The macro and micro facial expressions belong to the category of a non verbal psychology. The main difference between those two are that while the macro facial expression can last even few seconds, the micro facial expression can last only about a quarter of one second. The narcissistic smirk (also known as a duping delight) is a micro facial expression that forms only at one side of the mouth when the narcissist feel contempt, anger and disgust. As it lasts only quarter of the second, when you do not know what to look for, you can very easily over look it. On the other hand, when you are being educated on covert narcissism and non verbal psychology, the narcissistic smirk can help you to uncover and recognize the narcissist as the duping delight is one of the most common micro facial expressions of the narcissists.
Only the smirk itself is not an indicator that someone is a narcissist. Non narcissistic people smirk too. Although, if the person you feel suspicious about that might be a narcissist smirks often in a certain situation, in a certain way and he or she also shows at least 5 of 9 traits from the manual DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), then you can assume you deal with a narcissist. Normal non narcissistic people can smirk too as the smirk covers up to 7 different universal emotions – contempt, anger, disgust but also sadness, fear, happiness and surprise. Positive facial expressions such smirk and smile are sometimes an emotional mask to conceal the real negative emotions (for example, the person might smirk or fully smile to mask the depression from others or a person tries to hide upset in a passive aggressive way by hiding behind a smile or a smirk). The history of smile takes us back into the age when humans lived in a caves and the only form of a communication (before the verbal communication has been formed) was non verbal communication. The cave man was smiling to send a signal to the other man that he is coming in a peace and no danger should be expected from his side. This is the reason why people of today are smiling when they are introducing themselves to each other for the first time. By smiling on other person you are letting them know that you are not dangerous. This is a code of behaviour from the past we carry in our DNA to these days.
However, smile can be misappropriated and used with a bad intention rather than used to let others know that they are safe with you. Once you observe the narcissistic smirk, you will never forget that creepy smirk for the rest of your life and you will not confuse it for any other types of the smirks. The duping delight is often accompanied by a dominant body language exhibiting superiority complex signs. The narcissistic smirk is a facial muscle betrayal on a face of a narcissistic individual who tries to hide his negative emotions from the victim but those emotions leak out through the smirk and the narcissist is not aware of his emotions leaking out. In most cases the disordered person is not aware of his smirk but sometimes he can smirk knowingly. The covert narcissist is a master at keeping his “false self mask" on and duping delight is giving the victim quarter of the second to see through the cracks of his mask. The duping delight is removing the concealer for the negative emotions the narcissistic individual feels towards his victim.
The narcissist smirks at an inappropriate moment. The duping delight is formed only on one side of the mouth and it is visible like a half smile. Right before the narcissistic smirk you can observe that the narcissist will pause and stare at you. The long “narcissistic stare” gives the disordered individual a little extra time to study your facial expressions just to see if his tactic is working on you. As the narcissist has very low emotional intelligence (EQ), he reads the victim with the use of his intellect (IQ) to evaluate how the victim feels reading from the victim´s facial expressions and body language. After the pause the smirk follows. You can also notice the thrill, ecstasy and excitement in his eyes for the rush the deceive and hidden sadism is giving to his dopamine. He tries to hide his feeling of euphoria and power over the victim but when you know what you are looking for, you can clearly see it. After the smirk, the narcissist will quickly look down or away to try to hide the excitement of his emotions. The narcissist can´t laugh in your face openly yet as either he still needs you or he does not want to ruin his sadistic mind game yet as he is enjoying it. Thus he is celebrating his victory inside of him in a covert way.
The narcissistic smirk is a sign of a hidden sadistic pleasure and satisfaction of being able to manipulate someone, inflict the pain onto someone or watch someone suffer. The most common reasons why the narcissist smirks are:
- The narcissist managed to get a negative supply out of you by purposeful and calculated provocation and now he is enjoying to see you upset or crying or feeling discomfort and distress.
- The narcissist is deceiving you, lying to you, stealing from you and he thinks he is getting away with it.
- The narcissist caused you harm or a damage and it is bringing him a pleasure.
- The narcissist feels pleasure from your misfortune caused by him or an external source (such hearing about your bad news). This is being called “schadenfreude” and this word is coming from Germany.
