Exploring Moderation Effects of Education and the Role of Personality Attribution in a Convergent Model of Successful Psychopathy

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on the successful psychopath: An individual who manages to achieve occupational success despite exhibiting core psychopathic traits such as callousness. Several studies suggest this phenomenon is underpinned by a specific configuration of adaptive psychopathic traits that may facilitate positive behaviour in combination with protective variables such as education. In addition, research indicates that psychopathic personalities may be further enabled in occupational domains by specific facial cues pertaining to their underlying personality traits. The present study examined these assertions in a two-part cross-sectional design. Part 1 assessed the extent to which self-report psychopathy (as a function of education) predicted professional success in an occupational sample of 161 participants. In part 2, a convenience sample of 131 participants selected their preferred leaders from male- and female-face pairs communicating high and low psychopathy. Regression analyses revealed that psychopathy was negatively (but not significantly) related to professional success when expressed as a function of education. Conversely, a repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that low psychopathy was preferred in female, relative to male, target faces. Overall, the results provided little support for psychopathy having positive impacts on professional success.