Liar, liar

One thing I am always a little surprised by is how horrified people are of the idea of sociopath mask-wearing and lying. Doesn't everybody? The main difference seems to be what sorts of things people bother to lie about? Maybe not even that? From the New Yorker blog's "How to Tell When Someone is Lying":

People lie all the time. According to the psychologist Robert Feldman, who has spent more than four decades studying the phenomenon, we lie, on average, three times during a routine ten-minute conversation with a stranger or casual acquaintance. Hardly anyone refrains from lying altogether, and some people report lying up to twelve times within that time span. I might open a conversation, for instance, by saying how nice it is to meet someone—when I’m really not at all happy about it. I might go on to say that I grew up in Boston—a lie, technically, since I really grew up in a small town about forty minutes outside the city. I could say that the person’s work sounds fascinating, when it’s no such thing, or compliment him on his (drab) tie or his (awful) shirt. And if the person mentions loving a certain downtown restaurant where I’ve had a terrible experience? I’m likely to just smile and nod and say, Yes, great place. Trust me: we often lie without giving it so much as a second thought.

We lie in most any context—Feldman’s work has turned up frequent lies in relationships ranging from the most intimate (marriage) to the completely casual. Some lies are small (“You look like you’ve lost a bit of weight”) and some bigger (“I did not have sex with that woman”). Sometimes they are harmless, and sometimes they are not.

Interestingly, although it is very difficult to become a personal lie-detector, studies suggest that people are pretty ok at subconsciously detecting lying:

In a series of studies, out this month in the journal Psychological Science, the Berkeley team had students watch a video of a possible criminal who was being questioned about stealing a hundred dollars. As in an actual interrogation, the suspect responded to both baseline questions (“What are you wearing?” “What’s the weather like outside?”) and target questions (“Did you steal the money?” “Are you lying to me right now?”). Half of the potential criminals were lying; half were telling the truth. Each participant watched one truthful and one deceptive video.

Next, the students completed a simple assessment: Were the pleaders in the videos telling the truth? Just as in prior studies, ten Brinke’s subjects, when asked direct questions, did no better than chance at determining who was truthful and who wasn’t.

But then the students participated in one of two unconscious lie-detection tasks. In each, they saw still photos of the two pleaders alongside words that were associated with either truth, such as “honest” and “genuine,” or lies, such as “deceitful” and “dishonest.” Their goal was to categorize the words as indicative of either truth or lies, as quickly and accurately as possible, regardless of the face they saw along with it. If “genuine” flashed on the screen, they would press a button to classify it as a truth-category word as soon as possible.

When the researchers dug deeper, they saw that the participants’ unconscious instinct fared far better: in both studies, they were significantly faster at properly categorizing lie- and truth-related concepts when those concepts were presented with the lying or truthful face, respectively, from the video. Seeing a liar’s face made people faster at classifying lie-related words than truth-related words—and seeing a truth-teller had the opposite effect. “When you see a liar’s face, the concept of deception is activated in your mind even if you’re not consciously aware of it,” ten Brinke hypothesizes. “It’s still unclear just how high a percentage of lies our unconscious mind is able to sense accurately, but discrimination is definitely occurring.”

Unconscious discrimination seems to play out in more life-like scenarios, too. In a series of prior studies, conducted by an unrelated group at the University of Manheim, the psychologist Marc-André Reinhard and his colleagues found that the ability of student judges to detect deception improved drastically if they were given time to think—but only if, in that time frame, they thought about something other than the case they were judging. If they had to make an immediate judgment, they did no better than chance. The same was true if they were allowed to deliberate consciously. But when they were kept from consciously deliberating, by, for example, completing a demanding word-search puzzle, their accuracy improved significantly. Reinhard concluded that, in the unconscious-deliberation condition, the brain had had time to integrate the subtle cues that our conscious mind can’t quite perceive into a more complete judgment.

Why is it so hard for people to spot sociopaths then? Could it be that some people are willfully blind?

