Psychopathy and Camouflaging: a Social Mask between Adaptation and Manipulation

In the era of comprehensive, real-time, updated information, public opinion is deeply aware of social threats, including violent crimes eventually committed by psychopaths living next door. A very small and outdated literature focused on camouflaging as a strategy adopted to reproduce normal social behaviours, by subjects presenting antisocial/dissocial personalities. If these strategies have been investigated deeply among different clinical subgroups (i.e., patients suffering from autism spectrum disorder), the understanding of the underlying mechanisms may highlight some initial, prodromic manifestations, before a serious crime has been committed. On the other hand, similar attitudes are detected among the general population, with only a few who will become offenders. In this perspective, camouflaging might be considered as a transdiagnostic element, closely associated with the continuous distribution of the deviant personality traits among the general and clinical/criminal populations. This editorial proposes a reconceptualization of camouflaging as a diffuse phenomenon, particularly salient in psychopathy, with some historical reminder, and critically examines its potential role in facilitating social integration of high-functioning individuals with deviant traits.