“Are you a psychopath? Have I got the career for you!”

I want to save this for later reading.

Minding the Workplace

Screenshot from http://the-silence-of-the-lambs.wikia.com/wiki/Hannibal_Lecter

They may be click bait, but articles listing professions said to attract the most psychopaths are very popular. At least I couldn’t help myself when I saw the latest from AlterNet, by Kali Holloway, summarizing a now oft-repeated list:

• CEO
• Lawyer
• Media (television/radio)
• Salesperson
• Surgeon
• Journalist
• Police officer
• Clergy
• Chef
• Civil servants

The origin of this list is psychologist Kevin Dutton’s The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success (2012). According to Holloway, Dutton:

…believes that psychopathy can actually be advantageous in some careers. Using (not the most scientific) survey, he compiled a list of careers in which psychopaths are overrepresented. Mostly, they’re fields where the hallmarks of psychopathy allow people not just to get by but to thrive and succeed.

A similar 2013 piece by Kelly Clay in Forbes.com adds more from Dutton:

Dutton has said that ”a number…

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