to an everyday life kind of scenario, psychopaths tend to have quite a few positive characteristics

going for them. They tend to be assertive; they don’t procrastinate. They focus on

the positives of situations. They don’t take things personally. They don’t beat

themselves up when things go wrong. And they’re very cool under pressure.

  I’ll give you an example, if you like: the

Nike slogan “Just do it!”  There’s a psychopathic slogan for you, if ever there

was one. Psychopaths do not procrastinate. Psychopaths, if they want something, they

go for it and they go for it now.  

Now actually, I write in the book that actually top sportsmen are very high in certain psychopathic

characteristics. Now let me just go through them. You’ve got ruthlessness. You’ve

got fearlessness. You’ve got mental toughness. You’ve got coolness under pressure. You’ve

got the ability to focus remorselessly on a goal. I mean, these things are straight

out of the sports psychology text books in many ways. So anyone from top golfers, to

top cyclists, to top boxers, to top athletes, they are gonna be high on the psychopathic

characteristics.  

Now where we start getting into the realms of criminal psychopaths is when we look at

natural aggression levels and perhaps natural levels of intelligence. If you’ve got those

characteristics right there that I’ve told you about and you happen to be naturally violent,

and you also happen to be naturally stupid – not a very politically correct word there,

but you happen to be low in intelligence - then your prospects, to be perfectly honest with

you, are not gonna be that great. Okay?  You’re gonna wind up smacking a bottle over

someone’s head in a bar and you are gonna wind up in prison pretty quickly. Okay? 

  However, if you’ve got those traits I’ve

just mentioned to you and you are not naturally violent, and you are also intelligent, then

it’s a different story altogether. Then, as the famous Reuters headline once mentioned,

you are more likely gonna make a killing in the market than anywhere else.