Revealed: The key sign that indicates a woman might be a PSYCHOPATH trends now
Due to their often duplicitous nature, it can be hard to identify a psychopath.
But a new study suggests looking at a woman's head movement during a conversation could be a giveaway.
Using head tracking algorithms, experts in New Mexico analysed recordings of women being interviewed by police.
They found that the biggest psychopaths kept their head very still, just like men.
A stationary stance may be a tactic employed by psychopaths to hide potential clues about their personality or intentions given away by body language.
Using head tracking algorithms, experts in New Mexico found female prison inmates with higher levels of psychopathy kept their head more stationary during police interviews (file photo)
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The new study – which claims to be the first linking women psychopaths and nonverbal communication – was led by researchers at the University of New Mexico's Department of Psychology in Albuquerque.
'Nonverbal behaviors (i.e., head dynamics) represent an important, yet understudied, form of communication that may enhance our ability to detect certain forms of psychopathology, including psychopathy,' they say.
'We believe our results help identify a unique pattern of head dynamics characteristic of women scoring high on psychopathy, specifically, exhibiting more stationary head positioning during clinical interview administration.'
Generally, people who are described as psychopaths show traits such as antisocial behaviour, untruthfulness, irresponsibility and lack of remorse or empathy.
Already, studies have shown psychopathic men have 'unique patterns of nonverbal communication', including more fixed head positions during clinical interviews.
However, it has been unclear whether 'similar patterns of head dynamics' are also displayed 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 movement from recorded interviews of 213 incarcerated women in the US.
The women were informed 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 asses the average head position for the whole session as well as head position in each frame.
Using head tracking algorithms, experts in New Mexico found female prison inmates with higher levels of psychopathy kept their head more stationary during police interviews
To determine levels of psychopathy, the team used a common assessment called the 'Hare
