Psychologists from Carleton University in Canada have shown that men with more distinctive psychopathic personality traits show a better ability to mimic certain character traits to appear more attractive to women. Scientists’ research published magazine Evolutionary Psychological Science.
Psychopathic personality traits are a set of personality traits associated with a disregard for the rights and feelings of others, a lack of empathy, and a tendency to be impulsive and aggressive. People with pronounced psychopathic personality traits also tend to be callous, cold, and indifferent to the suffering of others.
However, psychopaths have the ability to deftly imitate in society and imitate empathetic, kind and socially active people for the sake of profit and avoid detection by others of their antisocial nature. The authors of the article wanted to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that male psychopaths tend to emulate prosocial (and therefore positive) personality traits in the context of dating.
Study participants were 164 men. Participants first completed a personality trait assessment, after which they were shown a video of a survey for a dating site for an actress. She described herself as spontaneous, fun-loving, conscientious, emotional and “hopelessly romantic”. At the end of the video, she talked about how she imagined her ideal partner. This is a fun-loving, spontaneous, adventurous person.
The participants were then instructed to undergo another personality assessment, but in a way that made them appear most attractive to the girl. The results showed that participants with higher levels of psychopathic traits changed their character traits more, especially honesty, emotionality, extraversion, and others.