Have you ever left a frustrating meeting with your boss or ended a phone call with a angry reporter and thought, “Well he/she is a psychopath”?

Turns out, your observation wasn’t too far off.

Psychopaths disproportionately gravitate towards the C-suite and the journalism field, according to psychologist and researcher Kevin Dutton in his book “The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.”

The blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree—which is listed on the blog roll of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal—featured a list of the 10 professions with the most and the fewest psychopaths based on Dutton’s research.

The 10 fields with the most psychopaths are:

1. CEO
2. Lawyer
3. Media (TV/radio)
4. Salesperson
5. Surgeon
6. Journalist
7. Police officer
8. Clergyperson
9. Chef
10. Civil servant

(Check out the list of professions with the fewest number of psychopaths here.)

According to the Wikipedia definition of “psychopathy,” the personality disorder is characterized by “shallow emotions (in particular reduced fear), stress tolerance, lacking empathy, coldheartedness, lacking guilt, egocentricity, superficial char, manipulativeness, irresponsibility, impulsivity and antisocial behaviors such as parasitic lifestyle and criminality.”

Writers, communicators, marketers, and PR professionals didn’t turn up on either of the lists, although writers needn’t feel too left out—a British study found that wordsmiths are at a higher risk of mental illness in general.

(via Business Insider)

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