How to maximize utility of socio relationship?

I thought this was a remarkably insightful comment, left July 7, 2013 at 7:56 AM

HOW TO BEAT A SOCIOPATH ... is the wrong question. If you're trying to beat, that means you're engaged in a competition, and non-socios tend to get revved up by their emotions during competition and thus will make it very difficult for themselves to "beat the socio", while the socio expends much less effort to pick at the non-socio's weaknesses.

Instead, the proper question for non-socios is "How do I maximize the utility to me of the socio relationship?"

In some cases, there may be no utility, so just terminate the relationship, or get out of it with at little damage as possible. In other words, you're in a hole, stop digging, don't try to beat or compete with the socio, just tend to your own needs. Do not feel sorry for the socio, or try to make the socio regret or repent, just leave. (If you can't control your own emotions, particularly to stop worrying about the socio, then you certainly aren't going to be able to control anyone else, including the socios, who are very good at control.)

If there is possible utility, then strictly enforce your boundaries, so the socio cannot damage you. Constantly assess whether you are getting enough from the relationship; do not worry that you are being selfish, trust that the socio is doing the same calculation for themselves, and will leave if they aren't getting what they want, so you can just worry about your own needs.

The tricky thing is to realize that socios imitate emotions to manipulate non-socios. If this satisfies your utility need, then great. Otherwise, realize that the socio has limits, and if you impose unrealistic expectations on the socio, you will just get burned.

It reminds me of this recent tweet:

"I am no more using them than they are using me."
— M.E. (@sociopathworld) January 24, 2014

Soft sociopathic traits

A lot emails that I receive from people describing their sociopathic traits strike me as being not quite placeable (nothing inconsistent with the diagnosis, but nothing really suggesting it either). This one seems to share a remarkable number of the "soft" sociopathic traits -- not quite in any textbook or diagnostic criterion, they are still traits that show up remarkably frequently in the sociopaths I have come to know. These soft traits include things like sexual fluidity, the particular instrumental way that charm is used, the obliviousness to certain things and hyper awareness at others.  From a reader:

As I’m sure since the subsequent publication of your book you receive these types of emails and attempts at correspondence daily, I will attempt to make this little stab at conversation short and sweet. Just a footnote here, I have no desire to exploit you and this is not an attempt to parallel our experiences. I suppose I am contacting you to relay some experiences of mine and perhaps receive some feedback.

My friend recently proposed the term, “sociopath” to me in passing conversation. I laughed off his name calling because I reasoned with myself: I grew up in a loving, stable environment, I have always had friends and significant others and I’ve always been keenly aware of my significance to them. I am not some brooding psychopath. I will admit here that I was unaware of the difference between “psycho” and “socio” and incorrectly found them mutually exclusive. However, the term “sociopath” sizzled in my brain for quite some time and I decided to delve into studying this alleged “disorder” and try to either self-diagnose or abandon the subject completely if it wasn't applicable to me. I reevaluated nearly every memory I can tap into and here’s just a sample of the conclusions I've come to:

By the age of 18, I had been arrested for assault, theft, and possession of criminal tools, vandalism, and a negligible complicity charge. At the various times of these altercations, I always was able to weasel my way out of the worst possible consequences. In my family’s eyes, I was a merely a victim of circumstance of hanging around the “wrong crowd” or being “scared, anxious” to be going away to college. At the time I think I believed those explanations myself. I have been in several altercations and what I refer to as “battles” with my family members often resulting in periods of estrangement with them.

Each one of my relationships throughout high school and my young adult life ended with a bang. The first ended in me cheating and spreading a rumor that my boyfriend had essentially taken advantage of me sexually. The second ended in cheating on my part as well and in a fiery battle with her parents that ended in a restraining order against me. The third was almost identical to the second. During these relationships, I would always befriend my significant other’s circle of friends and more often than not they all ended up liking me more than my girlfriend/boyfriend. I never felt particularly attached to my boyfriends or girlfriends, I always felt like, “well, I’m young, I don’t have to care about them or take these relationships seriously.” I have always identified as a bisexual. I like the differences between sexes and have never been able to adequately identify with one or the other. I am sexually fluid. This has always stirred confusion with those who have been in relationships with me and I've often heard they feel threatened by everyone around me, male or female.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was considered above average. I was and still am an avid reader and consider myself to be fluent in many musical instruments. I excelled in every activity I tried, guitar, drums, English, horseback riding, swimming, and softball. Music became somewhat of an obsession for me and I have become integrated in an underground community of musicians. I won several awards in academics and was able to attain a generous scholarship to a school I couldn’t otherwise afford. My family is exceedingly proud of me and I have always known I was the “favorite” to my various grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

I began waitressing at a small diner at the age of 16. I charmed my way into the hearts of many customers who still contact me after transferring to a different store several hours away. I consider myself to be the ideal employee, by befriending upper management and kissing a little ass I am mostly free to do as I please without consequence. However, I have managed to get approximately 5 people fired and dozens written up.  

You’re probably wondering why I failed to pick up on these things earlier or even realize how “abnormal” I am. The only explanation I can come up with is that maybe that’s just how the emotional and physical world naturally occurs in my mind. My “normal” is just maybe a variance on the society’s perceived notion of normalcy. I could go on forever but again, I am lazy. I realized rather quickly how much I assume the role of “sociopath” by textbook definition and although I have statistically come into contact with many sociopaths, you are the only one I have found to be formally diagnosed and have a way to contact.

How to Manipulate People

This was a good Lifehacker article on how to manipulate people (quick read, worth reading in its entirety). The following are the headings from the article along with my thoughts on each suggestion:

• Emotion vs. Logic: Appealing to emotion rather than logic in manipulation is a little bit of a no brainer. Not only do most people respond better to emotion than logic, irrational people often best (only?) respond to fear. 

• Master Your Own Emotions: Mastering your emotions means essentially two things -- being able to divorce your emotions from what is happening externally (look at this article for helpful suggestions of how) and being able to project the right emotions in the right circumstances to create the desired illusions. 

