There seems to be a lot of negativity in the comments because the author is not listing the bad psychopathic traits? I thought the whole point of the article and book was to find to good things in a psychopath. I personally find this quite interesting and useful. While we all know what psychopaths are capable of -criminally, thanks to their apathy-, it is hardly ever discussed what good traits they hold. Please put aside your subjective points (i.e. personal experience) and read. It's told from an open-minded view point. I wholeheartedly enjoyed reading this short find. I hope the rest of the readers think so too.

Another article hyping a book but short on substance (cf. the article about Texas in this issue). For example, in the survey of psychopaths mentioned, was allowance made for the bias of those who chose to answer the survey? Otherwise, the results cannot be deemed significant, since psychopaths, lacking in empathy, might be less likely to respond to a survey unless they saw some personal benefit in doing so.

The description of a psychopath sounds like the requiremnts for running for US political office. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Look at all you cry babies in the comments. You all want to blame others when you made mistakes. Stop looking for sympathy and learn from your experiences. I bet half of you will go around believing every person who doesn't immediately like you is a psychopath. Truth is, you're jealous because you aren't one. Psychos are the true alpha males of our species. If Armageddon strikes, you'll be begging a psycho to lead your group to safety. They're the ones who get things done. Psychos aren't dead inside. They just know how to control their feelings better than the rest of you sissies.

The article has almost nothing to say about the lack of conscience in psychopaths, which I believe is a defining characteristic. Lack of conscience means a true pschopath can torture and kill with no qualms at all. This, to me, overwhelms all the other traits in the article.

My experience of psychopaths has generally been a very negative one. To my mind they seem utterly evil and very nasty pieces of work and they don't have to be serial killers to be labelled as such. I can certainly say that some of the traits they display, ruthlessness, toughness, charm, focus, may be necessary traits in some areas, like the armed forces, or working in the City etc, and I would call these traits, 'positive' traits. But other traits, such as lack or empathy and lack of conscience we could certainly do without. Being without empathy or conscience is highly dangerous and divisive and does no one any good at all. If anything it is detrimental so society as a whole. Now if we had someone who did have conscience and empathy, and displayed all the other traits mentioned above, that would be an ideal person. And they wouldn't likely be anti-social either or spread lies about innocent people. So no, I don't think psychopaths without conscience are good for society. We need tough human beings, not tough zombies.

I'm very grateful that I'm not a psychopath. Psychopaths are empty black holes full of infinite rage, jealousy and greed. They have to work so hard to keep up their façade of normality. But they can only keep it up for so long. Thank goodness I don't have to do that. I can just be myself. Psychopaths have no concept of 'self'. There's nothing there. They copy their personalities off their current target/s or people they admire. This gives them their chameleon-like quality. I almost feel sorry for them, but I'll reserve my empathy for people that deserve it.

I am already suspecting that the author is a psychopath. Psychopaths have done damage to my relationships and my career with their lies, their manipulations, their utter lack of empathy, their rumor spreading and trashing me as a person. I do not even especially consider them human beings. They have no capacity to love, and only mimic the emotions of others, look upon normal feeling human beings with contempt, and do not care about you or me, expect for what they can get and take from you. Their views of reality are seriously distorted. Can you, seriously, imagine this group truthfully filling out a survey?

I am a victim of a psychopath. He lives next door. He has terrorized other neighbors and now it is my turn. He has claimed several different reasons for being mad at me -- none of which make any sense. He has assaulted me on my own property, threatened to kill my dog, left dead animals on my steps, cut my brake line and violated a no contact order. In response to the arrests, all he does is up the ante. He watches me constantly and has surveillance cameras aimed at me. I do not even live in my own home anymore. He has been indicted on a half dozen new felonies, including stalking. In response to the indictment he cut down all the shrubs between the properties and stands there videotaping me. These people are ruthless. THey turn trivial matters into WWIII. They have no conscience. They care about NO ONE but themselves. If this author really thinks this is so wonderful, I have a house i would like to sell him.

Maybe modern life and all it's down sides are created by psycho's, as they like that kind of society, whereas 'normal' people slowly drown in todays world. Psycho's are more or less the Ultimate Capitalists.

After actually reading the book his interpretation of psychopathy actually makes perfect sense. During the novel he speaks with Dr. Hare and Hare actually agrees with him in most of his observations and states that his interpretation makes sense. People should not just accept the cliché that all psychopaths are bad and at least be open-minded enough to sincerely learn about the other side in what is a grossly one-sided argument.

vyctorynotes.blogspot.com says: This article was an interesting one about something incredibly absurd! Men in patriarchal societies commit most crime, which is most of the world. Patriarchy has spent thousands of years attempting to defend itself and traditional notions of masculinity. Some of that tradition is pathological. In fact, whole societies, like the USA, are based on some of that pathology (i.e., that it is ok in any form and in any arena to be "ruthless"). I would never support anyone in any way mirroring themselves to a psychopath, which is itself pathological and another attempt by patriarchy to defend its pathological ways. A humin being can exhibit positive and beneficial traits without such an inane comparison. In addition, the ability to feel empathy is, in my opinion, crucial to a stable and healthy psychological and spiritual self. It is crucial to healthy social interactions. Empathy should be part of the definition of intelligence.

although it does not change the fact that a anonymous sort filled out an actual survey and consistently.... certain psychopathic characteristics were or were not present in people who do certain things..... the fact is... the world is ran by sociopaths and psychopaths...unfortunately very many people keep complaining about the author's findings-- which is.... that all of these psychopaths had a choice...use this personality characteristic to "kill" or "heal".... i guess

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a pyramid. basic needs must be met before higher needs can be addressed- in a 'normal human being'. What if psychopathy is an adaptation (sort of a positive feedback between behavior and cognition) to get around this hierarchy to improve performance and success when a need like basic security has no chance of being met. There might be a basic temperment that is necessary for the development of a psychopathic personality. If true psychopathy might result from the frustration of basic needs due to environmental factors- in individuals who are tempermentally predisposed to fight/assert instead of accept/adapt. I think this is where Dutton's coming from, but he does not provide an explanation for psychopathic development- only examples of how psychopaths seem to function at a higher level than most in short term stress situations. Empathy can probably be felt by psychopaths but early in development they usually discount the feelings of others as irrelevant to their immediate goals (unless they're not irrelevant)- hence the paradox of emotional manipulation in people who supposedly lack empathy. Interesting PD

Dutton is probably a psychopath himself. Just as long as he sells his book right? I wonder how he'd feel interviewing the victims of psychopaths.

