Are the world’s financial markets at the mercy of ‘corporate psychopaths’ seeking personal gain? It’s a question that Mensa member Dr Clive Boddy will be addressing in his talk on 22 March at this year’s Cambridge Festival.

Presenting new research undertaken since his 2011 paper The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis – in which he discussed the impact of certain individuals in the 2008 global financial crisis – Clive will explore the depths of corporate psychopathy and the lengths some people might go to for their own benefit.

Clive’s talks are well received at the annual festival, which features a mix of online and in-person events covering the breadth of world-leading and pioneering research under way in Cambridge. And this subject has chimed before with audiences keen to know more about corporate psychopathy, and who may even have experienced it in the workplace.

Clive’s presentation will include analysis of recent surveys illustrating whether the psychopathic and the non-psychopathic among us are willing to deal in financial derivatives to earn a bonus even when this might result in severe global financial damage for others.

Current literature suggests that, prior to the last global financial crisis, at least one corporate bank used a psychopathy measure to recruit new employees. Clive will discuss whether corporate banks, and those who govern them, should in the interests of financial probity, ethics and stability ensure that the highly psychopathic are screened out of rather than into corporate banks and the financial services sector.

Currently deputy head of the School of Management at Anglia Ruskin University, Clive has been researching the impact of psychopaths in the workplace since 2005. His groundbreaking work on corporate psychopaths was initially subject to rejection, due to widespread disbelief that psychopaths could even exist in the corporate sector. However, he was the first researcher to establish their existence in a quantitative scientific manner and the concept of the corporate psychopath is now firmly established.

Tickets to Clive’s in-person event, ‘Would corporate psychopaths in financial services cause another global financial crisis for personal gain?’ on 22 March are available via the Cambridge Festival website and are expected to sell quickly. A live, online version will also be available to watch.

Find out more at www.festival.cam.ac.uk