• Be Charming and Flirt Often: I love to flirt. I flirt with everyone. I used to flirt only with people that I could see myself wanting to seduce, but then the person who first called me a sociopath famously told me that she flirts with everyone, gay or straight because everyone likes positive attention everyone wants to be seduced.

• Overcome Trust Issues and Heal Doubt: Building trust with your target is often critical, see number 2 here (does Lifehacker read this blog? or have a sociopath on staff cluing them in?)

• Conceal Evil in Altruism: This step means pretty much what it says and is super popular with celebrities, billionaires and politicians.

• What to Do If You're Discovered: In addition to backpedaling and creating doubt in your target's mind as to whether you were actually manipulating them, I also suggest starting a counter insurgency campaign against them where you are spinning the message to favor you and disfavor them (Oliver North is a good example of this) if they're an enemy, or possibly proposing some sort of alliance if they're a friend or loved one (think Skyler White in Breaking Bad). Of course the best course of action is to prophylactically insure against this by building an actual, legitimate reputation for good (at least in certain areas) for people to cross-reference. 

Also, beware the anti-seducer, for they cannot be manipulated.

The Dark Side of Emotional IQ?

Daniel Goleman popularized the term emotional intelligence in his book "Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ". Apparently people are just now realizing that emotional intelligence is basically a prerequisite for effective manipulation and emotional deceit? Adam Grant writes for The Atlantic about "The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence":

In some jobs, being in touch with emotions is essential. In others, it seems to be a detriment. And like any skill, being able to read people can be used for good or evil.

Since the 1995 publication of Daniel Goleman’s bestseller, emotional intelligence has been touted by leaders, policymakers, and educators as the solution to a wide range of social problems. If we can teach our children to manage emotions, the argument goes, we’ll have less bullying and more cooperation. If we can cultivate emotional intelligence among leaders and doctors, we’ll have more caring workplaces and more compassionate healthcare. As a result, emotional intelligence is now taught widely in secondary schools, business schools, and medical schools.

Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbridled enthusiasm has obscured a dark side. New evidence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.

[…]

Shining a light on this dark side of emotional intelligence is one mission of a research team led by University College London professor Martin Kilduff. According to these experts, emotional intelligence helps people disguise one set of emotions while expressing another for personal gain. Emotionally intelligent people “intentionally shape their emotions to fabricate favorable impressions of themselves,” Professor Kilduff’s team writes. “The strategic disguise of one’s own emotions and the manipulation of others’ emotions for strategic ends are behaviors evident not only on Shakespeare’s stage but also in the offices and corridors where power and influence are traded.”

Dark side? Saying emotional intelligence has a dark side because it makes you better at influencing people to act and choose in ways that they might not otherwise have chosen is sort of like saying intelligence has a dark side because frequently people who make smart choices also happen to foreclose opportunities for other people. Not everything in life is a zero sum game, but often when there are winners there are also losers, e.g. most stock trades. And isn't the ability to persuade and even manipulate people one of the carrots for learning emotional intelligence in the first place? The same way that the ability to earn more and engage in more of life is an incentive to cultivate ones' other intelligences? Are we trying to defang nature?

Careers in sociopathy

A socio reader asked what sort of careers might best suit a sociopathic lifestyle or personality. I think that many careers may appeal to a sociopath, but there are probably some better than others. I hate being an "employee," I hate to be micromanaged, I hate to feel like I am working for someone else. I do a much better job when I feel like like I have some independence and creativity in what I do and how I do it, and I prefer for the focus to be on doing good work rather than trying to please someone else, perhaps ironically given my predilection for seduction and mask wearing. This is why although I have considered (and passed psych evaluations for) various government positions for the excitement, the intrigue, the power, the firearms, I would never be able to survive the bureaucracy, the idiocy, the micromanaging, and the lack of control over my fate. I actually avoid even being on any government property for that very reason -- I don't want to give them any reason to detain me.

Here's what one reader said about being a lawyer:

I definitely think my particular "personality" helps. My general experience has always been that more empathetic people spend a lot of time struggling with their emotions, both in law school and when practicing. To give some more concrete examples: non-lawyers often remark on how they can't imagine defending someone guilty of murder, fearing they might get them off. While I appreciate the moral and societal implications of clearing guilty criminals, it's clearly not something I struggle with emotionally. Furthermore, I find that even when I can explain the legal and societal need to always provide the best defense possible, many people can never emotionally get past the hurdle. A similar problem occurs for many first year law students with the often opined "that's not fair!" Professors even exploit this weakness by distracting students with highly emotionally charged situations on exams, this gives people such as myself a clear advantage. I could really go on and on.

Here's what another said about being a med student/doctor:

I am going to become a neurosurgeon. I have been fortunate enough to meet a neurosurgeon who wishes to give me his private practise, since he's ready to retire. He has some markedly sociopathic tendencies, which I think is why we get along so swimmingly well. Your recent posts on bloodlust resonate with me. (Neuro)Surgery satisfies that urge for me. I mean, hell, I get to use a bone saw. Doesn't get much better than that, haha. I would say an attorney as well. We have the natural charm to work the jury. Any profession that involves power, prestige and wealth in many forms is, in my opinion, attractive to us.

Obviously our unique skills qualify us for various illegal careers as well. Those weren't on my radar until recently, but they seem a very good fit for some.

I have considered doing something physical like boxing or stunts, where I would get to be violent and cater to my thrill seeking nature, I worry about things like brain damage and maiming.

I think the key is to be flexible. Always choose the most flexible career paths that focus on cultivating your own skill sets (internships, apprenticeships, grad school). The longer you put off getting a stable, consistent, real job, the better I think. Because you won't really be able to stay in the exact same position with the exact same people longer than a few years without having problems. I think mobility and lack of oversight are the key to long term success.

Ask a sociopath: high-functioning

This blog has been a good outlet for me -- in the past couple years that I have been writing it, I have had a more stable life. I've answered questions and had questions answered, I've seduced and been seduced, I've lived vicariously through you and you through me. It's been a very unique experience -- fascinating to see the breadth and depth of humanity and to be forced to contribute regularly to that type of dialogue, particularly since I would never do so otherwise (I get very bored with purely philosophical discussions). Anyway, I thought I would share just a few recent questions and answers.

