When most people picture a psychopath, they probably don’t imagine a friendly coworker in a helping profession. Popular culture tends to portray psychopathy as something obvious, extreme, and overwhelmingly male. But a small and growing body of research suggests that picture may be missing an important part of the story.
Psychopathic traits don’t always look like aggression or open hostility. In the workplace, they can be much harder to recognize, sometimes hidden behind charm, competence, and an outward appearance of empathy. Some research also suggests that psychopathic traits may present differently in women, with less overt aggression and greater use of behaviors such as emotional manipulation and relational aggression.
That possibility became the focus of research by Dr. Fiona Girkin, whose work on female psychopathy grew from a PhD in management completed at Curtin University in Australia. Girkin also brought more than 20 years of experience working in Tasmania’s welfare sector, where she says she encountered coworkers who appeared to display psychopathic traits and heard similar accounts from others in the field.
For one part of the research, 13 welfare workers in Tasmania were interviewed about difficult colleagues and their workplace experiences. Eleven reported encountering at least one person who displayed eight or more psychopathic traits, including lying, lack of remorse, and refusal to take responsibility.
Together, participants identified 47 people whose behavior met the study’s criteria, 36 of whom were women. Some described manipulation, gaslighting, deliberate isolation, and psychological harm, sometimes involving coworkers who had initially appeared friendly and supportive. Importantly, Girkin emphasized that the researchers were not clinically diagnosing these individuals as psychopaths, but identifying behaviors participants reported that were potentially psychopathic in nature.
The findings come from a small study and rely on participants’ recollections, so they can’t tell us how common female psychopathy actually is. But they raise an intriguing question: could psychopathic traits in women sometimes present differently enough that we’re simply less likely to recognize them?
What Psychopathy Actually Means
Psychopathy is defined by traits including short-lived emotions, lack of remorse, low empathy, manipulativeness, and pathological lying – a constellation of features that most people associate with a particular kind of predatory, often violent, predominantly male individual.
The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), developed by Canadian psychologist Robert Hare and published by Multi-Health Systems, is a clinician-administered 20-item rating scale scored through structured interview and file review, and it remains the criterion-standard measure of psychopathy in clinical and forensic settings. The PCL-R uses a four-factor model assessing Interpersonal, Affective, Lifestyle, and Antisocial dimensions of psychopathy. The Interpersonal factor captures traits like superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, and manipulation. The Affective factor addresses lack of remorse, emotional shallowness, and callousness. The Lifestyle and Antisocial factors lean heavily toward observable, often criminal, behavioral patterns: impulsivity, irresponsibility, juvenile delinquency, and a history of antisocial acts.
Those final two factors are where concerns have been expressed about whether the PCL-R captures psychopathy satisfactorily in women, given their fewer overt antisocial behaviors and often later onset of antisocial conduct. Women with psychopathy, compared to men, commit more fraud, offend more often out of relational frustration, are more often diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, and show less physical violence but more manipulative and self-destructive behavior during treatment. An assessment instrument calibrated toward overt antisocial conduct and criminal history will, almost by design, score such women lower – not because they lack psychopathic traits, but because those traits express themselves differently.
The Tool Was Built Around Men
The PCL-R was initially developed through research with male prison populations, creating potential bias in assessing female psychopathy. A 2021 review published in CNS Spectrums found that most research on psychopathy has focused on male samples, not least because of its historical link with criminal behavior – producing an androcentric (male-centered) conceptualization of the disorder.
Concerns have been expressed about whether the PCL-R captures the construct of psychopathy satisfactorily in women, given their fewer overt antisocial behaviors and often later onset of antisocial conduct. Data from a 2018 study in Personality and Individual Differences found that males scored higher on the Interpersonal, Affective, and Antisocial facets of the PCL-R compared to females – but a higher score on a test does not automatically mean more of the underlying trait. It may simply mean a better fit between the test and the population it was designed to measure.
