When people think of psychopathic women, true crime shows such as Deadly Women may come to mind. Criminologists have often pointed out that when women commit crimes, especially violent crimes, the media will depict these women as either ‘mad’ (her offending is linked to mental health issues) or ‘bad’ (she is viewed as evil and deserving of her punishment). Criminologists suggest that this depiction is due to the fact that, when women engage in violence, they are defying their feminine gender roles. Women are expected to be gentle, empathetic, understanding, compliant, and passive. When women defy their gender role they are considered ‘doubly deviant’ and often depicted as being especially heinous (for further information, consult Faith & Jiwani, 2015).
Aside from media’s sensationalized portrayals of justice-impacted women, is there really a difference between women with psychopathic traits and men with psychopathic traits? Are psychopathic women more dangerous than psychopathic men? First of all, individuals with psychopathy are not necessarily serial killers, and psychopathy does not equate to violence. Individuals with psychopathy know right from wrong but do not care about the harm they cause others. Psychopathy is a constellation of personality features and behaviors such as interpersonal features (e.g., being deceitful, manipulative), emotional features (e.g., lacking empathy or not feeling guilt for doing something wrong), lifestyle features (e.g., mooching off of others, being impulsive and irresponsible), and antisociality (e.g., committing crimes and early behavior problems such as bullying). People can fall onto a continuum of psychopathic features, with some people displaying very few features and others displaying many features.
For the purposes of this review, ‘psychopathic’ refers to people with many psychopathic features. In general, psychopathy tends to occur much more predominately in men in comparison to women. Research suggests that when administering the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003) in offender populations, men tend to score higher and are more frequently diagnosed with psychopathy than women are. Also, studies that use self-report measures of psychopathy in the general population tend to find that men in tend to score higher than women. Due to the low rate of occurrence of psychopathy in women, there has been limited research on women with many psychopathic features.
It has also been found that in general, women are more likely to have internalizing pathology – they are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Men are more likely to have externalizing disorders – they are more likely to have substance abuse problems, engage in aggression, and be diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder (APSD). Some research has suggested that there could be biological (e.g., differences in sex hormones) or cognitive reasons (e.g., proneness to antisocial and violent attitudes) for these differences.
Other research has pointed out the potential for socialization differences – men and boys are expected to refrain from displaying emotions and engage in rough and tumble play (potentially encouraging aggression). Women and girls are encouraged to show their emotions and feelings, and to be nurturing, sensitive, passive and considerate. These factors may help explain why psychopathy occurs at a higher rate in men than in women – that there could be biological, cognitive, and social factors at play that encourage men to be more likely to be aggressive or antisocial.
However, when it comes to how psychopathic women compare to psychopathic men, researchers have found they share some core features. For instance, both are younger in age when they commit crimes, commit a greater variety of different crimes, and are more likely to victimize strangers than other offenders (Hare, 1993; Kosson et al., 2006; Tuente et al., 2014). Their crimes are more likely to be motivated by a desire for personal gain, power, and dominance. Both males and females with psychopathic traits are less bothered emotionally by things that happen to them, their anxiety is related to interpersonal and emotional aspects of psychopathy, and they tend to have attention problems (Verona & Vitale, 2018). They also have similar areas in the brain related to experiencing fear that are impaired under some conditions (Maurer et al., 2022). Thus, this research demonstrates that the core features of psychopathy seem to manifest similarly between the sexes.
At the same time, there is evidence that psychopathy may manifest differently in women as compared to men – namely, in some notable behavioral differences. For one, it has been suggested that psychopathic women are more likely to use manipulative tactics to get what they want from others, such as using subtle, less violent, and more verbal aggression tactics (e.g., gossip; Nicholls & Petrila, 2005). Psychopathic men use overt aggression more than psychopathic women (de Vogel & Lancel, 2016). Because their aggressive behavior is less physically violent and more often covert, women with psychopathic traits may be less likely then men to get caught (Nicholls & Petrila, 2005).
