Psychopaths in all stages (narcissist, ASPD, sociopath) sometimes need to pretend they have compound emotions that they don’t really feel. Being ideological makes us vulnerable to their scripts. The more ideological you are the more they can manipulate you with your own cognitive dissonance. The inverse is also true. If your logical mind uses rationalization to know your subconscious self, wasting mind power on defending your ideology becomes unnecessary, freeing valuable mind power to detect anomalies in your own conscience. These anomalies are often a sign someone is trying to manipulate you.
Here are a few examples of manufactured empathy designed by psychopaths to manipulate you.
Celebrity gossip: Psychopaths love to chat about the stars. Particularly if a celebrity has a great misfortune that many people are in consensus about. The card trick is simple. Turn on the teevee and consume every perspective on the awful fate befalling some star. Then at a convenient time regurgitate word for word the script that was read to them.
The clue: Look for a similar but distinct situation with a neighboor or friend (who is not on social media) and ask them about that. They’ll hem and haw.
Pet perversion: Psychopaths know that people project all kinds of irrational love and trust on their pets. They will profess astonishment at an abused cat on the TeeVee but then beat, ignore, or experiment with their own dog behind closed doors. ‘Isn’t it awful’ they’ll say.
The clue: The animal is just a prop to them. They’ll talk it up but it will be malnourished, untrained, or allowed to run loose. They just as soon throw it in front of your car to trade an animal slave for a human one.
The one true ism: Sociopaths drool over the prospects for enslaving whole populations with a clever qip. Be it nationalism, racism, religious fundementalism, feminism, etc. You name it. If it pushes one group over another, the world has a whole lot less peers and a whole lot more masters and slaves, and making their their need for rank and file more rationial with each recruit. Healthy idiology is both personal and contextual. Empathic humans expound joy and revel in enlightenment and realization.
The clue: Do the ‘betters’ in your favorite idea act more like children sharing a new skill they’ve discovered, or zookeepers? Are they teaching you what they’ve learned about fishing or simply throwing you some fish to keep you well fed, for now? Don’t be passive. Ask questions until you stump them. They will slip and show themselves. Trust your gut. Then you will know if it’s just a handout (a Pavlovian training mechanism) or a hand up (the compassion of a peer).
The children: ‘but what about the children’ It’s a cliché. It almost goes without saying. But there is a subtle point which may assist you. Psychopaths do actually care for their children. Almost all animals do. It’s not the same as the love we show but it’s just as real to them.
The clue: Psychopaths turn to their own experience as children when parenting. A combination of harsh punishment and public denial would have protected them during their ASPD episodes, so they impart the same on their children psychopath or not. They may let their children run amok and only punish them when they are caught. The real lesson is not emotional programming of the conscience (pointless to them) but instead the simple logical message ‘don’t get caught.’ This results in some radical hypocrisy, especially for those in public life.
Anything you care deeply about: If you wear your heart on your sleeve they will use the knowlage to chain you up and clean you out.
The clue: If someone depicts them self as an emotional match that is simply too good to be true, it probably is. Know yourself emotionally (internal or external psychotherapy) and the distortion of the manipulation attempt should send your conscience reeling.
This is not even close to comprehensive, but gives you some examples of how fake empathy can be used to open your mind just enough that your metamind falls out. Explore your mind to discover your own ideas. The isms that truly suit your mind will always have an element of faith. It greatly behoves you to operate on a hunch. That’s what your conscience is for! That is how you become your own leader. You must be your own leader to truly treat your peers as equals.