Recently my journalistic
career brought me in contact with a man who, when I first met him,
seemed to be the very embodiment of a charming and well-heeled
gentleman. He is a natural raconteur, good-looking, athletic,
intellectually curious, financially successful, and wittily
self-deprecating. What few people know about him is that he has left
behind a trail of emotional destruction, having spent decades abusing
vulnerable individuals for his own twisted purposes.
Psychopaths, or
sociopaths as some prefer to call them, are well known figures in our
culture. We're fascinated by their predatory relationship with the rest
of humanity. Their chilling alien-ness makes them convenient villains in
books, film, and television. When we encounter them in real life, we
think: There really are monsters roaming the world. But as my own recent
experience has taught me, the crimes of the psychopath are not merely a
function of the perpetrator. We are not all equally likely to fall prey.
Just as psychopaths are a special breed, so too are their victims.
As my fellow
Psychology Today blogger Marisa Mauro has
pointed out, psychologists have long been known that the more
psychopathic a person is, the more easily they can identify potential
victims. Indeed, they can do so just by watching the way a person moves.
In one study, test subjects watched videos of twelve individuals
walking, shot from behind, and rated how easily they could be mugged. As
it happened, some of the people in the videotapes really had been mugged
-- and the most psychopathic of the subjects were able to tell which was
which. Writes Mauro:
The [subjects] completed the Self-Report
Psychopathy Scale: Version III, which measures interpersonal and
affective traits associated with psychopathy as well as
intra-personal instability and antisocial traits... Overall results
confirmed a strong positive correlation between psychopathy scores
and accuracy of victim identification. This means that individuals
that score higher for psychopathy are better at selecting victims.
And what was it about these people that made them seem vulnerable? A
later study found that the men were picking up on whole suite of
nonverbal cues, including the length of their stride, how they shifted
their weight, and how high they lifted their feet. Taken together, these
cues gave the psychopathic men a rough gauge of how confident their
potential victims were. Body language that implies a lack of confidence
--- read: socially submissive --- includes lack of eye contact,
fidgeting of the hands and feet, and the avoidance of large gestures
when shifting posture.
The researchers' findings confirmed my own suspicions regarding the
dubious fellow I mentioned above. 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. In the aftermath, they are so
traumatized that even speaking about their experiences is extremely
painful. And so the psychopath continues on his way.
The rather depressing upshot of all this is that, as much we may hate
the idea of "blaming the victim," people who are on the receiving end of
crime often do mark themselves out, if only subliminally. I suppose that
we could look on the bright side and recognize that there are things we
can do to make us less vulnerable. But unfortunately there always going
to weaker and more vulnerable members of society -- the lambs on whom
the wolves will focus their attention.
UPDATE: In response to some critical comments, I further address the
subject of "blaming the victim"
here. Am I
guilty? Feel free to vent.