Transgressions vs. Sins and Differences in Motivations

This was also sent to me by a reader, and I found it to be a pretty interesting and valid distinction between the dark triads sociopathy, narcissism, and machiavellianism. I think that people can be surprised at why people do the things that they do. For instance, once sociopath recently told me about how when she was 21 years old, she got a job at a bar so she could get better tips than at her previous restaurant job. She only lasted two weekends because she was giving away free drinks (she says she grossly underestimated their ability to track alcohol sales) and stealing tips from other servers. I immediately related to this a sort of naïvety about the world, a childlike innocence.

I told this story to a lawyer friend of mine and immediately likened it to the way I was with my first law job, in which I exploited some of the weaknesses of that system in similar sorts of ways and ways that were equally unappreciated by my employers. My friend was scandalized by the free drinks and tip stealing, but responded to my story "who hasn't done that?" I thought this was an interesting response. Why? Is it just stealing from the server's? But a lot of servers split tips because of things like some people getting better areas of the restaurant, etc. In fact, this was exactly what was happening to the sociopath server. But my friend thought that my sketchiness was totally normal, and even that my employer probably had it coming or that was just part of the employment deal, whereas she was disturbed by the other story and thought there couldn't be any other explanation for the behavior other than maliciousness and greed.

I kept trying to give her different analogies to help her understand that it was really malicious, and wasn't even really this overwhelming sense of greed, so much as a childish way of exploiting things. I remember once being at Disneyland when I was aged 8 or 9. I was old enough to realize that lines were long and thought of the lines more like a multilane freeway than a static order of things, so I kept pushing forward in line until these people got very angry at me and said that no matter my physical position ahead of them, they were going to still ride the lines before me. Mine was a breach of a rule, yes, but I don't see it as a moral failing.

My theology has a word for the breach without moral failing, "transgression". You have transgressed a law, although you may not have necessarily sinned because you didn't have a sinful heart (so to speak) when you did the thing. Although cutting ahead of people in line did hurt others, and that was clear to me, I didn't understand it to be an unfair hurt. When I get off the plane and walk faster than others to the customs lines, that's also sort of like cutting in line, but we don't think of it that way. We don't have a sense of the line starting from the moment of the plane, so it's a fair exploitation of the system. It of course is hurting others, people for instance who have young children or a disability and cannot walk as fast and have to perhaps wait longer in line than I do. Or I may use scarce resources before others do. I'm going to camp at a location this summer that requires a permit. By me using the spot, someone else is not able to use that spot. That also is prioritizing myself at the expense of others.

I don't know. I have a strong sense of there being a distinction in the transgression behaviors that sociopaths engage in at the expense of others in which there's not really an intent to harm (even though there is an understanding that there will be harm), so there's no malice, vs. the sort of behavior that one might correctly classify sin.

Power hungry

A reader asks why sociopaths are so power hungry, do I suspect any historical or contemporary figures were/are sociopaths, e.g. Machiavelli, and how to learn to think like a sociopath.

I honestly don't know why sociopaths are so concerned with gaining power. I don't think it is necessarily unique to sociopaths, obviously, but I would say that it seems to apply to the vast majority of sociopaths. Perhaps there is something evolutionarily implicated here, that for the same reasons that sociopaths were evolved to not have a conscience, they were also evolved to crave power?

There's something very primitive about the sociopath's drive for power, like the sex drive, but it can manifest itself in many ways. For instance, I think a lot of sociopaths just want to make people jump, or at least know that they can. Some of them want the classical form of power, for example some political or business position or the money that can buy the power. Some of them, like me, channel the drive for power to include power over oneself, one's impulses and inclinations.

I do think that Machiavelli was a sociopath. There are a lot of people that I sort of suspect are sociopaths, but it's really hard to tell if anyone is without being privy to their thought processes. Anything else is complete speculation. For instance, I got in this idle debate once about whether Angelina Jolie was sociopath leaning. In my mind she had some of the clear identifying factors: creepy attachment to family, volatile, bisexual, and loves Ayn Rand (libertarian leaning politically). The person I was arguing with could not get over her humanitarian work, which to me is a nonstarter because there could be plenty of reasons why she does that. You know? Like why do I write this blog? People always want to know stuff like that, but there could be a million reasons, including accumulating power, respect, being able to influence the dialogue about a particular subject, etc. And with Angelina Jolie, how can you explain the other stuff? Like the fact that she has a look that makes people want to cry and she can be equally seductive with straight women as she is with men? But really I could go either way with her, and without looking inside her head there's no way to know for sure.

There are few people that I would feel confident to say are sociopaths, most of them literary because we actually get to see the "honest" picture of how they think, e.g. Tom Ripley, Cathy from East of Eden, and some others I have mentioned on the blog.

