You will indeed know them by their fruits. The identifying set of traits found in sociopaths are:
• Lack of empathy – Inability to feel sympathy for others or to understand the emotional consequences their actions have on others. Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims. Sociopaths often feel contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily take advantage of them.
• Superficial charm – While the sociopath is unable to fully understand the emotions of others, they are highly adept at mimicking emotions and might appear to be charming and normal at first.
• High IQ – Often sociopaths will exhibit a high IQ which they can use to plan, conspire, manipulate, and deceive more effectively.
• Secretive – Sociopaths learn early to hide their true nature from others, who naturally find the true traits of sociopaths odious and repugnant. Sociopaths hide the true motivations of their actions from others as well. They operate behind a facade of normality to better deceive and manipulate normal people.
• Compulsive lying – As part of their facade, and as a quicker and easier means of achieving their goals, sociopaths are compulsive liars. They rarely speak truthfully. They are the ultimate deceivers and con-artists. Some degree of plausible deniability is often built into their lies. They are extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests, making them very hard to pin down.
• Manipulative – Sociopaths use their superficial charm, deception, and high IQ to manipulate others to achieve their selfish goals, and their lack of empathy allows them to do this with no sense of guilt, shame, or remorse. They don't recognize the rights of others and see their victims as merely instruments to be used.
• Cold, calculating nature – The ability and willingness to manipulate others around them for personal gain without caring how others are affected. The ends always justify the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Grandiose self image – Sociopaths usually see themselves as superior to others, often to the point of delusion. They believe themselves to be the fittest leaders of a group, business, government, or even the whole world. Sociopaths see their self-serving behaviors as not only permissible, but entirely appropriate.
• Narcissism – A personality disorder in itself in which the individual feels strong love and admiration toward themselves.
• Sensitive to criticism – Like all narcissists, the sociopath will desire the approval of others and will be highly sensitive to criticisms. They often feel they truly deserve the adulation and admiration of the world. When criticized, they often feel victimized and react with "tit-for-tat" attacks on their detractors.
• Shallow emotions – Sociopaths are cold and unmoved by what would upset a normal person. They lack genuine emotion whenever empathetic feelings would be normal, yet are outraged by insignificant matters of a selfish nature. Their capacity to feel real affection and love is very limited. Rather than feeling loving affection towards friends and family, sociopaths feel ownership. They see others as targets and pawns.
• Low tolerance for boredom – Sociopaths get bored quickly and thus tend to seek constant stimulation. Life becomes nothing but a massive game for them, with the desire of winning each new play driving them forward. Outbursts and physical punishments directed at others can occur unexpectedly. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
• Impulsive behavior – A lack of regret and empathy means that sociopaths are more likely to make sudden or rash decisions based on the limited information at hand. They can be careless risk-takers, especially when the risk is borne by others. This impulsiveness can be useful for manipulating victims. Sociopaths often alternate rage and abuse with small expressions of feigned love and approval, creating an addictive cycle in the victim of feeling hopeful and useful versus feeling despair and unworthiness.
• Irresponsible – Unconcerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Sociopaths do not accept blame themselves, but blame others, even for acts they obviously committed.
• Sexually deviant – The lack of empathy, responsibility, remorse, guilt, and emotional attachment means that the sociopath is happy to have affairs and engage in unhealthy sexual activity without worrying about the damage to others. Secrecy is important here. Sexual activity is not seen as a way to connect emotionally with another, but as a way to exercise power and control over another and confirm the sociopath's own narcissism and self-grandiose delusions. Child sexual abuse and rape are not uncommon behaviors.
• Despotic/Authoritarian – Often sociopaths see themselves as the necessary authority and will be very much in favor of totalitarian rule, especially when it benefits them.
• Playing the rules – Despite popular belief, a sociopath is not likely to be an obvious law-breaker, but rather will seek to find legal loopholes or work-arounds, or rise to a position of power where he makes the laws, or the sociopath will move to another environment where his behavior is legally sanctioned or better tolerated.
• Parasitic Lifestyle – Tends to move around a lot in search of new victims. Poor work ethic but exploits others effectively, shamelessly feeding off the accomplishments of others.
• Paranoid – Sociopaths feel constantly threatened by:
- their tiny proportion among the human population (less than 2%).
- their lack of understanding of normal human emotional response.
- the natural revulsion normal humans have towards visible sociopathic behavior.
- the possibility of their true nature being exposed.
As a result of this paranoia, sociopaths often rely on blackmail as a fail-safe tactic should the usual tactics of charm, deception, and manipulation fail.
• Problematic childhood – Sociopaths will often demonstrate behavioral anomalies at a young age. These include problems making and keeping friends, animal cruelty (pulling body parts off insects, abusing pets, etc.), stealing, psychological bullying, vandalism, and pyromania (an obsession with setting fires).