According to a study carried out on incarcerated women, those who present pronounced psychopathic traits all tend to adopt the same posture when they speak.
Can you tell if someone is a psychopath just by looking at them? Not sure, but researchers regularly study the common traits of people recognized as psychopathic. And a final study on the subject notably studied the position and dynamics of women's heads.
What is a psychopath?
The term psychopath should not be used lightly (as an insult for example) and describes a characteristic mental disorder, which is found in particular among people incarcerated for aggravated violence:
- Psychopaths experience a profound lack of empathy and remorse, resulting in indifferent or callous attitudes toward others;
- They tend to display superficial emotional responses and have difficulty forming genuine emotional attachments with others;
- They tend to be deceptive and manipulative, using charm or deception to achieve their goals;
- A strong sense of egocentrism and grandiose self-esteem are also common, making them overconfident and dismissive of others;
- Additionally, individuals with pronounced psychopathic traits tend to be impulsive and thrill-seeking, demonstrating poor control over their behavior and disregard for social norms and the law.
These characteristics make these individuals challenging in social and professional settings and present risks for antisocial behavior.
Physical traits too when they are expressed
According to studies, individuals with pronounced psychopathic traits are also similar in their way of expressing themselves: thus according to one study, psychopathic murderers tend to use conjunctions of subordination when they speak (for example, because, since , etc.) more often than non-psychopath murderers.
Other studies have found that incarcerated psychopathic men tend to use a greater number of hand gestures used to break down communication, that psychopathic men in general tend to use more hand gestures than individuals without psychopaths and blink more often.
Psychopathic women move their heads very little when they speak
A final study targeted psychopathic women. The researchers wanted to determine whether individuals with psychopathic traits exhibited specific patterns of head movements. For what ? Because head movements are a crucial part of nonverbal communication, often used to support or contradict spoken words and convey various messages.
The study included 213 women aged 21 to 57 incarcerated in medium and maximum security correctional facilities in the United States. Participants underwent an assessment of psychopathic traits using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), which included a semi-structured interview recorded by the study authors. An automated detection algorithm was then used to assess participants' head position and dynamics during the interview.
With a trend: women with pronounced psychopathic traits tended to move your head less during the interview than those with lower levels of these traits. In other words, the women studied kept their heads in a more rigid position than individuals without psychopathic traits.
It should be noted, however, that these data come from a single clinical interview session carried out in a prison setting. The head movements of psychopathic individuals in other types of situations might not be the same.