How to learn to think like a sociopath? I don't know, find one to apprentice with? But I would be careful. I think after you learn to think like a sociopath, there is something about you that changes and you can never really go back. I think this is particularly true if you learn to think like a sociopath at a young age and had all of those sociopathic neurological pathways reinforced instead of the "normal" ones.

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Power corrupts

Organisms can be very adaptable to fit the needs of a particular situation. For instance, certain animals like clownfish will even change gender depending on the exigencies of procreation. Humans change too. Even neurotypicals can become monsters in the right circumstances. Interestingly, it's not just childhood abuse and abandonment that sets neurotypicals off but (wait for it) -- power and the sense of moral superiority, inter alia, to which it leads. From the Wall Street Journal:

Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude. In some cases, these new habits can help a leader be more decisive and single-minded, or more likely to make choices that will be profitable regardless of their popularity. One recent study found that overconfident CEOs were more likely to pursue innovation and take their companies in new technological directions. Unchecked, however, these instincts can lead to a big fall.

But first, the good news.

A few years ago, Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, began interviewing freshmen at a large dorm on the Berkeley campus. He gave them free pizza and a survey, which asked them to provide their first impressions of every other student in the dorm. Mr. Keltner returned at the end of the school year with the same survey and more free pizza. According to the survey, the students at the top of the social hierarchy—they were the most "powerful" and respected—were also the most considerate and outgoing, and scored highest on measures of agreeableness and extroversion. In other words, the nice guys finished first.

This result isn't unique to Berkeley undergrads. Other studies have found similar results in the military, corporations and politics. "People give authority to people that they genuinely like," says Mr. Keltner.

Of course, these scientific findings contradict the cliché of power, which is that the only way to rise to the top is to engage in self-serving and morally dubious behavior. In "The Prince," a treatise on the art of politics, the 16th century Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli insisted that compassion got in the way of eminence. If a leader has to choose between being feared or being loved, Machiavelli insisted that the leader should always go with fear. Love is overrated.

That may not be the best advice. Another study conducted by Mr. Keltner and Cameron Anderson, a professor at the Haas School of Business, measured "Machiavellian" tendencies, such as the willingness to spread malicious gossip, in a group of sorority sisters. It turned out that the Machiavellian sorority members were quickly identified by the group and isolated. Nobody liked them, and so they never became powerful.

I feel like every high-functioning sociopath realizes this and either acts genuinely friendly, or is very stealthy about hiding any malicious intentions. It continues:

Now for the bad news, which concerns what happens when all those nice guys actually get in power. While a little compassion might help us climb the social ladder, once we're at the top we end up morphing into a very different kind of beast.

"It's an incredibly consistent effect," Mr. Keltner says. "When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. They flirt inappropriately, tease in a hostile fashion, and become totally impulsive." Mr. Keltner compares the feeling of power to brain damage, noting that people with lots of authority tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that's crucial for empathy and decision-making. Even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office.

***

Although people almost always know the right thing to do—cheating is wrong—their sense of power makes it easier to rationalize away the ethical lapse. For instance, when the psychologists asked the subjects (in both low- and high-power conditions) how they would judge an individual who drove too fast when late for an appointment, people in the high-power group consistently said it was worse when others committed those crimes than when they did themselves. In other words, the feeling of eminence led people to conclude that they had a good reason for speeding—they're important people, with important things to do—but that everyone else should follow the posted signs.

[E]ven fleeting feelings of power can dramatically change the way people respond to information. Instead of analyzing the strength of the argument, those with authority focus on whether or not the argument confirms what they already believe. If it doesn't, then the facts are conveniently ignored.
***
[P]eople in power tend to reliably overestimate their moral virtue, which leads them to stifle oversight.

Hypothesis: neurotypicals are currently in power as a mob/group. They are easily corrupted by that power in ways that make them behave more like sociopaths, but unlike sociopaths they unquestioningly assume that they are always acting for the good of humanity because they are "good people," whereas sociopaths can never do "good" because they are "bad people".

Am I... ?

From a reader:

First of all great blog. I really like that you don't talk about sociopathy, but through it. I find it similar to reading for example Nietzsche - nothing new, but if I find it HERE people must see it differently, it's funny how blind they are.

Moving to main part of this email I feel, that I will screw English terribly ;) If you want to publish it feel free to fix anything that sounds really bad.

I'd like to ask, what would you consider me to be. I tried tests – I always score full points on “lack of feelings and machiavelism” scale while having average score on aggression. On PCL-R I get about 17.
Where to start...
Maybe with what I'm not. I don't like killing animals and never did. Ants, some frogs etc, but not mammals. I don't commit crimes on daily basis and I'm not impulsive. I cheat in any way available and I find it enjoyable, but I didn't steal for fun or anything like it. When I had to fight few times in my life I just turned off anything but anger, so I could aim for eyes and veins, but I it was always a choice and I could stop at any point. I also wouldn’t say I’m fearless, I know that emotion pretty well. That will be it about being normal.

