Narcissism pros and cons

A reader sent me this article discussing recent research on the pros and cons of narcissism in business leaders. According to the research, narcissism is good up to a point because it often gives people the determination, confidence, and drive to pursue difficult and risky tasks. At a certain point, however, people don't like dealing with the narcissist as a boss, motivation drops, and unchecked narcissism can lead to unnecessary and stupid risks and an personal agenda substituting for the broader group agenda.

The article uses Steve Jobs as an example. Being a raging narcissist facilitated his early development of Apple, but once the company achieved a particular size and needed to keep attracting new talent, it became a detriment. During his time away from Apple, he learned lessons in humility that helped him become an even better business leader when he returned to run Apple 11 years later.

Not only does the article/research do a good job of examining both the pros and cons of a trait that we often associate as being negative, it also deals explicitly with the idea that people's personalities are more fluid than many people give them credit for, otherwise how would Steve Jobs be able to learn humility:

“Even if you have a narcissistic leader, and in a sense it’s causing them to be less effective in certain ways, people can proactively practice virtues like humility and develop their character,” Owens said. “Over time, it will begin to stick and enhance their leadership effectiveness.

Also, I don't know why this did, but one thing that surprised me about people's reaction to the book was some people were really turned off by what they perceived to be my narcissism and some people were really turned on by what they perceived to be my larger than life confidence. For some reason, it tended to split along gender lines with women being much more likely to be turned off and men much more likely to be attracted to it. I wonder why?

Trolling IRL

This was a pretty funny description of someone messing with people for the "puerile desire to get on other people’s nerves," as she describes it (I thought only sociopaths find pleasure in messing with people?).

She describes the game thusly:

All you do is stonily deny any knowledge of a person or cultural touchstone that you should, by virtue of your other cultural reference points, be aware of. These will of course be different for everyone, but my favorites include:

Žižek, John Updike, MORRISSEY (only for experts), Radiohead, Twin Peaks, David Lynch in general, Banksy (only for streetfighters), Withnail and I, Bauhaus (movement), Bauhaus (band), Afrika Burn, the expression “garbage person,” A Clockwork Orange, Steampunk (this one is really good), Jack Kerouac, “Gilmore Girls,” Woody Allen, the expression “grammar nerd,” the expression “grammar Nazi,” cocktails, bongs, magical realism, millennials, Cards Against Humanity, trance parties, bunting, many comedians, William Gibson, burlesque, the Beats, The God Delusion, sloths, anarchism, Joy Division, CrossFit, “The Mighty Boosh,” and Fight Club.

Find someone who is crazy about Morrissey, and pretend you have no idea who that is. It drives people nuts. I don’t know why, but it does. Just kidding, I know exactly why, because I myself have been on the receiving end of the Žižek Maneuver. This girl I had a bit of a crush on told me she had never watched “Twin Peaks,” and it damn near killed me. The reason I had a crush on her in the first place is because we liked so many of the same books, and movies, and music. How could she have never watched “Twin Peaks?” Was she messing with me? How? It did not for a second occur to me that she just hadn’t got round to it. My immediate response was to believe that she had deliberately not watched it in order to get on my nerves. When she told me later that of course she had watched “Twin Peaks,” my eye started twitching.

This is the beating heart of the Žižek Game: the disbelief that something you care about has failed to register on the consciousness of another. The agony of suspecting that someone has looked at Slavoj Žižek’s Wikipedia page and thought “I do not need to know about this man.”

But I thought the most insightful observation of playing this, or really any other game or interaction with another human being, is that you can never be afraid to look stupid:

Your success in this game depends on your ability to cope with people thinking you are dumb. This is so important. Adolescent conditioning—I grew up in a city with a strong surf/skate subculture of people who like to get extremely high—means that I am not only comfortable with people thinking I am dumb, I actually lean into it. I pretend I’ve never heard of Roman Polanski all the time. I do not falter, and neither must you. Your opponent must never have the satisfaction of looking down on you. When they begin to scoff and roll their eyes, because how could you have never heard of the Weimar Republic, you must simply smile and shrug your shoulders. If you look abashed, your opponent has won.

