Excusing behavior

I liked this recent comment comparing a girl with multiple sclerosis with a sociopath:

Of course, if you look at the real life woman, at some point people will probably feel sorry for the cute girl, tragically wheelchair bound due to neuropathy. But the ugly alcoholic male sociopath that callously runs over a few stray cats a week on his way to work - no sympathy.

Is this comparison outrageous? Another comment explains perhaps why not because in the same way that she doesn't have complete control over her body, most people (especially sociopaths?) don't have control over their minds:

Sociopaths are impulsive. I will impulsively grab a woman's ass. I will catch myself, after the fact. It is a bit like ADHD people interrupting, and only then noticing it (and perhaps apologising).

Your neck is probably tight right now. You didn't choose to tighten it. If you release it, and think a bit, or get otherwise distracted from keeping your neck quiescent, your neck will probably tighten up a bit. Again, you didn't choose to do this.

Finally, as you read this message, your brain turns the characters into words, concepts, etc and you have feelings about them. You don't choose to think what the concepts are, nor do you choose your feelings. If you get really upset at the thought that you aren't in control of your own mind (you can't even control the next thought you'll think) and get into a car upset and drive badly, that won't be you choosing to drive badly. You'll be a "victim" of your mind. 

Similarly, when I grab a woman's ass at the wrong time, piss in the sink without realizing it (and disgust my housemates) or am impulsively rough with my girlfriend's cat, the same thing is afoot. 

Or course, if we take this to the natural conclusion, no one is really responsible for anything they do, which we obviously can't have for practical reasons. 

Sociopath quote: self-justification

"Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons."

Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic Magazine

How feelings lead to self-deception

One of my favorite books that explains the way most people navigate their feelings and relationships is Bonds That Make Us Free, by C. Terry Werner, founder of the Arbinger Institute. The book and institute are primarily about self-deception. Here's an illustrative quote:

“Fable: When we're stuck in troubled feelings we believe that all our feelings are true-- that is to say, we believe that by our emotions at that moment we are making accurate judgments about what's happening. If I'm angry with you, I'm certain that you are making me angry.

Fact: Though we truly have these feelings, they are not necessarily true feelings. More likely I'm angry because I'm misusing you, not because you are misusing me.” 

I wrote a little bit about empaths' tendency to endow their emotions with feelings of Truth here.

This recent comment reminded me of this principle:

I think most people don't consider sociopaths as 'unknowns'. Most people think they know everything there is to know, and no amount of reasoning or metaphorical musings is going to change that.

[P]eoples' lives revolve around sparing their conscience. All their thoughts and actions must be justified, and they treat their morality as if it's entirely objective. When someone gets a 'bad feeling' about someone, then the source of that bad feeling is evil. I've realized that there are topics I choose to avoid, they give me a 'bad feeling'. When I examine that feeling, though, I realize that it says more about my own inner workings than anything that's happening outside my head.

Racism, bigotry, and discrimination stem not from some objective truth about the targeted population. It comes from parents, the media, and peers teaching young minds to dislike groups of people, and this dislike is rationalized by exaggerations and outright lies until the population is appropriately villified. I hate smokers because I find the stench of burning tobacco absolutely revolting. I hate hobos because they ask for and feel entitled to my money. They force an unwelcome interaction with me, be it through a pervasive miasma or trying to sell me pins and dirty papers.

Black guys and flamboyantly gay guys make me uncomfortable. I don't hate them, but I grew up in an ultra-conservative, ultra-white area. Fortunately, my family is not composed of bigots, so the extent of my racism and homophobicity is that I merely feel uneasy. I understand that this is a learned behavior, and the only way to unlearn it would be to interact with these people that make me feel uncomfortable, to teach myself that they are human, and not at all unlike myself. Most people, however, just consider people that make them uncomfortable to be evil somehow. It's much easier to reconcile their bad feelings this way, rather than recognize, admit, and try to change the fact that they themselves are the ones with the defect.

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.

Breaking Bad: Is Walter White a Sociopath?

