Children with psychopathic traits evidenced an impairment in their recognition for sad and fearful facial expressions and for sad vocal tone.
While psychopathy is associated with lower levels of self-reported empathy [22] and empathic accuracy [23], there is limited evidence regarding facial mimicry in psychopaths, and whether immediate facial muscle response to the emotional expressions of others is also reduced.
The core personality features associated with psychopathy are callous and unemotional personality traits, which include a lack of empathy or remorse, weak social bonds, an uncaring nature, and shallow emotional responding (Cooke et al., 2005; Frick and White, 2008; Viding and McCrory, 2012).
Compared to non-psychopaths, studies suggest that psychopaths make significantly less eye contact. This applies to both eye contact frequency and duration. Eye contact avoidance doesn't only occur while listening during in-person interaction.
2. Notice the psychopathic stare. A normal person will stare at you, and when you catch their eye, they will look away. A psychopath will continue staring without looking away or blinking.
“Sometimes, people with psychopathy use a stare as a deliberate means of controlling and intimidating others,” she continues. “But it can also reflect cold, hard anger if they're struggling to inhibit it in the same way that other people might glare if they're upset with someone.”
Karin Roelofs, at the Donders Institute at Radboud University in the Netherlands, confirmed that the brains of psychopaths showed poor connectivity between the amygdala — the brain region key for processing emotions, especially fear — and the more “judging,” wiser prefrontal cortex.
The callous unemotional traits consist of lack of empathy and remorse, with short-lived emotions. The daring-impulsive domain (also named impulsivity or psychopathy-related impulsivity) traits include irresponsibility, proneness to boredom, novelty seeking and antisocial behaviour.
Of course, they can also get angry, especially in response to provocation, or get frustrated when their goals are thwarted. So Villanelle is right, to some extent. You can hurt a psychopath's feelings, but probably different feelings and for different reasons.
The individuals with psychopathy in their interpersonal relationships present grandiose, deceptive, dominant, manipulative, superficial, unable to form strong emotional bonds with others, affectively shallow, irresponsible, impulsive, tend to ignore social conventions, lacking in empathy, guilt and/or remorse ...
A sociopathic stare is a look that doesn't involve any sort of feeling or emotion. It is different than when someone looks at you and their eyes light up because they are happy to see you. The sociopathic gaze may be the only way to tell that someone is a sociopath.
They speak slowly and quietly.
They don't emphasize emotional words like other people do. Their tone remains fairly neutral throughout the conversation. Researchers suspect they craft a calm demeanor intentionally because it helps them gain more control in their personal interactions.
There are some areas where psychopaths may experience normal emotions and grief is one such area. In response to death of a person with whom there is a bond, some psychopaths can experience sadness and this may even bring about feelings of guilt which are otherwise impossible to feel. Crying may be a part of this.
They found the young men with stronger psychopathic traits tended to have higher social intelligence and more relaxed attitudes towards casual sex. Members of the opposite sex also found the men with more psychopathic traits as more attractive, even after controlling for physical attractiveness ratings.
A person who is manipulative, dishonest, narcissistic, unremorseful, non-empathetic, and exploitative may be a psychopath. Criminality, promiscuity, and lack of responsibility are also common traits associated with psychopathy.
An intense fear of abandonment, separation, or rejection. Precarious yet intense relationships with “black and white” thinking – idealizing someone one moment and devaluing them the next. Fluctuating, unstable identity with inconsistent goals and values. Seeing the self as overly flawed or nonexistent.
A failure to maintain eye contact can be a symptom of someone hiding something or being insecure. But because sociopaths are extremely confident, they'll do the opposite—staring in a way that veers on predatorial. “Sociopaths are unfazed by uninterrupted eye contact,” writes diagnosed sociopath M.E. Thomas.
There is no single known cause of psychopathy. Genetics, trauma, brain structure, exposure to violence during childhood, and environmental conditions are possible contributing factors. Research about effective treatments for psychopathy is ongoing.
Psychopaths are considered to have a severe form of antisocial personality disorder.
The organizational psychopath
Organizational psychopaths crave a god-like feeling of power and control over other people. They prefer to work at the very highest levels of their organizations, allowing them to control the greatest number of people.
Those with histrionic, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, schizotypal, passive-aggressive, self-defeating, antisocial, paranoid, borderline, avoidant, dependent, and sadistic personality traits also were attracted to psychopaths.