Watch for these psychopath warning signs and avoid being a target!
US Serial killer Ted Bundy, who, right before his execution, admitted to 30 homicides committed in the 70s, declared that “he could tell a victim by the way she walked down the street, the tilt of her head, how she carried herself, and so on.”
This somewhat inspired a recent psychology study to test whether or not psychopaths used the way people walk to decide who to target. They wanted to see if predators select their victims by first observing their body language, which they use to determine our submissiveness and, therefore, ultimately, vulnerability to assault.
The results were pretty telling. So, based on that, here’s the number 1 psychopath warning sign to know so that you don’t become a target!
Psychopath warning sign: Their use of manipulation
Psychopathy is marked by a series of traits, including manipulativeness, impulsivity, and, most importantly, a lack of empathy. It’s common to come across these types of individuals among lawyers, salesmen, and CEOs because the superficially persuasive and charming nature of psychopathy is attracted to careers like these.
But a key psychopath warning sign is manipulation, which can easily be used to exploit others. Experts say that psychopaths view the world as having “predators and prey” or “givers and takers.” They believe it would be ridiculous not to exploit the weakness of those around them.
Psychopathy can be rated using Hare’s PCL-R scale, which is divided into two factors. But, some have claimed that the model should have three factors. With a total of 20 items that can be rated between 0 and 2, the cut-off point to determine a psychopath is considered 30 in the US and 25 in England. Average folks generally score around 5.
Psychopath warning sign: How they detect their next victim
According to the study performed, psychopaths appear to have a deeply rooted “victim detector,” which allows them to manipulate those who seem more weak.
Research has discovered the psychopath warning sign that they can use social information to influence those around them and have accurate insight into others’ motivations and emotions.
They can also accurately pinpoint submissiveness or vulnerability using facial and body language signals.
Psychopath warning sign: Remembering vulnerability
A different study investigated a person’s ability to detect submissiveness and vulnerability in others. This study was inspired by an experiment that found a correlation between psychopathy scores in participants and their accuracy in remembering pictures of unsuccessful and unhappy faces.
In the first trial phase, participants were shown images of either happy or sad faces with a description of them. This detailed the character’s likes, dislikes, name, and either a successful occupation or an unsuccessful one.
So, in total, they had four variations of faces: happy and successful, happy and unsuccessful, unhappy and successful, and unhappy and unsuccessful. After a quick break, they finished the second phase, where they were presented with all the faces again and new faces they hadn’t seen before.
This time without the character descriptions. They were asked if they had seen the face from the earlier trial. Accuracy was measured by their ability to recognize familiar faces. They discovered that participants who scored higher for psychopathy remembered unsuccessful people much better.
There were also differences in gender, where unsuccessful sad female faces were identified higher than males. This might be thanks to stereotypical gender beliefs that women could be more weak. The authors say that it may be due to a general disregard for female success in comparison to that of males.
These results provide support for the concept that psychopaths have a better memory than those deemed more vulnerable. The importance of this study is extensive: Do psychopaths recall unsuccessful, sad females better so they can manipulate them in the future? Is this a conscious or unconscious tool?
Other research suggests this apparent advantage for the recall of vulnerable women may be an unconscious feature of a psychopath warning sign in the community yet more conscious amongst criminal psychopaths.
Psychopath warning sign: Identifying victims based on gait
An impressive series of studies examined a psychopath’s ability to detect his victims. The research implies psychopaths are better than others in recognizing who’s a victim based entirely on their manner of walking or gait.
One study rated 59 inmates on their psychopathy score using Levenson’s Self Report Psychopathy Scale and also the PCL-R. Participants were then asked to finish two tasks. The first was a facial expression of emotion task, which showed pictures of faces showing different emotions.
They were asked to identify which sentiment the face was displaying and rate its intensity on a scale of 1 to 10. In the second task, they watched videos of people with a history of either low or high victimization interacting with a Confederate.
Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that rated the person’s assertiveness based on the idea that victims are less assertive and, thus, more vulnerable. Though psychopathy wasn’t associated with the categorizing of facial expressions, they found a connection between psychopathy scores.
They increased accuracy when judging emotion intensity for scared faces. Sadly, a massive restriction of the task is the limited number of stimuli used. With only four images for every emotion, it’s tough to confirm these results’ accuracy.
Replicating this with a larger stimulus set would undoubtedly be worthwhile in solidifying these results. In the victim assertiveness task, they found psychopathy was positively associated with accurately judging victimization.
This study implies that psychopaths are better at reading emotional intensity in facial expressions and victimization from body language. But, this advantage might not necessarily be an innate feature of psychopathy. Experts found no such performance amongst psychopathic children, though.
This could indicate that even though psychopaths don’t instinctively have advanced victim-detecting abilities, fine-tuned body reading skills have developed over time to make up for a lack of empathy or to enhance their manipulative nature. As intriguing as this study is, one significant setback is the sampling choice.
Their psychopathic inmates had an average PCL-R score of 17.58. And even though this is high, it doesn’t reach the 30-score cut-off point for psychopathy. This suggests that the majority of their psychopaths didn’t qualify as one.
Maybe their results have nothing to do with psychopathy and instead reflect a criminal’s ability to catch victims. That being said, research on undergraduates who haven’t been institutionalized has also found related patterns of victim detection accuracy.
In another study, experts wanted to look into the differences between Factors One and Two. Forty-seven inmates viewed videos of people simply walking. To make their behavior as natural as possible, these individuals weren’t aware they were being filmed.
They discovered that inmates with higher psychopathic scores overall were better at recognizing victims from non-victims. This makes sense as the traits in this factor relate more directly to exploitation and manipulation.
Not only does this provide the support that psychopaths are “social predators,” but it also indicates that Factor One traits are the core traits of psychopath warning signs.
The terrifying nature of this psychopath warning sign
Psychopaths are famous for being slick and manipulative, and characteristics like these can be enhanced by precise reading of facial expressions and body language. Their ability to catch vulnerability in others is a frightening skill that could bring a lot of harm to those around them.
(Check out The Dictionary of Body Language from Amazon for more on this)
Research into this field has many applications. For example, knowledge of a psychopath’s “vulnerability detector” can prevent false judgments of inmates applying for parole.
Overall, more research is required into how this psychopath warning sign extends across adolescence and the structural brain differences that arise as a result of this. It would be incredibly fascinating to investigate and might help us understand the psychopathic brain a bit more.
What are your thoughts on this psychopath warning sign? Leave a comment to let me know. And if you found this article interesting, check out: Truth or Lie? 7 Easy Lie-Detection Tips to Know if Someone’s Dishonest
