For a long time people believed that psychopaths were mostly male because most of the psychopaths they saw were in prison. Most of the identified psychopaths in prison are male, so they assumed most psychopaths were male. The question is: What if the women psychopaths are just not getting caught and showing up in prison? I did some research to find out why it seemed that women were not identified as psychopaths as commonly as men. (I looked at this link specifically for more information: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-is-2020/201508/the-field-guide-the-female-psychopath)
After reading the article, I came to the conclusion that there is no definite reason that we see less female psychopaths in prison, but there were ideas. The first idea is that they simply do not get caught as often because society is less suspecting of them. This theory is a little far fetched because now criminal and homicidal investigations rely heavily on eye witness accounts and mostly scientific evidence. It is probably not too hard to identify a woman from a man in both eye witness accounts and scientific evidence. The next reason makes a little more sense. The next theory is that the psychopathic traits manifest themselves differently in women. The same aggression is exemplified in a "more subtle and manipulative way." (psychologytoday.com) They may be seen as just crazy, jealous, or mean, but not a psychopath. One example of a female psychopath from the article was a woman who seemed rather normal, but secretly tortured animals. The article also brought out that some of the mothers that kill their children could be psychopathic and some women who are involved in school shootings could be psychopaths.
The ultimate conclusion of the article was that female psychopaths are just as dangerous as male psychopaths, but do not stand out as much because they are possibly less suspected by society and not expected to be cold blooded.
I agree that female psychopaths are just as dangerous as their male counterparts, but are harder to identify. This is most likely because female psychopaths exhibit less violent traits, and are less likely to be as up front about their situation.
ReplyDeleteI like your post; nearly all of the psychopaths who we have discussed are male. I agree with your point that perhaps we as a society are less suspecting of female psychopaths, even if there may not be fewer of them than male psychopaths. They likely act quite differently, perhaps verbally abusing others rather than becoming mass murderers. Although manipulation and deception is one of the main traits of a psychopath, this trait is likely very dominant in female psychopaths.
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is something in the females DNA that could possible explain why we hear less about female psychopaths. Also since psychopaths only make up 1% of the population, perhaps in that 1% there are more men present than women.
ReplyDeleteI actually hadn't thought of a lack of female psychopaths before this, so this article brought an interesting perspective to the table. I feel like part of the reason psychopathy may manifest differently in females is due to societal expectations, so they must keep up a certain appearance, keeping their true nature hidden.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all the points that have been made so far. I feel like that because all of the classic example of psychopaths that we can think of are mostly men, people are generally showing a confirmation bias in this situation. Because this is true, male psychopaths are generally what we look for, so female psychopaths become more elusive in this sense. This could also be because their type of aggression is more subtle as you cited from the article. This explains why you guys commented about female psychopaths being more verbally manipulative. Both of these points taken together show that because female psychopaths show a different type of aggression and are seemingly less violent, we don't hear about them much because there tend to be less female mass murderers. Also this could just be because men inherit the psychopath trait more often. Ultimately, it could be for a variety of reasons. But a question that I had was: Because females tend to develop earlier then males, do psychopathic tendencies manifest themselves earlier?
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting point, I like it. It is true that there is a lack of talk about female psychopaths. I think the reason for this is the female image and expectations set up by society and because psychopathy is more prevalent in males due to genetics.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting post! I agree that females are most likely harder to catch because they are not the obvious suspects, but I also think that there are less women psychopaths. Women are in general less violent than men are, so men often have more psychopathic tendencies than women do just because they are naturally more aggressive.
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