How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists

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All of us who have been conned by sociopaths ask ourselves, why did I fall for it? How could I have been so stupid to trust him (or her)?

Well, it turns out that there’s a chemical reason—oxytocin. According to an article on Psychologytoday.com:

Social interactions engage a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown—even with strangers.

Read How to run a con, on Psychologytoday.com.

Link submitted by a Lovefraud reader.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. learnthelesson

    GREAT LINK! Spot-on described the “B” I met a several years ago. My choices are so different now…thanks to LF and books and educating myself as much as possible. Im not exempt from being stung by one again — but no way will I ever have my being, my spirit and soul at risk because I make different choices with men and situations in general now. I look, listen, and learned trust has to be earned every step of the way…and I learned to say NO, THAT DOESNT WORK FOR ME. Slow and steady with myself and others helped me to learn and grow in all of my relationships.

  2. Ox Drover

    THANKS, DONNA! A great article! Some great links within that article too.

    The author’s noticing that 2% of people don’t “trust back” is also interesting—the oxytocin connection (or lack there of).

    Many people on LF have mentioned that the Ps they have known don’t trust anyone, which I think is quite true in my observation as well, and most of us have attributed that lack of to “they think everyone is like them” (untrustworthy) so they expect others to not be trustworthy because they know they aren’t.

    How can someone who doesn’t trust, because they don’t have a properly functioning oxytocin system to not only trust others but to BE trustworthy?

    Lots of “us” (former victims) have lots of ability to trust, yet we can become cynics because it seemed that everytime we did “trust” someone we got “screwed” over by them. Of course, we can and I think are learning to discriminate who we should trust and who we should not, therefore making ourselves safer from the “pigeon drop” or other simple or more complex cons, but never entirely safe unless we go live on a desert island alone. Connectedness to other humans is, after all, what life is about and what makes life pleasureable.

    Thanks again a great link!

  3. Zen

    Extremely interesting! I like to know the ‘why’ of things happen, the science behind it. People often wonder how can anyone be so stupid? How can anyone fall for something so blatantly obvious , well here is the answer.

    I found this portion of the article particularly interesting:

    “My laboratory studies of college students have shown that two percent of them are “unconditional nonreciprocators.” That’s a mouthful! This means that when they are trusted they don’t return money to person who trusted them (these experiments are described in my post on neuroeconomics). What do we really call these people in my lab? Bastards. Yup, not folks that you would want to have a cup of coffee with. These people are deceptive, don’t stay in relationships long, and enjoy taking advantage of others. Psychologically, they resemble sociopaths. Bastards are dangerous because they have learned how to simulate trustworthiness. My research has demonstrated that they have highly dysregulated oxytocin systems.

    Oxytocin’s effects are modulated by our large prefrontal cortex that houses the “executive” regions of the brain. Oxytocin is all emotion, while the prefrontal cortex is deliberative. I hope that by knowing that your oxytocin system can easily be turned on, you will be less vulnerable to people who might want to take advantage of you. But, don’t be too vigilant: two percent of bastards isn’t so bad. And, oxytocin causes us to empathize with others, the key to building social relationships. Russian playwright Anton Chekov said “You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.” I’d say that’s about right-just watch for the occasional con.”

  4. philomela

    I just wrote a reply on the post about the self-help Guru who was conned-It was about trust. I should have read this post and comments first- Psychopaths cannot trust and use and destroy trust in their victims- and trust is necessary for connection but trust also makes us vulnerable….

  5. Ox Drover

    I have spent several hours today reading various articles that this article links to on Psychology Today and there is some great stuff there. Anyone interested should have a field day clicking from article to article.

  7. ErinBrock

    Thanks for the article advice Oxy…..I’ll get to them when I can…..
    Today…the weather is beautiful and I”VE GOT SOME GARDENING TO DO!!!!!
    Moving ROCKS around my garden, 🙂 !

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