When the Same Behavior Gets a Different Label
The diagnostic label problem compounds the measurement problem. A female offender who is superficially charming and manipulative might be described as “histrionic” or “borderline,” while a male offender with the same traits would be labeled a psychopath. Histrionic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder carry entirely different clinical implications – different treatment pathways, different prognoses, and different levels of perceived danger – than a psychopathy assessment.
A consistent pattern has emerged across studies: whereas psychopathy in men is associated with antisocial personality disorder, in women the same level of psychopathic traits is more frequently associated with borderline personality disorder – a diagnostic outcome that may reflect gender stereotyping as much as genuine clinical difference.
The 2021 review published in CNS Spectrums found that female psychopaths are more likely to display traits such as verbal aggression, emotional volatility, and dramatic attention-seeking behaviors – features not well-represented on the PCL-R. The same review noted that clinical hesitancy around diagnosing women as psychopathic, even when they exhibit relevant traits, appears rooted in longstanding assumptions about psychopathy being a predominantly male presentation.
Female Psychopathy in the Research: The Prevalence Problem
Mainstream estimates have historically placed male psychopaths outnumbering females by a substantial margin, though the precise ratio remains contested and a growing body of work proposes that the field has significantly undercounted female psychopaths.
Dr. Clive Boddy, Associate Professor of Management at Anglia Ruskin University, argues that studies may be failing to identify female psychopaths, and suggests the real ratio of male-to-female psychopathy could be as low as 1.2:1 – up to five times higher than previously thought. Boddy draws on six quantitative workplace studies in which he consistently found more female primary psychopaths than existing theory predicted. As he told IFLScience, “the measures I use in quantitative research kept picking up more female psychopaths than theoretically expected,” and across his research he consistently found more female primary psychopaths – those characterized by callousness, superficial charm, and manipulative tendencies – than the literature anticipated.
A significant caveat applies here. Boddy’s 1.2:1 ratio is a hypothesis, not an established prevalence figure. His research relies on surveys of white-collar workers reporting on colleagues and bosses – a methodology that does not provide clinical diagnoses and cannot establish population-wide rates. The self-report instrument he used has been criticized for vulnerability to memory lapses and personal bias. The 1.2:1 ratio demands rigorous investigation before it can be treated as anything more than a directional estimate.
How Female Psychopathy Tends to Manifest
The research previously mentioned that was published in Personality and Individual Differences found that females higher in total psychopathy are often less noticeable than males, which may be because they are less physically violent and more subtle in their manipulative behaviors. The interpersonal traits of psychopathy may appear more subtle in females and be harder to detect during an interview or while undergoing treatment.
While sharing traits like a lack of empathy and manipulative tendencies with male psychopaths, female psychopaths are less physically violent and more likely to use relational aggression, deception, and emotional manipulation. Relational aggression refers to harm inflicted through social networks rather than direct confrontation – spreading targeted gossip, engineering social exclusion, or systematically damaging someone’s professional reputation.
Women with psychopathy offend more often out of relational frustration and show more manipulative and self-destructive behavior during treatment than their male counterparts. The target sees this relational harm directly. The manager who has been carefully charmed before any complaint is filed may not.
Inside the Workplace: Tactics and Consequences
Girkin’s study, coauthored with Dr. Sharyn Curran, drew from interviews with 13 welfare industry workers. Eleven of the thirteen participants said they had met at least one person who displayed eight or more psychopathic traits, including lying, a lack of remorse, or a refusal to take responsibility.
The behaviors described by participants were not physically aggressive. Workers described colleagues who appeared to deliberately set targets up for failure through manipulated workload arrangements, who cultivated close relationships with management before any complaint could be made, and who used gossip to strip targets of their workplace support networks. Participants reported encountering coworkers who met many of the criteria for psychopathy and who often bullied them and colleagues – a finding that was particularly striking in a field that prioritizes compassion and empathy.
Gaslighting as a Primary Tool
Girkin says multiple women in her study reported attempting to take their own lives as a result of their workplace experiences. The mechanism that appeared to cause some of the deepest harm was gaslighting – a form of psychological manipulation in which the perpetrator attempts to make a target doubt their own memory, perception, and judgment.