Too true. In the law, it's hilarious to me (and looks terrible to jurors) for lawyers or witnesses to work hard backpedaling on some point in order to save face or pretend like they know what's up. I don't know why we care so much what strangers think of us, but most people do. You absolutely can exploit this. And if you can gain all sorts of situational advantages by refusing to let other people's opinions change who you are, what you are doing, or what you believe about yourself or the world. They don't call it "confidence game" for nothing. Good luck!

Conned

A reader recently suggested a reason why people are so upset to learn that someone they know is a sociopath: "The normal person figures out they have been dealing with a sociopath only after they have been screwed and they see that the person they thought they were dealing with never existed. The distaste is both for the deception and also recognition that they were "had"- never pleasant."

It reminded me of this Radio Lab episode "What's Left When You're Right," which starts off with a segment on the game show Golden Balls. The end segment to each episode ends with a classic game theory prisoner's dilemma. So the deal is that if they both choose split, they split the money. If one chooses steal, the other split, the person who steals gets the money. If they both choose steal, no one gets the money. This clip is one of the craziest versions of it:



To me, this seems like an easy choice. I would split, because unlike most prisoner's dilemmas where it is much worse to cooperate/split when the other person defects/steals (20 years in prison for you) than to both defect/steal (10 years in prison for both of you), you end up with nothing if both of you split. The game show gets to keep its money. To me, that seems like the bigger waste. I would rather ensure that someone besides the show got the money, even if it meant giving it all to another person. And I don't actually get upset when someone gets one over on me. People manipulate me all of the time. I've been led into some pretty terrible situations (seen or heard a couple of my worst media appearances?), been conned, cheated, or whatever, but it doesn't really bother me. If anything, I'm often impressed, or at least try to learn something from the situation. (Although if it was less of a one time thing and more of a continuing power struggle, I'd probably try to figure out some way to hit them back).

I don't think most people think this way, in fact the Radio Lab episode tries to explain why so many people choose split (apart from the obvious greed) by interviewing previous contestants. The interviewees seemed to suggest that their main motivation in stealing was to avoid the feeling of being conned, tricked, or otherwise taken advantage of.

The problem with that is extreme efforts to avoid being "conned" often end up hurting yourself and others. The whole Cold War was basically built on this fear. From a New Yorker review of a book about nuclear almost disasters, "Nukes of Hazard":

On  January 25, 1995, at 9:28 a.m. Moscow time, an aide handed a briefcase to Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia. A small light near the handle was on, and inside was a screen displaying information indicating that a missile had been launched four minutes earlier from somewhere in the vicinity of the Norwegian Sea, and that it appeared to be headed toward Moscow. Below the screen was a row of buttons. This was the Russian “nuclear football.” By pressing the buttons, Yeltsin could launch an immediate nuclear strike against targets around the world. Russian nuclear missiles, submarines, and bombers were on full alert. Yeltsin had forty-seven hundred nuclear warheads ready to go.

The Chief of the General Staff, General Mikhail Kolesnikov, had a football, too, and he was monitoring the flight of the missile. Radar showed that stages of the rocket were falling away as it ascended, which suggested that it was an intermediate-range missile similar to the Pershing II, the missile deployed by nato across Western Europe. The launch site was also in the most likely corridor for an attack on Moscow by American submarines. Kolesnikov was put on a hot line with Yeltsin, whose prerogative it was to launch a nuclear response. Yeltsin had less than six minutes to make a decision.

The Cold War had been over for four years. Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned on December 25, 1991, and had handed over the football and the launch codes to Yeltsin. The next day, the Soviet Union voted itself out of existence. By 1995, though, Yeltsin’s popularity in the West was in decline; there was tension over plans to expand nato; and Russia was bogged down in a war in Chechnya. In the context of nuclear war, these were minor troubles, but there was also the fact, very much alive in Russian memory, that seven and a half years earlier, in May, 1987, a slightly kooky eighteen-year-old German named Mathias Rust had flown a rented Cessna, an airplane about the size of a Piper Cub, from Helsinki to Moscow and landed it a hundred yards from Red Square. The humiliation had led to a mini-purge of the air-defense leadership. Those people did not want to get burned twice.

After tracking the flight for several minutes, the Russians concluded that its trajectory would not take the missile into Russian territory. The briefcases were closed. It turned out that Yeltsin and his generals had been watching a weather rocket launched from Norway to study the aurora borealis. Peter Pry, who reported the story in his book “War Scare” (1999), called it “the single most dangerous moment of the nuclear missile age.” Whether it was the most dangerous moment or not, the weather-rocket scare was one of hundreds of incidents after 1945 when accident, miscommunication, human error, mechanical malfunction, or some combination of glitches nearly resulted in the detonation of nuclear weapons. 

