Another characteristic of psychopaths is an ability to avoid taking responsibility for things that go wrong; instead, they blame others, circumstances, fate , and so forth. They have an impressive supply of excuses for why they are not to blame for anything that they have said or done to hurt someone else. Pointing the finger at others serves the dual purposes of reinforcing their own positive image while spreading disaparging information about rivals and detractors.

Many people use impression management and manipulation techniques to influence others to like and trust them, or to get what they want from people - very often subconsciously, but sometimes as the result of training, practice, and planning. However, wanting people to like and respect you (and doing what it takes to achieve this) is not necessarily dishonest or insincere - the need for approval and validation from others is normal. Social manipulation begins to be insincere if you really don't care about the feelings of others or you try to take unfair advantage of others.
The difference between the psychopaths approach an the nonpsychopathic approach liea in motivation to take unfair and callous advantage of people. Psychopaths somply do not care if what they say and do hurts people as long as they get what they want, and they are very good at hiding this fact.