10 Ways to be Charming

I love the title to this article, "10 Genuine Ways Anyone Can Be Exceptionally Charming," as if there were completely nefarious ways to be charming. That's one thing that I think is interesting reading the tales of victims of sociopaths. When you factor out other risk factors like drug abuse, alcoholism, bad family upbringing, etc., etc., my anecdotally based opinion is that sociopathy doesn't really seem to contribute that much more to ones propensity to "abuse" others (not misuse, but actually abuse). Maybe I am wrong, and I would love to see some actual data on this, but my impression is that the most common complaint against sociopaths is that they pretended to be so wonderful, which is why it was such a letdown to be let go. The truth is that sociopaths can be extremely friendly, considerate neighbors, passionate lovers, great listeners, funny, easy-going, intense, quirky/brilliant at times, and compelling. Despite being labeled "antisocial," sociopaths are often some of the most charming people you meet, and for the same reasons that anyone else is charming.

Here are excerpts from the top 10 list that I found most compelling(ly sociopathic):

• When you feel someone "gets" you, respecting your opinion, your point of view, your experience--whatever you're communicating--Charming people willingly admit their mistakes. They don't mind serving as a cautionary tale. They don't mind being a source of laughter, for others and for themselves.then you naturally feel more important. The other person doesn't have to agree with you; they just have to show they respect you. How? They maintain eye contact. They smile when you smile. They frown when you frown. They nod your head when you nod. In simple, nonverbal ways, they mimic your behavior--not slavishly, but because they're focused on what you're saying. That feedback loop helps two people bond--and the ability to bond is the essence of charm.
• Charming people don't try to win any unstated competitions with people they meet. In fact, they actively try to lose. They're complimentary. They're impressed. They're even willing to admit a weakness or a failure.
• Charming people don't actively (or unknowingly) look to disagree; they look for points of agreement. Then, if it's appropriate, they gently share a different point of view--and in that way, help create an outstanding conversation. [See also my worst media appearances.]
• Some people have a knack for getting you to talk openly yourself. They ask open-ended questions. They sincerely want to know what you think, and that makes you open up to a surprising degree. You feel like the most interesting man (or woman) in the world. And you like them for making you feel that way. As soon as you learn something about someone, ask why they do it. Or how. Or what they like about it, or what they've learned from it. Charming people ask sincere questions that make it easy to answer in a thoughtful, introspective way. They make you think, in a good way, about yourself, and in the process make you feel charming too. [I was once told that when I do this with people who are not used to being treated this way, it can be especially disarming.]
• They always pass the waiter test. Some people put on a great show in certain situations, but they don't try nearly as hard when they think a person is beneath them. I like to call it the waiter test: If you really want to know how an individual treats people, take him to lunch. How he interacts with the waiter is a much better indication of his interpersonal skills than how he interacts with you. Charming people treat everyone the same way: as deserving of respect and kindness.
• Charming people remember names and even small details, often to a surprising degree. The fact they remember instantly makes us feel a little prouder and a little better about ourselves. And that makes us feel better about them.
• They always say less. Charming people already know what they know. They want to know what you know. And that makes you feel important. Because you are.

You are important! Just because someone turned out to be a sociopath doesn't mean that they think they're better than you or didn't genuinely care for you in their own way. Before I was self-aware, yes, I did think I was better than most people. But that was because I only saw other people's flaws and not my own (sound familiar?). After being taken down a peg or two in my life, I realized that everyone's just different but an equally important part of the human race. I guess that makes me a humanist?

But are they sincere about it? See, I don't think they could ever be sincere in the exact same way that an empath is because for the empath a lot of what they think of as sincerity involves empathy. But does that mean the sociopath can't ever be sincere, because he isn't doing or saying the things for the same reason that you might?

Reciprocity

Recently I have been struggling to keep a particular (and essential) professional relationship in any sort of equilibrium. If I act too professionally, I am considered cold. If I get too friendly, I'm accused of "handling" this person, of pretending I like them just to get them to produce better/more work. This person insists that I instead be completely honest and only do anything nice or social with them if I actually "want to," as opposed to merely keeping the wheels greased in our professional relationship. You can of course guess how this person reacts, though, when I am really honest, e.g. telling them that actually I don't want to go out to dinner every weekend and would really rather keep the relationship more professional, etc. Complicating issues is that this person has basically guessed who I am, or at least is aware of some of my more dominant characteristics; in fact, until recently we have laughed and joked about my ruthlessness around the office. And finally, the cherry on top is that this person is an aspie, and not just an aspie but a high strung, short-tempered, angry and emotionally oversensitive aspie. (Either it is my profession, my personality, or both that seemingly make me an aspie magnet).