- The narcissist is deceiving you, lying to you, stealing from you and he thinks he is getting away with it.
- The narcissist caused you harm or a damage and it is bringing him a pleasure.
- The narcissist feels pleasure from your misfortune caused by him or an external source (such hearing about your bad news). This is being called “schadenfreude” and this word is coming from Germany.
- The narcissist feels energized and happy when making you jealous by manufactured triangulation or cheating on you. The narcissist considers his victim naïve and the knowing that he is secretly and successfully duping you without you having a clue about it is bringing him sadistic pleasure.
- The narcissist does not enjoy only to hurt you, he is also enjoying to secretly planning on how he will hurt you. Only pure thinking about plotting against you is bringing him the pleasure and a dopamine rush.
- The narcissist is proving to you that he is superior to you and you are lesser than him. The smirk is full of arrogance, smug and sense of covert grandiosity.
- The narcissist is gaslighting you, creating confusion in you and watching you to feel out of your balance. Your confusion is bringing him pleasure.
- The narcissist does not enjoy only to hurt you, he is also enjoying to secretly planning on how he will hurt you. Only pure thinking about plotting against you is bringing him the pleasure and a dopamine rush.
- The narcissist is proving to you that he is superior to you and you are lesser than him. The smirk is full of arrogance, smug and sense of covert grandiosity.
- The narcissist is gaslighting you, creating confusion in you and watching you to feel out of your balance. Your confusion is bringing him pleasure.
Although, not every laugh and smirk might automatically mean that the person is a narcissist. There are some unique phenomenons and paradoxes in psychology. Sometimes people who are under extreme stress can start to laugh in a very inappropriate moment. For example, when someone experiences a breakdown or goes through an extreme stress such being at the funeral and watching his beloved close person being buried or being informed that his beloved closest person just died might trigger extreme behavior such as starting to laugh loudly. It does not mean that the person enjoys the funeral or is happy for someone else´s death, it might just mean that the person is going through an extreme stress and everybody is reacting to such a load differently. The extreme stress might make people act in a weird way and to have weird reactions. When a person is smiling in a stressful situation or when being embarrassed, its called “a stress smile”. The key to recognize if the person is a narcissist is to look for a set of patterns in the person´s behavior that are typical for narcissistic abuse such gaslighting, triangulation, etc. rather than one single trait. Look for a combination of more narcissistic traits exhibited in a consistent way through the life of a narcissist. One narcissistic trait does not make someone necessary a narcissist, all people displays some narcissistic traits to some degree, although it does not mean they have narcissistic personality disorder.
If you would like to see how the duping delight looks like, I suggest you to search for the video “Duping delight – Diane Downs” by Youtube channel “Ruby Dussek”. Diane Downs is a criminal who murdered her daughter and attempted to murder her other two children. She told the police a man had attempted to carjack her and had shot the children. Her duping delight in the end of the video is very noticeable and it’s a classic smirk of a narcissist who thinks she is getting away with her lie.
A less noticeable narcissistic smirk can be seen in a video “Duping delight – Marina Oswald” by Youtube channel "Anderson Carvalho" where Marina, the widow of the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, lies about not knowing about the plan for the assassination.
