Dark Personalities

Psychopathic Stare & 5 More Non-Verbal Cues That Betray a Psychopath

Published by
Janey Davies, B.A. (Hons)

Psychopaths are, by their nature, devious and cunning, inveigling their way into our lives, often leaving us worse off. Quite often we find out about their psychopathic nature after they’ve left a trail of destruction.

But there might be a way of detecting them through their body language. One way psychopaths betray their true nature is the psychopathic stare.

Studies have shown that when a psychopath communicates, they tend to keep their head still. They also maintain eye contact for longer than usual.

These are just two of the non-verbal giveaways from a psychopath.

Along with the psychopathic stare, here are 5 more non-verbal cues that betray a psychopath:

Psychopathic stare and 5 other non-verbal cues

1. Psychopathic stare

Why do psychopaths keep their heads still with a penetrating gaze? You might not realize, but we move our heads to convey different aspects of communication. A nod for agreement or a shake for dissent. Cocking the head to one side acts as a question.

When we couple head movements with facial expressions, we express even more. From conveying sympathy to indicating whose turn it is to speak next.

In other words, our heads give away a lot of personal information. This is exactly what the psychopath doesn’t want. A psychopath’s greatest tool is their devious nature and ability to manipulate. Keeping their head still is one way of hiding what they are thinking.

As for the penetrating gaze, studies have shown that psychopaths tend to hold a person’s gaze for longer than average. Throw in the fact that their pupils do not dilate when they are afraid, and you have one scary-looking dude.

2. Space invaders

One character trait of the psychopath is cold-heartedness or a callous nature. Of course, your average psychopath will try and hide this aspect of their personality from you. However, research suggests that there is a link between callousness and social distance.

One study revealed that highly callous individuals preferred shorter distances between themselves and other people. Typically, this was an arm’s length at most.

There are two theories for why this occurs. One is that standing closer to someone allows a highly callous person to engage in aggressive behavior.

The second is that psychopaths are much less fearful than the general population, and therefore don’t mind standing closer to a stranger.

3. Increased hand gestures

There are several types of hand gestures, including deictic (pointing), iconic (depicting a concrete object), metaphoric (visualizing an abstract concept), and beat (emphasizing a part of the sentence).

Research suggests that psychopaths use more beat hand gestures than non-psychopaths. Beat gestures are up-and-down or back-and-forth hand gestures that emphasize certain parts of speech. They follow the beat of a sentence and are used to draw our attention to certain words.

Psychopaths use beat hand gestures to manipulate us. They can emphasize the particular part of a sentence they want us to hear, or steer us away from something they’d rather we didn’t hear.

Psychopaths also tend to self-manipulate more, for example, they’ll scratch their heads or fiddle with jewelry. This is another attempt to distract a person’s attention from inconsistencies in their conversation.

4. Micro-expressions

There are some occasions where psychopaths cannot control their body language. Their body language leaks out in micro-expressions which, although fleeting, lasting for milliseconds, can be revealing.

One such micro-expression is duping delight. This is a flash of a smile across the lips of a person who has gotten away with telling a lie. They cannot help themselves. The feeling of getting one over another person is so great that it escapes the controlling nature of the psychopath.

“Duping Delight is the pleasure we get over having someone else in our control and being able to manipulate them” – Dr. Paul Ekman, psychologist

You often see duping delight in police interviews of serial killers. You have to slow down the taped interview to catch the smirk, but it is there.

Other micro expressions are anger, surprise, and shock. Again, you have to be fast to pick up on these micro-expressions as they occur within a fraction of a second.

When someone is angry, their eyebrows will furrow downwards, and their lips will curl up in a snarl. Shock and surprise are expressed through widened eyes and raised eyebrows.

Although you might not always see these micro-expressions consciously, pay attention to your gut feelings about a person. Their expressions will filtrate down into your subconscious level and give you an uneasy feeling about the person.

5. Lack of emotion during speech

I’ve watched many documentaries on serial killers, and one thing I’ve noticed is the complete lack of emotion expressed when describing their murders. I’ve heard detectives talk about interviews with accused subjects that finally confess to their actions. They describe horrific events as if they are shopping in a supermarket.

Many murderous psychopaths will include mundane details, such as what they had to eat or drink, or talking about vicious killings in the same sentence.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with a psychopath after he had committed a particularly vicious crime:

“We got, uh, we got high, and had a few beers. I like whiskey, so I bought some whiskey, we had some of that, and then we, uh, went for a swim, and then we made love in my car, then we left to go get some more, some more booze and some more drugs.”

