More women psychopaths likely out there than previously thought: study

New York: Studies now say that it is wrong to assume most psychopaths are men, because there must be many more female psychopaths out there.

Dr Clive Boddy, a professor at Anglia Ruskin University, specializing in corporate psychopathy, challenges the ration of 6 to 1, suggesting way more women psychopaths could be prowling around.

‘People generally attribute psychopathic characteristics to males rather than to females,’ Dr Boddy said in a report.

Based on his understanding, female psychopaths could be found at the ratio of 1.2 to 1.

‘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 labelled as such, even when they should be,’ he was quoted as saying .

A lack of empathy and guilt, antisocial behaviour, frequent lying, ruthlessness, narcissism, and manipulation constitute the characteristics of a psychopath.

‘Psychopaths are after money, power and control,’ said Dr Boddy.

However, when it comes to female psychopaths, their behavoiur seems to be ‘subtle and less obvious’ compared to male ones, hence they are not easily recognized, according Dr Boddy.

‘A small but mounting body of evidence describes female psychopaths as prone to expressing violence verbally rather than physically, with the violence being of a relational and emotional nature, more subtle and less obvious than that expressed by male psychopaths,’ he added further.

Dr Clive Boddy, a leading academic in the field, pointed out drawbacks in the psychopathy test of self-report psychopathy scale (LSRP), which seemingly ‘more geared towards men’.

Where its first part looks at emotional detachment, selfishness, lack of empathy, and manipulation, the second part focuses on violence and antisocial behaviour giving rise to a gender-specific bias, according to a report in NDTV.

‘The secondary element, and the measures for it, were largely based on studies of criminals who were in jail at the time and psychopathic - so the feeling is, among researchers these days, that those measures are just not suited to identifying female psychopathy,’ he was quoted as saying.