Fake laugh
Fake laugh
Another macro facial expression that might uncover the narcissist is a laugh. The narcissist is laughing in a very fake and forced way acting like a chameleon who tries to blend into the society pretending to be normal and controlling his every appearance. He laughs only when he can obtain a positive narcissistic supply from people for making them laugh and show them his superiority and power over them but he genuinely does not care about their happiness, it only makes him look good to his audience and it helps him to feed his ego and maintain his false image. All interaction with people serves only the purpose to obtain the supply. Behind the door, the narcissist hates people and despises them. His disorder often co-morbid with paranoia which means he is hypersensitive to every move in his surroundings, including the behavior of other people towards him. His paranoia makes him feel paranoiac - if people are laughing, they might be laughing at him and he often considers this as a narcissistic injury. You might notice that the narcissist often ruin the good mood of all people in his presence, stays quiet while others are laughing, he leaves the room or refuses to join the company of people in a festive mood and afterward he might “punish” those people with a silent treatment for being happy. The narcissist is envy of happy people and this is the reason why he always covertly or overtly ruins all Christmas, weddings, birthday parties and other events where people are in a festive mood. The narcissist can´t stand that the spotlight is being taken from him and he takes it as a narcissistic injury when the spotlight is being on someone else. The happiness of other people triggers him as it reminds him of his inability to be genuinely happy. They lack of sense for humor and in most cases they do not understand the jokes as they only can process the information through their intellect and take things literary. The more psychopathic and sociopathic the narcissist is, the more his personality is flat (“dry”) and robotic. His facial expression with a mask on is very animated, staged, unnatural and exaggerated (especially overt narcissists), he imitates a laugh but his eyes are betraying him. The eyes are not smiling and there is “nobody home” behind his eyes. Once the mask slips from the narcissist´s face, his facial expression is very emotionless and flat. The only moment you can see a narcissist genuinely laughs is on someone else´s misfortune. The narcissist created an alter ego (the false self) to protect his true self from the pain and shame. Once in the past the narcissist felt a tremendous pain and he tries to protect himself with his false self from feeling the pain again so he suppressed all of his emotions. The sacrifice that comes with suppressing the emotions so he would not feel the pain is that once you suppress the negative feelings, you automatically suppress the whole spectrum of feelings, including the positive feelings. This is the reason why the narcissist does not feel anything and he often describes it as “feeling empty” or “feeling void”. Without any emotion you are not capable to feel any pain but also any joy. Including jokes and a genuine laugh. It’s the price the narcissist is paying for suppressing his traumas and emotions. The best way to observe their fake smile is on photography. When you cover their lower part of the face (the mouth) with a sheet of paper and you will only observe their eyes, you will notice that the eyes are not laughing. The overall expression of his fake smile on photography reminds more about the aggressive monkey. Often people misinterpret the laugh of the monkeys as monkeys are being happy while in fact, in a lot of cases the smile of the monkey is a warning sign before the attack. It means: “Do not come closer, I feel in danger and if you come closer, I will attack”. You can see the aggression in their eyes while their mouth seems to laugh. The same as the narcissist. If you are an empath, being around a narcissist who smile or laugh in a creepy forced way is a pretty scary experience.
Dark eyes of the narcissist during rage
Dark eyes of the narcissist during rage
Many victims claim that during the narcissistic rage, the eyes of the abuser widen out and become darker and scary. In most cases the victims blame it on a demon possession. There is an explanation for this phenomenon. The reason why the eyes of the narcissist get bigger and darker (which might create the illusion of being scary and full of darkness) is the same reason why the eyes of a cat get bigger and darker right before the attack. The pupils of the cat dilate when they are angry (I suggest you to do a research – search for “cat pupils dilate attack” on Youtube). Cat pupils do much more than respond to the level of light in a room, they can give you a good sense on how the cat is feeling. The cat´s eyes widen out when ready to attack as the cat make sure she will be able to see as much as possible during the attack. The cat´s pupils dilate once the cat is ready to pounce. The dilation of the pupils can get you this feeling that the cat´s eyes become scary and dark as the color of the pupils is black and the iris heavily reduces. In nature, when the predator is ready to attack the prey, his pupils dilate. The narcissist whose eyes suddenly changed and became wider and darker mean that the narcissist is covertly raging or is ready to overtly physically attack the victim. The best solution in a situation where you found yourself in a presence of an aggressive person whose pupils dilate, exit the situation in a calm way and do not provoke the person in any way.
See the cat´s pupils dilating in this video.
Fake cry
Another facial expression to uncover a manipulative person with cluster B type of the personality is to pay an attention when they cry. Their cry is fake and they use crying as a tool for manipulation. Usually they pretend to cry and their eyes are being dry during the crying without any tears shed or they might cry crocodile tears. They can turn on and turn off crying and they can go from crying to laughing like nothing ever happened in a matter of a second. During crying they put on a show with lot of exaggerated sounds and dramatic weeping or their emotionless flat face expression does not match a deep emotion that the crying represents. They might appeal detached. Especially the covert type of the narcissists love to play the victim card whenever they can and they often cry to play pity party in front of others to obtain the supply - the sympathy or to cover up their abuse and crimes by guilt tripping the real victim so in the end the real victim ends up apologizing to the narcissist for receiving the abuse. When the narcissist failed to manipulate the victim to get what he wants, he might switch from crying into full blown rage full of hate. The only time you can see the narcissist cries for real is for himself. He never feels sorry for hurting others, he can only feel sorry for himself. Usually he cries and have a childlike temper tantrum when he collapses (known as collapsed narcissist) when he has no supply to obtain falling into a depression and when he rages because he received narcissistic injury. Another reason for a narcissist to fake a cry is to triangulate people with false accusations so he would stay clean while others will fight each other.
