanizing brain dysfunction caused by chronic stress. What makes it especially serious in the case of leaders is that this brain disturbance suppresses the part of the brain responsible for intelligence, creativity, foresight and judgment. This appears as “functional holes” – inactive areas in this important part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex), see Brain imaging picture. Moreover the disturbed judgment is further aggravated by defence mechanisms that impair the ability to perceive the situation realistically, see “Stress and  Mind“.

Conclusion

It seems reasonable to suggest, that brain dysfunction due to stress has been a major reason why top political and financial leaders have developed and upheld a fraudulent financial system that was doomed to failure in the end.

Defence mechanisms and bad judgment may be the reason why severe and well founded warnings from competent experts like William R White, Chief economist at  the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) since the beginning of this decade (for example Securing sustainable price stability: should credit come back from the wilderness? – July 2004) the economist Michael Hudson in 2003 (The Coming Financial Reality) and Nouriel Roubini in 2006 (New York Times, Dr Doom).

Especially remarkable is the neglect of Mr White’s warnings.  As the chief economist of BIS, the  ”Bank of central banks” Mr. White was the topmost authority  in the international banking world. His warnings about an imminent crisis and his demands for increased regulation grew increasingly sharp since the beginning of this decade and were repeated with increasing emphasis every year. They were very well underpinned as BIS had statistics directly available from all central banks. Yet he was ignored by the leaders of the financial and banking world. Afterwards it has been noted that his predictions of the crisis were stunningly correct. See the article “Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis: The Man Nobody Wanted to Hear“.

Ignoring serious and repeated warnings of the world’s foremost banking expert indicates that the world top financial leaders had pronounced defence mechanisms, seriously bad judgment and a serious degree of irresponsibility – that is,  signs of pronounced chronic stress-induced Survival-Oriented-Behavior.

Therefore, all present and future political and financial leaders in the world must be tested for the presence of SOB, so that only persons are selected who are free from this serious disturbance. Only so can we ensure that key leaders will be able to sustain intelligent, responsible, empathic, realistic and foresightful leadership even under the severe stress of the now evolving very serious world crisis.

Addition Oct 17 2009

A recent book by Danny Shechter, “The Crime of Our Time” amply documents the criminal actions of the Wall Street financial people.

Quotes from a review by Stephen Lendman:

“..according to former high-level government and Wall Street insider Catherine Austin Fitts in describing a “financial coup d’etat” that includes inflating multiple market bubbles, pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active market intervention by Washington and the Fed that lets powerful insiders game the system, commit massive fraud, and be able to transfer trillions of public wealth to themselves, then get open-ended bailouts when the inevitable crisis surfaces.”

The Crimes of Wall Street

Schechter names many, including: – “Fraud and control frauds;– Insider trading;– Theft and conspiracy;– Misrepresentation;– Ponzi schemes;– False accounting;– Embezzling;– Diverting funds into obscenely high salaries and obscene bonuses;– Bilking investors, customers and homeowners;– Conflicts of interest;– Mesmerizing regulators;– Manipulating markets;– Tax frauds;– Making loans and then arranging that they fail;– Engineering phony financial products; (and)– Misleading the public.

According to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, over 730,000 instances of suspected wrongdoing, or 13% more than in 2007, including a 23% rise in mortgage fraud to almost 65,000 incidents.

By the numbers, they amount to:

– $994 billion in 2008 losses or a median loss of $175,000;

– financial institutions or government agencies accounting for 27% of the total;

Examples include “shady lending practices….deepening debt, exploiting customers, overcharging borrowers with arbitrary late fees, and imposing other hidden costs that bilk consumers.”

Source: Book Review by S. Lendman.

Addition february 2011

Rolling Stones magazine: “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”

This well researched  story complements the picture of Shechter quoted above.  It is reveals the corruption of the regulators and control organs enabling the Wall Street criminals to continue committing billion dollar crimes unpunished.  Not only the Wall Street, but the federal justice, regulative and control organs (SEC) apparently are populated by people with impaired brain function, enabling them to heartlessly disregard the severe human suffering of millions of people thrown into poverty through  these crimes.

A few excerpts:

“Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them”

“Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. “

“But a veritable mountain of evidence indicates that when it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals.”

“”Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it’s a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats.

“You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass.”

“In fact, [this corrupt system is such as to] let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. “

“But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They’re crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let’s steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy.”

Source: Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? by Matt Taibbi, Feb 16, 2011. The essence of it you find in this video video interview with Taibbi along with a transcript.