I have put up with so much in this relationship -- accepted basically every idiosyncrasy of this person and adapted to it. For my part, I get criticized and apologize daily for small hurts I have "inflicted." But if I ever so much as refer to any of Aspie's numerous failings, I am accused of kicking someone while they're down. Aspie wants us to be "besties" instead of "frenemies" or even "water cooler colleagues", but I'll never be truly close with someone for whom I have to not only custom-tailor every response in a way that feels so unnatural to me, but also fabricate an elaborate fiction as to every sanitized-for-consumption thought I never actually had, down to the most intimate detail. I can play make-believe as well as anybody, but there are limits. In the meantime, I desperately need Aspie's technical skills in a very time-sensitive project, so I grovel when I need to, and screen calls when I can't muster up anything else. (Aspie if you are reading this, please do not find where I live and kill me and then you in a murder/suicide).

A reader presents what I thought was a relatively similar situation:

I think my ex-boyfriend might be a sociopath, and to be honest with you I don't really care all that much. We're still friends, but I seem to keep setting myself in the line of fire and getting hurt in some fashion. The result is me being upset and him being frustrated because he feels that I have no reason to be upset, and he doesn't think that he did anything wrong.

I want to make our friendship work, because like it or not...I'm hopelessly addicted to this boy - to the point that I don't even care how he feels about me. If he is a sociopath, then I'll know, and I'll be able to tailor what I say and do accordingly in the interests of avoiding future confrontations of the same nature.

We get in disputes, and he somehow knows exactly what to say to end it. Whether it's an apology, a promise, etc...But I always get this weird feeling about it. He's very attentive when I explain how I felt wronged, but not because he feels bad that I feel that way- because he's trying to dissect the feeling that I'm having, so that he can calculate what to say that will counter it. Then he'll come up with a conclusion that he thinks completely solves the problem, and it does - but I always get this underlying feeling of contempt from him. Like he sees me as some sort of authority figure that he's trying to outsmart.

You said: "Like he sees me as some sort of authority figure that he's trying to outsmart." He probably does feel that, in a way. He has to edit himself, restrict himself, and sugarcoat himself for everyone else that he probably resents when he has to do it around you too. He probably thinks that since he accepts and accommodates everything about you, why can't you do the same?

An escort's unbiased perspective of the spectrums (part 2)

Thoughts from an escort (cont.):

The positives are that aspies and sociopaths are often less prone to xenophobia, prejudice, home-blind self-righteousness, hatemongering drives and such. For aspies, this is due to their inability to perform the first step of socially appropriate perceptive attention. For sociopaths, this is due to their inability to perform the second step of socially appropriate emotional attention.

And the borderline/bipolar/narcissists are like wild cards that can be extremely tolerant and compassionate in some issues, and extremely intolerant and hatemongering in other issues, depending on how their perceptive and emotional attention randomly work, or from how chaotic and interfering their wound-up emotions are with regard to both their perceptive and emotional attention.

Anyway, an input I have on your blog, based on my theory, is that your focus of inquiry, that of “empathy” could changed to “ability to intuitively trigger and experience socially appropriate emotions in oneself” (the “displaying” part is more relevant for aspies, I believe). Whereas “empathy” merely would be one emotion of many.

Because as I see it, the empathy issue is just what so called empaths kind of react on, from their subjective and practical view (which really is not very empathically done by these so called empaths). But the issue goes much deeper than that, and even though the empathy issue might be the manifested symptom that is most noticeable in human interaction, it is not the root to the problem, nor the cause of the problem, or even what the problem “is about” as such.

As said, I believe that aspies, borderline/bipolar/narcissists and sociopaths all have different causes to their problems, - and yet I find that they often seem to share the same kind of problems in their personal lives.

Their family, co-workers and friends often accuse them of being insensitive, egoistic, uncaring or even emotionally abusive. They often end up with being excluded or discarded by people that have been close to them. (And usually compensate with working hard in their professional lives, thus making money, and striving for power positions – the latter, I believe, not so much because of an actual hunger for power as such, but as a protective strategy for the kind of personal and relational exclusion they fear to experience again.)