Finally, Radio Lab discusses a contestant who comes up with a strategy that successfully avoids people's fear of being conned:



So I guess this explains why the people I've told myself about my diagnosis take it drastically better than the people that hear it from other sources? They feel like I've conned them? Here's the trick, though. You start indiscriminately telling people you're a sociopath and see if they still treat you well. 

Sociopath fortune cookie

"Modesty is the art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it."

Sociopaths = primed for happiness?

I recently found out my death year is in the 2070s and thought, wow, that long? Better find some way to entertain myself... But I think a lot of people must be thinking the same thing. We no longer live hard and fast, struggling to meet the basic requirements of survival. With our survival all but assured, our minds are free to wonder, what else is there to life? For most people, it's not about the quest for meaning or heaven or anything else, but rather happiness that people seek most, reports the cover article in Psychology Today this month. What is the secret to happiness? Recent research suggests counterintuitive results -- people who engage in "activities that lead us to feel uncertainty, discomfort, and even a dash of guilt." Sound like anyone you know?

First, happy people seek stimulation:

Curiosity, it seems, is largely about exploration—often at the price of momentary happiness. Curious people generally accept the notion that while being uncomfortable and vulnerable is not an easy path, it is the most direct route to becoming stronger and wiser. In fact, a closer look at the study by Kashdan and Steger suggests that curious people invest in activities that cause them discomfort as a springboard to higher psychological peaks.

Reminds me of this recent post on doing things the hard way.

Second, happy people are unflaggingly optimistic, even delusionally so, even to the point of gullibility:

A standard criticism of happy people is that they're not realistic—they sail through life blissfully unaware of the world's ills and problems. Satisfied people are less likely to be analytical and detail-oriented. A study led by University of New South Wales psychologist Joseph Forgas found that dispositionally happy people—those who have a general leaning toward the positive—are less skeptical than others. They tend to be uncritically open toward strangers and thus can be particularly gullible to lies and deceit. Think of the happy granny who is overcharged at the car dealership by the smiling salesperson compared with more discerning, slightly less upbeat consumers.

Reminds me of this recent tweet.

"Even if you took every precaution in the world, you could still be manipulated. Or maybe a plane will fall on your head. Why stress?"
— M.E. (@sociopathworld) August 8, 2013

Third, they tend to not care about brass rings, don't really run in the rat race:

Similarly, the happiest people possess a devil-may-care attitude about performance. In a review of the research literature by Oishi and his colleagues, the happiest people—those who scored a 9 or 10 out of 10 on measures of life satisfaction—tended to perform less well than moderately happy people in accomplishments such as grades, class attendance, or work salaries. In short, they were less conscientious about their performance; to them, sacrificing some degree of achievement seems to be a small price to pay for not having to sweat the small stuff.

People who have a more fluid sense of self (see also Buddhists):

The ability to shift mental states as circumstances demand turns out to be a fundamental aspect of well-being.

Other counterintuitive tidbits that don't necessarily fit sociopaths (but should!) include giving to and serving others makes you happy, being happy for other people makes you happy, accepting your negative emotions and what that means about you, etc. Of course sense of purpose also matters, but it seems to be more a sense of forward progression:

If you want to envision a happy person's stance, imagine one foot rooted in the present with mindful appreciation of what one has—and the other foot reaching toward the future for yet-to-be-uncovered sources of meaning.

What you can learn from sociopaths (part 1)

From a reader on his experiences with sociopaths ("they let me fool myself") the seeming contradictions of a sociopath, narcissist,-lites, and other gems:


Early on in my life I could spot sociopaths but I didn't know how to qualify them.  There was some discomfort on their parts that I was on to them but they let me fool myself.  They figured out my interpretation of their behavior and then allowed me to think what I wanted to think.  

One can spot the sociopath by their strange lack of vulnerability, the absence of committal statements and their propensity to linger in a group long enough to politic.  These qualities all in one person seemed like a contradiction to me.  It's a contradiction because non-committers show some anxiety and sociopaths do not.   Lingerers are become increasingly committal as the increased time with the group increases their comfort but sociopaths do not commit even when they are supposed to be comfortable.  

