Theory of mind

A reader sent me a link to this Psychology Today blog post discussing how those in the dark triad (narcissists, Machiavellians, psychopaths) experience theory of mind.  The wikipedia definition of theory of mind is "the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own."  It seems to overlap a little with cognitive empathy (which the article gets into a little).  The blog author further distinguishes between the social-perceptual component of theory of mind ("the ability to determine the mental states of others using immediately available non-verbal cues (e.g., eyes, face, hand gestures)") and the social-cognitive theory of mind ("involves the ability to reason about the mental state of others, and use that reasoning to predict or explain their behavior"), the former of which is tested by this "Mind in the Eyes" emotional recognition test (I scored 30).

The article itself is a little long and all over the place, but it makes some interesting points and some even more interesting conclusions.  One of which is that Machiavellians do more "mentalizing" than other people, "cognitively strategizing, scheming, and trying to infer the intentions of others," presumably to stay one step ahead.  Another seems suspect:

For most of our evolution, it payed to be cooperative and empathic. But during the course of our evolution, there were also selfish individuals who learned how to manipulate others to get what they wanted. They lacked empathy, perspective taking, and self-awareness (i.e., metacognition). Still, they had in tact lower-level perceptual theory of mind abilities that were good enough for them to manipulate others. In fact, their lower levels of empathy and higher levels of strategizing and spontaneous mentalizing worked to their advantage: whereas most people intuitively felt as though they were doing something wrong when they hurt others, these Machiavellian individuals didn't recieve [sic] the same emotional signals so they persevered toward their short-term selfish goals. In the process, they obtained more quantity of mates. Therefore, they remained in the human gene pool, along with their short-term mating orientation.

I can see that narcissists lack self-awareness, but what about Machiavellians and psychopaths?  I'm sort of underwhelmed by this guy's reasoning.  And he is a cognitive psychologist at NYU.  So credentials in the psychology world don't mean much?

But here's something else interesting I didn't know:

Andrew Whiten and Richard Byrne argue that primate intelligence stems from "Machiavellian Intelligence" -- the ability to manipulate and deceive others in the competition for scarce resources.

I feel your loss

Many readers have asked me how sociopaths respond to feelings of loss, either a break up, a death, etc. I discussed this once myself in the context of fungibility.  A sociopath reader agreed to share her own experiences regarding the loss of a partner.

He was the ultimate empath. Not blind to my sociopathy at all. Yet he embraced me and loved me unconditionally. It was an intense and giving sort of love, which suited my selfish love just fine. We were puzzle pieces.

One morning, I stopped hearing from him. No cheerful "Good morning, beautiful" text. One day turned to two days. On the third day (he didn't rise again), his brother sent out a mass message saying he was involved in a motor vehicle collision and was in critical, comatose condition. I expected to feel like I'd been sucker punched. Instead, I felt strangely the same. As devoid as I'd always been. I really thought it would work out and I'd get the sociopath's version of happily ever after, haha. We were planning on an extended vacation, just the two of us, for later that summer. After he passed, my sister, with whom he was on friendly terms, revealed to me that he had been planning on proposing that summer. She'd been sworn to secrecy.

Shit sucks. But you get over it. For those of us who have an emotional deficit, it's an easier and quicker process. I still miss his presence and unconditional acceptance, but I have no intentions of putting a halt to my life for a body that's six feet under. I'm currently dating a guy who displays distinct sociopathic traits and that has its own problems. I don't concern myself with what-ifs with the dead, unless it's the zombie apocalypse.

Emotional martyrdom

A reader sent me this article about emotional martyrs.  Martyrs of all types are perplexing to me.  I read the drivel on LoveFraud and wonder, why would anyone choose to see the world this way?  In which they are constantly being acted upon, never acting.  I always want to think that I control everything, even if that means that I am the reason why something has gone wrong.  It's very empowering and I surround myself by people who think like that as well because it rubs me the wrong way to have people blame me for their misfortunes.  In my mind, we all make choices and should all have to suffer the consequences.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the above referenced article suggests that there is a connection between martyrs and the conscience-less:

Martyrs are often attracted to difficult and abusive people. They have a compulsive need to change them, make these people good, and make them appreciate and respect them. They pick spouses who are brutal or intolerant, who lack a conscience, who deceive and manipulate them, and who resist the martyr’s efforts to reform them. It is interesting that they unconsciously choose to be around impossible people, and that their efforts to rehabilitate the latter are doomed to fail.

Do they really want to change us?  Or do they just like the abuse?  I'm inclined to think the latter.  My thoughts are that it's generally understood that people don't change so if people are around me, it must be because they like what I'm dishing out.

Amplifying pain

Today I had to do a painful dental procedure ("oh no!  your perfect smile!"  don't worry, it's still preternaturally perfect) that required that I be cognizant and in pain.  I knew it was going to be painful.  When it started, I focused on the pain, amazed at how painful it was.  I started focusing on the particular way the pain felt.  It was interesting to me.  I had never felt quite that way before.  I started thinking about the nature of pain, and in particular this pain, and I realized that I had been amplifying the pain in my mind.  I thought -- I should be minimizing this, not amplifying it.  So I started to try to do that instead.