I asked a socio reader what it was like to be in a relationship with another sociopath: "What we were able to share was more than manipulation and sexual mind games. It was a simultaneous hollow connection that would eventually come to an end due to lack of further interest, or one of us ultimately winning."

One socio reader who describes herself as low-functioning but high-functioning enough to recognize it asked me, "How is my perspective interesting to you?" I answered:

I think everyone that has their feet in two different worlds (e.g. you being both high/low functioning) is interesting. For instance I am interested in someone who is transgendered, or black but light enough to pass for white, or poor but very educated. They are about the only people I trust to speak honestly about their own circumstances because they have a rare objectivity about what it really means to be a certain gender, or a certain race, or a certain social class. It's an objectivity about one's own personal circumstances that I think I lack in a lot of ways.

Another question, "How functional are you? like in maintaining an image?"

I'm single, so do poorly at relationships, but haven't really wanted to be in a committed relationship yet either (not enough). I've never been to prison, but have been "officially disciplined" several times, discharged from my employment a couple times, progressed from career path to career path while still managing to "climb" rather than slide in terms of prestige and money. Right now I have a relatively stable life in which I basically do what I want within reason in a field where micromanaging is frowned upon as stifling of creativity.

"Have you ever been this low in your life?"

No, but yes in some ways. I have made mistakes before and had my bad actions revealed to everyone that mattered, lost my good reputation and had to start over from scratch. Does that count?

"How did you manage to change yourself?"

I had a problem with self-deception, believing my own lies, which got me into trouble because I was blinded to the real risks inherent in my actions. Recognizing self-deception as being the root of my problems, I went on a dishonesty fast for about a year until I could trust myself to lie to others while still maintaining a knowledge of the truth for myself. Sometimes I fear that I have again strayed too far into self-deception, but I don't have the luxury of another complete fast from being dishonest at my current stage in life. Instead, I try to be as honest as I can and only lie if it is necessary.

Sociopaths = slightly less violent than toddlers

David Dobbs writes for the NY Times about the progression from violent toddlers (everyone), to become less violent children (most everyone) to becoming hardly violent at all adults (a lot of people):

To understand the violent criminal, says Richard E. Tremblay, imagine a 2-year-old boy doing the things that make the terrible twos terrible — grabbing, kicking, pushing, punching, biting.

Now imagine him doing all this with the body and resources of an 18-year-old.

You have just pictured both a perfectly normal toddler and a typical violent criminal as Dr. Tremblay, a developmental psychologist at University College Dublin in Ireland, sees them — the toddler as a creature who reflexively uses physical aggression to get what he wants; the criminal as the rare person who has never learned to do otherwise.

In other words, dangerous criminals don’t turn violent. They just stay that way.
***
“It’s highly reliable,” said Brad J. Bushman, a psychology professor at Ohio State University and an expert on child violence, who noted that toddlers use physical aggression even more than people in violent youth gangs do. “Thank God toddlers don’t carry weapons.”
***
The rate of violence peaks at 24 months, declines steadily through adolescence and plunges in early adulthood. But as Dr. Tremblay and Daniel S. Nagin, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, found in a pivotal 1999 study, a troublesome few do not follow this pattern.
***
To Dr. Tremblay, the findings suggest cause for optimism: that humans more readily learn civility than they do cruelty.

We start as toddlers. We learn through conditioning, as we heed requests not to hit others but to use our words. We learn self-control. Beginning in our third year, we learn social strategies like bargaining and charm. Perhaps most vital, we use a developing brain to read situations and choose among these learned tactics and strategies.

I wonder if the non-violent sociopaths were the ones that as children started focusing more on negotiation and charm to get their way (as opposed to the violent sociopaths who remained heavy-handed in their techniques).

The rest article is interesting, especially when it discusses how Tremblay became interested in human violence only because he grew up with a father who was a professional football player and was fascinated that there were certain areas of life in which violence was not only accepted, it was praised. See also, glorification of violence in media, video games, and many other areas of our entertainment lives.

Ethics

I was talking to a sociology professor acquaintance of mine, who also has been diagnosed with Asperger's (interesting combination). She was discussing the process of getting an experiment approved by her institution. I am always interested to hear different iterations of ethical codes, so I started asking her about the sociological approach to ethics, which is apparently very different from the psychological approach and is abhorrent to anthropologists. She told me that sociologists have a bad reputation from studies like Tuskegee syphilis experiment (arguably not even a sociological experiment) and the Milgram experiment.

To me the Milgram experiment is just good science. Get some ordinary person via a classified ad, put them in a room, instruct them to torture a third person, and see how far they are willing to go, based solely on the "authority" of the person conducting the experiment.

The sociologist acquaintance of mine thought that the Milgram experiment is harmful to test subjects because people want to believe that they are a good person, not someone who is capable of doing horrific things, and the test deprives them of that belief. I told her that the experiment did society a favor by forcing at least some of its members to face hard facts, i.e. almost anyone is capable of the world's worst horrors, if only put in the right situation. My argument was that if we fail to understand our capabilities for evil as well as for good, than we are doomed to repeat the atrocities of yesteryear. We agreed to disagree about this point.

Later in the conversation, however, she began talking about how she uses her charisma and the structure of the class to get her students to realize that they are racist, that they have knee-jerk reactions unsupported by any evidence, and that the logical conclusions of their positions would be tenets that they would be unwilling to acknowledge as their own, despite being the root of their misinformed views. Of course I support her manipulating her students to the point of shaking the very foundations of their beliefs, but I did mention to her that I thought it was a little hypocritical that on the one hand she thought it was "unethical" to expose experiment subjects to the realization that they too could be torturers given the right circumstances, but she was willing to basically tell her students that their belief systems were completely flawed. People in her classes cry when they realize how small-minded they have been. How is this any different than the Milgram experiment, I asked? Because if it is different, it seems to only be a matter of degree of harm, not type.

