Thursday, May 15, 2025

Psychopaths Are More Attractive

Newsweek reports:
Dark personalities may not just be uncaring, self-obsessed and skilled at manipulation—but they may also look trustworthy, according to a new study that sheds light on how physical appearance can subtly disarm our instincts.

A new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences examined how people perceive strangers' trustworthiness based on facial appearance alone.

Researchers found that individuals with high levels of the so-called "dark triad" traits—narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism—were consistently rated as more trustworthy.

Why? The answer lies in looks. People with high dark triad traits tended to be perceived as more physically attractive—and this perception strongly influenced how trustworthy people believed them to be.

I do not take these studies too seriously. I just post this so you can be on the alert about how you might be manipulated.

1 comment:

CFT said...

The power of charisma (visual and otherwise) is not to be underestimated. I even go as far to only consider all major political/policy speeches in text first, before listening to them as performance, as voice can also be persuasive to a point where you really aren't really listening to the ideas, but the raw emotional conveyance. People think most clearly when they aren't being psychologically overwhelmed in a crowd. Psychopaths know how to manipulate people through their weaknesses, especially groupthink, and social standing, as they are compulsively drawn to exploit them.