Former City analyst told he was not a psychopath despite workplace fears

In a BBC Wales story distributed on 3 October 2026, former City analyst and author Geraint Anderson said he had adopted a harder, more manipulative manner during his finance career because he believed the environment rewarded it. Consultant and forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes, who evaluated him, concluded that he was not a psychopath. She suggested he might have been a “situational psychopath” – her description of behaviour shaped by circumstances, not a separate clinical diagnosis. [1] [7]

Daynes had already published that conclusion in September. In an accompanying first-person account, Anderson said he had previously gone along with the psychopath label in the hope that it would help book sales. He also gave himself a score of about eight or nine on a psychopathy checklist. The checklist’s publisher describes a formal assessment involving an interview and a review of other information, rather than self-scoring alone. [1] [2] [3]

Wider research allows for a limited career advantage, but not a rule that ruthlessness brings success. A 2019 review of leadership studies found a weak positive correlation of 0.07 between psychopathic tendencies and emerging as a leader, but a weak negative correlation of −0.04 with ratings of leadership effectiveness. Its authors also found that moderate levels of those tendencies were associated with higher effectiveness ratings than either very low or very high levels. Those associations do not show whether London finance rewards such traits or whether a workplace changes someone’s personality. [4]

The BBC story says no treatment is available for psychopathy. NHS guidance makes a narrower point about antisocial personality disorder: harmful behaviour can sometimes improve with therapy even if core characteristics remain. In a randomised trial involving 313 men with that disorder under probation supervision, a therapy group had lower aggression scores than a usual-probation group at 12 months. A difference between the groups was not statistically established at 24 months. The trial concerned aggression in that selected group, not a cure for psychopathy. [1] [5] [6]