Wen/Tan Hao, a columnist of Sina Finance
Of the seven characteristics of great investors, five actually coincide with the characteristics of psychopaths. High level psychopaths often cause trouble for themselves, while low level psychopaths are prone to anxiety. If the state is adjusted to a certain value in the middle, it is likely to occupy an advantage in society.
Of the seven characteristics of great investors, five actually coincide with the characteristics of psychopaths. A question was raised last week, Is Buffett a psychopath ？
Before answering, let's review that Kevin Dutton, a world-class authoritative expert in psychiatry, once summed up the unique skills of psychopaths into seven categories - 1. ruthlessness; 2. Charm; 3. Focus; 4. Perseverance; 5. Fearless; 6. Mindfulness; 7. Action.
In the last column, investment guru Mark just talked about the seven characteristics of great investors he thought.
So, is Buffett a psychopath? Let's play a game of connecting the seven traits of great investors that Mark said and the seven traits of psychopaths that Kevin summarized.
The first characteristic of a great investor is the ability to buy stocks decisively when others are panicking and sell stocks when others are blindly optimistic. Please see: the No. 1 trait of psychopathic people is "ruthlessness" - greed when others are afraid, fear when others are greedy, which means not being infected by public emotions, which is a highly unsympathetic ability.
The second characteristic of a great investor is that a great investor is a person who is extremely obsessed with the game and has a strong desire to win.
Please see: The third trait of psychopathic people is "concentration". Most psychopathic people have a kind of concentration that will never stop until they reach their goals.
The fourth trait of great investors is their innate sense of risk based on common sense.
Many facts have proved that psychopathic people often have an extraordinary sense of smell. Psychologist Angela Booker once did an experiment. She distributed the Psychiatric Self Test Form to 47 male college students and divided them into high and low groups according to the results. Then she asked 12 volunteers to walk along the corridor and record their gait. Some of these people have been hurt, some have not.
Then Booker asked 47 college students to watch the 12 videos and asked them to rate the vulnerability of each target on a scale from 1 to 10.
The experimental results show that people with high scores are better at judging others' weaknesses than those with low scores. Later, Booker went to prison to do this test for real mental patients, and the results showed that their judgment was more accurate.
This is a natural sense of smell.
The fifth characteristic of great investors is that great investors have absolute confidence in their own ideas. For example, Buffett insists not to join in the crazy Internet craze even when facing a lot of criticism.
Look at the No. 4 trait of psychopaths, "perseverance". They have the ability to follow their own path without looking left or right.
The seventh characteristic of great investors is their ability to keep their investment ideas unchanged in the process of investment.
Please look at the 5th trait "fearlessness" and the 6th trait "mindfulness" of the mentally ill. In fact, psychopaths don't care how others see themselves. Their anxiety level is far lower than that of ordinary people.
After finishing this online game, you must have a surprising discovery - five of the seven characteristics of great investors are in line with the characteristics of psychopaths.
Would you believe it was just a coincidence?
In fact, perhaps we should re recognize the phenomenon of psychopathology.
Lilinfeld, the inventor of the Special Quality Scale of Mental Illness, believes that mental illness is a pedigree. If we regard it as an extension of normal personality, then logically speaking, mental illness itself is a scalar. Under certain circumstances, it may bring advantages.
And I want to introduce another interesting research. In 2010, three scientists, including Scott Lilliffe, made a survey on each biographer of the US president. The results showed that many American presidents showed obvious psychopathic characteristics, led by Kennedy and Clinton.
Sociologist John Ray said that the extremely low and high level of mental illness are not the best state, and the middle level is the most adaptable.
High level psychopaths often cause trouble for themselves, while low level psychopaths are prone to anxiety. If the state is adjusted to a certain value in the middle, it is likely to occupy an advantage in society.
From the writing up to now, let's look at Mark's seven characteristics of great investors, which mainly rely on talent and childhood cultivation, and cannot be learned after adulthood. I don't agree with that.
Examples from surgeons, marines, bomb disposal experts and other industries show that your psychopathic level can be trained the day after tomorrow.
This means that the one who holds the tuning knob is not only God's hand, but also your own hand.
(The author of this article introduces: Executive editor of Financial Weekly, see more original and recommended essence content from China's top investors, please pay attention to find the WeChat official account RIH118.)
