1. I've used animal metaphors to explain things before; e.g. feel a bit like a cat does when it's toying with a mouse, get like a shark does when there's blood in the water (this is good for the predatory aggression), wolf in sheep's clothing/sheep in wolf's clothing, etc. However, I try not to overdo it with these metaphors because a lot of people already see psychopaths as subhuman, and I don't want to perpetuate that notion.
2. It tends to end up that way, especially if something needs to be done.
3. I had to think about this one for a minute. My default mask is "polite," so I normally come off as polite in most surface-level exchanges without really even trying. Also, it affords me a lot of trust from acquaintances and leeway in my social interactions, so I don't mind it.
This can change on a dime, though, trigged by the following:
- I'm irritated, which can be made worse when someone expects me to act polite for their benefit.
- I get the impression that someone is taking my "politesse" too far and attempting to guilt trip me into giving them something.
- Someone expects me to be polite and respectful outside of "business hours." If you want to hang out with me on my personal time, then you get the far less restrained me (which always surprises people for some reason). As someone else mentioned in another thread, wearing masks all the time can get tiring. I need my downtime, too, and I'm not keeping up the mask just to pacify someone else's precious feelings. This is probably why I can't keep a longterm relationship.
4. Not really. Yeah, I keep my cards pretty close to my chest, but that's just the nature of things. I've never felt like it was a necessity. And yeah, I suppose it would amuse me a little when people would call me mysterious or whatever, but I've gotten bored of that. Recently, I've been trying to find likeminded people so that I can understand myself better.
5. I can cry pretty easily, just not genuinely. I think it's a mirror thing. Nothing ever really sticks. I have cried genuinely on a handful of occasions, but those moments were short-lived.
I do enjoy moving others to various emotions because I find emotions to be weirdly fascinating. It's like learning a video game. You push buttons to figure out how the game works. Press X to get reaction "cry."
6. Yes to the former, no to the "victim" bit. Being perceived as a victim undermines my authority.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Open Eyes
There is a certain "normal" amount of predator in many that goes back to how man needed to hunt to survive and it felt positive to hunt, empowering which was necessary to thrive.
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True. There's been some research on the Warrior Gene and aggression.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0121093343.htm
Quote:
In the experiment, which is the first to examine a behavioral measure of aggression in response to provocation, subjects were asked to cause physical pain to an opponent they believed had taken money from them by administering varying amounts of hot sauce.
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Their results demonstrate that:
-Low-activity MAOA subjects displayed slightly higher levels of aggression overall than high-activity MAOA subjects.
-There was strong evidence for a gene-by-environment interaction, such that MAOA is less associated with the occurrence of aggression in the low-provocation condition (when the amount of money taken was low), but significantly predicted aggression in a high-provocation situation (when the amount of money taken was high).
The results support previous research suggesting that MAOA influences aggressive behavior, with potentially important implications for interpersonal aggression, violence, political decision-making, and crime. The finding of genetic influences on aggression and punishment behavior also questions the recently proposed idea that humans are “altruistic” punishers, who willingly punish free-riders for the good of the group. These results support theories of cooperation that propose there are mixed strategies in the population. Some people may punish more than others, and there may be an underlying evolutionary logic for doing so.
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