These are the top 10 careers in which you are most likely to meet a psychopath.

If your idea of a psychopath is a disturbed killer, wandering the streets at night, deciding on who his next murder victim is going to be, you might be surprised. Psychopaths live in today’s society.

They hold down jobs and have relationships and families. Your next-door neighbour could be one, your boss, or even your partner.

What is a psychopath?

Psychopaths are classified as having no emotions or conscience and lacking empathy. They are regarded as cold-hearted, manipulative, and often act amorally to benefit themselves. Psychopaths are said to have ‘killer instincts’, whether they kill or not.

So how do these sets of characteristics translate into employment?

Well, surprisingly, some jobs actually require certain psychopathic tendencies. These so-called killer instincts can be extremely useful in some roles.

When you consider that psychopaths tend to be risk seekers, impulsive and fearless, you can see how these qualities might be desirable in certain jobs.

Kevin Dutton, a research psychologist at the University of Oxford and author, has spent years studying the psychopathic brain and has compiled a list of the jobs in which you are most likely to meet a psychopath.

Here are his top 10 careers:

1. CEO

What better career than the head of a company where you are beholden to no one but yourself? You have absolute control and power over your employees and can fire at will without remorse, treat your workers with disdain and yet have no one to answer to.

It is not surprising that CEOs are first on our list of the top ten careers with the most psychopaths.

2. LAWYER

Tell a joke about a lawyer and it will rely on the punchline depicting them as liars or cheaters. Basically, a lawyer will do anything to get his or her client off the charge and this involves turning on the charm at a second’s notice.

3. MEDIA (TELEVISION/RADIO)

You have to think that you are pretty important to work in television or on the radio and who other than a psychopath with deeply held narcissistic tendencies? Of course, not everyone on TV and radio is a psychopath, but if someone starts showing diva characteristics, then watch out.

4. SALESPERSON

Salespeople have to sell you a product without actually caring if you need it or not. Those who do care whether you are wasting your money will never make their targets, but those who don’t, who have psychopathic tendencies, would sell you anything to get ahead in the game.

5. SURGEON

Unsurprisingly, surgeons make the list as they make the difference between your loved one living or dying, it is practically Godlike, and they know it.

In fact, many surgeons say that showing emotion gets in the way of them performing well, as they operate as a cold, emotionless machine, and showing emotion would slow them down.

6. JOURNALIST

Telling people your own opinions and expecting them to listen and take it as fact makes you pretty narcissistic. You also have to be charming and intelligent with it, three factors that are known to be associated with psychopathy.

Just the fact of seeing your name in a newspaper is enough to stroke the ego of someone who doesn’t have psychopathic tendencies, so imagine what it does to those who have?

7. POLICE OFFICER

Being in a position of power, where you are literally the law, is like nectar to a bee where the psychopath is concerned. They can get away with everything as they have a badge to hide behind and no one would believe it even if they were reported.

8. CLERGY

This is another area in which the weight of the church can hide a psychopath in its midst. Psychopaths are drawn to establishments where they can hide in plain sight, and abuse their victims where they have the sheer vastness of the organization to back them up, should it be needed.

9. CHEF

It takes a hard character to work in a pressurized environment such as a professional kitchen. Psychopaths can exist here because they get on with the task at hand, do not care about their colleagues, they just want the job done to their high, exacting specifications.

10. CIVIL SERVANTS

If you cannot imagine the typically timid civil servant going off on a psychopathic rage, cast your minds back to British serial killer and civil servant Dennis Nilson who killed at least 12 young men.

Also, remember Dennis Rader, or otherwise known as BTK, was a civil servant and murdered 10 people. Being employed in civil servant roles allows psychopaths to hide in plain sight and no be noticed.

Is your job on the above top 10 careers list? Do you think that you have met a psychopath in your workplace?

References:

  1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-011-0810-4
  2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178912001218

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This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Gaz

    dont forget oncologists, they are the biggest psychopaths on the planet, they poison human beings for a living and do very well out of it.

    1. ddd

      They are No. 1 , next to them child pediatricians

  2. Jeff

    1) Banker…
    2)Politician

    Not having these 1st and 2nd takes the credibility away. Okay….just trying to get a laugh. But, it is a viable argument.

  3. DatedOneInFinland

    No psychopath at workplace but I dated one this summer..he was a doctor spacializing to surgery and running a plastic surgery firm and also ceo. So there you go..funny my occupation is civil servant. This psychopath was “whitecollar” one..lies, machiavellism, narcissism, multiple partners, no responsibility in acts..at work or in personal life, emotionless at times, overlooked love evrn laughed to relationships, quick switch in moods and opinions. Luckily not dating one anymore and now wiser of these traits.

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