AMC's hit show, "Breaking Bad" returns this Sunday and some are asking "How Walter White Found His Inner Sociopath".  The show details the exploits of a chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin who finds his hands getting dirtier and dirtier until he seems to lose most of his humanity. Or does he? A.O. Scott writes for the NY Times:

In truth, though, his development over five seasons has been less a shocking transformation than a series of confirmations. Mr. Gilligan’s busy and inventive narrative machinery has provided plenty of cleverly executed surprises, but these have all served to reveal the Walter White who was there all along. The sides of his personality — sociopath and family man, scientist and killer, rational being and creature of impulse, entrepreneur and loser — are not necessarily as contradictory as we might have supposed.
***
Walter may have wanted us to believe — and may, at moments, have convinced himself — that he was a decent man driven by desperate circumstances to do terrible things, but that notion was either wishful thinking or tactical deceit. Viewed as a whole, in optimal binge conditions, with the blinds pulled down and the pizza boxes and chicken wrappers piling up around the couch, “Breaking Bad” reveals itself as the story of a man mastering his vocation and fighting to claim his rightful place in the world. 

But is he really a sociopath? He is great at lying. That's probably one of the most entertaining parts about the show. He is amazing at coming up with an answer that fits the facts, like a sort of WebMD for excuses that fit the symptoms perfectly yet innocuously. Where did all of this cash come from? He has a gambling problem. Why did his wife just have an emotional breakdown? She was having an affair and her lover is in the hospital. He is the master of deflection and playing upon not just people's emotions, but especially their expectations about him (as a loser, but ultimately harmless) and the world (that bad people are not your friends, relatives, and neighbors but people who seem "off" to you).

However, I don't think he is a sociopath. He may act like how one expects a sociopath to act (ruthless, disloyal, power hungry), but his motivations seem all wrong. If he was a sociopath, why does he constantly cling to an image that he's a good dad/husband/friend making the most of a bad situation? From the NY Times:

Walter is almost as good at self-justification as he is at cooking meth, and over the course of the series, he has not hesitated to give high-minded reasons for his lowest actions. In his own mind, he remains a righteous figure, an apostle of family values, free enterprise and scientific progress. 

For instance:

Walt: "When we do what we do for good reasons, then we've got nothing to worry about. And there's no better reason than family."

Here he extends his typical self-justification to his wife:

Walt: Skyler, you can't beat yourself up over this thing. Please. You didn't set out to hurt anybody. You made a mistake and things got out of control. But you did what you had to do to protect your family. And I'm sorry, but that doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a human being. 

Skyler: Stop it, Walt. Just stop. I don't need to hear any of your bullshit rationales.

And an incredibly insensitive and oblivious moment of self-absorption:

Walt: So how are you feeling? 

Jesse: Okay, I guess. Broke it off with Andrea. I had to. She's gonna tell Brock. I'm still gonna take care of the rent and stuff. It's the right thing to do, but, you know-- 

Walt: (interrupting) I meant this. (gestures behind) How are you feeling about the money?

And finally the over the top but insincere display of emotions and taking huge offense when the sincerity is questioned:

Walt: I am just as upset as you are. 

Jesse: Are you? 

Walt: Really? How can you say that to me? Jesus! I mean, I'm the one who's the father here. What, do I have to curl up in a ball in tears in front of you? 

Walt in all of his self-centeredness clearly thinks that not only do his ends justify any means he chooses, but it's clear that this process of justification is important to him. If he were a sociopath, why he would care at all? As a corporate executive put it upon seeing Walt and his team balk at killing two innocent witnesses, "I thought you guys were professionals." But there's hardly anything professional about them. Despite being extremely clever and calculating (he fakes an emotional breakdown in his brother-in-law's DEA office to tap his phone), he seems like a prototypical narcissist who lets his emotions rule him, particularly his feeling that his talents were never truly appreciated and so he is finally going to make them realize that he is a force to be reckoned with. A sociopath would not care what people thought of him, as long as he was getting and doing what he wanted to get/do.

