Study: Female psychopaths are surprisingly common

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom — While the word psychopath usually conjures up images of knife-wielding attackers and masked assailants for most people, not all psychopaths are serial killers. The vast majority simply blend in with the rest of society, all the while masking their cold and calculating true nature. Now, new research set for presentation at Cambridge may just disprove yet another psychopath falsity. Most depictions and popular examples of psychopaths in the media are male, but the study argues female psychopaths are up to five times more common than currently believed.

Dr. Clive Boddy, an expert in corporate psychopathy from Anglia Ruskin University, is set to present his findings at the Cambridge Festival. While current estimates tell us male psychopaths outnumber females by roughly six to one, Dr. Boddy believes prior studies have failed to properly identify female psychopaths. This is in large part due to solely basing profiles around criminal and male psychopaths.

Dr. Boddy posits the characteristics of female psychopaths are quite different from males. He also notes gender bias likely plays a role in the under-reporting, as society tends to ignore perceived male traits when they’re displayed by women.

According to his latest research, the real ratio of male-female psychopathy may be roughly 1.2:1, or up to five times higher than previously estimated. He reached this conclusion by using measures of primary psychopathy, or excluding psychopathy’s antisocial behavioral characteristics and instead concentrating on its core elements.

Paranoid wpman with psychosis
Women who are psychopaths are less likely to be labeled as such even if they display key characteristics. (© New Africa – stock.adobe.com)

Referencing research pertaining to corporate psychopaths and how they operate in high-achieving roles in workplaces, Dr. Boddy explains female psychopaths tend to be more manipulative than males, use different techniques to create good impressions, and use deceit and sexually seductive behavior to gain social and financial advantages more often than male psychopaths.

“People generally attribute psychopathic characteristics to males rather than to females. So even when females display some of the key traits associated with psychopathy – such as being insincere, deceitful, antagonistic, unempathetic and lacking in emotional depth – because these are seen as male characteristics they may not be labeled as such, even when they should be,” Boddy says in a media release.

“Also, female psychopaths tend to use words, rather than violence, to achieve their aims, differing from how male psychopaths tend to operate. If female psychopathy expresses differently, then measures designed to capture and identify male, criminal, psychopaths may be inadequate at identifying female non-criminal, psychopaths,” he continues. “Female psychopaths, while not as severely psychopathic or as psychopathic as often as males are, have nevertheless been underestimated in their incidence levels and are therefore more of a potential threat to business and society than anyone previously suspected.”

“This has implications for the criminal justice system because current risk management decisions involving partners and children may be faulty. It also has implications for organizational leadership selection decisions because female leaders cannot automatically be assumed to be more honest, caring and concerned with issues such as corporate social responsibility.”

Dr. Boddy’s talk is scheduled for Saturday, March 16th at ARU’s campus in East Road, Cambridge, and will also be available to attend virtually.


Comments

  1. The lesbians and asexuals are not the crazy ones. It’s the hetero females that have to be crazy to risk their lives by mating with a male. Even if they survive childbirth unscathed, the female’s remodeled brain often makes them into a different kind of antisocial person.

  2. You dimwits didn‘t publish my comments, which provoked people into thinking deeper on this subject and to see important connections it raises. As such, you are contributing to psychopaths getting a pass and have metaphorically and literally blood on your hands. You are enabling this blight. I am appalled at your lack of ethics. But it was predictable and, therefore, not surprising. Nevertheless, if we were living in ancient Greece, I would have you ostracised for your disregard and the harm you help bring on others.

  3. The mother of my child.. oh oh oh, when the child came, nothing was good on me anymore. Wasnt even able to see my own administration. Pushed on all the buttons she thought are on me to make me irritatable. Then you rage, and it was a issue, but if you are intentionally are pushed again everyday.. and then she makes a lot of fairy horror tales and tells them to organizations, so she gets “help” to leave from me, with the child. “because she is the mother” ..Never been able to see the child normally. She just went to other organizations. The same bullshit storys. After discovering her fairy tales i wrote my view on the situations she accused me from, I just said what was true and not and why, and that the mother is making her own fullfilling prophecy. So the accuses where gone. And suddenly they all backed off.. But untill to this day it isnt managable to see my kid anymore. That is where a system fails. If the victim is not a victim, and its als backwards.. all those stupid organisations suddenly are gone… and the child as well. Which are run by a lot of women..

