Victims have a certain way of walking, and psychopaths can spot it. That’s the conclusion two bloggers for Psychology Today reached, based on a scientific study released last year.
The study, Psychopathic traits and perceptions of victim vulnerability, was authored by Sarah Wheeler, Angela Book and Kimberly Costello of Brock University. The abstract states:
The purpose of this study was to determine whether individuals scoring higher on psychopathic traits would be better able to judge vulnerability to victimization after viewing short clips of targets walking. Participants provided a vulnerability estimate for each target and completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale: Version III (SRP-III). Higher SRP-III scores were associated with greater accuracy in assessing targets’ vulnerability to victimization.
Psychology Today blogger Marisa Mauro, Psy.D., explained the study further. A group of male university students were asked to watch video clips of 12 people walking. The videos were shot from behind, and the students were asked to rate the ease at which each could be mugged. Several of the individuals had, in fact, been victimized. The students who scored high in psychopathic traits were better at picking out the people who had already been mugged.
Mauro works as a prison psychologist. Based on her experience and this study, she wrote:
Certain personal characteristics are associated with tendency to be on the receiving end of bullying such as harassment and manipulation. I have found that the demonstration of confidence through body language, speech and affective expression, for example, provides some protection.
Wallflowers
Another Psychology Today blogger, Jeff Wise, also commented on the study and what it says about victims. Wise wrote that he recently came across a guy who seemed to have the traits of a psychopath. The man was charming, good-looking, athletic, financially successful—and he left a trail of destruction in his wake. His victims sounded like wallflowers. Wise wrote:
The women who wound up on the receiving end of his attentions were individuals who, in their own description, were not very worldly, experienced, or outgoing. They were psychologically vulnerable and hence ill-equipped to either resist this fellow’s predations or to deal with them emotionally after they had occurred.
Wise concluded that, “people who are on the receiving end of crime often do mark themselves out, if only subliminally.” Mauro suggested that people can decrease perceived vulnerability by projecting dominance—more eye contact, less movement of the hands and feet.
If only it were that easy.
Traits of targeted women
The research both bloggers quoted described a particular situation—people walking down the street, and how vulnerable they might be to being mugged. It should not be generalized to describe all victims of psychopaths. After all, how many of us were involved with muggers?
Consider the research by Dr. Liane Leedom on women who were targeted by psychopaths. She found that they have three traits in common:
- Extraverts. The women are outgoing, competitive, strong-willed and liked excitement. Sometimes they are free-spirited.
- Cooperative. They are high in empathy, tolerance and compassion. They value getting along with others, and are willing to compromise their own interests for the larger picture.
- Invested in relationships. They like being around people. They are sentimental and focus on special moments.
Dr. Leedom’s research relates to women. But I’ve heard from many Lovefraud readers, both men and women, who were successful, take-charge individuals—until they met the psychopath.
Personally, I don’t think anyone who watched me walk down the street would tag me as timid or vulnerable. I’m an athlete, and my stride is confident. But I was victimized by a psychopath, who took $227,000 from me, and cheated on me incessantly. And the guy started setting his hooks via e-mail, before he ever saw me walk.
Maybe projecting dominance would work to avoid muggers. But it’s not going to stop victimization by a card-carrying psychopath intent on finding a resourceful new supply.
O
Oxy and Bluejay- in buddhism there are five disturbing emotions; all other’s (all 84,000 of them) are combination of these five:
1. Attachment (desire, greed, lust, etc.)
2. Aggression (anger, hatred, resentment etc.)
3. Ignorance (lack of understanding, confusion, apathy,
laziness, etc.)
4. Pride (wounded pride, exclusive pride, low-self
esteem etc.)
5. Jealousy (envy, paranoia etc.)
humans, of all the ‘beings’, are the ones most dominate in ‘attachment’ – we are creatures of desire. it follows that spaths are deeply rooted in in desire, and by their actions we know they are deeply rooted in the ’causes of samsaric (cycle of existence, the mindset of all suffering, and the antithesis of nirvana) suffering’
they live, eat, breath the disturbing emotions – it is their diet. that ‘glee’ is their envy manifesting.
Ox,
I think that is an incredibly painful reality when one awakens to what is the depth of their motives. It also could put into perspective his anger at my happiness, my moving away from alcohol (he HATED that!), and moving more toward independence seeing the discard coming. The glee would have been the power and control to stop me from “progressing” (growing) away from his motives to destroy me or at least continuing to indulge him in his self destruction until he could find someone else to do it with him. I think he sensed my moving away, even before it started. I questioned everything he said and did and didn’t believe a word of it towards the very end. His mask fell completely OFF and there was no going back.