I’m narcissist, but I work on it. It’s like drug and I don’t like anything to control me. I guess you know that nice feeling, when people say how they think, that they know you really well, when they only know mask – or even better feeling, when they tell you, how they can see through your mask and describe another mask as “real you” ;) But the drug part is the only thing that I fight with. I feel better, I don’t think about “difficulty level” when I choose goals and so on.
I play with people. I see them like they were sets of algorithms. I read “Influence” by Cialdini when I was 8-10 year old and I never stopped learning psychology from that point (I’m 21 now). I always could easily imagine how to break someone or how to help him evolve and I find both ways enjoyable – what I care about is how good am I with it. And I am pretty good ;).
I don’t think there is any “real me” behind all that games.
I never felt remorse. I also didn’t feel love, attachment or friendship and I don’t think I fully believe these are real things like people describe them. I know it on cognitive level, that they exist but I just feel like it was some fake. I know happiness, anger, some lust, sorrow(and I think it’s nice),fear/anxiety and flow. Actually, I heard few times that people find it hard to imagine me in any other mood then happy.
I’m also pretty smart. I like math, physics or philosophy and can understand them as well as I can remember lots of biological stuff. At the moment I study three full courses and it’s just fine. I even prefer when I have more to do and I find time pressure fun.

Opinions?

P.S.
There is a book “Psychopaths among us” by Hare. Nothing spectacular, but read part about successful sociopaths. There is also “Time Paradox” by Zimbardo. Basing on what you wrote about your analogy-based world perception I think you will find connecting those ideas enjoyable 

Where on the dark triad are you?

From a reader:

I'm writing to you about the topic of Machiavellianism. I've noticed that you have not wrote an article concerning it at all yet, and I thought that considering it is a dark triad personality that that was surprising... in fact I suspect it is not an anomaly that it has been left out.

Machiavellianism according to the Oxford Dictionary has been defined as "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct." And more relevantly - psychologically speaking - it describes the tendency to be emotionally cool and detached from others, resulting in the Machiavellian personality being more able or fully capable of disregarding conventional morality. In other words, the Machiavellian personality experiences low levels of emotion, intellectual empathy making the Machiavellian exceedingly crafty in their manipulation and all the more cunning, possessing a minute or no conscience at all.

The reason I took an interest to SociopathWorld (is it separated or joined words for SW?) was to explore my own personality, for sociopathy at the time of my limited knowledge in psychology seemed to fit adequately. As I delved deeper into the nature of sociopathy, I noticed it did not quite fit. Nevertheless, the topic fascinated me and I discovered psychology did too.

As to why I decided the Machiavellian personality fitted me more than the sociopathic one is because - on some level - I care about two people, however they are only somewhat important in comparsion to the pursuit of power and my own self-interest. Any means necessary will be used to this end - providing I will get off scot free: I will feign emotion, charm, manipulate, subliminally or openly blackmail, coerce, et cetera you aren't new these lists, haha.

At a younger age, when I began noticing my pathological emotional detachment from people, I knew I could use it to my advantage. I examined other people's weaknesses in an attempt to exploit them, but due to my own weaknesses (arrogance) I sometimes failed, facing frustration, I decided to research. I suspected I was the problem, and I eventually discovered that one must realize his own weaknesses in order to eradicate them. Other perceived weaknesses can be turned into a strength - my basic personality is more lenient towards being introverted - so I'm particularly hard to read, always think before I speak and make it count. Gradually, my ability to be extravert improved vastly too.

Would you say that I have sociopathic tendencies that do not overlap with the Machiavellian personality?

P.S: I saw an article regarding some INTJ personality types being sociopathic. If it helps, my personality type is XNTJ.

M.E.: Actually, if anything, have you considered whether you might be narcissistic? You mention arrogance, and your email comes across as being arrogant, but maybe it's just the subject matter you're talking about. Should we publish what you wrote and see how other people feel on the subject?

Reader:

Regarding my younger self, I'd say I was more cocky than actually arrogant. I enjoyed a bit of admiration, and I seemed a notch above everyone else I knew, as I have quite an insightful thought process which used to make me think, "this would all be better if people rolled over and let me take care of it, fucking idiots." I have confidence in my abilities, I simply asserted that confidence arrogantly, hence being cocky.

If I liked admiration, I could be flattered - flattery is like a weapon, and I had to make it ineffective. Made me feel powerful, rather than the satisfaction narcissists seem to withdraw from admiration.

Arrogance, to any degree is unattractive and therefore uncharming, didn't help my image, it had to go.