Is the Female Psychopath More Hidden Than the Male? - ARU Cambridge Festival 2024

Using evidence from his own and other studies of corporate psychopaths, Dr Clive Boddy will discuss the incidence rates of female psychopathy in the adult population and argue that there are more female psychopaths than anyone has previously imagined.

He will show how these behaviours manifest themselves and explore how these compare with male psychopathic behaviour across both criminal and corporate psychopathy. We will explore the implications of this for employees, business, and society.

Dr Boddy’s talk will show that female psychopaths are destructive but in more subtle and less overtly violent and anti-social ways than male psychopaths are. The view of the psychopath as typically a violent, criminal, male will be challenged.

Dr Clive Boddy has been researching the effects of having psychopaths in the workplace since 2005. His groundbreaking work on corporate psychopaths was initially subject to ridicule and rejection but the idea of the corporate psychopath is now firmly established and accepted. Clive is currently Deputy Head of the School of Management at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. He was previously Professor of Management at the University of Tasmania and Professor of Leadership at Middlesex University in London. He has also held Visiting Professorships at Curtin, Lincoln and Middlesex Universities. Clive’s research interests include toxic leadership and particularly in researching the effects of corporate psychopaths on employees, organisations and society. Clive’s publications on corporate psychopaths include over forty papers, several chapters, two doctorates and two books; “Corporate Psychopaths: Organisational Destroyers” and most recently: “A Climate of Fear: Stone Cold Psychopaths at Work”. Clive has thus published more on corporate psychopaths than any other academic.