As an escort (with certain aspie traits myself) I’ve learned good ways to communicate with these various types of persons. (Although, my selection methods as an escort narrow my clientele down to individuals that are both intellectual and apt at displaying a cooperative attitude to me, or I don’t accept them initially, nor do I accept to go through a full date with them if they aren’t trying to be cooperative).

But approached with the right communication, these persons are not so difficult in regard of being insensitive, egoistic, emotionally abusive and so on. – I just need to verbalize a lot of things and bluntly tell them about my experience of specific things said or done, and how they appear from my point of view, rather than expect them to just know it (as an objective fact) or know the relevance of it (as an emotional fact).

- Again, I would like to say that the distinction in the last sentence is important: Discerning between “objective state of facts” and “emotional facts”, as “knowing something” versus “knowing the relevance” of it.

Loving to cheat

To be filed in the normal-people-are-more-like-sociopaths-than-they-would-like-to-think folder (but sociopaths are evil because they lie and cheat!), the NY Times reports recent research suggesting that despite popular wisdom that people feel guilty for doing bad things like cheating, people feel pretty good after they cheat.  "Cheating's Surprising Thrill"

In the study’s initial experiments, participants were asked to predict how they would feel if they cheated. Badly, they generally reported.

Another set of participants was given a baseline assessment of their moods. Then they took a word-unscrambling test. After finishing, they were handed an answer key, told to check their answers and asked to report the number of correct ones. For every right answer, they would earn $1.

Participants did not know that researchers could tell if they corrected wrong answers; 41 percent did so.

The follow-up assessment of their moods indeed showed that the cheaters, on average, felt an emotional boost that the honest participants didn’t.

“The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing, because there is emotional reinforcement of the behavior, meaning they could be more likely to do it again,” said Nicole E. Ruedy, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Washington’s Center for Leadership and Strategic Thinking.

Then she and her colleagues removed the financial incentive. A new group would take a test on a computer. The results, they were told, would correlate with intelligence and a likelihood of future success.

But 77 participants were told that if they saw a pop-up message offering them the correct answer, they should ignore it and continue working.

About 68 percent of this group cheated at least once, clicking the button for the correct answer. In the follow-up assessment, this group also reported a rise in upbeat feelings.

Why did people feel so good about cheating? Was it relief at not being caught? That would imply that while cheating, they felt stress or distress. Or had they deceived themselves, rationalizing or minimizing the cheating to feel better?

Stripping away these possibilities, the researchers found that those who cheated experienced thrill, self-satisfaction, a sense of superiority.

The effect persisted even when subjects cheated indirectly. Next, they would solve math problems with someone who was just pretending to be a participant. The fake participant reported the results, elevating the scores, thus cheating for both. But no actual participant objected. And again, they felt just fine about it.

“We were a little appalled,” Dr. Ruedy said.

I thought these reactions were funny. "We were a little appalled"? "The fact that people feel happier after cheating is disturbing"? Because this study is just a snapshot of reality. This is what people do everyday. If most people will cheat in situations like this, it just means that most people will cheat in situations like this. And that's a problem for governments seeking to maximize their tax revenue and insurance companies who do not get 100% accurate reports from their customers, but why do other people care? This is apparently just how people are. This experiment was not like the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, which put people in unusual circumstances to provoke unusual behavior. These were everyday people doing everyday things, and it turns out that people cheat about as often as they jaywalk or commit traffic violations. Where's the story?

The shock for me is not that the behavior is so common or that the participants were not wracked with guilt after committing such petty infractions, it's that anybody was "appalled" or found it "disturbing". Of course people are going to be happy about cheating because they are happy when they're winning. Our brain wants us to get ahead, our culture encourages us to get ahead. We are naturally competitive. You don't need to be an interspecies predator to get a rush from getting one up on someone, whether it is called "honestly earned" like a cunning stock trade based on another's ignorance or poor judgment, or is called "cheating" because it happens to exploit obvious loopholes in the system. It reminds me of the time my Swedish friend came to visit and I said the pleasure of capitalism over socialism is not that you get a particular thing, but that you get more than someone else. She didn't agree at all until we went to a theme park where we bought VIP passes that allowed us to go to the front of the line and she realized that a big part of her pleasure was not in going on more attractions, but in saving time as compared to other people.

