POLITICIANS and psychopaths share many significant behavioural characteristics, according to Dr David Cook, psychologist and lecturer at Caledonian University, Glasgow - but there's one significant difference: psychopaths lie easily and enjoy duping people.
Dr Cook offered his insights while presenting the results of a three year study on the causes of behaviour of 105 Scottish criminal psychopaths to the British Psychological Societys annual conference in York. But he's not the first to, argue that psychopaths may have more of an influence on our lives than we think.
"The idea that the psychopath is a type of criminal only is wrong. What we are dealing with is an abnormal structure of personality which does exist in normal life and among our friends. No one is immune and no profession is immune," says Dr Pearse O'Malley, a retired consultant psychiatrist living in Dublin who set up the neuropsychiatry department at the Mater Hospital, Belfast in 1946 and ran it until 1981.
Most of us probably wouldn't recognise a psychopath even if we saw - or voted for - one. Yet a civilised psychopath on his best behaviour can become so powerful through his manipulative behaviour and pathological lying that he might rise to run important institutions and even the country.
Dr O'Malley told The Irish Times that he is personally concerned that psychopaths can manipulate their way into positions of prominence and power, including paramilitary and political organisations. The traits they share are the key to their success: psychopaths tend to have a grandiose sense of self worth and a superficial charm.
The key to preventing psychopaths from creating further harm in society is to diagnose the condition in childhood, when it is not too late to influence the structure of the brain.