How sociopath target their "victims"

It turns out that sociopaths really do have an uncanny ability for spotting susceptible victims, as suggested in a study described by a Psychology Today writer:

In a study by Wheeler, Book and Costello of Brock University, individuals who self reported more traits associated with psychopathy were more apt to correctly identify individuals with a history of victimization. In the study, male student participants examined video tapes of twelve individuals walking from behind and rated the ease at which each could be mugged. The men also completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale: Version III (Paulhus, Hemphill, & Hare, in press) which measures interpersonal and affective traits associated with psychopathy as well as intra-personal instability and antisocial traits. Finally, they were asked to provide verbal rational for their ratings. Overall results confirmed a strong positive correlation between psychopathy scores and accuracy of victim identification. This means that individuals that score higher for psycopathy are better at selecting victims.

The study is also featured in this video clip from I, Psychopath.

I think sociopath do tend to go for a particular type of victim, or at least a certain susceptibility to their "charms." I wrote about this a little here. A typical target would be someone the sociopath feels like he can dominate, or where he can tell there is some wound, some "damage" that he can stick his finger in and play with. Being with damaged people is good for socios in two ways: (1) the playing, and (2) the damaged person expects other people to be damaged as well, so socios don't have to do as good a job of keeping up appearances, i.e. can be more of their unapologetic selves.

But that begs the question: how do sociopaths know who is damaged, or at least so quickly and accurately? As one of my readers said "I put up armor but most sociopaths can see right through it."

It reminds me of a trip I made to New Zealand. New Zealand has been an isolated island so long that it traditionally had no mammals, except for bats. Instead, it had a extremely diverse ecosystem of birds. These birds had perfected "defenses" against the other birds in their ecosystems and had survived for millions of years that way. I was told that one of the natural defenses of the birds was to remain perfectly still, which made them almost impossible to spot by the predator birds flying high overhead. Or course this tactic made them (almost literally) sitting ducks when man brought rats with them to the island.

Simply put, we all have "defenses" to disguise our weaknesses, whether wearing clothes, cosmetics, compensating with a flashy car, acquiring meaningless degrees and titles, etc. Most people construct their defenses with the average person in mind -- your boss, your spouse, your kids, your colleagues, your friends and family. A defense that may work swimmingly with most people may work not at all with a sociopath. Asking a sociopath how he is able to see through these devices is sort of like asking a rat how he is able to see through the facade of a bird remaining perfectly still.