If you’ve been in the dating scene for a while now, chances are you’ve come across your fair share of guys who seem less than stable. When the relationship implodes, as it inevitably does, you often find yourself wondering, “How the hell did I not realize what he was like earlier?!” As it turns out, it’s not your fault. A new study finds that psychopathic men are actually pretty great at faking traits like empathy, honesty, and agreeableness in order to appear more attractive to women, according to findings published in Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Psychopaths can hide it well… for a while, anyway.
The study findings indicate that psychopathic men (or those with psychopathic tendencies and traits) are way more willing to pretend to be less psychopathic in order to attract women and trick women into thinking they’re great, well-adjusted guys who would potentially make great partners. In reality, they tend to lack empathy, don’t care about other people’s feelings, and can be pretty aggressive and impulsive. Of course, if you knew that from the get-go, you’d likely avoid them, hence the added layer of deception.
Researchers discovered that psychopaths have a really unique skill set: They can “blend into their social environment in order to avoid being detected as antisocial predators.” Because of this, despite this, they’re often able to lead successful lives and are especially successful in dating. It tends to be easy for them to find romantic partners and they’re likely in high demand with women, which is pretty scary (and awful for the women that end up with them).
Part of the way psychopathic men deceive women, the study found, is by using mimicry. They’re able to pick up on women’s expressions, intonations, and reactions to things and mirror them back so that they appear more charming and well-adjusted.
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The study found that psychopathic men are happy to change their personalities to win women over.
To look deeper into this trend, researchers used 164 undergraduate students, all of whom identified as heterosexual. The participants filled in the HEXACO Facets scale of personality traits and the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale 4 for psychopathic traits. Then they watched a video of a female actor verbally giving a dating profile. In the clip, she described herself as fun-loving, sentimental, and a “hopeless romantic.” She also said she wants a partner who’s adventurous, spontaneous, fun, and with whom she can feel relaxed and comfortable around.
Next, the participants filled in the personality assessment again, this time in a way that they believed would make them more attractive to the woman in the video. On average, the participants made themselves appear more honest, extroverted, and conscientious after watching the video than before. This pointed to men changing their personalities when they were trying to be more attractive to the opposite sex. Those with higher levels of psychopathic traits also reported the highest change in personality traits the second time around.
The study concluded: “The findings showed that psychopathic traits were associated with significant increases in the three personality traits from the HEXACO (e.g., Honesty, Emotionality, and Agreeableness) after viewing a dating video when compared to their true personality (as well as smaller increases in extroversion). We also found that psychopathic traits were unrelated to explicit use of spontaneous mimicry while viewing the video and affective mimicry in everyday life, which is in line with studies showing average levels of automatic experiences of mimicry in those higher in psychopathy.”
Well, this certainly explains a lot!
