The word “psychopath” is used to describe someone who is heartless, callous, unemotional, and depraved of any moral scruple.

An estimated 1% of the human population can be classified as psychopaths. They exist everywhere irrespective of racial, cultural, ethnic, religious or academic background. 

It’s usually easy to spot psychopaths but at times it takes careful study to spot the nuances as many of these strive hard to cloak their real trait.

In this article, we look at the seven most common attitudes idiosyncratic of psychopaths. If you are dealing with someone who demonstrates these characters, then chances are you just stumbled on a psychopath.

(1) Masters of creating fake persona

Psychopaths try very hard to fit in like anyone else. They feel uneasy if they appear the odd one out. Because of this they usually pull on superficial charm and charisma in their bid to blend in. It appears often that their smiles, laughs or general show of good character isn’t natural but imitated.

If people around him are happy and the moment calls for happiness or at least a grin across the cheeks, psychopaths would want to don or wear a layer of that mood on their skin in order to avoid any sharp criticism.

(2) Hidden streak of callousness

As hard as they try, psychopaths will reveal their true color if they spend too much time in company with others. The superficial charm or grin, flattery, laughter or kind words will eventually vanish and they will be replaced by a sense of indifference, abstraction, absentmindedness, meanness, quick temperament or general anti-social behavior.

(3) Over confidence

Psychopaths hardly go wrong. To them, whatever they believe or know is the reality. All other things are but a fallacy.

These people exude an unprecedented aura of self-confidence. Don’t get me wrong. Being confident is a good thing but too much of self-confidence can be a red flag that the person suffers from psychopathy.  

Psychopaths demonstrate superior attitude wherever they go and consider their fellow men mostly inferior to them especially in their views and thinking abilities. 

I’m sure you might be thinking about Donald Trump at this moment.

(4) No Empathy

We’re our brother’s keeper. We share in their joy and grief. We feel deeply about their feelings. But there are some few who may not be too concerned about your mood. It’s normal – just individual differences. 

But hold on a bit! Psychopaths are on a different level. Their show of indifference transcends borders which can only be termed as callous.

Psychopaths do not empathize with people. They only think about themselves. They will willingly hurt people very close to them without a tinge of regret. 

Psychopaths are unaligned with people they talk to. That’s, they hardly share in the person’s happiness if they’re told good news or share in their grief if it’s bad news. If they ever try to fall in line, they do so with a clear sign of indigenousness.

The thought you might be entertaining now is whether Vladimir Putin is a psychopath or not given the fact that he prioritizes ruling Ukraine than the lives of women and children lost every day in his self-declared war.

(5) They are impulsive

There are certain times we cannot help it. A sharp criticism may call for an impulsive reaction. But what if the person you are dealing with doesn’t take the least time to ponder over before responding? When you realize an unimaginable rate of impulsion, chances are you’ve just landed in the lair of a psychopath.

Psychopaths are notorious for their tendency to act before giving any real thought to their utterances. 

As explained by Dr. Galperin, “psychopaths don’t fear the consequences of doing risky things. They seek excitement. Thrill. Danger.”

(6) They don’t apologize

If you eagerly seek “I’m sorry” from a psychopath, then you must be living in a fool’s paradise. They don’t easily do it. They just don’t do that stuff. They have a lack of guilt attitude and they lack true remorse.

The best you can glean from a psychopath as a form of apology is a lengthy explanation that only justifies and further affirms that he wasn’t wrong and hence, the apology is needless. 

Should they be constrained to spurt out any form of apology, it’ll definitely be clear to all that it reeks of insincerity in all its composition and delivery.

Some psychopaths may show a slight smirk on their face when they say sorry as if you demanded more than necessary from them

(7) They are serial liars

Who hasn’t lied before? We all do it when it suits us or when we have to save a face.

But psychopaths are serial liars. Deceit is in their blood. Perhaps, it’s the ego and their over-confidence that make it difficult for them to tell the truth if their personality is in the line.  

They are master crafters of stories just to paint out any blemish on their personality.  

They are highly deceitful and the most thing is they don’t do it for the fun of it. They are deceitful on purpose to further inflame their personality. 

Being on the watch for discrepancies in a person’s claims can be an early warning alarm that you may have just being caught in a psychopath’s web of lies.

They try so hard to let the pieces of lies interface with one another but the harder they try the easier will it be for you to know their true color.

So the next time you come across any of the above characters, do hold a composed attention. You might be dealing with one of the world’s 1% of people – psychopaths!