I don't consider myself a sociopath but I can appreciate and empathize with their realistic approach to life.  You see I grew up with the exact opposite.  My parent is a narcissist.  It didn't take long for me to learn that as long as the narcissist is receiving his narcissistic supply he will delude himself. Sound familiar? The neurotypical, as long as he is receiving societal approval and validation will delude himself as well.  The average person is a narcissist-lite. 

The realistic aspect of the sociopath is that he understands human nature and coldly uses it to his advantage.  The practical part of the sociopath is that he casts the widest possible social net to influence the greatest number of people - all the while preventing opposition-opposition which would undermine all his hard work.  The authentic part of the sociopath is that he knows what he wants and isn't afraid to get it.  The only difference is the sociopaths authenticity is that it is harmful for him to divulge it. 

The sociopaths authenticity is an impediment when revealed. The sociopath creates rapport without ever divulging his/her "authenticity." Divulging this authenticity is social suicide for the sociopath since society does not accept people that lack empathy and refuse to play by the "rules."  From my observation, however, the sociopath is more authentic a being than both the narcissist and the average neurotypical person.  At least the sociopath is in touch with who he is.  He is someone that knows what he wants and will do whatever it takes to get it.  He is strongly in touch with his desires of the moment. He is not afraid to acknowledge them and is not afraid to risk failure in order to obtain them.  

How to seduce a sociopath

I've address this topic before, but never to my satisfaction. I've never had a good answer, always thinking that people were incapable of doing it -- that if they had it in them to do it, they would have just done it. But one of my friends wanted to seduce someone they believe is sociopathic. And because I know her a little better and the nature of her strengths and weaknesses, I thought that maybe I had a better chance of coming up with something than I have before. And here's what I told her:


I've been thinking about the best tactic for you to seduce your maybe sociopath boss. I was thinking that sociopaths are intrigued when people they know change, like not just an off day sort of temporary change, but start acting differently pretty consistently. That should renew their interest in you, because they thought they had you pegged but you turn out to be more dynamic than they had considered. And I think they are also intrigued when people share their same traits, because they are, after all, narcissists. So I was thinking that maybe you could work on one particular trait that is similar to a sociopath and really make it a daily focus for the next few weeks and see how that works.

The thing that I think will be most helpful for you, and in a Karate Kid paint the fence sort of way improve your manipulation skills, is to focus on exploring every aspect of yourself. You know how sometimes they tell golfers to focus on what their pinky toe feels like in the moment that they start their swing? Always be thinking of yourself. When you talk to people, think of what your upper right prefrontal cortex must feel like. When you are eating, be aware of the size and shape of your tongue. Think about things you have not thought about yourself in years, if ever. Feel the bottom of your lungs, the roots in your teeth. Become aware of your eyes in their socket. When you shower, truly regard yourself in a frank fashion. You are a marvel, a wonder of engineering. You are a god. Your body is amazing and your brain is unfathomable.  Explore the spectrum of your feelings. Can you think yourself to tears? To bliss? Explore every single inch of your physical, emotional, and mental self with the sort of curiosity that a walking miracle such as yourself deserves. And you control this thing. Let yourself become heady with the thought of your power over this awesome thing that is you. 

This is the sort of self regard that sociopaths have about themselves. If you do this you will act differently, and he will notice. He will also recognize, and admire, that you two now share this trait.

I think this will at least renew his interest in you. Once that happens, maybe we think about you trying some more advanced things to get him to understand the nature of your desire.

The Unburdened Mind

This is one of the most balanced, accurate depictions of sociopathy/psychopathy I have seen written by a non sociopath, and the comments are hilarious. Highlights from the article:

