Opportunistic people are a constant in all areas of life : work, emotional relationships, the political sphere… However, this does not mean that we cannot identify them (or discover one in ourselves) in order to try to make their influence not harmful.

Of course, to do that, you first have to know the characteristics of opportunistic people, the way they act. What follows are their main characteristics.

Typical characteristics of opportunistic people

These are not characteristics that are part of the immutable personality of those who present them: every person can change.

However, do reveal that they have learned to adapt to situations in order to obtain personal benefits at the expense of others and of the commitments or links established in the past. Opportunistic people do not have to present all these characteristics at once, but as a whole they serve to have an “archetype” of this kind of individuals.

1. May have psychopathic features

Some of the opportunistic people may have psychopathic traits. The reason for this is that people who present this characteristic do not experience empathy and have the capacity to offer a seductive and charismatic facet that allows them to manipulate other people to carry out actions that they believe they are doing on their own initiative.

People with psychopathic traits are cold and calculating , although they rarely let others realize it, and are ruthless, although not necessarily through direct violence.

The key to their ability to manipulate others is the absence of guilt and empathy and their ability to be charming people. In the business world, moreover, they tend to hold positions of high responsibility: their proportion in the top positions of the organization could be 1 in 5 individuals.

2. Surround themselves with influential people

Those who are opportunistic know that the most powerful people are nodes of relationships, people who know (or have access to) many areas of business with potential. That is why from a position of friendship (real or fake) they can see an overview of the different opportunities they have to prosper .

Something similar occurs beyond working life; opportunistic people seek to maintain contact with influential and well-liked people in order to benefit from the advantages of being close to the point where others focus their attention and cultivate a good public image.

3. They look for the weakest link in the chain

This is a feature that is linked to the previous one. Opportunistic people observe a network of relationships in which they would like to gain power and concentrate their attention both on their most influential members and on those individuals who, despite being in a situation of power, may weaken and lose relevance in the future.

This allows the opportunist to be ready to assume the roles of this forgotten person.

4. They take advantage of emotional blackmail

Opportunistic people play hard to inject certain doses of guilt into people who are prone to quickly assume guilt that is not really theirs. Thus, it may be that a business owner leads his employees to believe that keeping them in their jobs is a sacrifice, as if he were doing them a favor by giving them work, or that a former spouse feigns or exaggerates his discomfort over the breakup so that the other person thinks he is responsible for their suffering.

The most interesting thing about this type of process by which opportunistic people become manipulative, emotionally extorting others are the ways in which they make others internalize a discourse based on guilt by simply making things understood, without going so far as to explain it directly. This is a way of making others come to embrace beliefs that, coldly analyzed, would seem absurd.

5. play with gender roles that favor them

Gender roles are a good alibi for many opportunistic people. A man can make his wife believe that he has the power to make decisions for her if he implies that he is responsible for her safety, being physically stronger than her, and that therefore the directions he gives about where not to go at certain times should be followed or what kind of premises not to enter should be followed.

Another very fine way of manipulation is to act as if it is assumed that someone who goes with us on a first date will pay for dinner for both of us . This puts the other person in the position of deciding whether to become a bizarre person who does not follow the customs or someone who assumes that his or her value as a person is not enough to be on the date, which leads him or her to assume a position of submission in certain areas.

Of course, manipulative people will only play the gender role card in contexts that favour them, and not in others. Thus, the man who wants his wife to assume her status as a helpless person who must be protected will not hesitate to ignore the male role if he wants the wife to work more to maintain an income level that will allow him to buy things for the house.