A dear friend who loved animals was a veterinary tech, who'd switched from pet clinic work, to a university-affiliated research lab. She died suddenly, very young, it seems probably due to experience as a vet tech at the lab.
Some of this article sounds familiar, including (near the end) the sneaking off to find somewhere to cry. Even though she was pretty tough.
I don't recall her mentioning troubles related to the animals, other than some physical pain related to some of the repetitive movements handling small cages, and being bothered if other techs didn't do the animal care properly.
She did have problems with a clique of other vet techs bullying her. Though some techs were nice, and the supervising vet and the head of the lab were nice to her, and mostly supportive, other than not managing to fix the nastiness problem.
Going only from one person's experience, and this short article:
1. Can the nature of the lab vet tech work lead to, or select for, nastiness in some people?
2. Do labs let some bad behavior slide, due to the difficulty of hiring (given that the work can be rough, and the pay is poor)?
1) Vet techs have been some of the kindest, most patient people I have met. They are humans, which means some of them are nasty, but between the compassion fatigue, the relatively low pay for the amount of training, etc., I don't think "nastiness" is selected for.
2) Difficulty hiring is one. Difficulty firing is another, if they're at a state university. But there is a national shortage of these types of technicians, and it's not a job that can't get done.
A close family member of mine runs a small animal hospital which routinely hires high school students as cage cleaners and dog walkers. Animal comfort is top priority, and the standard of comfort is very high. For instance, employees are expected to learn how to read and heed animal body language, and to control their own body language and voices to be as non-threatening and friendly as possible.
Very few new hires have any inkling about any of this when they start, so there's a period of a few weeks where they're forgiven a lot. It's a big ask, because a lot of it is new habits, and some of it can be strange new thinking, too. But ultimately the hires who can't adapt are fired.
Consequently a lot of the hires end up studying animal science or veterinary medicine later on. My point is: the nature of the work that comes before the lab tech work can have an impact, too.
Hard to say. We'd probably get better national leaders, but we'd have a big shortage of surgeons so more people would die from medical problems requiring surgery.
I say this purely to foment thought, but think about it, has anyone identified why we even have psychopathy among us? And why many of them are so successful?
Until we do, we're being just as self-indulgent as they are when we get on our high horses with utterances like "psychopaths bad".
Your making an assumption that this is a selected-for trait. I could just as easily substitute many hereditary disorders.
As to why they are successful: cooperation is a more successful strategy than individualism, but cheating is a more successful strategy than cooperation if you can get away with it. Our societies have been largely shaped by cheaters for their benefit so they get away with it a lot, right up until the guillotine comes out.
About the same. Many lawyers and doctors have dark-triad tendencies, which actually aid them. I mean, the original article is about the crippling emotional toll of what many would argue is a necessary evil.
put it this way, the vast majority of people have difficulty reasoning about emotional topics; I bet psychopaths have no limitation of the sort.
my question to you would be, what if we are in an equilibrium? Perhaps just enough psychopaths exist to “GSD“, but not enough to cause too many problems…
Some of this article sounds familiar, including (near the end) the sneaking off to find somewhere to cry. Even though she was pretty tough.
I don't recall her mentioning troubles related to the animals, other than some physical pain related to some of the repetitive movements handling small cages, and being bothered if other techs didn't do the animal care properly.
She did have problems with a clique of other vet techs bullying her. Though some techs were nice, and the supervising vet and the head of the lab were nice to her, and mostly supportive, other than not managing to fix the nastiness problem.
Going only from one person's experience, and this short article:
1. Can the nature of the lab vet tech work lead to, or select for, nastiness in some people?
2. Do labs let some bad behavior slide, due to the difficulty of hiring (given that the work can be rough, and the pay is poor)?