Many potential psychopaths might not even realize they have the condition, nor has there traditionally been any easy way for others to recognize them.
* * *
The psychopath does not merely repress feelings of anxiety and guilt or fail to experience them appropriately; instead, he or she lacks a fundamental understanding of what these things are.
* * *
Arriving at a disaster scene, a psychopath would most likely gather to watch with the rest of the crowd. He might even lend assistance if he perceived no threat to his own safety. But he would feel none of the panic, shock, or horror of the other onlookers—his interest would fall more on the reactions of the victims and of the crowd.
* * *
Despite this emotional deficiency, most psychopaths learn to mimic the appearance of normal emotion well enough to fit into ordinary society, not unlike the way that the hearing impaired or illiterate learn to use other cues to compensate for their disabilities. As Hare describes it, psychopaths “know the words but not the music.” One might imagine that such a false and superficial front would be easily penetrated, but such is rarely the case, probably because of the assumption we all tend to make that others think and feel essentially the same way as ourselves. Differences in culture, gender, personality, and social status all create empathy gaps that can seem almost unfathomable, but none of these is as fundamental a divide as the one that exists between an individual with a conscience and one without. The psychopath’s psychology is so profoundly alien to most people that we are unable to comprehend their motives, or recognize one when we see one. Naturally, the industrious psychopath will find this to his advantage.

Some psychologists go so far as to label the psychopath “a different kind of human” altogether. Psychopathy has an environmental component like nearly all aspects of personal psychology, but its source is rooted firmly in biology. This has caused some researchers to suspect that the condition isn’t a “disorder” at all, but an adaptive trait. In a civilization made up primarily of law-abiding citizenry, the theory goes, an evolutionary niche opens up for a minority who would exploit the trusting masses.

This hypothesis is supported by the apparent success many psychopaths find within society. The majority of these individuals are not violent criminals; indeed, those that turn to crime are generally considered “unsuccessful psychopaths” due to their failure to blend into society. Those who do succeed can do so spectacularly. For instance, while it may sound like a cynical joke, it’s a fact that psychopaths have a clear advantage in fields such as law, business, and politics. They have higher IQs on average than the general population. They take risks and aren’t fazed by failures. They know how to charm and manipulate. They’re ruthless. It could even be argued that the criteria used by corporations to find effective managers actually select specifically for psychopathic traits: characteristics such as charisma, self-centeredness, confidence, and dominance are highly correlated with the psychopathic personality, yet also highly sought after in potential leaders.
* * *
A lack of empathy does not necessarily imply a desire to do harm—that comes from sadism and tendencies toward violence, traits which have only a small correlation with psychopathy. When all three come together in one individual, of course, the result is catastrophic. Ted Bundy and Paul Bernardo are extreme examples of such a combination.
* * *
The reasons we look up to these conscience impaired people are unclear. Most likely it has something to do with the confidence they exude, the ease they seem to feel in any situation—a trait that comes easily in someone essentially incapable of fear or anxiety. Maybe we’re easily suckered in by their natural glibness and charm. Or maybe on some level we envy the freedom they have, with no burden of conscience or emotion.

Manipulation 103: interviews and presentations

I have a new theory of interviewing -- try not to answer any question without asking first one clarifying question. I think it's good for the interviewee because it gives you something to focus on apart from trying to gauge your own performance. It makes you think of the interview as more of a conversation, so there is less performance anxiety. It's effect on the interviewer is to force her to commit to actually wanting to know the answer, rather than asking a question and zoning out during your response. And it evens the power dynamic a little bit because the interviewer is not the only one asking the questions. It puts the interviewer on a small version of the defensive, because they're forced to explain what they're asking and question why they are asking the question in the first place. (I have a similar dynamic with one of my more distant relatives, a silly woman who has confessed to other relatives that I make her nervous because when she asks me a question, I pause and answer it carefully and in the meantime she has rethought whether it was important enough to have troubled me with it.) When I feel like I have to talk nonstop, I will frequently get out of breath and consequently get a tremor in my voice. Breaking up the interview in this way would give you a chance to catch your breath while you collect your thoughts.


I haven't had the chance to use this tactic in an interview yet, but I have had the chance to use it in some recent presentations to midsized audiences. Within the first few minutes, I try to ask the crowd a question and ask for a show of hands or field specific responses if people volunteer. It immediately cuts the tension and instead of a dynamic where people feel like they can sit passively and judge my performance, I am requiring them to engage with me. If anything, they focus their judging efforts and attention on their own selves with worries that I may ask them to engage in a way that they will not be prepared for or that they might mishandle.

During the question and answer sessions I follow any questions with my own clarifying questions. I pin them down. I don't give people the chance to retort "that's not what I asked," or "you've misunderstood me." Once I am clear as to what exactly they're asking, I say things like, "that's an interesting question." I want to seem friendly but I also want to establish the power dynamic that I feel worthy and competent to assess the merits of their questions -- a teacher/student dynamic. They are happy for the praise, happy that I have granted them my approval, and so are less inclined to speak ill of me later.

