Fantasising about killing your boss is healthy, says leading psychologist

If you daydream about murdering your boss, you are not alone.

And in fact your fantasy is not only usual, it is healthy, a leading criminal psychologist says.

Julia Shaw, of University College London, said most people have imagined killing a specific person and the one important lesson someone will take is that committing a murder would be horrific.

In fact, they reinforce the idea, for most people, that such a brutal act would be immoral.

“Murder fantasies are a product of the human capacity for abstract thought and hypothetical planning — if I did this, what would happen? They allow us to play out entire scenarios,” she told the Cheltenham Science Festival.

“Most of us decide that, no matter how irritating the target, murder would not be worth it.”

In a book published this year, Making Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side, Dr Shaw admitted she had murderous thoughts. “I regularly feel like I want to kill people — you know, just a little bit. Especially when they are dawdling at airports,” she said.

She also said that murder fantasies were “part of our evolved psychological design”, which help people prepare for the worst.

Researchers at Arizona State University once conducted a study to ask people if they had ever imagined deliberately taking somebody else’s life.

Somewhat surprisingly, 75% of men and 66% of women said they had.

Near the top of the list were bosses and former partners.

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Men were more likely to imagine killing colleagues, while women plumped for family members.

She added: “Those who don’t have this capacity to mentally test potential future behaviours and their likely consequences might act more impulsively and live to regret it.”

Dr Shaw added though bad thoughts do nor necessarily mean a bad person.

“Just because you have — if you will — evil or dark thoughts it doesn’t mean that you are a dark person.”