Overview
Recognising the signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder in the workplace is crucial for protecting teams and culture. Common traits include manipulation, deceit, irresponsibility, and lack of empathy. This article outlines ten signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder, its impact on the workplace, and why professional help and legal support may be necessary.
Introduction
As an employer or employee, it is essential to spot the signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). While only a mental health professional can diagnose the condition, being aware of its behaviours can help safeguard individuals and organisations. ASPD is a serious disorder marked by a persistent disregard for the rights of others, manipulative behaviour, and an absence of empathy or remorse. In the workplace, these patterns can disrupt teams, lower morale, and damage organisational culture if left unaddressed. This disorder is associated with a lack of empathy and remorse, as well as challenging interpersonal relationships.
10 Most Common Signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder
- Persistent Disregard for the Law: Individuals with ASPD often engage in behaviours that are illegal or against societal norms. They may repeatedly commit crimes or acts that violate the rights of others.
- Deceitfulness: Habitual lying, using aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure is a common sign. Deception is often a central trait.
- Impulsivity: People with ASPD tend to act impulsively without considering the consequences of their actions. They may make decisions that are risky or harmful without thinking them through.
- Irritability and Aggressiveness: Frequent physical fights, assaults, or other aggressive behaviours are expected. They may display a quick temper and be prone to violent outbursts.
- Reckless Disregard for Safety: This can involve taking unnecessary risks without concern for their safety or the safety of others, such as reckless driving or substance abuse.
- Consistent Irresponsibility: They often exhibit a pattern of irresponsibility, such as failing to honour financial obligations, consistently meeting work commitments, or fulfilling personal responsibilities.
- Lack of Remorse: Individuals with ASPD often show little or no guilt or remorse for the harm they cause others. They may be indifferent or rationalise their actions.
- Difficulty Sustaining Long-Term Relationships: Because of their behaviour, individuals with ASPD often struggle to maintain healthy, long-term relationships. Their interactions are usually superficial and exploitative.
- Lack of Empathy: A key characteristic is a marked inability to empathise. They may have difficulty understanding or caring about the feelings and needs of others.
- Charm or Manipulation: Some individuals with ASPD can be superficially charming or charismatic, using this charm to manipulate others for their benefit. This behaviour is often self-serving and lacks genuine emotion.
What to Look Out For In The Workplace
A person with Antisocial Personality Disorder will display signs of being erratic and unreliable at work. It is essential to protect yourself from discrimination and manipulation. These employees can harm productivity and the corporate culture that has been established within the company. The Henry Law Firm is an employment law firm based in Ohio, and you may need to consider contacting them if you encounter problems with employees.
An employee with Antisocial Personality Disorder can ruin a team, department, division or entire company because they feed off manipulation and thrive on destruction.
Personality Traits
These employees are often perceived as charming and intelligent when it suits them, but they can also come across as cold and aloof to others. They can be well-liked within the company but not have any real friends. They struggle to connect with people on a personal level. Conversely, they are kind to strangers and know how to say the right things at the right time.
Since they cannot empathise with others, they lack emotion and may laugh off situations. They often do not remain in the same job for too long and do not have long-standing, loving personal relationships as they feel no guilt, shame, or love.
They appear harmless until someone or something gets in their way or attempts to expose their self-seeking behaviour.
Lies and Risks
An employee with Antisocial Personality Disorder lies and speaks badly behind other people’s backs. These lies generally have no master plan but are meant to show how much they can get away with. They are quickly bored and, therefore, play mind games and take risks to stir things up. They make repeated mistakes on purpose to make things difficult for others. Additionally, they often arrive late for meetings and project deadlines. They struggle to control their anger and can have high anxiety levels.
Manipulation
They only worry about themselves and are highly manipulative to their benefit. Additionally, they use their appearance or sex for self-promotion and often boast about their wild sex life. They may even commit illegal acts for the sake of amusement. Their life seems to have no plan. They also make threatening remarks about harming others or themselves. Suicidal threats should always be taken seriously, but sometimes, these employees use these to alter the behaviour of others to their benefit, as they have no intention of following through.
They have big egos and love to share their insights, but they are never interested in advice from others.
Most of these employees are never clinically diagnosed, as they blend in with society even though they struggle with mental health issues. If these issues affect the working environment and other employees, they must be documented and investigated to prevent long-term harm.
