Revealed: The key sign that indicates a woman might be a PSYCHOPATH

Due to their often duplicitous nature, it can be difficult to identify a psychopath.

But a new study suggests that watching a woman’s head movement during a conversation could be a giveaway.

Using head-tracking algorithms, experts in New Mexico analyzed recordings of women being interviewed by police.

They found that the biggest psychopaths kept their heads very still, just like men.

Staging may be a tactic used by psychopaths to hide potential clues about their personality or intentions given away by body language.

The new study – which claims to be the first to link female psychopaths and nonverbal communication – was led by researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

“Nonverbal behavior (i.e., head dynamics) represents an important but understudied form of communication that may enhance our ability to understand certain forms of psychopathology, including psychopathy,” they say.

‘We believe that our results help identify a unique pattern of head dynamics that characterizes women high in psychopathy, specifically in exhibiting more stationary head positioning during the conduct of clinical interviews.’

In general, people described as psychopaths exhibit characteristics such as antisocial behavior, untruthfulness, irresponsibility, and a lack of remorse or empathy.

Research has already shown that psychopathic men have “unique patterns of nonverbal communication,” including more fixed head positions during clinical interviews.

However, it is unclear whether ‘similar patterns of head dynamics’ are also exhibited by women who score high on psychopathic traits.

For the study, the researchers used an image processing and machine learning tool to automatically extract head movements from recorded interviews with 213 incarcerated women in the US.

The women were informed about their interviews and other data would be “videotaped for data quality purposes and possible use in future analyses.”

In each interview, the tool was used to assess the average head position for the entire session, as well as the head position in each frame.

Using head-tracking algorithms, experts in New Mexico found that female prisoners with higher levels of psychopathy kept their heads more stationary during police interrogations

To determine levels of psychopathy, the team used a general assessment called the ‘Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised’ (PCL-R), originally developed in the 1970s by Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare.

Using a 20-item checklist, PCL-R scores a person from one to 40 – and anyone who scores 30 or higher in the US is considered a psychopath.

The PCL-R has been “validated for use among incarcerated women” as well as incarcerated men, the team said.

As expected, the researchers found that the lower the level of head movement, the higher the prisoners scored on the psychopathy assessment.

Because psychopathy in both women and men is “highly predictive of future recidivism,” the findings could be important for prison staff.

Police interviews show that female detainees who keep their heads still are more likely to reoffend – although this requires further research.

One limitation of the study is that the participants were exclusively prisoners, so the team does not know to what extent “the prison environment influenced participants’ behavior.”

Shown: 3D maps of a participant’s head position during a full video recording. Each point represents the participant’s head position in a single frame of the video

“Capturing nonverbal communication signals, such as head dynamics, in a research setting may not necessarily reflect those demonstrated during everyday interactions,” they say in their paper. Personality and individual differences.

Further research could also explore whether minimal head movements among women are a trait among psychopaths outside of prison.

It comes shortly after a British researcher warned that more women are psychopaths than commonly thought.

Dr. Clive Boddy from Anglia Ruskin University said signs of psychopathy in women are different from men and can take the form of sexually seductive and manipulative behaviour.

Current scientific evidence suggests that male psychopaths outnumber females by approximately six to one.

But Dr. Boddy thinks the true ratio of male to female psychopathy is about 1.2 to one – up to five times higher than previously suggested.

The authors of the new study seem to acknowledge this, saying that attempts at manipulation by psychopaths can resemble cheating behavior when it comes from men, but flirting behavior when it comes from women.