When I finally got her to realize my point, she gave me a look as if she were going to cry too and started asking me if I believe in the "soul" and why would I be asking all of these questions. I felt bad for having let the mask slip (apparently, although I thought we were just having a reasonable discussion). I tried unsuccessfully to backtrack saying things like your students arguably impliedly consent to this treatment by signing up for your class (no they don't, the class is required, she is the only one who teaches it), or for going to university in the first place (can you really be said to consent to being the mental plaything of your professors by going to university?). I woke up the next day to a very long email (Asperger's) going into aspie detail with sentences like this "When we assess the consequences of policies or laws or teaching philosophies that are driven by normative and evaluative ideological considerations, the assessment can be shifted from 'right' or 'wrong' to 'functional' or 'dysfunctional'" and "And of course, one could argue that by making assessments on the basis of what is functional/dysfunctional for society (vs. individuals), we are also saying, as a normative/evaluative issue, that the well-being of society is more important than giving effect to the norms and values of sub-groups in society. This is especially (ethically) problematic in that what is functional for society may actually serve to further marginalize vulnerable minority groups (antithetical to certain democratic values), but if the society is not healthy, then the rest becomes moot (maybe)." And then she basically went on to say that society values critical thinking skills, so jacking with her student's minds is fine, ethically speaking.

I think this is illustrative of the true point of systems of ethics, which is -- let's agree on some random value system that we'll call "common" or "normal" and either enforce it past the point of bearing any resemblance to what it was meant to accomplish in the first place or ignore it whenever it is convenient. If the end is always going to justify the means, what is the point of even discussing the ethics of the process?

Sociopath kryptonite

One my friends is kryponite. By that I mean she is totally immune to my charms. This is my favorite characteristic about her. I love being around someone for whom any mask I wear is completely ineffectual. There is no temptation or expectation that I be anything other than myself. Some of my other favorite people will sometimes become weak and require me to wear a mask -- the mask of understanding or compassion or humanity, when they feel they need it. With her, it's all completely unnecessary. She may wish that I was something other than what I am sometimes, but she knows nothing's going to change that.

I don't know what it is that makes her so immune. I do know that she is consummately reasonable. Are the two connected?

In Robert Greene's, "The Art of Seduction," he talks about different seduction targets, including the anti-seducer. He warns seducers, "Root out anti-seductive qualities in yourself, and recognize them in others." And warns against choosing an anti-seducer for a target: "There is no pleasure or profit in dealing with the anti-seducer." There may be no pleasure or profit for the seducer, but maybe there is a benefit to being the anti-seducer -- invulnerability.

Sometimes I envy my friend's kryptonite qualities. Unlike her, I can actually be seduced or manipulated relatively easy, if you know what buttons to push. This friend remains unflappable in all circumstances, but as you can imagine, she also lives a relatively lonely, arguably sad, and perhaps soulless life. Everyone wants to be seduced, probably even part of her. With risk comes reward, and with nothing ventured, nothing is earned. I wouldn't want to be incapable of being seduced/manipulated, like she is, because I think it can frequently be fun. But I still think that invulnerability would be a useful skill. Is it just a matter of being difficult to please?

Manipulation 104: words

This was an interesting video about how word choices are basically by their very nature manipulative:

I love the references to Barack Obama's political campaign phrases and Occupy Wall Street. I'm not saying it's bad to use words in a way that is clearly manipulative. When I was writing the book, some of the people involved in the publication were concerned that the book was going to be manipulative. I told them that the book was going to be manipulative no matter what as long as it involved word choice -- the question was only about degree of manipulation and which way it slanted. I have spoken before about loaded word choices from journalists, even so-called objective journalism is naturally manipulative in that it is trying to get you to actually read or watch the feature. And of course one of the most loaded and pejorative terms you can call someone is a sociopath. I guess that's because you are inhuman unless you empathize? (Except people with autism, asperger's, some limited types of brain damage, some mental handicaps, or other things that Simon Baron-Cohen does not deem to be one of the "evil" types of lack of empathy).

Datamining

People sometimes ask me what does it mean when sociopaths say they datamine. Basically they are collecting information about you in an effort to predict your future behavior and what might please or displease you. In this way, they are not much different than Google, Facebook, Orkut, or the other programs that kids are into these days. This was a good description of how these programs work, from Mind Hacks:

The Economist has an excellent article that discusses the increasingly diverse ways in which information from your social network – drawn from services like Facebook, or from telephone calls or payment patterns – are being used to obtain personal information about you.

This is not information which you have explicitly stated or included, but which can be found out or ‘mined’ from your patterns of behaviour and your connections to other people.

And from the Economist article mentioned, the fascinating way in which phone companies target trend-setting customers:

Telecoms operators naturally prize mobile-phone subscribers who spend a lot, but some thriftier customers, it turns out, are actually more valuable. Known as “influencers”, these subscribers frequently persuade their friends, family and colleagues to follow them when they switch to a rival operator. The trick, then, is to identify such trendsetting subscribers and keep them on board with special discounts and promotions. People at the top of the office or social pecking order often receive quick callbacks, do not worry about calling other people late at night and tend to get more calls at times when social events are most often organised, such as Friday afternoons. Influential customers also reveal their clout by making long calls, while the calls they receive are generally short.

Similarly, sociopaths watch your behavior to figure out who you are. It can be something as small as the way you grip a steering wheel when you drive or whether you break prolonged eye contact and when. The sociopath collects all of this information about you and mentally references it to the thousands of other people he has collected information from, coming up with a rough sketch of who you are. As marketers have known for centuries, people that like certain things will probably like other similar things.

It's not hard to collect this information, the sociopath is paying attention to these little behavioral responses anyway to make sure that he is remaining undetected. And it's hard not to notice certain very common human behavioral patterns, once you've been made aware of them.

After the sociopath has collected all of this information, he can use it in various ways. He can use it to better construct his own masks to stay hidden. He can use it to anticipate your every need and desire. Or he can use it to get into your mind and plant yet another type of mine. That's the mining that you really should be worried about, and the only way that the sociopath can set traps in your mind is if you have weaknesses or needs that you refuse to address yourself.

Apart from that, datamining of any type is relatively harmless. It's basically just catering to your expectations.

