4 Clues to Test if you are a Psychopath - Psychology

 

IDENTIFY THE PSYCHOPATH BETWEEN US

If anything invented starts with a question a simple what if, why so, how did, etc.

What if the air starts to cut in its quantity? Will there be any oxygen left on earth.

What is there is something small than an atom and what would it look like?

 

What happens if the sun stops to give sunlight, would there be cold all over? 

All these questions have defined the in-depth world of chemical science and mathematical laws of physics.

 

But few questions have stayed longer than all the questions. Throughout history, people have discovered what the difference between the normal and the abnormal is.

Do weird people scream at the top of their lungs? Or dance in the middle of a public place? Does he makes scratches on the wall? Or what if he wears socks in his hands? 

The answer to all the questions is floating somewhere in the air.

In the past, people called a person abnormal if he did not obey his family, society, and his culture. If he did not marry the right girl or if he was not able to settle down in the right town people called him crazy.

After decades this term crazy converted into something new, the crazy person lived an unconventional lifestyle at the time those were usually social stars, writers, actors, and celebrities. 

They dressed differently and had a social interaction with people in a very weird way and expressed themselves in different forms. 

To the rest of the world these people seemed crazy but later in the 20th century the term crazy changed forever. 

The behavior that is aggressive and terrifying and the term crazy now in the hearts of many are called Psychopaths. 

The term Psychopath¹ triggered by a German Psychiatrist named J.L. KOCH but psycho got its popularity by literature and movies. 

Film directors and authors got fascinated by these sadistic people and in their scene psychopaths would catch people into their world. 

They first, impress with their ability to be nice and then harm them with different acts of violence.

 

How to Test a Psychopath?

The majority of psychopaths are the normal people that we meet in our regular life. 

Here you wake up at 6 am in morning when you listen to your alarm and you take a morning bath and get ready for work. But when you are tying your shoelace you are about to encounter 3 different categories of people.

The first one is your old company associate who lives from 4 houses after you and every morning by 7:30 he sits outside his house reading the newspaper.

You start a conversation with him and say "hello" and he replies a charming one line about temperature and laughs with you.

 

You go ahead with your car for work and you spot a person asking for help, although he wants to sell you flowers and come near your car. You think she is nice as she is doing business rather than asking help from people, you buy flowers from her at the traffic signal and carry on. 

Next you spot a person outside your office that irritates you and asks for help in a weird way that makes you feel uncomfortable. 

So who is a psychopath in 3 of these different cases you meet? 

It's easy and many of them would go with the third person that is irritating and making uncomfortable. 

This is because we think he is crazy, dirty, and not able to talk with us what he really wants but he is not a psychopath.

 

He is weird, loud, and dirty but not a psychopath and that’s true. 

It’s also not the women who met at the signal to sell you flowers but it’s your colleague that lives 4 houses after you. 

He is the only person who showed you the key characteristics of a psychopath that was a superficial charm and laughs in this case.

What does an actual Psychopath looks like and how should we test ourselves?

Before we proceed with this question we need to look at few things. A psychopath is not a yes or no question nor is it black and white, think like it as a person's height you can be tall or short, and everything between but not a zero.

 

In the same way you can be extremely psychopathic or a little bit of it but every one of us falls somewhere on this psychopath spectrum. 

The challenge is to test that spectrum and its level of intensity. Human habits are complex and are diverse from place to place and people to people. Every one of us has different features that make us who we are.

 

After several years of research² the psychologist have developed a psychopath test called as Psychopath checklist revised or PCLR³.

 

After answering a series of questions you get a score out of 40. The lower your score in this test the chances are high you fall victim to this spectrum. 

If the score is within the range of 30 to 35 you got nothing to worry about. Most of the extreme psychopaths score around 5 to 6.

 

Questions this test falls down into 4 different categories. Each category triggers the core personality feature that defines a person as a psychopath. 

Further as we disclose these categories you need to know that the psychopaths from films do not count on this scale.

We in this article are only talking about the person who is your office colleague and who stays 4 houses away from you. 

This type of people lives a normal life but somewhere they have a personality disorder. 

 

 

1. DISTURBING FEATURES

This method describes how you process your emotions; this is a huge problem for someone that is high on spectrum.

Some people naturally understand and explain the feelings of others but psychopaths do not care for any such feelings.

 

For Example: -

 

If you take credit for work done by others and you know that you have done something wrong that will make you guilty.

Psychopaths do not have any such sense of guilt that makes them emotional and they do not care for hurting others.

 

2. OFFENSIVE FEATURES

This does not mean that psychopaths are antisocial and offensive but they are excellent communicators and they find it hard with social expectations.

Following the rules are good examples of this: -

Many psychopaths get in trouble at a young age and their sensation is unreasonably high like a tight balloon that is about to burst.

They hate or do not like to do things that they are told to do and also not all psychopaths are criminals.

A large percentage of them have never done anything wrong but capability and power are something that they struggle with.

Only 1 % of the total population falls under the low end of the spectrum and few among them turn to be dangerous.

 

 

3. WAY OF CONDUCT & LIVING

In this type, the individual is not at all worried or serious about his lifestyle traits.

These types of psychopaths are observed without any scale, tests and measures.

Examples of these types of Psychopaths are: -

Mac is 30 years old and has a dream to become a successful millionaire. But he is not able to continue a simple job for more than 6 months.

Chris is a person who is 28 years old and can take care of himself when he is sick. But he insists his family and friends take care of him even when it is not necessary.

Charles is 35 years old and he quits his good going job and sales his house only because he thought he should without any reason and meaning.

All the 3 examples include psychopath way of conduct and living lifestyle features that are parasitic and not real. 

 

4. PERSONAL FEATURES

This involves the parts of your personality that describe you in social interaction and moderate your behavior.

For Example: - Assume that you are leading an important meeting and you make a conversation with 2 different people in this meeting.

 

The first one was fascinating and charming with a proper tone and enough eye contact that impressed you and you enjoyed the conversation. 

The second-person you met was not that much fun instead he was straightforward and to the point that made sense in the meeting.

 

He also kept disturbing you in the meeting with different pros and cons and had a weird behavior. Out of the two who are high on the psychopath spectrum, the first person is high on psychopath.

 

This is because Psychopaths are very clever to maintain a charming and fascinating attitude and they are also very keen observers.

They will notice small things about what you do like, how you walk, how you talk, how you dress and how you eat. 

After analyzing all this information they will try to figure out to win you over even if they have to lie. 

 

This article concludes with a few of the Lines as: -

Psychopaths are excellent liars and they are very good at this. 

They are good observers and study all small habits to win you. 

Psychopaths keep very good charming and fascinating personalities. 

They know how to take control over others, make use of them, and have no shame for their any such selfish works.

 

A book on Psychopaths among us By – Alex Rice⁴