Researchers define workplace gaslighting as an attempt to manipulate the target’s understanding of their own experiences, reinforcing a distorted narrative in which the perpetrator’s version of events replaces the target’s own lived perception. Gaslighting can manifest as a form of silent abuse that is often difficult to detect or expose, with victims sometimes failing to recognize themselves as being harmed. The target is made to doubt their own account, while the perpetrator builds credibility with authority figures. Raising a complaint can result in the complainant being identified as the unstable or difficult party, especially when the person they are describing presents as warm, competent, and well-regarded.
Girkin’s data found that the psychopathic bullying behaviors described by participants caused significant damage, including unemployment, suicidality, depression, and career sabotage.
Social Isolation as a Strategy
Research in occupational health has established that social isolation is among the most commonly reported bullying tactics described by workplace victims, used to separate targets from the peer support that might otherwise validate their experience or provide witnesses to harmful conduct. In Girkin’s data, this manifested as carefully cultivated friendship networks – with managers and senior colleagues – established before the isolation of any target began. By the time a complaint was filed, the person making it often found that colleagues had already been turned against them or were reluctant to be associated with a conflict.
What the Largest Reviews Have Found
Despite growing scientific interest, the number of studies investigating psychopathy in women remains low relative to those focused on men. Most major reviews draw on comparatively small samples, often from forensic or incarcerated populations, which introduces its own selection bias – the women who ended up in those settings may not be representative of women with psychopathic traits who operate successfully in civilian life.
Research on female psychopathy has increased over the past twenty years, providing more information about the similarities and differences in psychopathy across sexes – but the body of evidence remains uneven. The CNS Spectrums review concluded that the androcentric framing of psychopathy research – built from the outside in, starting with incarcerated males – has produced measurement tools and theoretical models that may not translate cleanly across gender. Its authors called for female-specific instruments and larger population-based studies to test whether the gender gap in diagnosed psychopathy reflects a genuine biological difference or an artifact of how the research has been designed.
Some recent studies using female-specific measures have found that the gender gap in psychopathy may be much smaller than previously thought, with one possible reason being a male bias that fails to detect more subtle psychopathic expressions.
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What This Means in Practice
The PCL-R was built primarily from research on incarcerated men and weights behavioral items – including overt criminality and physical violence – that female psychopaths are less likely to exhibit. Clinicians applying it to women need to account for systematically lower scores that may undercount genuine psychopathic traits.
The behavioral profile of female psychopathy, as current evidence describes it, centers on relational rather than physical aggression – gaslighting, social isolation, reputation manipulation, and covert emotional harm. These tactics are harder to document, harder to prove, and harder for organizations to respond to because they rarely leave visible evidence. Targets may be manipulated to the point where they doubt their own experience, while perpetrators may have cultivated precisely the relationships most likely to discredit any complaint.
For clinicians, the practical implication is to hold diagnostic categories more loosely when assessing women who display manipulativeness, lack of remorse, and interpersonal shallowness alongside emotional volatility. A borderline diagnosis does not automatically exclude consideration of psychopathic traits – the two are not mutually exclusive, and in women, they appear to co-occur frequently. For organizations, the most damaging colleague in a workplace may not be the loudest or most overtly aggressive person in the room. The person with the most carefully cultivated reputation may warrant closer attention.
Girkin’s work, though small in sample size and geographically narrow, provides qualitative detail that larger quantitative studies have not. Thirteen interviews from one Australian state cannot establish prevalence rates, but they illuminate the mechanics of harm – and the recurring pattern those 13 people described was systematic, deliberate, and socially sophisticated in ways that existing psychopathy frameworks were never designed to catch.
Disclaimer: The information provided here is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional psychological, psychiatric, or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the guidance of a licensed mental health professional, therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist with any questions or concerns about your emotional well-being or mental health conditions. Never ignore professional advice or delay seeking support because of something you have read here.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.
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