The charming face of manipulation: How dangerous personalities fool everyone

People frequently judge dishonesty through familiar social signals. Someone caught lying might hesitate, become uncomfortable or try to repair the damage to their reputation. A person who shows none of those reactions presents a more difficult problem.

Professor Essi Viding, a developmental psychopathology researcher at University College London, told The Guardian that unusual confidence could interfere with ordinary judgments about sincerity. She suggested that a person who remains composed while lying might be harder to read, while stressing that the idea has not been formally tested.

A 2019 review in the Journal of Personality Disorders examined the possibility that psychopathy may emerge from combinations of personality dimensions that do not necessarily occur together strongly in the wider population. The authors described the evidence for their model as provisional.

The study does not prove that confident people are better at getting away with lies. Its argument is much more narrow: Traits that rarely appear together in most people can sometimes combine in ways associated with psychopathy.

That makes appearances unreliable. Someone can be charming, composed and successful while reacting very differently when challenged or caught doing something wrong.

Control becomes visible over time

Dr Karen Mitchell, an organizational consultant and researcher based in Australia, spent decades advising institutions dealing with major cultural and workplace problems. She said to The Guardian that encounters with destructive individuals encouraged her to investigate similar conduct across fields that are usually considered separately.

Her 2024 doctoral thesis at Swinburne University of Technology, Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One Overarching Dark Personality Type?, developed what she calls the Persistent Predatory Personality model.

Mitchell drew on practitioners from areas including human resources, law enforcement, social work, courts, religious organizations and academia. Her framework brings together attributes, tactics and distinguishing features that she argues recur across several forms of harmful conduct.

Among the characteristics she identified were a strong drive for control, grandiosity, retaliation following challenges, exploitation, manipulation, disregard for agreements and unwillingness to accept responsibility.

The concern is not a forceful personality in isolation. Determination, ambition and confidence are common human traits. A more troubling picture forms when disagreement consistently brings punishment, boundaries are treated as obstacles and blame is habitually redirected toward somebody else.

Reputation shapes who gets believed

A dispute rarely begins on equal terms. Senior managers, respected professionals and popular colleagues can enter one with years of accumulated credibility.

Mitchell’s research and interviews describe circumstances in which a person accused of harmful conduct successfully presented themselves as the injured party. Such a reversal carries particular consequences in workplaces because managers and colleagues already have impressions of everyone involved.

The target may then face two battles at once: Explaining the alleged mistreatment while also challenging an established reputation.

Research into DARVO, meaning Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender, provides evidence that this type of reversal can affect outside observers. A 2023 study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence asked 230 undergraduate participants to respond to fictional sexual violence scenarios. Those exposed to DARVO rated the perpetrator as less abusive and more believable, while judging the victim as less believable.

Because the study used fictional scenarios and university students, its findings have limits. Even so, the results suggest that blame reversal can affect how outsiders judge both sides of a dispute.

Prison studies shaped psychopathy research

Much of modern psychopathy assessment developed in forensic environments.

Professor Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist and one of the leading figures in psychopathy research, developed the original Psychopathy Checklist and later the 20 item Psychopathy Checklist Revised, widely known as the PCL R. The revised instrument was published in 1991, followed by a second edition in 2003. His official PCL R materials describe an assessment that combines interviews with information from other records and sources.

Prison populations offered researchers an important practical advantage. Statements made during interviews could be checked against criminal histories, institutional files and other records. That access also meant that scientific understanding became particularly strong around people whose behavior had already brought them into contact with the justice system.

Socially successful people are harder to investigate in the same way. Someone operating within a company, family, profession or public institution might have no criminal record and no comparable collection of independent documentation.

Mitchell’s qualitative work examines part of this less visible territory through practitioners who encountered harmful personalities professionally. Interviews cannot establish how common her proposed type is or create a clinical category by themselves. They can, however, reveal similarities in conduct described across fields that have traditionally used different terminology.

Clinical terms are not interchangeable

Psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder and Mitchell’s Persistent Predatory Personality model refer to different concepts.

The American Psychiatric Association recognizes antisocial personality disorder as a clinical condition involving a continuing disregard for the rights of others. Its description includes deceitfulness, impulsivity, irresponsibility and lack of remorse among associated features.

Psychopathy belongs to a separate tradition of research and assessment. Hare’s PCL R considers interpersonal and emotional characteristics alongside lifestyle and antisocial features, one reason psychopathy should not simply be used as another name for antisocial personality disorder.

Mitchell’s framework sits outside formal psychiatric diagnosis. It was developed to bring together forms of predatory conduct described across organizational and interpersonal environments.

You do not need a psychiatric diagnosis to take troubling behavior seriously. If someone repeatedly retaliates against criticism, manipulates others, ignores boundaries or refuses to accept responsibility, those actions can be judged on their own terms.

Sources:

Journal of Interpersonal Violence — DARVO experimental research

The Guardian

Journal of Personality Disorders — “Personality Disorders as Emergent Interpersonal Syndromes: Psychopathic Personality as a Case Example”

Karen Mitchell, Swinburne University of Technology — Psychopaths, Narcissists, Machiavellians, Toxic Leaders, Coercive Controllers: Subsets of One Overarching Dark Personality Type?

Robert D. Hare — Psychopathy Checklist Revised materials

American Psychiatric Association

This article is made and published by Kenneth Glad, who may have used AI in the preparation