Professions With the Most Psychopaths? The Fewest? Is Your Job on the List?

A blog called "Boing Boing" by Mark Frauenfelder  caught my eye this week.  He takes a look at the... new book,  "The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success", by Kevin Dutton, which gives a side-by-side list of professions with the highest percentage of psychopaths (CEO tops the list) and lowest percentage (Care Aide has the fewest psychopaths).

Although I've never thought of it in those terms, it was revealing, and a little disturbing, that we have two of the top five careers with the most psychopaths living in my household!  The immediate temptation is to say, "well, that explains a lot!"

See how your job fares in this chart, followed by the author's explanation of why he believes this is the case.  I would love to hear your feedback in the comments section below.

Most of the professions on the right require human connection, dealing with feelings and most of them don’t offer much power. Psychopaths, by their very nature, would not be drawn to or very good at these things.

On the other hand, most of the roles on the left do offer power and many require an ability to make objective, clinical decisions divorced from feelings. Psychopaths would be drawn to these roles and thrive there.