Fake cry
Another facial expression to uncover a manipulative person with cluster B type of the personality is to pay an attention when they cry. Their cry is fake and they use crying as a tool for manipulation. Usually they pretend to cry and their eyes are being dry during the crying without any tears shed or they might cry crocodile tears. They can turn on and turn off crying and they can go from crying to laughing like nothing ever happened in a matter of a second. During crying they put on a show with lot of exaggerated sounds and dramatic weeping or their emotionless flat face expression does not match a deep emotion that the crying represents. They might appeal detached. Especially the covert type of the narcissists love to play the victim card whenever they can and they often cry to play pity party in front of others to obtain the supply - the sympathy or to cover up their abuse and crimes by guilt tripping the real victim so in the end the real victim ends up apologizing to the narcissist for receiving the abuse. When the narcissist failed to manipulate the victim to get what he wants, he might switch from crying into full blown rage full of hate. The only time you can see the narcissist cries for real is for himself. He never feels sorry for hurting others, he can only feel sorry for himself. Usually he cries and have a childlike temper tantrum when he collapses (known as collapsed narcissist) when he has no supply to obtain falling into a depression and when he rages because he received narcissistic injury. Another reason for a narcissist to fake a cry is to triangulate people with false accusations so he would stay clean while others will fight each other.
Tone of the narcissist´s voice
Another indicator you might deal with a manipulator might be the tone of his voice. When the manipulator tries to charm the target, he often uses almost childlike voice. Especially if you know the narcissist and you know how his voice sounds normally, you would be able to hear the difference when they suddenly switch to this childlike softer and almost hypnotic voice. The narcissist does this to create this illusion he is powerless as a child so you (on a subconscious level) put your guards down. They might use also flirting as an additional tool to charm the target. A very nice example is an interrogation tape available on Youtube of Jodi Arias, the female killer. While she has been in an interrogation room with a male interrogator, she softened her voice to sound almost like a little child and she was flirting with the interrogator by playing with her hair. The moment the male interrogator left the room and was exchanged by a female interrogator, she went back to her normal voice and her body language changed too.
Another indicator you might deal with a manipulator might be the tone of his voice. When the manipulator tries to charm the target, he often uses almost childlike voice. Especially if you know the narcissist and you know how his voice sounds normally, you would be able to hear the difference when they suddenly switch to this childlike softer and almost hypnotic voice. The narcissist does this to create this illusion he is powerless as a child so you (on a subconscious level) put your guards down. They might use also flirting as an additional tool to charm the target. A very nice example is an interrogation tape available on Youtube of Jodi Arias, the female killer. While she has been in an interrogation room with a male interrogator, she softened her voice to sound almost like a little child and she was flirting with the interrogator by playing with her hair. The moment the male interrogator left the room and was exchanged by a female interrogator, she went back to her normal voice and her body language changed too.
Another indicator of the victim dealing with the psychopatic individual is the lack of fear in the disordered individual when giving a speech to the audience or talking to their new target. Normal people are usually nervous when they are giving a public speech, they try to mask it with a confidence, but you can observe that the speaker´s hands and voice are shaking. When a normal people dates other people, they might try to control their excitement and nervousness, but you can observe their voice and hands might shaking and they can even mumble a bit. On the other hand, the psychopatic individuals are very slick due to their lack of emotions. They confidently give a speech, not only their voice and hands are not shaking at all, but they use the perfect words similar to the scripts from the movies to impress the audience with their superficial charm. Dating a psychopatic individual is like a scene from a movie. Everything is too perfect.
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