  4. Seems to me someone forgot the age old saying that ‘Hell knoweth no fury like a woman scorned’ and the humans are by far the most intelligent and dominant species of life on the planet and that is primarly attributed to the survival instincts of the human female. She successfully had and raised children and they are at the top.

    With the complete loss of every female with a brain reading and many men seeking a woman, and with that their possible end, and yes she can put an end to a man and she doesn’t need a .45 in here hand to do it either, I wonder how many hours are left until this place is no longer publishing this attention seeking articles. Men are allowed to live only because women allow it. It’s good to remember it if you can right after remembering that life itself is always truthfully most important, whether it chooses to needlessly take life or to honestly care and protect it.

    1. Sorry about the typos. The correct sentences should be

      ‘in her hand to do it either’ and ‘attention seeking article’

      And another way to word it is, the human female is the most dominant life form to ever walk this planet.

      The saying, ‘only women know women, and they all hate each other’, is proved false. The paragraph above settles that one.

    2. Remember, people are not psychopaths.
      We are not doctors. We practice medicine.
      John is not a bad boy. He did a bad thing.
      The dog is not evil. It has a disease.

      Everyone is Truthfully Most Important because Life is always Truthfully Most Important.

      When semantics are thrown around like that It instills identity disorder in people. Many people actually do believe that they are these very things that they do and that is absolutely not true amd can never be true because we cannot say ‘family is most important’ or ‘quality of life’ is most important’ without life.

      It’s not open to negotiation. Anyone at all attempting to dismiss that truth as correct while simultaneously claiming to represent life’s truthful interests loses any possibility of ever having genuine honest integrity going forward forever because they can only learn through consequences going forward after dismissing that truth because they can never be shared a higher truth. As we all learned on the train…. consequences alone are not ever good enough to properly represent life of any kind in any capacity. Not one’s own or even a bug. You who have read have each been freely shared the authority to judge yourselves guilty of eternal soullessness. Please choose well. Choose to honestly care about life and truth. There are no do-overs that can ever be possible. You can never again be shared a higher truth. Thank you and lots of love to yours and you.

  5. Autism spectrum disorder and ADHD have the same problem… Women are under diagnosed because the metrics used are designed for men.
    It’s an interesting puzzle because on the one hand men and women aren’t as different as we like to think, but the symptoms are different because they aren’t the same either.

  6. It certainly appears the people responsible for moderation here have judged themselves guilty of eternal soullessness, but they are still Truthfully Most Important. Unfortunately, if correct, any possibility of them having genuine honest integrity going forward has been lost forever.

  7. This has implications for the criminal justice system because current risk management decisions involving partners and children may be faulty

    This is 100% accurate. The courts are making decisions that are way out of line and skewed so badly. I am a victim of a horrific act that I don’t care to detail here but police were called and it ruined my life. She made everything up, she was cheating and lying like crazy so calling the police on me was her way out as I discovered everything. The way I was treated by police and the courts was shocking.

  8. I wrote a book on psychopaths, it’s on Amazon, nobody reads it, never promoted, etc… I figure that the origin of psychopathy is simply when infants fail the very well documented stage of development wherein they discover their feelings. That can happen in any environment and explains why psychos can come from a really good home. After that they make up a personality based on feedback and that explains the differing personalities of the males and females. Their main observable characteristics are slow blink rate, inability to read facial expressions and complete lack of empathy. Regardless of what any “experts” say, with practice one can recognize them practically at first sight. I love to watch for them when shopping: I spot one by way of the seeming sense of entitlement, I keep an eye on them and voila! They shoplift! It’s a good training ground for recognizing them quickly


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