More women may be psychopaths than previously thought, expert says

New research suggests there might be more female psychopaths about

Anglia Ruskin University's Dr Clive Boddy argues that the assessment as to whether someone is a psychopath is skewed towards male qualities, whereas female psychopaths are more subtle.

“Psychopaths are after money, power and control,” Dr Boddy told The Guardian.

“The behaviour of female psychopaths seems to be subtle enough and less obvious than male psychopaths and therefore they’re not recognised as much,” he added.

"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."

One problem in particular is with the Levenson self-report psychopathy scale (LSRP).

LSRP focuses initially on how detached, selfish, uncaring and manipulative a person is, with the second part of the test looking at antisocial behaviour and violent tendencies.

“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.”

Estimates consider there to be a 10:1 ratio of male to female psychopaths, but Boddy's research, which uses only the intial part of LSRP, claims it is much closer.

“It’s almost one to one,” he says.

“Estimates [using the first part of the LSRP suggest] there are about 23% of men who, although they’re not categorically psychopathic, have enough of the traits to be problematic for society,” Boddy explained.

However, his research discovered that many of the same traits are present in women too.

“Around 12% to 13% of females have enough of those traits to be potentially problematic,” he said, talking of his survey of women white-collar workers.