Spotting the psychopaths among us

I find that article very interesting and I assume it could help one or two to make decisions..

Not all psychopaths are criminals. Some are bosses. Some are neighbors. With no empathy and no conscience, they manipulate us with charm and false feelings.

A persistent myth about psychopaths involves the belief that they are callous, emotional void criminals (particularly serial killers). The mass media (e.g., television shows, films, and books) often reinforces this inaccurate image. For example, a recent ABC program, "Secrets of Your Mind," presented a story of an incarcerated terrifying serial killer/psychopath who was diagnosed as having brain abnormalities in regulating his emotions.

Two facts contradict the false belief. First, a number (possibly most) of psychopaths are found in managerial or power positions rather than in prison/jail (see my early post: Why some psychopaths are in leadership positions and fellow blogger Sandra Brown's pertinent post). From the perspective of evolutionary biology, psychopaths flourish in society because most of them actually have the skill to avoid prison. Both criminal and managerial psychopaths are detrimental to others' well beings. However, unlike the violent criminals who rely on physical aggression to maintain their control over individuals, managerial psychopaths are inclined to employ verbal brutality, deception, and emotional abuse and ploys to ruin people's lives.

Second, psychopaths do not lack emotions. Emotions can be divided into self-serving and pro-other ones. Although they lack pro-other or social emotions, they have plenty of self-serving and/or maladaptive emotions. Psychopaths in power positions are good at harming and controlling others in part because they know how to use emotions to manipulate others at the expense of others' well beings.

Research and observations show that managerial psychopaths possess many self-serving and/or maladaptive emotions, such as: Arrogance, grandiosity, pleasure, anger, rage, hostility, contempt, overweening, envy, jealousy, greed, suspiciousness, impatience, and irritability. Because of their superficial charm, people often misperceive their impulsivity and unscrupulousness as being courageous and determined, and mistake their self-inflation and self-admiration as signs of self confidence.

On the other hand, research and observations also reveal that psychopaths are severely deficient in pro-other emotions, such as: Love, compassion, gratefulness, peacefulness, pleasantness, sympathy, guilt, remorse, empathy, and general moral emotions (e.g., shame, anxiety, and fear). Certainly, they pretend to mimic the emotions, but theirs are very shallow and artificial.

One question remains to be answered: Why do emotionally intelligent, nice people often become the victims of the psychopaths, who have abusive tempers and exhibit glibness, irresponsibility, and deception with an excessive need for control and interference corresponding to their sense of incompetency? In my observations, this is because managerial psychopaths use emotions, including your emotions, to advance their interests.

Let me use a midlevel manager as an example. He used three typical tricks to defeat his victims:

First, he constantly told lies to another as long as it helped maintain his control over the person. The victim, who attempted to communicate with the manager always met frustrations because the boss always denied what he did or justified his actions by saying "What's wrong with it?"

Second, although the manager had no guilty feelings, he managed to make his abused victim feel inadequate by repeating "It is Ok" (right after his violent emotional outburst against the person who disagreed with him). Basically, he made the victim feel that the victim's normal emotional reaction to the abuse was overreacting. As the result, the victim felt guilty.

Third, he was good at using another's empathy. Although anger was his primary temper for controlling others, he was excelled in shifting his emotional expressions from extreme angry to extreme sadness, automatically or voluntarily. Suddenly, he appeared to be a helpless and sad person, needing immediately to be babied by others, arousing his victims' empathy right away (This shift is part of his performance, different from the emotional instability as observed in borderline personality disorders).

How to deal with them? I agree with Martha Stout's suggestion that the best method to deal with psychopaths is to detach from them or the situations in which they operate.

However, I do not share the consensus that there is neither a cure nor any effective treatment for psychopathy, which has a strong genetic component. I think that the late British psychologist Hans Eysenck's research on conditionability and conscience sheds a light on psychopathy (even though he has not examined psychopathy per se). Eysenck contended that people who are impulsive, lack (or have not learned) the sense of guilt or conscience have low conditionability, which was influenced by the process of classical conditioning, particularly during childhood. Although the limbic system regulates the effectiveness of classical conditioning, more frequent and intensive conditioning processes can improve the innate low conditionability.

In short, psychopaths represent a much more complicated category than the offenders portrayed in the media. They thrive not because they lack emotions in general, but because they use emotions (in addition to other tricks) to control others.

 

Thanks for posting, Christine. Where did you find this article?

 

Never met a psycopath I couldn't handle. I enjoy the confrontations with these type of people.... but that doesn't get you far in life seeing that I'm now jobless lol.

 

We have a new statistic in Germany about that topic and it says that around 1 Mio psychopaths exist here. In general I was interested, because I've met and still meet a lot of them (or maybe I am just able to identify them, because of my experience). They are "fascinating* me, because it is unbelievable, how convincing, successful and dangerous they are.
This english article I've found on http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201104/spotting-the-psychopaths-among-us

 

Good for you, but honestly said, I don't think you can handle them..nobody can (as long as you move within legality), the missing emotions and conscience is their big advantage.To identify and to detach from them is the only possibility

 

Good article CD.

 

A psychopath match made in heaven hell if he....









met her.........

 

All starting to fall apart for him. I read where now the US is going to try to extradite him to face extortion charges for taking 25,000 from Natalie Holloway's mom. He was supposed to tell her where the body was for the money. I guess.

 

It's all in the eyes... :smt100

 

:smt042 True.

 

From a male perspective, you can. Basically, they are bullies and you bully them back. That won't stop them from intimidating or manipulating others but they will back off you.

I agree with your last statement though, the best way is to identify them and become detach from them. Being in the military, you run into all kinds of people. It doesn't take long to be able to identify those people.

It seems like they are amoral, they have NO conscience. Because I am the polite, silent type, I become the target for some of these guys. I don't yell or raise my voice in front of a lot of people to put on a show. I'll completely ignore you to a point.

When I'm around my lady friend, very seldom do I raise my voice. When I do, it scares her because I'm reacting in a manner she is not use to.

Same with dealing with those kind of people. I blow them off, very seldom do I respond to ANYTHING they do. If they misread that as me being afraid of them and they push it, that's when the other side of me comes out. Will walk right up to them and get in their face, I make sure my eyes lock with theirs. I let them know that this is their ONE AND ONLY verbal warning, next time I walk up on them, there won't be any talking.

Being around many individuals from all walks of life, I know EXACTLY where you are coming from.

 

Which one wouldn't you trust, when you look in his eyes?

 

It is possible that you have a better experience, I just have a problem to believe it. Police doesn't find them (in a criminal case) for years, family members, friends are shocked, if the truth comes up..
Personally I have seen longtime business owners going down, some even committed suicide, because suddenly it was clear what happened and that they've lost everything.
I just can say, be careful

 

Interesting. I agree with Armyranger and, I also agree it's better to detach yourself from such people if possible.