Walter White is also a great example of why I don't value people's "good" intentions--because they're incredibly subjective, often misplaced, and sometimes used to justify horrible atrocities. People never feel that they have done anything wrong as long as their intentions were not malicious. It reminds me of this recent comment from a reader:

Intentions don't matter. Hitler's intentions were good. What are good intentions? It depends who you're talking to. If you talk to the chicken just before you kill it and tell it "Hey chicken, my intentions are good, I don't want to be misunderstood, I'm just gonna eat you and share you with my family."

And also from this NY Times review of Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion:

Traits we evolved in a dispersed world, like tribalism and righteousness, have become dangerously maladaptive in an era of rapid globalization. A pure scientist would let us purge these traits from the gene pool by fighting and killing one another. But Haidt wants to spare us this fate. He seeks a world in which “fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means.” To achieve this goal, he asks us to understand and overcome our instincts. He appeals to a power capable of circumspection, reflection and reform.

Empath song: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

I was listening to this song the other day and thought it was a perfect example of the sort of self-justifying stories that empaths tell themselves about how they're not really "bad people" even though they admit that they do bad things.


Baby you understand me now
If sometimes you see that I'm mad
Doncha know no one alive can always be an angel?
When everything goes wrong, you see some bad

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

Ya know sometimes baby I'm so carefree
With a joy that's hard to hide
And then sometimes it seems again that all I have is worry
And then you're bound to see my other side

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

If I seem edgy
I want you to know
I never mean to take it out on you
Life has its problems
And I get more than my share
But that's one thing I never mean to do

Cause I love you
Oh baby
I'm just human
Don't you know I have faults like anyone?

Sometimes I find myself alone regretting
Some little foolish thing
Some simple thing that I've done

Don't let me be misunderstood
I try so hard
So please don't let me be misunderstood

Shame and justification (part 2)

For the sociopath's part, I don't think we're motivated by feelings of shame or embarrassment, although I hesitate to make a completely categorical statement.

This is not to say that sociopaths do not come up with stories to explain their behavior, sometimes seemingly outrageous stories like "I killed him because he looked at me funny."  They can and they do.  But everyone wants to explain their behavior. It helps give them a sense of purpose, of self-knowledge, and more importantly of control. If you don't know why you do things, then how do you know that it is even you who is choosing to do them?

The sociopath killer who says he killed someone because of a funny look is not attempting to justify his behavior so much as explain it to himself.  And it is an explanation.  Maybe the killing was an impulsive act, but it was prompted by something, in this case the look the victim gave him.  Perhaps a sociopath might take it one or two steps further and add "I don't allow people to disrespect me," or some general opinion about the small value of human life, but the sociopath is just reflecting on the "why" of the action, not the "what does the fact that I have performed this action say about me and my own concept of self?"  So unlike narcissists, sociopaths don't need to justify their behavior, but they'll still seek to explain it.

Another question the narcissist had was how sociopaths view the bad things we do to other people.  He gave this example of how narcissists view this sort of situation:

E.g. take lions that eat wildebeests. The narcissist lion has to convince himself that the wildebeest has it coming to it, or that the lion is doing the wildebeest a favor by eating it. I'm wondering if the sociopath lion has to engage in that sort of self-deception, or if it can just eat the wildebeest and not give a shit.

I don't think sociopaths really blame people so much as attribute their failings back to them. Using the lion example, the lion doesn't think the wildebeest is a bad person "so it had it coming."  For the sociopath, life is a survival of the fittest.  It's enough for the lion that the wildebeest is unable to defend itself. Why did the wildebeest die? In the sociopath's mind the answer is not "because the lion killed it," but "because the wildebeest couldn't run away or defend itself adequately." That's what is really happening when it seems like a sociopath is blaming someone else for the sociopath's own actions. It's more an assigning of responsibility on the victim for not being more vigilant than it is a justification of self according to some rigid construct of being a "good person," like narcissists do

Sociopaths do not view the entire world through the lens of self as much as narcissists do (not surprisingly).  Narcissists tend to think that everything that happens in their world is some sort of direct reflection of them (good person, bad person, whatever).  Sociopaths understand that they are just a cog in a machine.  While they don't completely give up on that idea of cause/effect and personal accountability, sociopaths are much more inclined to believe that what they do is perhaps meaningless.  As arms dealer Viktor Bout said, “If I didn’t do it, someone else would.”