Revealed: The Top Sign That Indicates A Woman Could Be A PSYCHOPATH

From Patrick Bateman in American Psycho to The Joker in The Dark Knight, psychopaths have been a staple of successful films for years.

Although most psychopaths in movies are male, research shows that female psychopaths are more common than we think.

Research has now revealed that a woman you know may be a psychopath.

Researchers from the University of Sao Paulo say women who wear minimal makeup are more likely to have this dark personality trait.

“These findings highlight the nuanced relationship between makeup use and personality,” the researchers wrote in their study.

Earlier this year, a study found that female psychopaths are more common than we think, because studies have “long failed to identify them.”

Dr Clive Boddy, an expert at Anglia Ruskin University, explained in an interview with MailOnline that the symptoms of psychopathy in women are different to those in men.

‘Psychopaths are driven by the need to have power over other people and to control them by any means at their disposal,’ he told MailOnline.

In male psychopaths this can tend towards physical dominance through violence, bullying and threats.

‘In female psychopaths this can tend towards manipulation through seduction, relational aggression and spreading rumors and lies about people, with the aim of personal advantage and favoritism over those people.’

Researchers from the University of Sao Paulo say women who wear minimal makeup are more likely to have this dark personality trait (stock image)

In their new study, the researchers wanted to find out whether makeup use is linked to psychopathy.

The team recruited 1,410 women who completed surveys measuring their levels of the “Big Five” personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, as well as the “Dark Triad” traits: Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.

The women also reported on their makeup habits and their makeup use in different social situations, such as at home, during exercise, on a first date, and in a meeting.

Not surprisingly, women who regularly wore heavy makeup scored higher on narcissism.

These women also changed their makeup use significantly in different social situations. They wore more makeup in situations where they wanted to make a good impression, such as first dates or meetings.

Women who wore a lot of makeup also scored higher on extraversion, although extraverted women did not change their makeup use across situations as much as narcissists.

Women who scored high on psychopathy were less likely to wear makeup in a variety of situations.

“These findings contribute to the interplay between personality traits and makeup use, taking into account interindividual differences and intra-individual variation in understanding cosmetic behavior in women,” the researchers added in their study, published in Archives of sexual behavior.

Current scientific evidence shows that there are six times as many male psychopaths as female psychopaths.

But Dr Boddy believes the actual ratio of male to female psychopathy is about 1.2 to one – up to five times higher than previously suggested.

“Because there has been too little research into female psychopaths, too little is known about them,” he said.