Inventing yourself: dangerous liaisons

This is a classic portrayal of a female sociopath, but the general principles apply to everyone who knows they are different in an inhospitable world but refuse to just lay down and die.

Childishness

I've been meaning to write a post on the childlike qualities of sociopaths for a while, but luckily a reader did it for me:

I'd like to prod something on which I haven't found a discussion on the blog, yet. To wit, the issue of the emotional childishness of the (apparently) typical sociopath. Personally, I find that despite my relative intelligence, rationality, education (and modesty~), etc., there's an undercurrent of selfish, childish rage beneath many of my actions—and even the associated thought patterns. I refer to the people in my sphere of influence as my "toys" and so on. Standard objectifying/dehumanizing nonsense. I doubt I need to explain it in any great detail, but it frames my following thoughts. Like a child, I become unreasonably angry (and violent) when people damage my toys. Like a child, I am fickle and become easily annoyed when they don't meet my needs, e.g., they're busy or unresponsive when I want them to spend time with me, even (or especially?) when the reason they can't is outside their control. It tends to be a short-lived annoyance, as I usually find something to do eventually, but it's irritating nonetheless.

On another level, there are benefits to this (rather literal) inner child. Datamining is a commonality between us, but this may be where our methods diverge. When collecting data, I am of two minds; in the developed, relational part of my datamining process, I am calculating, rational, blah blah blah; in the instinctive collection phase, however, I can take in large amounts of "raw" data, uncolored by preconception, overthinking, or other noise. I can then feed it through the relational mechanism and form otherwise disparate data into a cohesive whole, or I can leave it unprocessed if the situation calls for it. In this way, it is possible to prioritize information. The brain being as it is, this is a mostly instantaneous and automatic process. I imagine it would be a bit of a chore if it were more deliberately conscious.

I gather from your writings that some of this will seem familiar, but I'm curious about your thoughts.

Childish traits include being heavily self-involved, pettiness, manipulation as a primary social tool, tantrums, anger issues, impulsivity, an overindulgence in certain things without knowing when to stop (like eating the equivalent of candy until we get sick), among others. There are also childlike traits, like love, naiveté (until disabused of it), a perhaps overly simplified way of looking at the world, and a sensitivity to rejection and its corresponding desire to please.

Sociopaths share a lot in common with children, it's why we can get along so well with them. In fact, I think child sociopaths only really learn their opportunism and jaded mentality by attending the school of hard knocks. That's one reason why I think the comparison between sociopaths and aspies is so potent for me. I have wondered if I would have ended up seeming like a helpless, clueless aspie if only I were raised on a deserted island isolated from the harshness of the world, Blue Lagoon style.

I'm looking at you, society.

For more information, please visit our Web Community.

A story of exploits: love and marriage (part 1)

Here is a fun story from a reader about his recent exploits:

Dear M.E,
I would like your view point on something that's recently happened on my side of the cage.

I have a "friend" of a friend of mine who on his bucks night decided to get a stripper, now that seems like the norm, not something I'm personally interested in, Anyways back to the story. On his bucks night after the stripper came to his house we moved on to the city to have a few more drinks and to see where the night took us, we ended up at another strip club....fun.

The groom to be proceeded to have coitis with said stripper. I said nothing I like to keep "information" because you never know.

From the strip club to another club we see my wife and her friends dancing away we meet up and have a drink together my wife and I go outside to chat and be "married" we come back in my buck/groom to be is gone, I ask around about the groom and he is said to be in the toilet with none other then my wife's friend, they are making woopie (cute term for what was actually going on). Once again I keep this to myself. We go to the wedding they wed they buy a new house its all happy days, till recently they wronged myself and my wife, I wont say how or why but none the less wronged. I put into action my plan.

THE PLAN - by ME(not you me)
Step 1.Don't let them know I'm upset, I like acting so this will be easy. Have lots of conversations about "adultery, cheating, infidelity". She is a paranoid person in general so making her think about these subjects will be easy as well.
Once these subjects take root in her mind we play the waiting game, I wait till Valentine's Day. I send her a bunch of flowers to the school she works at, then within the flowers is a note "your husband has committed adultery play the game and try and find out WHEN!"
My thoughts on this were as follows.
Flowers in front of her kids and fellow workers = Happy
+
Note that brings up a lot of topics shes already paranoid about = Sad
=
Confused

Happy + sad = Confused

Confused people make for an easy target, she will inevitably seek out someone to talk to about these "thoughts" she has been having, cue me, I can be very nice and helpful on hard to talk about subjects.
I will lead her to the "right" conclusion.

They had a BIG fight he admits something happened she forgives him we are all happy friends again.

One year passes, they get pregnant. time for step 2.

Step 2.
Month 1 and 2 - I have a new phone to play with, I start sending him random messages saying how I enjoyed myself so much with him.
He did as I thought played them off as a wrong number.

Month 3 and 4 - while around for barbeques and fun activities I started putting perfume into the air conditioner in their room. My wife has a great selection of perfumes she really has good taste I always compliment her on it.

Month 5 and 6 - myself and a mate start showing up every Friday night and Saturday night and taking him out with out making plans she comes home to an empty house, we take him to a strip club so he doesn't want to tell his wife where he has been, I tell him not to say anything because I don't wont my wife to know either, being as though he has already been in trouble with strippers we wouldn't want them to break up. She starts freaking out, but it seemed like she didn't want to say anything because of the baby.

Month 8 - I find some of my wife's lingerie and... well leave evidence on it.....I leave it in his Ute, wait a little to let it dry out etc. I start with the phone calls again and the messages. I send a note written in a woman's handwriting with the same perfume from month 3 and 4. I love how subtle a smell can be but how much power it can have at the same time its very exhilarating, the note says sorry. I send him another text that says I'm sorry I had to tell your wife I couldn't be the mistress anymore and that I accidently left some lingerie in his Ute.... his wife reads it and finds the lingerie - game over for them, they get divorced and she now has a baby by herself and they sell the house and are no longer happy. I win.


