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Brain-Damaged Psychopaths Make Best Financial
Traders
 LONDON (Reuters) – "Wanted:
psychopaths to make a killing in the markets."
Such an advert will not be appearing in the world’s newspapers any time
soon, but it may have a ring of truth after research revealed the best
wheeler-dealers could well be "functional psychopaths."
A team of U.S. scientists has found the emotionally impaired are more willing
to gamble for high stakes and that people with brain damage may make good
financial decisions, the Times newspaper reported Monday.
In a study of investors’ behavior 41 people with normal IQs were asked
to play a simple investment game. Fifteen of the group had suffered lesions
on the areas of the brain that affect emotions.
The result was those with brain damage outperformed those without.
The scientists found emotions led some of the group to avoid risks even
when the potential benefits far outweighed the losses, a phenomenon known
as myopic loss aversion.
One of the researchers, Antione Bechara, an associate professor of neurology
at the University of Iowa, said the best stock market investors might plausibly
be called "functional psychopaths."
from Reuters
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