Pieter Hintjens - The Psychopath Code - Cracking the Predators That Stalk Us

In the same way, a child eats well and is healthy and shows this by expressing happiness . The parents respond by feeling great about themselves. It doesn’t take a training manual to have kids. Children from birth tell their parents what to do next. "Feed me! Enough, stop, I’m going to vomit! Cuddle me! More, this is great! OK, put me somewhere safe, I want to sleep!"

Juveniles do not have the same range of empathy as adults. Yet they often have basic empathy from a few years old. A young child is playing and sees another crying. He or she offers their toy to the crying child, who accepts it and starts smiling.

Social humans project their familial emotions onto people outside their family. They also project them onto pets and inanimate objects as they bring those into their personal lives. We feel happy when our possessions are safe and in a good state. When our possessions are vulnerable to damage, or in a poor state, we feel sad. We have empathy with inanimate objects. Our home is happier when it is safe against the rain, and warm, and filled with people. A cold, leaking, abandoned house feels lonely, and when we see it, we feel sad.

Empathy triggers older emotions too, particularly the defense emotions. Close traumatic injury or death in others close to us triggers shock. Threat to others provokes terror, flight, anger, or rage.

Mallory does not feel the family emotions. She feels no love for her relatives, neither parents nor siblings nor children. She does not experience distress , nor happiness , nor sadness . She has no empathy for belongings and living spaces. She treats her home the same as a random field. This makes her careless with things, and incapable of organizing by emotional value. Her living room looks sterile, or chaotic, to social eyes.

Mallory can project the visible signs well, at least in face and voice and body language. She acts love , happiness , sadness , and so on. This presents a real problem for honest relatives. As Mallory fakes her emotions, parents, siblings, and other relatives over-invest in her. So we’ve evolved counter-measures. Those are physical signals that Mallory cannot (yet) fake. Pupil size and skin flushing are the main ones.

Mallory can fake crying to some extent. She cannot fake the full display, above all the skin flushing. She can produce the tears, and runny nose, as the tears leak into the nasal cavities. This looks like "silent weeping." We generally feel it’s insincere when someone does that. I suspect there’s an arms race here. Honest crying gets more complex over time, to stay ahead of Mallory’s acting skills.

When we see Mallory expressing an emotion, we do a subconscious check of her eyes. I assume our mind corrects for light conditions, perhaps using our own pupil size as control. If her pupils match her expression, we feel "she is sincere." If not, we will still respond, yet with unspoken reservations.

Various emotions display through skin flushing, each with different and recognizable patterns. Terror , anger , interest , climax , happiness , sadness . The emotions control these flushes and use them as authentic indicators.

When we have an authentic indicator, it is always fun to ask, "are there ways to cheat?"

There are ways to hide the pupil response. For instance, dark sunglasses, veils, or other coverings of the face and eyes. By wearing these, we can mask our responses. Mallory likes her sunglasses, and often wears them when she’s out hunting.

How about the skin flushing? This shows on all skin tones, as different and yet recognizable patterns. The exception is dark black skin. People with dark skin flush like anyone, yet it is invisible. This tells us skin tones evolved after emotional flushing. And yet emotional flushing evolved after we lost our body hair.

There is an advantage in dark skin beyond protection from the sun and skin cancer. How far this has affected the evolution of skin tones, is an open question. We can ask same question about the evolution of dark irises. Does this interfere with empathy? If so, has that driven its evolution in any way?

There are other empathetic responses that Mallory also lacks. I’ve not counted yawning as an emotion. Yet it follows a familiar pattern of family emotions. Yawning prepares our body for sleep, and signals to others that we are tired. You breath in, close your eyes, stretch your jaw wide, and tilt your head back. Arguably this pumps blood into your brain. More interestingly, it provokes an empathetic yawn response and drowsiness in younger family members who observe you.

Mallory does not have the contagious yawn response. Some researchers have suggested [83] http://www.today.com/health/take-our-survey-how-successful-your-marriage-t40166 that this is a potential psychopath test.

Humans take the parental investment strategy to an extreme. We invest in our extended family, to almost any degree of distance. We are able to form tribes of many families, keeping track of every other person in our tribe. To make this leap we evolved tribal instincts, including a set of emotions:

❂ Loneliness - the emotion of being disconnected. You feel physical pain in your intestines and chest when you see others enjoying themselves. You sleep lightly and wake often. Your immune system starts to slow and you start to get sick. Your metabolism slows down, yet you eat more often than usual. Your circulation slows, and you feel cold. You hunger for company and conversation. You adopt submissive body language. Your voice goes quieter and lower. You sigh a lot. You cannot smile with sincerity.

❂ Belonging - the emotion of being safe within your tribe. You feel pleasure in your gut and chest. You sleep well, and wake up refreshed. You are healthy and rarely get colds. You lose weight and don’t feel the cold, as your metabolism speeds up. You spend more time with people than alone. You rarely question your situation. You use confident body language. Your voice gets louder and you laugh and smile with ease.

❂ Disgust - the emotion of tasting bad food. Disgust is how you warn others to stop eating. Blood flows to your digestive tract. Your stomach prepares to vomit. You make noises and a specific grimace to warn others. You narrow your eyebrows, curl your upper lip, wrinkle your nose, and stick your tongue out. You look at others to make sure they got the message. You make a characteristic groan.

❂ Hate - the emotion of rejecting a tribal member. Hate is a call to others to support you in a fight. Your eyes narrow and stare at the offender, or an imaginary spot. Your nostrils flare. You frown and your pupils contract. Your mouth closes hard in an anti-smile. Your body prepares for a physical confrontation. Blood flows away from your face and to your arms and shoulders. Your fists clench and you clench your jaw. You use aggressive and closed body language. You make the characteristic sounds of hate : low growls. You lose your sense of humor.

❂ Self-pity - the emotion of asking for adult help. Self-pity is the "I give up!" emotion. This lets us display defeat, and respond to it by helping one another. You show self-pity by slumping your shoulders, pouting, and crying. You look down, sniff, and use closed body language. The empathic response is to put an arm around the shoulders and ask, "how can I help?"

❂ Submission - the emotion of offering yourself. You feel weak and insecure. Your heart beats faster than normal. Your temperature is higher than normal. You are anxious at the threat of rejection. If the other party accepts and confirms, you switch to feeling powerful and secure.