My wife has found out about this... from me, I think I wanted someone to know what I did maybe get some credit, but alas she is very.... upset that I have done something like this....I don't know I don't think I'm a sociopath in the basic sense of the word more so I just don't like being fucked over...anyways, what I was wondering is reading that do you think could I of approached it in any other way ? maybe a way that would get me in less trouble... I don't know.

Cheers.
some other me.

Mob mentality

This was another interesting column in the New York Times about the history, origins, and power of fear + mob mentality in the U.S. Normal people sometimes don't like sociopaths because they don't like feeling that they are just a patsy to the sociopath's intrigues. They are hyper focused on thinking that the sociopath is the root to their problems. It may or may not be true that sociopaths are to blame for as many problems for which they are blamed. Historically, however, it is this fear, suspicion, and hate of "others" that not only perpetuates negative stereotypes to the utter disregard of reality, but leaves people open to be a further patsy to those who would capitalize off of their fear. These opportunists may include political or religious leaders, bosses and neighbors, and anyone else that would use your fear to drive their own ascension to power, or even turn other people's fears against you. Here are excerpts from the column:

A radio interviewer asked me the other day if I thought bigotry was the only reason why someone might oppose the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. No, I don’t. Most of the opponents aren’t bigots but well-meaning worriers — and during earlier waves of intolerance in American history, it was just the same.

Screeds against Catholics from the 19th century sounded just like the invective today against the Not-at-Ground-Zero Mosque. The starting point isn’t hatred but fear: an alarm among patriots that newcomers don’t share their values, don’t believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans.

Followers of these movements against Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese and other immigrants were mostly decent, well-meaning people trying to protect their country. But they were manipulated by demagogues playing upon their fears — the 19th- and 20th-century equivalents of Glenn Beck.

Most Americans stayed on the sidelines during these spasms of bigotry, and only a small number of hoodlums killed or tormented Catholics, Mormons or others. But the assaults were possible because so many middle-of-the-road Americans were ambivalent.

Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days. But we should also recognize that historically this distrust has led us to burn witches, intern Japanese-Americans, and turn away Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.
***
Historically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy. And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women. The pattern has been for demagogues to take real abuses and exaggerate them, portraying, for example, the most venal wing of the Catholic Church as representative of all Catholicism — just as fundamentalist Wahabis today are caricatured as more representative of Islam than the incomparably more numerous moderate Muslims of Indonesia (who have elected a woman as president before Americans have).

During World War I, rumors spread that German-Americans were poisoning food, and Theodore Roosevelt warned that “Germanized socialists” were “more mischievous than bubonic plague.”

Anti-Semitic screeds regularly warned that Jews were plotting to destroy the United States in one way or another. A 1940 survey found that 17 percent of Americans considered Jews to be a “menace to America.”

Chinese in America were denounced, persecuted and lynched, while the head of a United States government commission publicly urged in 1945 "the extermination of the Japanese in toto." Most shamefully, anti-Asian racism led to the internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

All that is part of America’s heritage, and typically as each group has assimilated, it has participated in the torment of newer arrivals — as in Father Charles Coughlin’s ferociously anti-Semitic radio broadcasts in the 1930s. Today’s recrudescence is the lies about President Obama’s faith, and the fear-mongering about the proposed Islamic center.

But we have a more glorious tradition intertwined in American history as well, one of tolerance, amity and religious freedom. Each time, this has ultimately prevailed over the Know Nothing impulse.

Americans have called on moderates in Muslim countries to speak out against extremists, to stand up for the tolerance they say they believe in. We should all have the guts do the same at home.

This is why I am anxious in crowds. This is why I am a libertarian. I think I have a healthy fear of persecution that helps constrain any inclination to persecute others. Similarly, I wouldn't mind if the tables were turned on some of those people who are so sure that they know what's right and best for everyone. Maybe if they were on the receiving end of persecution themselves, they wouldn't be so self-satisfied. But I am glad that with the prohibitions on women wearing face veils in France, protests against a Muslim community center in New York, etc., people who would normally consider themselves open minded, inherently "good" and "wise" individuals with clear definitions of "right" and "wrong" are being faced to stare down the barrel of reality.

I smell change.

Approval vs. power

A reader wonders why people do the things they do and how that affects the relationships they form:

It’s like there are 2 ways to be with people

1. Approval seeking
2. Power seeking

We are a mix of those 2 to different degrees with everyone we interact with, which is exactly why we’re different depending on who we’re talking to . It's usually all subconscious, it’s like our personalities form hierarchies everywhere.

1. Does a lot of stupid things for approval, and has since the dawn of time. Like the things people did for kings and god and people that stay in relationships that aren't any good for them, hazing, the desire to be in the ‘inner circle’ regardless of how bad it is. It explains people like Snooki. These people let others mold them. This also explains the existence of the all-forgiving, all-accepting powerful paternal father figure also known as god in most cultures, people create someone that gives them approval whenever they want, and I think people need it to be happy and to function, like sort of a feedback that they’re valuable people.

Also 1 seems to be stereotypical woman behavior and 2 seems to be stereotypical guy behavior, they seem gender related but it’s actually only so because (generally) women are more submissive and men are more assertive.

So most emotions seem to come out of interactions with 1. and 2. These are extreme examples, but people mix and match these and things come out more balanced.

Like
1-1: to equal degrees is where true bonds form, like real friendship and love.  But the problem is that people have to make themselves slightly vulnerable and easy to take advantage of for this dynamic to work. This is where functional families are too, regardless of who they are they get down or up on each others levels and reciprocate. Reciprocation is the best way to have 1-1 and it works with uneven playing fields.

1->2: the 1 will feel like the 2 is emotionally unavailable, distant, they will get clingy onto them, which will reinforce 2’s behavior and drive them further away. This is why most guys are all like ‘bitches be crazy’. They don’t understand that it’s a normal response to neglect. The 1 will wrongfully take this personally, and think there is something wrong with them. They will want to re-balance things but will usually go about it the wrong way. The irony is the harder they try, the more they'll be a nuisance.

2->1: 2 will experience boredom with 1, so they’ll either end the relationship, enjoy the attention, or reduce 1 to more and more of a functional role. Which is why most girls are like ‘guys are assholes’. 