My practioner had been trying to engage me in yes and no conversation (me grunting replies) and I had been too distracted.  I decided to become fully engaged in the conversation.  I focused on the sound of his voice and thought of the way he enunciated his fricatives.  I emphasized that hissing exhalation of noise in my mind until it became one, continuous rushing of air like the sound of waves crashing on a beach.  And the pain was the dull pull of the waves around my ankles -- pushing and receding and swirling the sand around my feet.

I was amazed at what a difference shifting my attention had made in my perception of the pain (my practitioner was amazed at my lack of pain as well).  I have a relative who is a physician and will frequently hypnotize his patients so I am aware that the perception of pain is largely mental.  I have even endured periods of intense pain without realizing it.  The oddest thing about the whole situation is that now, many hours later, the parts of my mouth that were treated during the initial period in which I was amplifying the pain are still quite tender.  The parts that were treated while I was ignoring the pain are not in the least.  It could be that the first parts of the procedure were actually more physically invasive, but they weren't.  It could be that my practioner started poorly and got better by the end.  Could it also be that my physical tissues remember the pain differently because I felt the pain differently while it was happening?

Even more interesting to me was thinking about all of these people in the world that focus on their pain.  Everyone knows someone like this.  No matter what happens to them, they always seem to be miserable.  My friend and I were just talking about a mutual acquaintance of ours who is this way.  He always complains that he has the worst job in the world.  He's a journalist.  Before that he was a solicitor.  Now he covers legal news, primarily by hanging out at the courthouse and watching legal proceedings or getting dirt from shady sources.  Does this sound like the worst job in the world?  He was so envious when I was funemployed that he quit his job and was still miserable.

I am infinitely fascinated by empaths (hyperbole), so I wonder -- is this why some empaths can be so miserable?  If anything, I am almost blissfully happy 90% of the time, whatever my circumstances happen to be at the moment.  Empaths seem to be complaining all the time.  Maybe I am doing a better job making good decisions than they are, but I think at least part of it has to do with my ability/choice to amplify happiness rather than pain.

Morality vs. rationality

I've mentioned Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, before.  He's probably best known for arguing that conservatives and liberals come from different moral universes in which they weigh values like fairness, harm, loyalty, authority, and purity differently and that difference explains their different opinions on moral and political issues.  He has a new book, "The Righteous Mind" in which he (according to this NY Times review) aims to expose some of the faulty reasoning employed on behalf of people's different moral beliefs.  Here are some selections of what I thought was most interesting/pertinent:

Haidt seems to delight in mischief. Drawing on ethnography, evolutionary theory and experimental psychology, he sets out to trash the modern faith in reason. In Haidt’s retelling, all the fools, foils and villains of intellectual history are recast as heroes. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who notoriously said reason was fit only to be “the slave of the passions,” was largely correct. E. O. Wilson, the ecologist who was branded a fascist for stressing the biological origins of human behavior, has been vindicated by the study of moral emotions. Even Glaucon, the cynic in Plato’s “Republic” who told Socrates that people would behave ethically only if they thought they were being watched, was “the guy who got it right.”
***

We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided. The funniest and most painful illustrations are Haidt’s transcripts of interviews about bizarre scenarios. Is it wrong to have sex with a dead chicken? How about with your sister? Is it O.K. to defecate in a urinal? If your dog dies, why not eat it? Under interrogation, most subjects in psychology experiments agree these things are wrong. But none can explain why.

The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others. Haidt shows, for example, how subjects relentlessly marshal arguments for the incest taboo, no matter how thoroughly an interrogator demolishes these arguments.

To explain this persistence, Haidt invokes an evolutionary hypothesis: We compete for social status, and the key advantage in this struggle is the ability to influence others. Reason, in this view, evolved to help us spin, not to help us learn. So if you want to change people’s minds, Haidt concludes, don’t appeal to their reason. Appeal to reason’s boss: the underlying moral intuitions whose conclusions reason defends.

That last part about not appealing to reason reminds me of this 30 Rock video in which one character opines: "Your father is being irrational and irrational behavior doesn't respond to rational arguments. It responds to fear."  It also reminds me of how I often approach topics on the blog, like appealing to people's sympathy to suggest that any anti-sociopathic beliefs are fascist and one step away from being Hitler-esque.  I'm just trying to say things in a way that people are more likely to understand.  But seriously, I use reason for my readers that prefer that, but sometimes I like to do a little gut check for the rest of you.  I think most of you like it, at least the ones that stick around.  You don't mind having your beliefs tweaked with a little bit.  If you end up not changing your mind, you feel like you come out of the haze stronger for it.  If you change your mind a bit, you feel like the experience has broadened your horizons.  It pays to have a sociopath around for this very purpose.  You're welcome.  Now return the favor and don't commit genocide against my people.

I also like this part of the article about how maladaptive traits can hurt society, which I consider a bit of a nod to taking care of dirty work:

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.