Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Thank you, sociopaths! (?)

I was having a conversation with a sociopath who is currently in the military about the relatively higher proportion of sociopaths in the military versus the general population.  The reader asked "What part do sociopaths play in the world? What's our niche?" and suggested: "In times of catastrophe, it's the socios that step up and lead until stability is restored, because at that point, we're the only ones who -can- do it, 9 times out of 10."

There are quite a few documented instances of sociopaths being exceptional in socially positive ways.  There is professor Jim Fallon his ideas about psychopaths doing the "dirty work" and the "good work" that others can't or won't do as well.   Joseph Newman believes that psychopaths are perhaps more inclined to be impulsively helpful than empaths. Also this post comparing heroes with sociopaths.

The reader continued about why sociopaths may be doing pro-social things, even when it doesn't involve the occasional "heroic" act:

In my experience, both personal and talking to others, sociopaths and psychopaths do seemingly random nice things for people more often than those seen as empathetic. If you walk the Path, you naturally want a leg up on those around you. You want to know what's going on, how to react, and you want people to defend you when someone tries to ruin your day. The best way to get that leverage is for people to like you and think you have their best interests at heart. Eventually, doing those small (but often meaningful) kindnesses becomes something the Path cares about, even if for no other reason than a flexible personality and unwillingness to change to suit others make it a routine.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Sociopath quotes: Mob mentality

Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow creatures than from the convulsions of the elements.

--Edward Gibbon

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Shame and Justification (part 3)

Under the title "The Moral Diet," NY Times op-ed columnist David Brooks reviews Dan Ariely’s new book “The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty” (Ariely is also the author of the recent Conscience+, the app).  Ariely told the story of how the gift shop at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was the victim of rampant embezzlement, mainly by elderly volunteers manning an unsecured cash drawer.  Interestingly, there wasn't one person who was stealing tons, but many stealing just a little.  The conclusion: "Nearly everybody cheats, but usually only a little."  The reason being that "most of us think we are pretty wonderful. We can cheat a little and still keep that 'good person' identity. Most people won’t cheat so much that it makes it harder to feel good about themselves."  In an experiment, Ariely found that cab drivers were more likely to cheat their standard fare than someone who is blind, because of what David Brooks calls "the good person construct."

Ariely points out that we are driven by morality much more than standard economic models allow. But I was struck by what you might call the Good Person Construct and the moral calculus it implies. For the past several centuries, most Westerners would have identified themselves fundamentally as Depraved Sinners. In this construct, sin is something you fight like a recurring cancer — part of a daily battle against evil.

But these days, people are more likely to believe in their essential goodness. People who live by the Good Person Construct try to balance their virtuous self-image with their selfish desires. They try to manage the moral plusses and minuses and keep their overall record in positive territory. In this construct, moral life is more like dieting: I give myself permission to have a few cookies because I had salads for lunch and dinner. I give myself permission to cheat a little because, when I look at my overall life, I see that I’m still a good person.

The Good Person isn’t shooting for perfection any more than most dieters are following their diet 100 percent. It’s enough to be workably suboptimal, a tolerant, harmless sinner and a generally good guy.

Obviously, though, there’s a measurement problem. You can buy a weight scale to get an objective measure of your diet. But you can’t buy a scale of virtues to put on the bathroom floor. And given our awesome capacities for rationalization and self-deception, most of us are going to measure ourselves leniently: I was honest with that blind passenger because I’m a wonderful person. I cheated the sighted one because she probably has too much money anyway.

I think this is actually an insightful and accurate observation.  I have noticed this a lot recently, more in discussions I see on the blog than in real life, but probably only because the topic of morality comes up a lot more here than it does in real life and people tend to feel the need to take some kind of moral high ground when advocating something horrible like killing all sociopaths (or even just the simple art of accusing anyone of anything), so there is a lot of self-justification going on here.  The weird thing is that many people will unashamedly admit that they're not perfect, but then go on to assert something categorically negative about sociopaths.  I guess the price of admission to the moral high ground is not what it used to be.    


Saturday, June 9, 2012

Shame and justification (part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, June 8, 2012

Shame and justification (part 1)

A narcissist reader and I have been discussing the role of shame and justification as a motivator for narcissists and sociopaths.  Here's his perspective on shame (next post mine):

I think it all comes down to shame and putting up appearances.

If I don't feel shame, and if I don't feel the need to put up appearances so that I can feel good about myself, I'm left just trying to do the things that I want to do, for my own reasons.

As soon as I realized how driven by shame and putting up appearances I've been, it hit me that if I stopped doing that, I would have a tremendous amount of time on my hands. And I'd have a lot of flexibility, because there just isn't that much stuff I genuinely want.

However, when pursuing my own interests, I'm liable to act selfishly and immorally. That's just what comes naturally.

One thing: I'm not a good liar. When I've lied well in the past, it required deceiving myself. The less I delude myself, the harder it is to lie.

I think the key is to become comfortable with shame and with perceiving of myself as a "bad" person.  To the extent I can do that, I seem to just act selfishly and without conscience.



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