So say 1 gets reduced to more and more of a functional role, the gap between 1 and 2 widens. There’s obviously a sub/dom thing going on, but at a certain point, sub/dom turns into inferior/superior in the mind of the dom, this can also happen if people are told they’re more worthy than others,and if they believe it. They start to build their self-worth on that concept that that’s when things unhinge because for them to feel worthy, they need to keep that dynamic in place. If 1 tries to reassert themselves, 2 will resent that [like with all the hateful comments on yt when porn stars try to conduct a normal interview, proving that they have a brain] and crack down further. This may be because the animal brain finally gets engaged, and that part deals with dominance, hatred and lust. That exact thinking pattern is present in racism, lust, treatment of POWs, in domestic abuse, murders, gang members, bullying, it explains why those hot-headed middle easterners are so angry at everyone that’s female or not of their religion, why some people have authoritative personalities, why bosses can be intolerable. They’re all equally as bad. There’s also a study that proves that people like to exert more and more dominance over people that allow them over time, not out of malice but out of a want to control, and they sort of gain joy out of that process. The people that do this in a way that's not considered socially acceptable are the sociopaths. Pure 2.

So why do people do this if it’s bad? Complete dominance over someone is euphoric, seriously, it feels amazing in a twisted kind of way. It induces guilt and regret for a regular person, but sometimes the (empath) 2s come up with ways to circumvent that and allow them to act that way at will, to their benefit. These excuses make no actual sense, but if they’re socially supported that’s all that matters (screw logic if we can feel good about ourselves is a stance people love to take, case in point: religion). These excuses are : She/he’s black, she’s a whore she/he’s a communist, she/he’s dumb, she/he is an enemy of god and in the way of my blissful afterlife where 7 virgins will cater to all my needs. In this way, they can relish in the fact that they think they're better than at least one person, the ego boost that it gives them, and can partake in the illusion that it actually means something.

2-2: Could be bad, like wars and armed standoffs. But could also result in competition, which is what pushes thing forward the fastest. Competitions don’t always endanger lives and they’re not always about interpersonal relationships so they're not always destructive.

I've learned not to be angry despite this, it’s not really peoples fault that they are SOO easily manipulated by their context, I mean it is but it's clearly not an individual problem since it's so widespread, it's more like the wiring. It seems that it’s just  what happened to their brains after experiences, outcomes, and places where social reinforcement was applied. It makes a ton of evolutionary sense, not actual sense, and that can only work if people see things through a self-serving perspective. 

Fear leads to anger

This is an interesting quote from the movie "A Single Man." In the movie it refers to the gay population, but I think it works equally well for any persecuted minority, whether an ethnic minority in Africa targeted for genocide, or people whose minds work a little bit differently. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but it's not much of one.

The Nazis were obviously wrong to hate the Jews. But their hating the Jews was not without a cause… But the cause wasnʼt real. The cause was imagined. The cause was FEAR.

Letʼs leave the Jews out of this for a moment and think of another minority. One that can go unnoticed if it needs to.

There are all sorts of minorities, blondes for example, but a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one. And therein lies the FEAR. And, if the minority is somehow invisible……the fear is even greater. And this FEAR is the reason the minority is persecuted. So, there always is a cause. And the cause is FEAR. Minorities are just people. People……like us.

Fear, after all, is our real enemy. Fear is taking over our world. Fear is being used as a tool of manipulation in our society. Itʼs how politicians peddle policy and how Madison Avenue sells us things that we donʼt need. Think about it. Fear that weʼre going to be attacked, fear that there are communists lurking around every corner, fear that some little Caribbean country that doesnʼt believe in our way of life poses a threat to us. Fear that black culture may take over the world. Fear of Elvis Presleyʼs hips.Well, maybe that one is a real fear. Fear that our bad breath might ruin our friendships… Fear of growing old and being alone. A fear that we’re useless and no one cares what we have to say.

The Gervais Principle (part 3)

A reader sent me a link to the latest edition of the Gervais Principle. From the reader:

Have you read the final installment of the Gervais Principle? You mentioned the previous installments in older posts, but the last section is much more insightful and relevant to sociopaths than the previous ones. 

Venkat basically describes sociopaths as ultimate social nihilists that progressively learn that every single ideal or moral calculus that gives meaning to human existence as social constructs. In the end, sociopaths find immense freedom in a world that has no meaning except what they create or choose to acknowledge. This means that sociopaths can still coexist peacefully (social contracts), both with empaths and other socios. I identify very strongly with this nihilism, and I have frequently mentioned the idea of an absent god before I read the Gervais Principle, but I also feel that you do not identify very strongly with this description, given your adherence to the tenets of Mormonism, unless I am misinterpreting you. What are your thoughts? 

Here's what I replied (makes the most sense if you read the article first):

Thanks for this! I enjoyed it a lot. I especially liked this part:

"The mask-ripping process itself becomes revealed as an act within the last theater of social reality, the one within which at least manipulating social realities seems to be a meaningful process in some meta-sense. Game design with good and evil behaviors."
I feel like a lot of sociopaths stop at that stage for a while. They give me a hard time for revealing their methods, as if playing a game was any less meaningless than everything the empaths are up to.

I think it is that sort of nihilism that allowed me to write the book and be so flippant about it and possible ramifications. Some people think my zen attitude is from my mormonism. Maybe. It is true that if you believe in religion then a lot of things in life just don't matter much. But if you don't believe in religion, then for sure nothing in life matters much. So that's where I sort of am on Mormonism. I'd like to think that I will continue to exist forever and be a god. If that doesn't work out, oh well, there's really no such thing as "wasting time" doing one thing over another. But I do think my conception of God is really different from most people's, including most Mormons. The Otherwise Occupied God, or the God who might care about us but has the perspective to not really be as caught up as we think he might be in what all we get up to (or he cares about different things than we think).

The article's most basic argument, in reference to the emphasis that the "losers" place on social interactions and the accompanying emotional checks and balances:

But by their very nature, emotions overweight social behavior over material substance. Having a $100 bill thrown contemptuously at you hurts. Being politely handed $10 feels good. The Loser mind, predictably, sees the first act as a slight and seeks revenge, and the second act as nice and seeks to repay it.

