How psychopaths choose their victims

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Watch the way you walk, you could be watched by a psychopath and may be targeted as an easy target to be mugged or to be attacked.

To learn how psychopaths choose their victims and the characteristics that make a person vulnerable to being chosen.

Here is the website:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/extreme-fear/201010/how-psychopaths-choose-their-victims


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5 Comments

This is scary!! To think of someone just watching the way you walk and thinking about if they could take advantage of you or not really makes me analyze the way that I walk!! I wonder if these people are more sensitive to these things even as children. I am sure that would be a difficult thing to study but are these kids the bullies that pick on the weaker links on the play ground because it is easier for them to pick that out? May make an interesting study!!

I think that it is interesting how these men were picking up on the non verbal cues within their subjects walking. I feel to watch someone that closely to pick up on the length of the stride, how their weight is shifted and the way that they pick up their feet is something that is very disturbing. I don’t even know how long my stride is, how I shift my weight or how high I lift my feet. There is never one thing that I want someone else to know about me that I don’t even know myself. There are certain ways that women and men should walk to show that they are not an easy target. It is important that women learn self-defense just in case a psychopath would try to attack her....or any other person for that matter.

This is really interesting. The part about just watching tapes of people and being able to tell if they had been mugged before is really impressive albeit frightening. These psychopaths are skilled in the way they pick victims for their vulnerabilities. It is really scary to think that those people can pick out a victim that will have the most emotional damage after an attack. It's very perceptive that they could pick up on the body language of insecurity though. I wonder how they would begin to understand that. The more psychotic the person, the better able they are to pick out people who had been victims in the past and that's just a scary thought. I wonder if there's anything in the psychotic person's body language that hints at their underlying mental oddity.

So I read this article before I left my house for a group meeting on campus. It was really interesting to me, but it also kind of creeped me out. I found it interesting that sociopathic perpetrators had something of a sixth sense about which people were the "best" victims. This article focused on how people walk, and of course as I was walking to my meeting after parking, I found myself wondering what my walk said about me. I am usually so zoned out when I'm walking on campus (due to my iPod or talking with someone) that my posture and demeanor when walking probably isn't an overly confident one.

Overall, this article was really interesting, and it made me think a lot. Mostly, I was stuck thinking about the fact that victims do essentially mark themselves as a "good" victim. Of course we would never blame the victim, because it is truly never someone's fault that they are victimized by someone. However, it is very ineresting that someone could lessen their chances of being victimized by changing a few subtle nuances in how they carry themselves.
Great add Chelsea! This was a very interesting article!!

Wow this is creepy! It's pretty sad too, because being shy and having low self-confidence is really a part of one's personality. Some people might be shy when they are young, but when they get older, turn out to be very outgoing. However a lot of people are always going to be shy, timid, and very self-conscious.
I also think that this trait of knowing when a person can be easily attacked, doesn't just belong to psychopaths. Elementary bullies also are able to pick out the weak, and prey on them. All human beings, at one point or another, attack people that are weaker than them. I'm not saying that they all attack in such a way as to harm someone physically, but they attack individuals that are weaker than them, emotionally and verbally sometimes.
It's a sad thing to think about. I guess part of a solution would be to take pride in yourself, and realize your self-worth to ensure that you are confident and not one to be targeted by these attacks. Perhaps it would serve individuals, who are really down on themselves, some good to see a counselor or take some leadership/self-esteem classes if they are available. That way they can avoid harmful situations.

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