Kevin Dutton

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Kevin Dutton (born 1967) is a British psychologist and writer who studies psychopathy. He works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and is part of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN). He says he divides his time between lab work and popular writing.

Previously, he was a research fellow at the Faraday Institute, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Professor for Public Engagement with Psychological Science at the University of Essex. He earned his PhD from Essex in 2000 with the thesis Minorities as symbols of uniqueness: a break from the norm.

Dutton leads a research group focused on how personality traits and emotion regulation skills affect people in different jobs, including politics, investment banking, surgery, and the military. He investigates whether these traits can be improved to boost job performance and decision making.

He has written several popular books on psychopathy. A review notes that his work links psychopathic traits to qualities that are often rewarded in capitalism. He has said The Wisdom of Psychopaths was an attempt to understand his father, who ran a market stall and was ruthless, fearless, and charming.

In 2011, he led the Great British Psychopath Survey, which identified professions with the highest share of psychopaths—jobs that require staying calm and detached. He also appeared on Channel 4’s Psychopath Night, and a related survey drew about 700,000 responses. Among the findings: people with fewer psychopathic traits tended to prefer cats, while those with more traits preferred fish.

In 2014 he appeared on BBC Radio 4’s The Museum of Curiosity and said his dream donation to the fictional museum would be a smile.