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A leading Australian expert on emotional intelligence believes Lance Armstrong is a classic "corporate psychopath" who has hustled and bullied his way to the top his whole life.

According to Sydney-based lecturer and author Chris Golis, the characteristics of a corporate psychopath are their charm, their lack of natural empathy, their ability to deceive and their view that life is a game with winners and losers - and that they are winners.

"Typically they are manipulative, lack ethics, desire power and are very active players in corporate politics," Mr Golis explains.

"They meet someone and they say, 'what's in it for me? How can I make money from this person?'"

Mr Golis says well known examples of the character type in the corporate sphere include businessman Alan Bond and the late Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin. But he says top sportsmen often exhibit the characteristics too, and Lance Armstrong appears to fall smack bang into the category.

"Corporate psychopaths have a phenomenal desire to win or to make money and the two often go together, of course.

"Obviously Lance had an incredibly strong desire to win bike races, but he also very much has the desire to make money through the deals he signed left, right and centre."

Mr Golis says corporate psychopaths are not all bad. "They're wonderful rogues and fantastic company. They're hustlers, they're the ones who get deals done and the world would be more dull without them.

"The problem is, many of them have no moral compass."

Many people are now asking whether Armstrong has actually come to believe the lies he has repeated so frequently and convincingly over the years.

Chris Golis doesn't think so. He believes Armstrong likely knows he's lying, but that he has justified those lies to himself and simply can't bring himself to back down.

"People like Lance Armstrong divide the world into winners and losers. Then when someone raises doubts, they reconcile their actions internally by saying 'yeah, I'm doing that but that's what we winners have to do."

If there's one piece of good news for Armstrong, it's that corporate psychopaths can mellow as they get older.

"It can happen," Chris Golis says. "You do get these people suddenly working hard and becoming benefactors. By the time Lance is 60 I would say yeah, he may able to show some remorse."