There are more psychopaths than you think: Just notice this gesture

When you say the word psychopath, many immediately think of movie monsters, cold killers or manipulators with a diagnosis. But in reality, psychopathic traits are not just the domain of prisons. Many people with partial psychopathic characteristics live among us. And their behavior can be subtle if you don’t know exactly what to look for. One key, yet often overlooked, signal is the way they look. Their eye contact (or rather lack of it) can reveal a lot about their inner world.

There are many psychopaths around us. For some it manifests itself in a big way, for others it is just a subtle behavior that even they themselves may not be aware of. But the truth is that they can hurt us not only physically, as many people believe. How do you know a psychopath, what can their proximity mean to you and how can you defend yourself against them?

Surprising statistics

Psychopathy is not as rare as it may seem. According to a large meta-analysis involving 11,497 adults from the general population, researchers estimate the prevalence of psychopathic traits at 4.5%. However, this is talking about people who exhibit at least some traits. If we use the so-called gold standard assessment of psychopathy, which is often used for the individuals examined, the estimate drops to around 1.2%.

This means that although a fully diagnosed psychopath is relatively rare, traits of psychopathy may be present in a significantly larger proportion of the population than we commonly realize. And even such a person can be a problem for us if we have them in our environment and are unaware of it.

Lack of eye contact

Among psychopathic individuals, a marked defect in visual observation of socially significant stimuli has been found. They often fail to focus their gaze on specific things, but generally avoid the gaze of other people in particular. This has been demonstrated, for example, in a study of prisoners in which experts investigated what their eye contact with people around them says about them.

Another study produced similar results, where psychopaths showed fewer first fixations towards the eye region when tasked to recognise emotions on their faces. This was regardless of whether their faces had neutral or emotional expressions. This lack of eye contact is not just a coincidence. It appears to be a systematic problem that may be related to their difficulty empathizing with others and recognizing emotions.

How to deal with them?

If you have a psychopathic individual in your environment, the key is to maintain firm boundaries, avoid emotional conflicts and not be drawn into their manipulation. People with strong psychopathic traits can be dangerous, particularly because of their low empathy, superficial charm, manipulative behaviour and tendency to use others for their own gain, as expert Robert Hare has repeatedly confirmed in his publications.

Although psychopathy is not curable by standard therapy, there are approaches that can alleviate problematic behaviour if these people show a willingness to change. However, if the individual does not show motivation to cooperate (which is common), experts recommend mainly minimizing intimate contact with them, protecting one’s own safety, not passing on sensitive information, and seeking professional help or legal protection in severe cases.