Free Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work by Robert D. Hare, Paul Babiak

the authorities uncover some heinous crime or masterful deceit that a psychopath’s charming mask of sincerity, integrity, and honesty is questioned. In less dramatic cases, it may still take much day-to-day exposure before the façade becomes transparent to a few studious observers, but this rarely happens with most people with whom they interact.
    While lack of empathy and guilt allows psychopaths to identify their victims in the assessment phase, these traits also help them to con and manipulate shamelessly during the manipulation phase.
    What contributes significantly to their success in engendering trust in their victims is their almost pathological ability to lie with im-punity. Unencumbered by social anxieties, fear of being found out, empathy, remorse, or guilt—some of nature’s brake pedals for antisocial behavior in humans—psychopaths tell a tale so believable, so entertaining, so creative, that many listeners instinctively trust them.
    One might think that a long series of lies would eventually become transparent, leading to unmasking the psychopath, but this is rarely the case. The reason most observers do not see through the lies is that many psychopathic lies serve both to allay the doubts or concerns of the victim and to bolster the psychopathic fiction. Their often theatrical, yet convincing stories and entertaining explanations reinforce an environment of trust, acceptance, and genuine delight, leading most people to accept them exactly as whom they appear to be—and almost unconsciously excuse any inconsistencies they might have noted. If challenged or caught in a lie, psychopaths are not embarrassed. They simply change or elaborate on the story line to weave together all the misarranged details into a believable fabric. Well-practiced oral communication skills make this endless stream of disinformation seem What You See May Not Be What You See 51
    believable, sensible, and logical. Some psychopaths are so good at this that they can create a veritable Shangri-la view of their world in the minds of others; a view that they almost seem to believe themselves.
    Surprisingly, psychopaths will lie even to people who already know the truth about what they are saying. Amazingly, more often than not, victims will eventually come to doubt their own knowledge of the truth and change their own views to believe what the psychopath tells them rather than what they know to be true. Such is the power of psychopathic manipulation. In at least one case we have heard, a thief fleeing the law shot at his pursuer. Upon capture, the arresting officer—even though he returned fire—was convinced by the fast-talking suspect that the suspect did not, in fact, have a gun and never shot at the officer! Some psychopaths are proud of this expertise, making fun of their victims’ gullibility and often bragging about how they fooled this person and that person. To give the devil his due, this self-praise is justified in many cases.
    It is not clear whether psychopaths lie because it is an effective tactic to get what they want, or the act of lying is pleasurable, or both.
    It could be that psychopaths fail to learn the importance of honesty in their youth, and learn, instead, the utility of lying to get what they want from others. In the typical child, lying and distortion lessen with age, while psychopaths just get better at them. They don’t see the value of telling the truth unless it will help get them what they want.
    The difference between psychopathic lies and those told by others is that the latter typically are less callous, calculated, damaging, and destructive to others. They also are far less pervasive than psychopathic lies. For example, poker players, men trying to talk a woman into having sex, adolescents working their parents over to obtain permission to go to a party, a businessmen trying to close a deal, and a politician trying to get elected or to explain his actions may use a variety of lies to attain their