Are psychopaths authentic

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are psychopaths authentic? Well not really. This is where it
gets confusing. People in what they call the dark triad
traits of narcissism. Psychopathy falls in here in macavilianism are
superficially appealing. We know the psychopaths are charming and manipulative,

(00:20):
so if someone seems a little too charming or magnetic,
that should be a beginning of a red flag. One
study showed participants emotional facial expressions, asked and asked which
seemed most authentic. The researchers had already measured the dark
triad scores of the people in the photos. Strikingly, the
participated participants rated those high and dark triad traits as

(00:42):
the most genuine. Back to the common I may earlier,
the least authentic people were seen as the most authentic.
That's because these individuals often know how to manipulate appearances.
They study which expressions seem sincere and exaggerate them to
win people over. Some psychopaths describe realizing early on that

(01:03):
they didn't feel emotions like others. To compensate, they mimicked
emotions they saw in movies, watching an actor cry, for instance.
And remember, emotions are the physiological response. The feelings is
how we interpret it, and the affect is how we
represent it, so they don't feel the emotions, which we've
also seen lower reduction activity in the amigdala or heart rate.

(01:25):
Actors always already exaggerate for the camera, so when a
psychopath imitates that performance, they're exaggerating an exaggeration, and their
emotional displays become hyperreal and maybe even more convincing. So
bottom line, if someone's personality feels a little too strong,
too instantly likable, it's worth being cautious. I don't know
if it relates to the idea of love bombing, but

(01:48):
it could. I we'll have to explore that on another show.