6. Dominance in social settings

A psychopath wants to get the upper hand in any social setting they are in. To achieve this, they use dominant body language.

As well as a psychopathic stare, psychopaths will lean forward and dominate your space while they’re talking to you. Studies show that this is especially true of young offenders with psychopathic traits. These young psychopaths will also smile less and blink less.

However, the same studies show that even psychopaths get stressed when they are trying to manipulate you. Their blink rate increases, and you’ll notice more hesitations in their speech, e.g. they’ll say um and ahh more. This gives them time to think of an appropriate response.

Final Thoughts

We all want to protect ourselves and stay away from psychopaths, so being aware of a psychopathic stare and other non-verbal giveaways is important.

You never know, one day it might save your life!

View Comments

  • Psychopaths are very manipulative people. Unless they are very careful they can't be as effective as they want to be. When first meeting others, they can be quite charming in order to get their mark to drop their guard so that the manipulation can begin.
    Unless a person is extremely wary and watches every new person closely when they encounter someone new for the types of behavior discussed in this article, it's unlikely these will be noticeable by a lay person. That's what psychopaths rely on, and while they may have these "tells" as soon as they meet someone, unless you have yourself on constant guard to try and detect these, it's good to know what some of the other behaviors are in case you can't catch how long they hold a stare, for example. Other more noticeable indications of psychopathic behavior include cruelty to animals, lack of emotional connections, early fire-setting and destruction of property, manipulativeness, quick to extreme anger, no understanding or regard for truthfulness, lack of empathy,impulsive antisocial behavior, extreme egocentricity, etc.

  • Hey Hii 👋

    The article is very nce and informative. I came here cause just few days back something weird happened with one of my very old neighbour. Can u help or guide plz with this issue and concern of mine plz. So few fays back i was talking to someone and past his shoulder i saw someone staring at me. As this was the first time I saw someone staring at me in a very intimidating and serious way I was stunned and my mind just couldn't process anything. I just went numb and got goosebumps and immediately without hurting his feelings slowly closed the door of my home (10-12 feet away from neighbours). I live in an apartment building with 4 houses in each floor, each side by side apartment facing the 2. So I inquired with my another neighbour on same floor who said the stranger who stared at me was my neighbours son in law. To my shock i couldn't believe bcoz i have seen him 1-2 times as completely normal being. But the way he stared at me, after reading this article i m 100% sure it was a psychopathic stare. He didn't moved or blinked for 5-10 secs until i closed the door. Now i am worried a lot cause recently i have also watched many crime stories as we all love to watch such, including netflix Mind Hunter. That's why my suspicions grew a lot cause that was no way a normal behaviour, you don't stare at someone like that. Normal people on stare contact either look away or act ignorant. To me he looked like someone with down syndrome but I also have a sister with such, but she rarely gives such dead stare. Plz guide as I think he has been through something rough and bad, so much that to me he wasn't identifiable and looked like a psycho, if you watch a lot of crime documentaries you know what i am talking about. People who have very less emotion and have a very fixated stiff face. As i live alone sometimes when parents are out i am very worried as such people look for such people only, maybe my neighbour has told his son in law abt it? Whi knows. So Plz let me know what u think by replying to this. Also should i confront and inform my neighbour about his son in laws weird behaviour. He's a very nice person but who knows what happens behind closed doors. I am so worried that i sleep at 4-5am only nowdays just to be safe. I am 32 but physically not that powerful and also I don't curse, which is quite common where i live. One can say i am good guy and that's why concerned a lot in case if something happens.

    Thanks a lot in advance.

    • A word of caution. You can’t jump to the conclusion someone is a psychopath based on 5 minutes of observation. Even fully trained psychologists cannot do that.

  • Psychopaths are not "devious in their nature"; most are devious by choice. Psychopaths lack empathy, but they still intelligently know right from wrong. Emotions help us make moral decisions, but they do not make our decisions for us. The absence of certain emotions and impulses don't necessitate the presence of certain others. Devious psychopaths are just bad people with a mental illness, who lack the emotional incentives most of us have to at least pretend we care.

  • I often had the expression that people backed up because I came to close (invaded their space), mostly when I was younger. But I didn't do it because I wanted to dominate but because I wanted contact with them, a teacher I admired, a person i liked.
    So caution is nessecary, one of the points is not enough to say anything about a person.

Published by
Janey Davies, B.A. (Hons)