THE Ted Bundys of this world may have given your everyday psychopath a bad name, or so Dr Kevin Dutton’s theory goes. What if you could harness your powers for evil and channel them into something productive: swelling up your bank account, keeping a cool head under pressure, advancing your career, weaselling your way to the presidency…

One thing the Oxford University research psychologist has come to realise through his research - and a little soul searching – (he scores very high on the psychopathic spectrum himself, some food for thought there) is that contrary to popular belief not all psychopaths are bad. Then again he’d say so.

On a serious note though the checklist of psychopathic traits includes: charisma, charm, coolness under pressure, fearlessness, focus, impulsiveness, lack of conscience, mental toughness, reduced empathy and ruthlessness.

“These characteristics are not inherently bad in themselves,” explained the author of The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success to a baffled audience at the Lit Fest on Friday. “Not all psychopaths end up being criminals or serial killers… If these characteristics can be dialled up to the right level, in the right context, they can be beneficial and allow you to be successful in your profession. But if all the dials are cranked up, it’s no good.”

Case in point, the business world, politics, special armed forces and, surprisingly, the church (number nine on the list), is rife with functional psychopaths. It makes sense really: these jobs require razor-sharp focus, the ability to read people, schmooze, take risks, and oodles of narcissism. How could this not be a winning formula?

“I’m not saying that psychopaths per se are good for society,” he clarified. “A pure psychopath is going to ruin his or her life and also the lives of those who they come into contact with.”

But in certain contexts it will predispose them to success. And that’s where the book’s co-author Andy McNab comes into the mix. Dutton first met the former SAS and novelist during a research project. McNab it turned out was a diagnosed psychopath, but a good one, able to dial up or down his ruthlessness, fearlessness, consciousness and empathy to get the best out of himself and others in a range of situations.

Just last year they were in a gastropub with their wives, watching the rugby world cup, when four foul-mouthed barflies started to get too rowdy for McNab’s taste. He asked them politely to watch their language, but when one of them squared up to him a switch flipped.

“You see that with psychopaths,” recalled Kevin with a kind of awe. “His eyes just changed, they were ice-cold. He put his hand on the guy’s forearm and he said, ‘The door is over there; you, you, you and you get out’. And they did. I’m studying this now; I want to know if this is something you can method act, something you can fake, or whether you need to know deep down inside of you that you can rip these men apart.”

That’s one for the psychopath, zero for the louts. The as-yet-unexplained ability to catch someone in a lie could be another tell-tale sign of psychopathy, and a rather enviable talent at that. Concluding his chat at the Festival of Literature, Kevin put our psychopathic tendencies to the test with real clips of family pleas for information after the disappearance of a loved one. Some were guilty, some were not. Not even the police at the time were able to tell who was lying. But Kevin’s psychopath subjects have been able to unmask the liars in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. I’m sad to report that (like the police) I was shamelessly duped by two murderers out of three, and the rest of the audience didn’t fare much better.

If not harnessing your baser psychopathic nature dooms you to a life of poverty, career suicide and makes you more vulnerable to cheats and swindlers, maybe taking a leaf from the psychopath’s handbook is not so ill-advised after all.