Written by Shahida Arabi, MA, psychopathology researcher and expert
There are eight ways you can cause a psychopathic person to reveal their true colors before you get heavily involved.
Share your good news.
An empathic person will celebrate you organically. A psychopathic person is maliciously envious and may first approach your success with starry-eyed admiration and love bombing, only to try to undercut you later with devaluing remarks, minimizations, or attempts at provoking jealousy. For example, if you disclose to a psychopathic friend that you have just started dating an amazing person, you might notice that psychopathic friend attempt to flirt with that same person once you introduce them - also known as attempted “partner poaching” to one-up you. Or, if you tell a jealous psychopathic dating partner that you’ve just earned your PhD from a prestigious university, they may cast doubt about your strengths and ability to succeed to undermine you.
Use the red herring technique.
Disclose a small fear, insecurity, or unpleasant experience (can be real or false) and use this as bait to see if they “bite” by using it as ammunition against you in the near future. For example, if you share a false insecurity regarding your legs that you don’t actually possess, and a dating partner makes a cruel comment about your legs under the guise of a joke a couple of weeks later, you know you are dealing with a person who is not emotionally safe, and such behavior would escalate if you ever did share any of your vulnerabilities or real-life traumas. This helps you opt out of the relationship earlier than usual and mitigates potential harm.
Share what you’re confident about - and see how they try to detract from you and “humble” you.
Psychopathic and narcissistic individuals resent people who they perceive to be out of their league and who surpass them, whether in relationships, dating, in the workplace, or in friendships. For example, if you’re an attractive woman in the dating world with many options, a psychopathic person in the dating pool would likely try to minimize or “neg” your most attractive features or try to provoke jealousy, especially if they sense you are authentically confident and want to try to “humble” you.
If you have a maliciously envious boss at work, the minute they sense you have achievements that surpass other colleagues or even themselves and feel threatened by your healthy pride in this, they may try to detract from these accomplishments by promoting people who did not deserve it, giving opportunities you rightfully earned to your competitors, stealing your work to try to take credit or make profit, or by making covert comments minimizing your high performance. They do not want you to own the spotlight that you deserve.
Confront what bothers you - and see if they repeat the harm or double down on the gaslighting.
Psychopathic individuals are “wired” differently when it comes to how their brains respond to dopamine. They are in constant pursuit of novelty and require high levels of stimulation. Some can be sadistic and seek out egregious ways to provoke you to get the emotional reactions they desire.
That is why, if you confront their behavior once and they do not change their behavior and in fact, escalate their attempts at provoking you, it will help you establish the baseline for how they react to your boundaries.
For example, if you tell a psychopath that you notice that whenever you are complimented by others on your beauty that the psychopath later tries to provoke jealousy in you by trying to “humble” you, or if you tell a psychopathic individual that it bothers you that they follow inappropriate accounts on social media, but they simply increase that behavior at moments they think it will hurt you the most, you know that their behavior is deliberate and calculated to taunt you.
More sophisticated manipulators may apologize, take accountability, and pretend to reassure you when you do confront them, but they will revert to the same behaviors they once pretended to show remorse for. Others will double down on gaslighting you into believing you’re insecure or “crazy.” Rest assured - when harmful behavior is repeated multiple times despite knowing the potential danger it can cause, such behavior is on purpose, and narcissists and psychopaths tend to provoke jealousy on purpose for power and control.
Analyze how they react when you’re in distress.
How does this dating partner or potential friend treat you when they know you’re going through a difficult time or facing an obstacle? This behavior can reveal how they may treat you in even more serious situations such as illness, pregnancy, or emotional ailments…