Professor Robert Sutton has a new book called “The No Asshole Rule” in which he argues that assholes are detrimental to the businesses that employ them because they poison the work environment, decrease productivity, and cause good people to quit.

According to Sutton, these people are characterized by two main qualities:

1. They deliberately annoy people and go out of their way to make others feel bad
2. They mostly pick on people who are less powerful than they are

Sutton also distinguishes between what he calls “temporary assholes” and “certified assholes.”

While most of us have probably been guilty of bad behavior at one point or another, a “certified asshole” is someone who exhibits a consistent pattern of annoying behavior over a long period of time.

The main point of the book is that business need to wake up and realize that jerks need to be dealt with no matter how much they may contribute individually, because over the long-run, they do more harm than good.

I’ve often wondered if jerks, bullies, creeps and other “certified assholes” actually enjoy being that way, or they behave this way for some other reason.

While I’m sure that some of their behavior can be explained by lack of impulse control, anger management issues, or lashing out at others due to low self-esteem and insecurity, Yahoo reported about new research that concluded some people actually enjoy provoking angry expressions in others.

“It’s kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for,” study co-author Oliver Schultheiss, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, said in a prepared statement.

He said the findings may help explain why some people are so fond of teasing.

It appears that some people do enjoy being assholes, even if they are not consciously aware of it