Psychopaths affects the full spectrum of society irrespective of race, geography, culture, economic class or personality type. Its distribution in a population is the same as those that are left handed, one would not notice a person is left handed until you see them write or catch a ball.
Similarly one may not notice a psychopath until you see him do something that requires them to have a conscious.
Most people think of a psychopath as a rare creature found only in the lowest levels of society, but the reverse is true, they are not rare but common. You are more likely to find a psychopath in the board room than on the wrong side of the tracks. The reason is the more competitive a particular environment is,the more ruthless the use of the cheating strategy becomes. Within the highest circles of power and wealth a lack of pity and remorse is a prerequisite to success, and only the psychopathic mentality can thrive.
Because of the tremendousness destruction psychopaths reap on society it is vital for everyone to recognise their behaviour traits, understanding them is the first step to defending against them.
Key characteristics of psychopaths.
Lack of empathy, empathy is the ability to experience within one self the feelings and emotions expressed by others. It allows us to feel what others feel, It is why we are inspired by music, art and poetry. The feeling of caring for a pet, or just having a sense of feelings towards others.
Psychopaths have no empathy, they realise from a early age that they are different, and that they should act like everyone ells does in order to be accepted into society. They learn to mimic what others do for them to be accepted, but they can never understand why they have to mimic life this way, they do it to fit in.
Psychopaths are known to be wily and manipulative, but even so, they unconsciously betray themselves, according to scientists who have looked for patterns in convicted murderers’ speech as they described their crimes.
In a newly found study researchers interviewed 52 convicted murderers, 14 of them ranked as psychopaths according to the Psychopathy Check-list-Revised, a 20-item assessment, and asked them to describe their crimes in detail. Using computer programs to analyse what the men said, the researchers found that those with psychopathic scores showed a lack of emotion, spoke in terms of cause-and-effect when describing their crimes, and focused their attention on basic needs, such as food, drink and money.
What it means to be a psychopath.
Psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the general population and as much as 25 percent of male offenders in federal correctional settings, according to the researchers. Psychopaths are typically profoundly selfish and lack emotion. “In lay terms, psychopaths seem to have little or no ‘conscience,’” write the researchers in a study published online in the journal Legal and Criminological Psychology.
Psychopaths are also known for being cunning and manipulative, and they make for perilous interview subjects, according to Michael Woodworth, one of the authors and a psychologist who studies psychopathy at the University of British Columbia, who joined the discussion by phone. [Criminal Minds Are Different From Yours]
“It is unbelievable,” Woodworth said. “You can spend two or three hours and come out feeling like you are hypnotized.”
While there are reasons to suspect that psychopaths’ speech patterns might have distinctive characteristics, there has been little study of it, the team writes.
How words give them away.
To examine the emotional content of the murderers’ speech, Hancock and his colleagues looked at a number of factors, including how frequently they described their crimes using the past tense. The use of the past tense can be an indicator of psychological detachment, and the researchers found that the psychopaths used it more than the present tense when compared with the nonpsychopaths. They also found more dysfluencies — the “uhs” and “ums” that interrupt speech — among psychopaths. Nearly universal in speech, dysfluencies indicate that the speaker needs some time to think about what they are saying.
With regard to psychopaths, “We think the ‘uhs’ and ‘ums’ are about putting the mask of sanity on,” Hancock told LiveScience.
Psychopaths appear to view the world and others instrumentally, as theirs for the taking.
As they expected, the psychopaths’ language contained more words known as subordinating conjunctions. These words, including “because” and “so that,” are associated with cause-and-effect statements.
“This pattern suggested that psychopaths were more likely to view the crime as the logical outcome of a plan (something that ‘had’ to be done to achieve a goal),” the authors write.
And finally, while most of us respond to higher-level needs, such as family, religion or spirituality, and self-esteem, psychopaths remain occupied with those needs associated with a more basic existence.
Their analysis revealed that psychopaths used about twice as many words related to basic physiological needs and self-preservation, including eating, drinking and monetary resources than the nonpsychopaths, they write.
By comparison, the nonpsychopathic murderers talked more about spirituality and religion and family, reflecting what nonpsychopathic people would think about when they just committed a murder, Hancock said.
The researchers are interested in analysing what people write on Facebook or in other social media, since our unconscious mind also holds sway over what we write. By analysing stories written by students from Cornell and the University of British Columbia, and looking at how the text people generate using social media relates to scores on the Self-Report Psychopathy scale. Unlike the check-list, which is based on an extensive review of the case file and an interview, the self report is completed by the person in question.
source:-
http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/09/30/how-to-spot-a-psychopath/ 