Psychopathic women are also more likely to engage in suicide/self-harm behaviors, use their sexuality to manipulate others, are more emotionally unstable, more anxious, and more likely to develop Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD; a disorder of panic, anxiety and, sometimes, paranoid fears, that occurs after experiencing a traumatic event; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). When psychopathic women commit crimes, they tend to commit offences such as theft or fraud and are more likely than psychopathic men to be motivated primarily by jealousy or revenge (de Vogel & Lancel, 2016).
Women with high psychopathic traits tend to focus their aggression more within the family and in interpersonal relationships. In comparison to men with psychopathy, women tend to be more violent towards family members and in the home, inflict less serious injury on victims/survivors, and are less likely to be arrested for their violent behaviour. Women that are psychopathic are also more likely to be involved in prostitution, demonstrate irresponsible parenting, and exhibit violent behavior towards their partners and children (Verona &Vitale, 2018).
In stark contrast to psychopathic men, it seems that emotional instability is a unique occurrence in psychopathic women. Often, psychopathic men in prison are described as emotionally cold and unfeeling. They have what is called, ‘flat affect,’ which is what occurs when someone has no emotion in their voice; psychopathic men have been described as displaying little anxiety, fear, or panic.
To add to this, women with psychopathic traits are more likely to also have a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD; a personality disorder that is marked by emotional instability and is more common in women) in comparison to men. For instance, Carabellese and colleagues (2018) reported that 85% of psychopathic men have a diagnosis of ASPD (a personality disorder that is more common in men, and has symptoms that focus on violent behavior such as committing crimes, being aggressive, and recklessness), while 80% of psychopathic women were diagnosed with BPD. Carabellese and colleagues (2018) suggest that, since psychopathic men are more likely to be diagnosed with ASPD, it is not surprising that psychopathic men are more violent and break laws that lead them to getting caught. They also suggest that, because psychopathic women are more likely to be diagnosed with BPD, it is not surprising they tend to be emotionally unstable.
A similar gender difference has been identified among adolescents: adolescent girls with psychopathic traits appear to be less violent and less likely to have early behavior problems than adolescent boys with psychopathic traits. For instance, Linberg and colleagues (2016) found that girls with psychopathic traits are more likely to have unstable interpersonal relationships, to experience childhood sexual abuse, and to victimize people they know, and they are less likely to victimize strangers as compared to boys with these traits. This shows that, even at a young age, those who grow up to be psychopathic women have more emotional problems, experience more trauma, and differ in whom they target.
A note of caution is warranted. This research is not showing that people that are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are psychopathic. To come to this conclusion would be incorrect and problematic. BPD is a completely separate disorder often diagnosed in individuals who have a history of sexual abuse or have a history of serious trauma. Some experts have suggested that due to a high comorbidity between a history of serious trauma and PTSD in individuals who have been diagnosed with BPD, BPD may be related to a broader collection of trauma-related symptoms (Powers et al., 2022). To come to the conclusion that women with BPD are all psychopathic is inaccurate and stigmatizing to people that have this disorder. BPD is already a highly stigmatized disorder and should not be conflated with psychopathy. Rather, the research is suggesting that behaviorally, women with high levels of psychopathic traits may exhibit behaviors that resemble BPD and may be more likely to be diagnosed with BPD. This is not the same as stating that women with BPD are psychopaths, and we strongly encourage researchers and the public to recognize this difference in order to minimize harm and stigma towards those victims/survivors of trauma who develop symptoms of BPD.
The takeaway is that women with psychopathy are not more lethal and cunning than men with psychopathy (even though this is how Hollywood depicts them). Rather, psychopathic women are, on average, more likely to be emotionally unstable and less likely to be violent than psychopathic men. Although there are important commonalities between psychopathic men and women, there is also substantial evidence of gender differences that are important to consider.
For more information on this topic, please refer to:
Fournier, L. F., & Verona, E. (2022). Psychopathy, trauma, and PTSD symptoms: Theory and evidence. In J. E. Vitale (Ed.), The complexity of psychopathy (pp. 201-234). Cham: Springer Nature.
Verona, E., & Vitale, J. (2018). Psychopathy in women: Assessment, manifestations, and etiology. In C. J. Patrick (Ed.), Handbook of psychopathy (2nd ed., pp. 415-436). The Guilford Press.
References:
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Publishing.