Of course these tactics can't make something if there's not anything there, but they have been very useful in helping me perform my best, particularly in situations in which people are likely to underestimate me.

Test-driving psychopathy

Kevin Dutton, author of the Wisdom of Psychopaths, tells the story of how he test-drove being a psychopath (excerpted from his book):

"The effects of the treatment should wear off within half an hour," Nick says, steering me over to a specially calibrated dentist's chair, complete with headrest, chin rest, and face straps. "Think of TMS as an electromagnetic comb, and brain cells—neurons—as hairs. All TMS does is comb those hairs in a particular direction, creating a temporary neural hairstyle. Which, like any new hairstyle, if you don't maintain it, quickly goes back to normal of its own accord."
***
TMS can't penetrate far enough into the brain to reach the emotion and moral-reasoning precincts directly. But by damping down or turning up the regions of the cerebral cortex that have links with such areas, it can simulate the effects of deeper, more incursive influence.

It isn't long before I start to notice a fuzzier, more pervasive, more existential difference. Before the experiment, I'd been curious about the time scale: how long it would take me to begin to feel the rush. Now I had the answer: about 10 to 15 minutes. The same amount of time, I guess, that it would take most people to get a buzz out of a beer or a glass of wine.

The effects aren't entirely dissimilar. An easy, airy confidence. A transcendental loosening of inhibition. The inchoate stirrings of a subjective moral swagger: the encroaching, and somehow strangely spiritual, realization that hell, who gives a s---, anyway?

There is, however, one notable exception. One glaring, unmistakable difference between this and the effects of alcohol. That's the lack of attendant sluggishness. The enhancement of attentional acuity and sharpness. An insuperable feeling of heightened, polished awareness. Sure, my conscience certainly feels like it's on ice, and my anxieties drowned with a half-dozen shots of transcranial magnetic Jack Daniel's. But, at the same time, my whole way of being feels as if it's been sumptuously spring-cleaned with light. My soul, or whatever you want to call it, immersed in a spiritual dishwasher.

So this, I think to myself, is how it feels to be a psychopath. To cruise through life knowing that no matter what you say or do, guilt, remorse, shame, pity, fear—all those familiar, everyday warning signals that might normally light up on your psychological dashboard—no longer trouble you.

I suddenly get a flash of insight. We talk about gender. We talk about class. We talk about color. And intelligence. And creed. But the most fundamental difference between one individual and another must surely be that of the presence, or absence, of conscience. Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels good. But what if it's as tough as old boots? What if one's conscience has an infinite, unlimited pain threshold and doesn't bat an eye when others are screaming in agony?
***
I shake my head. Already I sense the magic wearing off. The electromagnetic sorcery starting to wane. I feel, for instance, considerably more married than I did a bit earlier—and considerably less inclined to go up to Nick's research assistant and ask her out for a drink. Instead I go with Nick—to the student bar—and bury my previous best on the Gran Turismo car-racing video game. I floor it all the way round. But so what—it's only a game, isn't it?

"I wouldn't want to be with you in a real car at the moment," says Nick. "You're definitely still a bit ballsy."

I feel great. Not quite as good as before, perhaps, when we were in the lab. Not quite as ... I don't know ... impregnable. But up there, for sure. Life seems full of possibility, my psychological horizons much broader. Why shouldn't I piss off to Glasgow this weekend for my buddy's stag party, instead of dragging myself over to Dublin to help my wife put her mother in a nursing home? I mean, what's the worst that can happen? This time next year, this time next week even, it would all be forgotten. Who Dares Wins, right?

I take a couple of quid from the table next to ours—left as a tip, but who's going to know?—and try my luck on another couple of machines. I get to $100,000 on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" but crash and burn because I refuse to go 50-50. Soon things start to change. Gran Turismo the second time round is a disappointment. I'm suddenly more cautious, and finish way down the field. Not only that, I notice a security camera in the corner and think about the tip I've just pocketed. To be on the safe side, I decide to pay it back.

