 Have you ever met a sociopath, psychopath, narcissist, or dark empath before? Well, this video could be the ultimate duel between super characters to determine who wins the title of most harmful. These personality disorders have dark traits or characteristics that make them dangerous to the people around them in varying degrees. Some personalities are more aggressive than others. Some conceal themselves better than others, but what they all have in common is their manipulative traits. While they all manipulate people to get what they want, each has their unique way and reason behind why they do it. So, let's explore each dark personality type briefly before going into which one could be the most harmful to your mental health. 1. Sociopaths Hailing from the spectrum of antisocial personality disorder, which by the way is not just preferring pizza over people and weighing in with a weak conscience coupled with a weak sense of empathy. We have the sociopath. They know they're wrong, yet find justifications instead of being good. Sociopathy is characterized by, but not limited to, clearly don't care how others feel, attachment issues, unpredictable, hot-tempered behavior. Their low empathy and weak conscience makes lying and disregarding others in pursuit of their own needs easier. When confronted with consequences of their actions, they react negatively by showing spitefulness and recklessness. Empathy is a chronic condition that can be acquired by harsh family dynamics, such as parental instability or sexual abuse. Let's look at our next contender, psychopaths. Also hailing from the spectrum of antisocial personality disorder and weighing in with zero empathy is the psychopath. Any outward justification for their actions is for performative purposes only. Psychopathy does have some different specs from its brethren, sociopathy. Where the sociopath is an erratic volcano, the psychopath is a silent black frozen abyss. The sociopath will show they don't care, but the psychopath will convince you they do when they really don't. Spotting a sociopath is easy. A psychopath makes it a point to appear as normal as possible while hiding in plain sight. The pros say that to diagnose a sociopath, look for what's showing on the outside. To diagnose a psychopath, it's much more based on what's happening on the inside and why. Psychopathic qualities like recklessness and aggressiveness are caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, not upbringing. One of their weapons is a non-automatic emotional response to others. They can choose to understand how someone feels, if it benefits them. While they, like sociopaths, are not necessarily violent, they lack the regular restraints and protections of empathy and conscience, to prevent them from becoming violent. 3. Narcissists The narcissist is the diva with the most ego. They believe everything is about and for them, but snarking you're such a narcissist when someone acts kinda douchey doesn't mean they have the disorder. To a true narcissist, confidence, limits, and basic affection are now self superiority, self entitlement, and the expectation of praise and servitude. In their minds, they get extra because they ARE extra. Everyone else is a tool tooy or toaster to be used until they're no benefit to the narcissist, then they're discarded. According to one clinically confirmed case, narcissism is self-defense in the pursuit of four primary goals, fuel, control, character traits, and residual advantages. The fuel is whatever emotion they can evoke from you. Emotion vampires, narcissists savor every ounce. They enjoy having control over how you feel. They steal character traits, co-opting aspects of another person and passing them off as their own. Money, sex, and contacts are all residual benefits from their supply. This exploitative behavior stems from childhood trauma. It could have been formed by being smothered in protection and placed on a pedestal or by being in an unstable environment. And now, a surprising fourth, dark empaths. This term introduced in a 2021 study marks this contestant as a yet untested newcomer. In this study, it was discovered that these people tend to score high on empathy, but also high on dark triad traits, like narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. The dark empath could be described as a black mirror version of ourselves. They have everything the other personalities lack, especially empathy. Yes, empathy. But the dark empath's empathy is cognitive only. Empathy means if you hurt, I hurt. The dark empath's cognitive empathy means they fully understand the pain they cause. They just don't feel it. Even if they've been directly hurt in the past, they intuitively get how others work and feel. So like a thief with all the blueprints and passwords, their manipulations are devastating. For them, with great power comes great wrongness. There's the bell to the round and the disorder that wins the title of most harmful to your mental health is, honestly, between the psychopath and the dark empath, it's a toss-up. Or is it? The psychopath has the zero empathy attack. They have no restraints of conscious or empathy and take advantage of others without remorse. They relax your defenses by acting outwardly normal. That's dangerous. What about the dark empath then? This could be the most dangerous personality type because the dark empath can intuit as opposed to study. What other people are feeling? This makes accurate manipulation far easier for them. If you don't believe dark empaths are a thing, the singular type of personality that is most dangerous would be the psychopath who is unshackled by conscience. However, if you believe that the dark empath is an entity unto itself, then this is the winner. Beware of their machinations as they have the ability to tune in and focus attack through empathy. Comment down below with your thoughts on which is the most harmful and why you believe it is so. Always remember too that despite these personalities being a psychological phenomenon, which may or may not be conscious choices, if you are the target, you are never under any obligation to accept abuse. Stay safe and we'll see you soon.