We saw an example from the The Office last time. In the sales-commissions episode we find that for the support staff, sharing in the salespeople’s commissions and being thrown a thank-you party are emotionally equivalent. Both heal the emotional rift, but one leaves the salespeople vastly better off.

The Sociopath as Priest

It is this strangely incomplete calculus that creates the shifting Loser world of rifts and alliances. By operating with a more complete calculus, Sociopaths are  able to manipulate this world through the divide-and-conquer mechanisms.  The result is that the Losers end up blaming each other for their losses, seek collective emotional resolution, and fail to adequately address the balance sheet of material rewards and losses.

To succeed, this strategy requires that Losers not look too closely at the non-emotional books. This is why, as we saw last time, divide-and-conquer is the most effective means for dealing with them, since it naturally creates emotional drama that keeps them busy while they are being manipulated.

Sociopaths encourage this mode of processing by framing their own contributions to betrayal situations as necessary and inevitable. They also carefully avoid contributing to the emotional texture of unfolding events, otherwise their roles might come under scrutiny by being included in the emotional computations.

For theatrically skilled Sociopaths, other non-vanilla affects are possible. “Divine anger” (Jan),  ”charming but firm elder” (Jo Bennett) and “unpredictable demigod” (Robert California) are examples. These framing affects are designed to shape outcomes without direct participation, in ways that cannot be achieved by neutral low-reactor affects.
***

These non-vanilla personalities operate by adding to, or subtracting from, the net emotional energy available to go around in Loser emotional calculations, but without intimate involvement. Sociopaths basically create the emotional boundary conditions of Loser life in simple or complex ways, depending on their skill level.
***
Guilt is the one emotion that Losers cannot always resolve for themselves, since it sometimes requires quantities of forgiveness that mere humans cannot dispense, but priests can, as reserve bankers of the fiat currencies of Loser emotional life.

Other good nuggets:

• manufacturing fake realities is very hard. But subtractive simplification of reality is much easier, and yields just as much power.
• Sociopaths exercise agency on behalf of others. They do not grab power. Power is simply ceded to them.
• Sociopathy is not about ripping off a specific mask from the face of social reality. It is about recognizing that there are no social realities. There are only masks.  Social realities exist as a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated and specialized fictions for those predisposed to believe that there is something special about the human condition, which sets our realities apart from the rest of the universe.
• There is, to the Sociopath, only one reality governing everything from quarks to galaxies. Humans have no special place within it. Any idea predicated on the special status of the human — such as justice, fairness, equality, talent — is raw material for a theater of mediated realities 
• Non-Sociopaths dimly recognize the nature of the free Sociopath world through their own categories: “moral hazard” and “principal-agent problem.”  They vaguely sense that the realities being presented to them are bullshit: things said by people who are not lying so much as indifferent to whether or not they are telling the truth. Sociopath freedom of speech is the freedom to bullshit: they are bullshit artists in the truest sense of the phrase.
• Non-Sociopaths, as Jack Nicholson correctly argued, really cannot handle the truth. . . . The truth of values as crayons in the pockets of unsupervised Sociopaths. The truth of the non-centrality of humans in the larger scheme of things.
• When these truths are recognized, internalized and turned into default ways of seeing the world, creative-destruction becomes merely the act of living free, not a divinely ordained imperative or a primal urge.  Creative destruction is not a script, but the absence of scripts. The freedom of Sociopaths is the same as the freedom of non-human animals. Those who view it as base merely provide yet another opportunity for Sociopaths to create non-base fictions for them to inhabit.
• Morality becomes a matter of expressing fundamental dispositions rather than respecting social values. Kindness or cruelty, freely expressed. Those who are amused by suffering use their powers to cause it. Those who enjoy watching happiness theaters, create them through detached benevolence.

Ad hominem

I was arguing with a friend about Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley Manning). My friend did not think that Manning was a "hero" but rather that she was a tragic example of being so messed up by her transgender identity that she ruined her life by leaking all of that government information. It was hard not to think that my friend was just using Manning's trangender identity as an excuse to write her off and downplay her efforts.

People love to write other people off based on personal characteristics. I was reading an article about "journalese" (the jargon of journalists) that defined the word "coffers" as "Where organisations of which we disapprove keep money." Another recent article about someone the journalist clearly did not like described the subject's "dilapidated Victorian home," his "appearance more akin to Coronation Street’s hapless cafe owner Roy Cropper than a cutting-edge satirist," his "battered Toyota vehicle," and his "gap-toothed" maw.

We call these ad hominem arguments and they work because of our reductionist desire to simplify the world and people into clear cut categories of good and bad, troubled or heroes. From Wikipedia:

Ad hominem arguments work via the halo effect, a human cognitive bias in which the perception of one trait is influenced by the perception of an unrelated trait, e.g. treating an attractive person as more intelligent or more honest. People tend to see others as tending to be all good or tending to be all bad. Thus, if you can attribute a bad trait to your opponent, others will tend to doubt the quality of their arguments, even if the bad trait is irrelevant to the arguments.

Under this reasoning, of course we can't believe that Private Manning acted in what she considered the best interests of her country -- how could she when she was in the midst of a gender identity crisis? Similarly, Edward Snowden seems simply too "weird" or unpredictable to be a hero.

What is particularly self-defeating about this type of thinking is that it suggests that certain types of people are not capable of certain actions. Transgendered people cannot be patriots. Eccentric people cannot be acting in what they think is the greater good. Ugly people cannot have good or important or at least legitimately controversial ideas. Disabled people cannot be commander in chief. Sociopaths cannot do pro-social things? The more we know about people's personal lives via social networking and the eternal memory of the internet, the easier it will be for us as a society to get tripped up in these fallacies. But the truth is that we can never predict people's behavior, especially not based on their appearance or their feelings about their gender, or how eloquently they're able to articulate their beliefs. And we can never know someone's true motivations. All we know and all we can see is what they say and do. So why can't we judge those things based on their own intrinsic merits, without also "considering the source"?

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".