I smile and swig my beer. Psychopaths. They never stick around for long. As soon as the party's over, they're moving on to the next one, with scant regard for the future and even less for the past. And this psychopath—the one, I guess, that was me for 20 minutes—was no exception. He'd had his fun. And got a free drink out of it. But now that the experiment was history, he was suddenly on his way, hitting the road and heading out of town. Hopefully quite some distance away.

Immune to insecurities

I am dating someone who has loads of insecurities, body image issues, career dissatisfaction, etc. The insecurities are not to the point that they're annoying, they're just there and in ways in which this person readily accepts about themselves. The whole thing is actually pretty attractive to the sadist in me. But it has also gotten me thinking about what it means to be insecure. See, I don't think I've ever been insecure. I know it sounds absurd. It’s not like I think that I am the best at everything. I am well-aware of my many failings. I guess it’s just that they don’t bother me, and I certainly don’t identify with them in this bizarre, fixated way that I often see people do.

I was talking to my friend about this, because she often suggests that I am overly secure with myself. We had the following conversation:

M.E.: I think you're the one that's really made me realize that I am basically not insecure about anything

Friend: If anything you're oblivious

M.E.: Oblivious?

Friend: To others reactions or positions which in turn insulates you and makes you immune

Very insightful, I thought. I do seem to have the ability to be targetedly oblivious to things. I know in the abstract that there are people who hate or judge me, but I probably wouldn't be able to name specific people. Is this the origin of my confidence? Is it really because I don't care what people think, or that I think they're wrong, or maybe that I just am blind to others disapproval.

Cultivating luck

Sociopaths are known for being charming, but they also seem to lead a charmed life.  I have had such unusual success in my profession that people often wonder what exact deal had I made with the devil and whether he is still looking for business partners.  It's not that I am not qualified, I am (but that is another story heavily influenced by luck).  It's more that my profession is one of those that is heavily influenced by luck.  I happened to have had a truly unique idea and was lucky enough to have been able to act upon it.  I do acknowledge that it was a lucky break, but there were also things I did to make my own luck.  Similarly, this was an interesting article in the Telegraph from psychologist Richard Wiseman about some of his research on what distinguishes the lucky from the less fortunate:


Take the case of chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not. I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: "Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper." This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
***

Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice the unexpected. In one experiment, people were asked to watch a moving dot in the centre of a computer screen. Without warning, large dots would occasionally be flashed at the edges of the screen. Nearly all participants noticed these large dots.

The experiment was then repeated with a second group of people, who were offered a large financial reward for accurately watching the centre dot, creating more anxiety. They became focused on the centre dot and more than a third of them missed the large dots when they appeared on the screen. The harder they looked, the less they saw.

And so it is with luck - unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.



He then talks about how he wondered if those principles could be learned by the unlucky:

One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. While lucky people became luckier, the unlucky had become lucky. 

Other "lucky" traits that seem particularly prevalent in the sociopath community: mixing up routine and remaining optimistic.  And it wasn't explicitly stated, but I think being willing to take risks often makes someone seem lucky.  It's like the pickup artist community -- if you play enough numbers, you're bound to have one pay out.

How to be more charming

Under the headline "Top 10 Charming Gestures," this Ask Men article suggests:


We’ve all met them, haven’t we? People who just get along effortlessly with everyone -- those incredible individuals who seem to glide through life on a permanent high. These are the people we are all slightly jealous of because they are always doing something interesting or they always seem to have another amazing adventure to share. We can’t stay jealous, though, because they are just too damn likable. When other people discuss them, they always use that word: charming.

If you asked anyone what makes someone charming, the vast majority of people would have no idea. It would be some vague, intangible quality that doesn’t help us in developing that desirable characteristic. But help is at hand; part of our raison d’etre is to break these things down, so that you too can develop these life-enhancing social skills. Being charming is not as difficult as it may seem, and can be hugely rewarding: You get invited to more parties, you make more friends, you get more business opportunities, and important people are more likely to remember you. Above all, you have more fun. Sound good? Then get ready for these top 10 charming gestures.  

The article goes along to suggest some obvious and not so obvious tips, including the effective use of touch, believable flattery, accepting others' flattery graciously, including less social individuals into the conversation, using people's names, and always finding a way to turn conversations back to the other person.

