Is it time to stop celebrating shallow, cheating psychopaths?

Contrary to its agreed negative traits, psychopathy has remained an evolutionary success, but mainly down to societal failures, writes Jonathan R Goodman

Rather than focusing on being good or trustworthy only because of how it can help you get ahead, promoting these qualities for their own sake may help people with antisocial tendencies to treat others well without ulterior motives.

When you start to notice them, psychopaths seem to be everywhere. This is especially true of people in powerful places. By one estimate, as many as 20% of business leaders have “clinically relevant levels” of psychopathic tendencies — despite the fact as little as 1% of the general population are considered psychopaths. 

Psychopaths are characterised by shallow emotions, a lack of empathy, immorality, anti-social behaviour and, importantly, deceptiveness.