I got a glimpse into the love bombing he was doing to an old high school friend after their reunion this year. He was absolutely FOCUSED On her after the reunion. Perfect bait. PERFECT bait and she lived in another state and knew NOTHING about him in the present. PERFECT bait. The love bombing was interesting for what it revealed to me from the sociopathic profile of initial engagement. Fascinating, if not very painful observations. Classically textbook and when she shared her vulnerabilities about her life, she was CLEARLY a target. She had a feeling something was wrong and was glad his ass was gone after his spontaneous three day flying there to love bomb on three nights of dates. From the time of the reunion to his love bombing attempts was LIGHTNING speed!!! I knew instantly what he wanted in her and what he was looking for. Not only to destroy what she had built for herself, but she also had money and her own business….and he wanted some of that. What a GREAT target, huh? I realized after I emailed back and forth with her, that not only was everything a lie, as well as his saying almost verbatim some of the things he said to me, but that it didn’t matter WHAT either one of us “looked” like. It was about HIS agenda only. He was also massively enjoying the pain it caused me and I was quite verbal about that, as well as busting him on his lies. He didn’t give a rats ass what I felt or thought, he never did, but when his use of me had run out, he was already onto new supply. What a worthless, evil human being.
The hardest part for me I think in putting all of this together is that no matter how I try to intellectualize all that happened or try to understand it, it still is extremely painful. Painful with what he did, as well as painful seeing how i allowed this to happen to myself. Over and over again.
I’m proud of myself for the steps I’ve taken to move ahead this last year and it’s been VERY hard to break free, but after a few short weeks at the end, it was easier…..just painful.
I could never and will never, understand how someone could enjoy seeing someone hurting or deliberately cause the pain. I think his sadism surpassed his being merely Narcissistic and into Sociopathic territory as well as his being a predator.
I feel sorry for the women that will get entangled in his web. If there was anything I could do to stop it from happening to more women, I would. but someone else will have to walk that path now, and as long as he’s alive, anyone that’s in his path, from dog, to kids, to friends, to potential lovers, there will be devastation, abuse and drama the entire time.
How very sad….
one_step_at_a_time,
I think that sociopaths are driven by whatever their desire(s) is/are – for the sociopath that I know, he wants to be the boss, having everyone (his employees) thinking that he’s the best boss around, showering them with whatever goods (eg. health insurance, cell phones, equipment, etc.) he can (not logically considering the cost of things). It’s bizarre and aggravating. He wants to be adored by them. Meanwhile, the wife gets thrown into the ditch (not deserving to be there) and is still clawing her way out, having lost all respect for the sociopath. And the kicker is – the sociopath wants the wife to show respect toward him despite all the crap that he’s pulled, the betrayals, causing the wife to know (without a shadow of a doubt) that he truly is a psychopath.
Lost
Obviously no one here can know what was going on in your spaths mind when she wrote that. But I can tell you exactly what the deal would have been if it had happened between me and my spath.
He would often spend days acting suspiciously as if he was up to something. My mind would not consciously register it but suddenly I would start feeling very suspicious of him. In the early days I would follow him or question him. But i never won that game and realized that I would go crazy if I tried. Now I realize that driving me crazy WAS the whole point. They are masters of emotional manipulation. she probably wrote that email and then began her attack on you knowing that you would want to see her email and would discover that one. It’s all part of the grooming process. You would never believe that someone could be so diabolical or that they could spend so much time and energy creating a facade. But they do. Lost, the day you realize that she NEEDS to spend that much time and energy on the facade is because otherwise she does not exist at all, is the day you will be free. Everything about her was a lie. When you came into her field of vision,it was likea cat spying a mouse. AUTOMATICALLY, she went into predator mode. Her facade comes out, she now exists in three dimensions and the games are on. She becomes “real” for you, in order to suck on your psyche. SHE IS ONLY REAL IN THE PRESENCE OF OTHERS. Alone she ceases to exist. Furthermore, thepeople who give her the most attention, the most space in their heads, those people make her the most real. That is why she needs your emotions. Its why she needs your drama, suspicion,angst. These volotile emotions prove to her that she exists. She is a story driven mythological being that only exists while the story continues.
Lost n confused,
Yes, it is “easy to say” NO CONTACT, BUT it is like an alcoholic at an AA meeting telling the newbie NO DRINKING AT ALL. NONE, ZIP, ZERO, ZILCH—because if you do you will wind back up being falling down drunk again. THE GUY AT AA HAS EXPERIENCE and has broken “no drinking” and he KNOWS how bad the other guy craves a drink, so he can say it and Yes, it is “easy” to say the words, but the WORDS COME FROM EXPERIENCE, HARD, PAINFUL EXPERIENCE. Been there and done that.
