Psychopaths are everywhere today, some people become psychopaths because of the way things are in their life or because of the way they’ve been treated by others. Make no mistake, though, contrary to popular belief not all psychopaths are criminals.  As a matter of fact, you yourself can be a psychopath, or even somebody in your family or group of friends can be one. I could even be one.

It seems that lately there have been crimes and shootings relating to young people, some in their twenties or even teens. There was that incident last year of the Colorado theater shooting, the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, and last week’s LAX airport shooting.

A lot of these people are classified as psychopaths having stories such as being bullied and having a very lonesome social life. In fact, many people associated as psychopaths have almost similar origins.

So how are psychopaths made? A behavior geneticist, Dr. David Lykken led a study on psychopathic behavior and connections to crime. He looked into statistics on juvenile crime and found that there is only a minority of children with antisocial tendencies or psychopathic traits that were born with such a predisposition of committing crime.

Lykken’s results also found that most antisocial behaviors in children are caused by poor parenting and when parenting fails a child with traits of a psychopath, they may express them through violence.

Not all abused children grow up to become psychopaths, some of them come from stable families.

Some cases have more to do with genetics, the strongest evidence for a genetic basis comes from a 2005 study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry that pointed to a strong inherited component for CU (callous-unemotional) traits among 7-year-old twins from the United Kingdom.

The study involved 3,687 twin pairs who were assessed by their teachers found that extreme CU traits were more strongly linked among same-sex identical twins than fraternal twins. The study also found a strong genetic component for extreme antisocial behavior among children with high CU traits. But extreme antisocial behavior among children without CU traits appeared to have a stronger environmental influence.

“There is no real recipe for psychopathic personality disorder,” says Jennifer Skeem, UC Irvine Professor of psychology & social behavior.

“The environmental factors are as ill-defined as the genetic factors, although antisocial behavior mixed with a history of punitive discipline, abuse and neglect seems to apply in many cases.”

Some of characteristics of psychopath are superficial charm, hiding their true personality by acting good and nice on the outside to get things their way.

They also cannot be still and quiet and need to be entertained and active. They are also liars, manipulative, irresponsible, and lack guilt and remorse. Psychopaths also enjoy taking advantage of others and often try making them look bad.

You should try by avoiding these people and have nothing of great value to offer them since they like to take advantage and manipulate people. That is one way to get them out of your life so they don’t try getting things from you or your loved ones.

If you must talk with them speak clearly and loudly with them and agree with them in complimentary ways whenever you can. If you have a conversation with them, talk about something neutral like politics, sports, people, news, etc, never about things like your life goals, dreams, friends, family, and finances.

Be sure not to arm them with mental, emotional, and psychological weapons that they can use against you such as giving them any information about your weaknesses or what makes you happy.