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Psychology and Psychopathology of White collar crime

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Organized Crime, Corruption and Crime Prevention

Abstract

After a historical examination of the concept of white collar crime, the authors highlight that severe psychopathic traits can be found in white-collar criminals, often studied only by analyzing their crimes, and not by assessing the people who committed crimes. Approaching white-collar crime from the personological perspective enable us to understand how certain individual traits (arrogance, love of risk, disregard for the damage inflicted to the next, manipulative tendencies, narcissism and others) can be ecological both for the psychopathic subject and—on the short term—for specific business contexts. Corporate Psychopathy is the criminological and personological construct embracing such behaviors.

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Correspondence to Isabella Merzagora .

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Merzagora, I., Pennati, A., Travaini, G. (2014). Psychology and Psychopathology of White collar crime. In: Caneppele, S., Calderoni, F. (eds) Organized Crime, Corruption and Crime Prevention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01839-3_20

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