Here's what I want in the follow-up study. Do the participants lie to themselves about the cheating? If they're not lying to themselves about the cheating, are we lying to ourselves about how frequently and guiltlessly people lie, cheat, despite having empathy, despite having consciences and the ability to feel guilt? Here's a crazy thought -- maybe we shouldn't want to discourage people from cheating more than we already do. Maybe there are upsides to "cheating" or the willingness to cheat. That would certainly explain why it is so prevalent.

Book appendix (part 3)

From an interview with a friend:


I like talking to you because you are like a stockpile of knowledge with the capability to process important components of that knowledge and to assimilate them into an intelligent decision—the best decision.  Whereas I feel like I might fall on to decision that is fourth best, even though I have been exposed to the same data.  But I have forgotten that information in the meantime, and am unable to pull it forward when the time to make the decision arises.  And you even take into account my personal preferences.  I don’t know how, I guess because you know me now.  But something I find very humorous is that when I start explaining emotionally frustrating things to you, maybe about my marriage, and you’ll say “That’s because he __________” and I am always wondering why you have so much insight into my emotional life.  Insight that I didn’t have—like I am still hashing through the ideas emotionally and haven’t been able to reach any conclusion, but you have been able to reach a conclusion by just listening to me for a minute.  Sometimes I discount your conclusions, I will be honest.  At those times I generally conclude that you didn’t input the right information.  Other times I will be surprised at how spot on you are.  It seems like you know my husband better than I know him. I’m always surprised with your assessments of people, because you can kind of sum them up, taking this vast amount of data—a person—and you break it down into the important bits for that output.  You tell me, “well of course that is what happened because of these few things.”  

Also, you’re blatantly honest.  At first I was scared and there were moments in this house in which I was afraid that you would provoke fights in social situations. Then I started finding the humor in it.  Now sometimes I will use it to find out things I really want to know by just asking you, although I can still get angry at some of the things you say.  Overall, though, it is refreshing, and I have a much harder time getting offended at anything you say than I used to.  Even now telling you these things, it’s odd because I think now you will understand me so much better and when I come to you with another emotional problem you will say, “Oh, it’s because of this,” or “something something something” and I will feel ok.  

When I come to you with an emotional problem though, I don’t feel like you give empathy or emotional support.  Sometimes you will say, “that’s just because your husband's a retard, sorry.”  So maybe that is empathy.  Maybe it is refreshing to hear that it comes down to something that isn’t emotional—that my problems aren’t fundamentally an emotional issue, but something separate that can be intellectualized.  It takes out the sting in the hurt.  

I remember one time you were talking to me in the car and you said something like, “I don’t think I want to marry a guy who is as intelligent as me.”  And I asked you, “someone more like me.”  You said “no, not really.”  And I thought, oh ok, smarter than me then.  

I think you’re a better computer than I am.  If you had learned all of the stuff that I learned in college, I think you could do so much better with it than I can.  But that’s alright, I supposed I have other skills.  You’re like a data processor, but better because you can also process emotional inputs.  You can’t ask Google why my husband did something.  It’s like the best thing—kind of like a fun toy.

S is for serious as a heart attack

One response to my men seeking men personal ad:

You sound so conceited I want to cry

I had to laugh at this, of course, but I also really respect this guy's astuteness. I sent him the same follow up email I sent most of the responses to my ad:

Okay, actually, I should have added a few more things to my list: sinister, promiscuous, flexible definition of the truth, emotionally unavailable, able to rationalize almost anything to myself, manipulative, prone to boredom, weak sense of empathy. Still very Jimmy Stewart -esque, right?

He mistook my complete sincerity for being a joke and actually apologized:

You gave me a good laugh. Thanks. I need to lighten up. It's rare that I send snide remarks to strangers. I can reduce that to zero. Don't know if it's jimmy stewartesque. You sound honest here.

Ron

Thanks Ron. I was being honest. And by honest I mean that the words I said were to be interpreted as having their ordinary dictionary meaning.

I don't understand how empaths can say one thing and mean an entirely different thing and the true meaning is understood by other empaths. Ttsk tsk to the whole phenomenon of sarcasm. But prevalent sarcasm and insincerity make it easier for sociopaths to "pass" in normal society. If you've ever seen an episode of Dexter, some of the funniest moments are when he is telling the horrible truth about something he did but no one will believe him because no one wants to believe that horrible things and people exist. But we do. Seriously.