This is a far cry from the truth! If anyone has read Dr.Hare's book "Without Conscience", they will know that psychopaths are almost the opposite of what is explained in this article. And Dr.Hare is the doctor that actually wrote the psychopath checklist used uniformity throughout the world to diagnose and understand psychopaths. Get real! It seems a little bit obvious that the man who wrote this is a little out to lunch ...

Psychopaths are liars, uncreative, selfish, dangerous to society, full of themselves etc. So NO I can't see them having a positive impact on society. Frankly im pretty blown away (and not in a positive way) by this article. By the way psychopaths are not good soldiers since they are the ultimate cowards who would do anything to save their own skin.

Fascinating, I'll have to read the book. "There were several police officers, actually, so as opposed to being criminals, some psychopaths are actually out there locking other people up." When I was in college, I decided to pick up some Criminal Justice classes. The professor of Intro, who had been in the Police-I want to say Chief, but don't recall for sure, in New Orleans, said there is a fine line between a cop and a criminal. Both have common psychological characteristics [of a sociopath], but one chooses to express them one direction, and the other in another. Of course, human behavior isn't quite that simplistic, but it is interesting, isn't it?

I have to agree with the other commenters that this is pretty idiotic and unhelpful. Yeah, a handful of traits that are diagnostic of psychopathy proper can, in a person who doesn't have psychopathy, be useful in certain pursuits. So, obviously, fearlessness/boldness/preternatural calm under stress would be great traits for Navy Seal. Uh, yeah, and? How does this extended analogy with psychopathy - which is a highly dysfunctional personality disorder - add to our previous understanding of the traits valuable to Navy Seals? Well, it doesn't really. It's just a way to get a book out of "gee, isn't it neato how psychopaths have this trait too?" So? Any psychopath also had a host of other traits that cause profound misery to those who come into the psychopath's orbit, and that frequently lead the psychopath into legal trouble. The Buddhist monk bit is too stupid for words. Anyway, whatever. This guy got a book and some attention out of it. Have no idea why the Smithsonian considers this work worth writing about. I was hoping this would be interesting, and was very disappointed by how shallow and useless it turned out to be.

I'm sorry, but this is about the most ridiculous article I've read, certainly not befitting the Smithsonian, and on top of that the book sounds silly and sensationalistic at best. I'm no expert, but the traits you're describing sound like sociopathic, not psychopathic, ones (I think this is more than a matter of degree). Also, it bears emphasizing that ON A SCALE, you can rate someone on CERTAIN TRAITS, but to qualify as a sociopath much less a psychopath you have to hit several of the traits, beyond a certain level, and in several contexts and over time. Futhemore, true psychopathy is an illness and not a desirable state of being! You're not doing anyone but yourself any favors with writing pap like this.

Sadly, I have to throw in with the comments which precede my own. The feedback posts from Steph Rae/ Don Druid/ Tarara Boumdier take exception to the validity and 'positive spin' suggested by Amy Crawford's 'Pros of being a psychopath'. The source document reviewed (Kevin Duttons' 'The Pros to Being a Psychopath'), makes use of selective data, and flanks several postulates with conclusions facilitated by some relatively stark generalizations (while not misrepresentation per se, the conjecture valence is pretty darn high). Some of the misses reflect the absence of the basic adherence to scientific method. Causation/ Correlation. e.g. --> being decisive to say that a decisive person has a psychopathic trait/ feature/ etc., is not too far from saying that a the owner of a XXXL t-shirt is overweight because of the wardrobe they own (kind of). This is, to my way of thinking, the problem with 'lay-literature' documents which tread the boundries of a scientific discipline. Titles, phrases, photographs and language that get peoples attention are frequently infused with charisma and sexy. Loose interpretation, selective data use, a tendency toward generalizations in the service of a particular point of view, or economy, when reviewed by a 'non-specialist', well ... it gets train-wrecky (sort of like a 'non-writer' trying to write a cogent comment without getting so lost in the middle of a run-on sentence that he does his best, but is wrong - so wrong that he resorts to odd punctuation or abrupt endings, such as, well ....

"The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, the Oxford research psychologist argues that psychopathic personality traits—charm, confidence, ruthlessness, coolness under pressure—can, in the right doses, be a good thing".....Not if you have been forced to work for one it's not. Take it from someone who knows!

Smithsonian is giving this inches?! I know a psychopath and although wealthy he and his family have had so much unhappiness in their lives because of his condition. Those psychopathic personality traits that the researcher claims are healthy in the right doses are so clearly not the traits that are unique to a psychopath. It is the lack of empathy and conscience that makes a psychopath. The suggestion that people should seek to emulate the traits of a psychopath is irresponsible.

I think this psychopath-boosting is pretty ridiculous. Psychopaths don't consider long-term consequences. They cause extreme problems when placed into positions of power where they are expected to plan for the future.

The author should spend some time working in correctional facilities and forensic psychiatric units, if he has the cojones, then come back and enlighten us some more about psycopaths.