You might expect to encounter a psychopath in a law office or managing a hedge fund, or perhaps in an operating theatre.
Law, finance and medicine are often seen as favourable professions for those who have little capacity to feel guilt, embarrassment or compassion – and some research backs this notion up. But what about in a therapist’s office?
In a small study from Tasmania, a number of people in the welfare sector reported encountering coworkers who met many of the criteria for psychopathy, and who often bullied them and colleagues.
It’s a surprising finding in a field that prioritises compassion and empathy, two traits a psychopath lacks by definition. Also surprising was that the majority of these potential psychopaths were women.
The study comes from Dr Fiona Girkin, a consultant in psychopathic female behaviour, and grew from research she conducted while getting a PhD in management at Curtin University in Australia.
Girkin worked in Tasmania’s welfare sector for over 20 years and says she encountered coworkers who she believes displayed a number of psychopathic traits, and heard similar stories from others in the field.
It got her thinking about female psychopathy, which some studies suggest presents differently than in men, with less overt aggression and an emphasis on tactics like emotional manipulation and relational aggression.
Girkin’s study, published in the Proceedings of the 5th International Developments in Applied Psychology and Business Management Conference, and coauthored with Dr Sharyn Curran, a senior lecturer in the School of Management and Marketing at Curtin University, draws from interviews with 13 people working in Tasmania’s welfare industry.
Eleven of them said they’d met at least one person who displayed eight or more psychopathic traits like lying, a lack of remorse or a refusal to take responsibility.
Some reported leaving jobs or sitting in their cars crying for hours because of interactions with these coworkers. Others left the welfare sector entirely.
“I had a number of women saying that they tried to take their own lives as a result of the experience,” Girkin says.
In Girkin’s study, participants identified 36 women and 11 men who acted in ways that met criteria for psychopathy. Girkin says it highlights a lack of attention on female psychopathy, which she argues can have severe impacts in the workplace and beyond.
A lack of research on female psychopaths could mean women displaying problematic behaviours are more likely to go unnoticed, causing harm with little chance of repercussions.
It raises a troubling question: are there more psychopaths than we realise?
Finding a psychopath
Not all psychopaths are violent criminals. In fact, most aren’t. Psychopathy is defined by a number of traits, including short-lived emotions, a lack of remorse, low empathy, manipulativeness and pathological lying that can lead someone to act in ways that are antisocial.
Psychopathy is often divided into two types. Primary psychopaths tend to display behaviours like repeated lying or a lack of empathy, while secondary psychopaths are impulsive and thrill-seeking, and more likely to commit crimes or be violent.
“The secondary psychopath doesn’t have a lot of self-control, whereas the primary psychopath does,” Girkin says. “That’s why they’re able to hide well in everyday society.”
Diagnosing someone as a psychopath isn’t a simple task – many antisocial behaviours can stem from other things and there’s no single ‘tell’ for psychopathy.
But for many people with psychopathy, there’s a pattern of careless, dangerous behaviour – reckless driving, drug use and minor theft – that stems from low levels of fear, lack of concern for others and a desire for stimulation and personal gain.
While psychopaths can feel emotions and learn to act in ways that take the feelings of others into account, those feelings are typically shallower, says Hedwig Eisenbarth, an associate professor of psychology at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
Far more natural for a psychopath is to act in ways that will let them accomplish their own goals, regardless of harm. An analogy might be a cat playing with a mouse, she says. “I play with them. I kill them. That’s just what I do. It’s just my nature.”
Estimates vary, but it’s thought that just a small percentage of humans qualify as psychopaths.
In smaller amounts, many of the traits of a psychopath can actually be helpful in some situations: think of the surgeon who needs the utmost focus on the work at hand, free of emotional concerns.
But there’s a problem with our knowledge about psychopaths: the majority of it comes from men.
Take the most common tool used to diagnose psychopathy, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), created by Canadian psychologist Dr Robert Hare.
The 20 psychopathic traits on the questionnaire, which include a grandiose sense of self-worth, the need for stimulation and shallow affect, come from Hare’s research on male inmates in the US and Canada.
“The antisocial behaviours of women are different to those of men,” Eisenbarth says. “There might be more manipulative and antisocial behaviour of the kind we often don’t score in men.”
It’s a trend Abigail Marsh, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Georgetown University in the US, says she’s seen in women with psychopathy.
Marsh says many psychopaths have learned to mask their true feelings or thoughts exceedingly well. But underneath, people with psychopathy, male or female, are often motivated by a desire to get what they want.
Differences between the genders mean distinct tools work better for each: a physically larger man may be able to get what he wants by using violence, while a woman may find social methods work better. In some cases, that means a charm offensive is the best approach.
“The thing I think people don’t always anticipate about psychopathy is that the best way to get things out of people is by being really nice to them,” Marsh says. “I find that when people with psychopathy want you to like them, you almost certainly will.”
In her research, she uses a different measure of psychopathy, the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TRiPM), which isn’t based on the PCL-R and one that she believes may do a better job of assessing female psychopathy in some situations.
In much of the psychological research, the PCL-R still dominates, however. The takeaway is that studies suggesting there are fewer female than male psychopaths may be misguided and many women with psychopathic traits may simply go undiagnosed.
Eisenbarth notes that psychopathic women likely display behaviours that don’t rise to the level of criminal activity, while psychopathic men may be more likely to commit crimes or become violent and enter the criminal justice system.
Again, it’s a difference that could disguise the true prevalence of female psychopathy.