If you are trying to tell us your pain is worse than ours it won’t fly, because ALL PAIN IS TOTAL, yours is EXACTLY EQUAL TO MINE, AND EVERY ONE ELSE’S, but your pain is YOURS and you have to feel it, you have to work through it, experience it, and then stay NO CONTACT and it will eventually go away, if you keep on going back and trying to talk yourself into the fact she is “good for you” then you are on the wrong blog….even if she doesn’t qualify for a professional diagnosis of psychopath, she and the relationship with her was dishonest from the get go. Okay, so she told her friends you were “special”—what does “special” MEAN? That you are young and pretty and naive?
You are here on this blog because the relationship was painful, not because she beat you, but that does NOT mean it was a healthy relationship. WORK ON YOU! ((hugs)))))
Lost,
I think I understand where you are. I hope I don’t get into trouble for saying this here, but more a matter of what I THINK I’m hearing….
Here, you won’t be encouraged to go back to your relationship. I think it’s natural to wonder why it happened, how it happened, even going into detail about how it happened….and then working on how to fix YOU so that it doesn’t happen again. 🙂 I do not say that lightly. I’m struggling too, BUT, the truth was not something I could deny anymore. My reasons for asking about what Spath did, said or whatever, are to understand what Spaths DO, how they BEHAVE…..I’m getting a crash course of sorts but from the perspective of KNOWING the relationship FOR ME, is over, as painful as that is….
Having said that, I see that maybe the focus isn’t so much on that you’re dealing with a Spath or not, or even that the relationship is unhealthy. It SEEMS to me (forgive me if I’m wrong here), that you’re looking for someone to tell you that you meant something to this person, that it’s YOUR doing so that you can go back and try to work through it. Been there, done that.
And ya know what Lost? NO ONE is going to keep you from doing what you are compelled to do to learn the lesson. I think what I hope for you, is that if you want to go back, and you do go back, which I think you might, deep in your heart, what you’re seeing is accurate, but you’re not fully believing. I also think that whatever answers you are finding here, even if you are not fully ready to accept them (which is SO HARD, I KNOW), if you go back, somewhere in your subconscious, you will have this new awareness. And in so being, the behaviors that are targeted to you will make a lot of sense and your exit will be much faster. I hope.
I’m not in any way judging you. I went back and back and back again. I HAD to do that to learn the lesson, to extricate in my own personal way, to accept what i was seeing as the truth…and to stop believing the lies he told, as well as I told to myself about them.
The process is really hard. It’s very painful, but when you are done, you are done. And you will KNOW when you are done, because the answers that you seek and the motives to which you seek them will have an entirely different perspective for you.
HUGS!!!!!!!!!!!
a friend posted me Jeff Wise’s answer to Donna’s article about his article:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme-fear/201012/do-crime-victims-deserve-some-blame
Dear Bluejay,
I feel like I understand more about your spath and how his behaviors. He is very similar to my spath meaning he needs people to adore him and he is very good to his employees that are faithful. Promoting and giving them many pats on the back. It wasn’t, however, because he really cared about them, it was because he wanted to be seen as wonderful.
Lesson learned talked about the rage, etc. of her spath when she was happy. I know my spath felt the most content in his life when I was put down and in my place. I realize that I put up with way too much I had a hard time coming to terms with he was so different than his image.
He didn’t have the rages until the end and it was not very much. He does not have any range of emotions to speak of. He likes to joke and tell stories but never shows compassion, true giggling happiness, even anger is muted, you see no outward signs of jealousy, no tears until recently, no mood swings. What he could be with ease was dismissive, condescending, haughty, snobish, elitist, lustful, hungry and VERY in control. Everything about him is in control (oh, except for his sex addiction, not much control there). And every single time I was upset about something he would talk me out of it and I would feel like I was wrong and misread the situation.
He found a house, not in my neighborhood, thank goodness. I hope he gets a girlfriend fast so he doesn’t bother me.
I talked to attorney today and we are going to speed up the process so he gets out as soon as possible. Spath was trying to pull a fast one by saying that our assets should be valued by replacement cost. The courts don’t see it this way, it’s market value. Mediation next week and my attorney is going to come with me, he said that seeing how spath is acting, it’s better if I have support. Amen to that!
Mediation=manipulation……
Keep that in mind Hope.
It sounds as if your moving in a great direction! GOOD for you!
Keep on keepin on gf!
XXOO
EB