What If the Lady Is a Psychopath?

The dangerous psychopath is a stock figure in modern mysteries and thrillers, but most stories focus on menacing males. What if the psychopath is a lady? Is she just a male psychopath with lipstick and high heels? Not quite.There isn't as much research on the female psychopath, but she's like her male counterpart in being superficially charming while, behind the mask, she's an egocentric, manipulative, deceitful and impulsive risk-taker who lacks empathy, remorse and respect for social norms. It's a personality compatible with criminal acts, which is why psychopaths, who are estimated to represent 1% to 3% of the general population, are over-represented in prisons and murder mysteries. One study pegged psychopaths at 16% of the female prison population (although that's lower than the 25% of male prison inmates). It's the manifestation of the disorder that differs between the sexes, including violent behavior. Where male psychopaths are prone to physical aggression, for example, females tend to resort to relational or verbal aggression -- such as manipulating social networks to exclude a victim, engaging in self-injury, or using sexual seduction and coercion. Male and female psychopaths may have more in common when it comes to sexual behavior. A recent U.S. study of "hypersexual" people, meaning those with the most casual sexual partners, found that psychopathy is the key predictive personality trait for hypersexuality in both men and women. The female psychopath is more likely to be a sexual thrill-seeker because she is impulsive and immune to the anxieties and social taboos that usually discourage risky encounters, and she is successful in using socially and sexually exploitative tactics to snare partners. By the way, female psychopaths apparently are also more interested in coercive and sado-masochistic sex (pause to consider this if you enjoyed 50 Shades of Grey). For more on psychopathy and sexuality, read http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-raj-persaud/male-and-female-psychopaths-get-more-sex_b_1845750.html