Of course I credit a lot of my charm to a perfectly disarming smile.  I happen to have dimples (seen in some cultures "as a sign of attractiveness and veracity," according to wikipedia), which make me seem much more harmless than I really am.  The smile combined with a too-intense gaze is like coffee with cigarettes -- very complementary.  I do use people's names a lot, as the article suggests, but once it's clear that I can (or should) know their name, I refer to them by their title instead.  You can also do this if you have forgotten someone's name.  The Ryan Gosling character in the film Crazy, Stupid, Love did this to good effect ("fancy face," among others).  Other than that, I think the formula for charm is essentially  an utter confidence that makes you seem superior to others, but an accessibility and approving attitude that makes people feel comfortable in your presence.  Like all formulas, the devil is in finding the right ratio of one thing to the other.

The flipside of overconfidence

I didn't address the flipside of overconfidence. Like the photo of the cat ready to do battle with an eagle from yesterday's post, I feel like I have frequently been the eagle happening upon unwitting cats ready to do battle against what, they don't really know. There are aspects of my personality and my appearance that can lull people into a false sense of security. I can seem very unassuming, easy to not notice in some ways because I keep my own counsel most of the time. I'm not an easy mark by any stretch, but it's not immediately apparent to most people what I'm all about and for some reason that can provoke people who are used to a little more certainty, or provoke bullies that are used to a little more deference. It reminds me of the old "Nutty Professor" movie with Jerry Lewis. He harasses a bar tender and is in turn harassed by a "barroom brawler." I love the depiction of the sudden burst of violence, even if exaggerated and unbelievable, especially given the contrast to the slow pace of the first part of the movie.



I'm in a similar situation now where someone has grossly underestimated me. I don't know what makes people want to pick fights, you know? That's what I always wonder when it happens. Sometimes I pick my own, but a lot of the time people will come to me wanting to start something. If they're planning on fighting fair, I will best them. If they are planning on fighting dirty, I will fight dirtier than them. The real problem in going up against me, though, is that it is just so hard to land a punch. I have vulnerabilities, like anyone else, but it's hard for most people to find them and they're small targets that require a precision attack, not your usual wild flailing you see from a typical thug. See, for me, I'm used to fighting your average normal person and the other typical variants of aggressors (bullies, narcissists, aspies, what have you). I have had at least a few of fights with each type and they're relatively easy to spot, so I more or less know what to expect. But it is quite unlikely that any of those people have ever gone up against someone like me, or unlikely if they had, that they would have identified that previous assailant and or identified me as being in a similar fashion to that previous assailant. Consequently, I almost always have the element of surprise to the point where some fights are just so outweighed, they're not even fun to fight. When someone picks a fight like the barroom brawler, of course, you don't really have a choice not to fight. But it is some small consolation knowing that even if they won't be memorable to you, you certainly will be memorable to them.

Overconfidence

Confidence is an amazing thing. Because appearances are essentially all that matter, especially in circumstances of information asymmetry, confidence is an incredibly important for any leader or successful individual. The hazard of confidence, as this New York Times article by famed behavioral psychologist/economist, are when the individual starts believing his own inflated stories. Here were the more poigant parts:
The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.

When a compelling impression of a particular event clashes with general knowledge, the impression commonly prevails. And this goes for you, too. The confidence you will experience in your future judgments will not be diminished by what you just read, even if you believe every word.

True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes. You are probably an expert in guessing your spouse’s mood from one word on the telephone; chess players find a strong move in a single glance at a complex position; and true legends of instant diagnoses are common among physicians. To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals’ experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes. Anesthesiologists have a better chance to develop intuitions than radiologists do. Many of the professionals we encounter easily pass both tests, and their off-the-cuff judgments deserve to be taken seriously. In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow: overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.

I've mentioned several times that I believe one of the primary practical differences between a narcissist and a sociopath is that a sociopath does not believe his own lies. Sociopaths are able to lie to others and also lie to themselves, but some compartmentalized version of them will always hold on to the truth, lest they make some of these mistakes of overconfidence or underestimation that are so apparent in our brother narcissists. I fully agree with the article, though, that the only real way to avoid the perils of overconfidence is to have some touchstone that allows you to verify the validity of a particular belief. For me, I like to have people around me whose opinions I trust. If they tell me something is or not so, I have to basically take them on their word, like playing a game of mental blind man's bluff where I'm being guided by one or more participants. Luckily I learned how to trust people in my early 20's, otherwise I don't know what I would do.