Read more:
- The psychopaths among us
- How psychopaths control their 'dark impulses'
- What we now know about how psychopaths lie
Gaslighting, gossip and worse
In her study, Girkin found that her respondents reported initially being embraced by a problematic coworker, only to have the relationship suddenly turn sour. They recalled managers denying them leave, or putting them in situations where they were set up to fail.
In other cases, a coworker would employ gaslighting (convincing someone that a situation is their fault), gossip or rumours, to isolate and attack them.
The alleged psychopaths were often well-connected and built strategic relationships with people in power to insulate themselves, while directing their attacks at people with little ability to fight back.
Girkin emphasises she’s not making diagnoses. “It’s not about saying that person’s a psychopath; it’s about saying they’re using behaviours that are potentially psychopathic in nature, and the impact [those methods] have,” she says.
Still, her interviews suggest a worrying dynamic in which psychopathic behaviour may be disguised in some cases by assumptions about the empathetic nature of welfare work and the inherent compassion of women.
In a world where female psychopaths are as prevalent as male ones, though just different enough to escape notice, it could amount to an ideal disguise for those wishing to do others harm.
There are reasons to be cautious in our interpretations of Girkin’s study. For one, it was small, just 13 people, and relied on participants’ memories of others’ behaviour.
For that reason, Eisenbarth says the study is interesting, but leaves open the larger question of whether psychopathy is a significant issue in welfare work more generally. It’s also unclear how the study results might compare to other places.
Tasmania is an island home to around 500,000 people, and its isolation and small population could also factor into Girkin’s findings.
Still, if Girkin’s study is to be believed, it raises the question of why so many psychopathic behaviours can be found in the welfare sector in Tasmania. The answer could lie at the intersection of traditional gender roles and power dynamics.
Caring professions like nursing, therapy and social work tend to be female-dominated, so it’s unsurprising that any psychopaths found there would be women. What’s more, these roles entail assuming a position of power, Girkin says.
“Whether that’s over someone’s mind, over their resources, over their medical care, it’s that level of control that someone has over another human being,” she says.
Girkin adds that she doesn’t believe most in the care industry feel this way: “There are some amazing people that care for others and I think [psychopaths are] only a small portion.”
Eisenbarth agrees that control could be a factor, adding that financial gain could be a motivator in some cases. “If you care for somebody who has some money to leave behind at some point, that might be very interesting,” she says.
Once in a position of power, Eisenbarth argues female psychopaths may benefit from a more subtle approach that leaves little opportunity for complaints, as well as from existing stereotypes about psychopathic behaviour.
“A woman showing manipulativeness and aggressiveness, or maybe violence, it’s such an unexpected behaviour, still,” she says. “People are probably often not believed as much.”
Understanding psychopaths
A dearth of both good science and societal education around female psychopaths may be adding to the problem.
The best solution is more research, something Girkin says may be easier said than done – she found it quite difficult to get her own research funded, something she attributes to her choice of topic.
“If I were doing a PhD on male psychopaths, I reckon it would have been accepted in five seconds flat because it’s okay to criticise men, but it’s not okay to criticise women,” she says.
Eisenbarth says that hasn’t been the case for her. Gender comparisons are common in psychological research in New Zealand, she says, adding that she hasn’t encountered any hesitancy around discussing female psychopaths.
But she goes on to say that research into psychopathy in general can be hard to get funding for.
“Nobody has empathy for people with psychopathy,” she says. Marsh agrees and says that it’s an issue exacerbated by a dearth of researchers focused on psychopathy.
“Clinicians don’t like working with people with these disorders,” she says. “They can be antagonistic, they can be resistant to treatment, they can be frightening. [Clinicians] have long viewed them as untreatable.”
But Marsh says that idea is wrong. She believes psychopathy is treatable with the right interventions at the right time, likely earlier in life. It’s an approach she argues would leave all of us, psychopath or not, better off.
Nevertheless, Eisenbarth argues that psychopathy offers an intriguing perspective on human cognition, one that could offer more general insights into why humans act the way we do.
“What happens if somebody doesn’t have the spontaneous emotional reaction, but they can compensate. How does the brain do that?” she asks. “We can learn so much about the human brain and human social interactions through the lens of psychopathy.”
Dealing with your workplace psychopath
That’s of little comfort to someone at the mercy of a potentially psychopathic coworker.
Actually diagnosing someone as a psychopath is easier said than done, of course, though intimidation or aggression should be taken seriously no matter the source.
Marsh says people with psychopathy tend to use other people as tools, with little regard for the consequences, so establishing a pattern of callous, indifferent behaviour can be one giveaway.
Additionally, psychopaths may present differently to different people, the result of attempts to charm one person and intimidate another.
But armchair psychologists, be warned: when trying to diagnose someone, many people get tripped up by their own feelings.
Girkin says the best approach is to start by reaching out to others in your workplace, if possible. The potential female psychopaths in her study often attempted to isolate victims, or build a social consensus against them.
Bringing others onto your team, whether it’s someone from HR, a coworker or friend, can be a big help. Taking detailed notes to buttress future complaints is another key step.
It’s possible that more gender-balanced workplaces are better equipped to handle psychopathic behaviour.
The two men in Girkin’s study were able to distance themselves from female coworkers who they felt were problematic, a tactic that might help shift balances of power.
But Girkin says workplaces need to play a stronger role anyway, including by being willing to address problematic behaviour from managers, even when that might prove difficult. Instating and enforcing clear policies around harassment or bad behaviour is also crucial, she says.
Should all else fail, you may need to simply leave, if only for the sake of your own wellbeing. “Sometimes it’s better to leave than stay in a situation that’s leaving you harmed on a daily basis,” Girkin says.
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