What careers do psychopaths usually choose? Psychopathy is a real mental health condition that often goes unnoticed, which means that we could be living with a psychopath on a daily basis without even knowing it. Now, a study carried out by scientists from the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Aarhus University (Denmark) presents us with a way to detect them according to the university degree they study or have studied. And it is that, psychopaths, are more likely to study careers related to business .
The study found that individuals with traces of the so-called ‘dark triad’ (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) are more likely to study Business Administration or Economics, for example. These results show that personality, particularly if you have a “dark” personality, can influence educational choices.
The results are based on the responses of more than 400 Danish students who took a personality test while providing information on their academic options. The study was conducted specifically before the participants began their university studies, so that any personality differences could not be attributed to the socialization effect of the university course, but rather give a more pure view of the link between career selection and the personality.
In other words, the researchers wanted to see what personalities were initially attracted to certain professions, not what effects a college degree had on an individual’s personality.
One of the curiosities of the study is that those who later chose the career of Psychology obtained relatively lower scores than the others on the scale of ‘dark personality’.
The dark triad of personality includes psychopathy , a disorder fraught with lack of empathy, high self-esteem, and an energy drive, narcissism (a person’s exaggerated admiration for himself), and Machiavellianism (‘the end justifies the means’: making whatever it takes to achieve the goal at all costs).
The study has been published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
