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How long does it take someone to spot a psychopath?

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About five seconds.

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So most people think a psychopath looks dangerous.

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They picture the villain in a movie, but that's not how it works in real life.

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We've done some research in my lab and we found there are certainly some things that you can look for.

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Have they ever done that with lying to figure out if people can spot lies?

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thousands of times.

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You ask people what's the number one cue that someone is lying to you, they will say they can't look you in the eye, but there's no research to suggest that that is true.

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However, there's an essential tool for detecting lies, which is... Oh, fuck.

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I know I study dark personality traits, and I found that there's four different elements, which are psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism.

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And what we found is that people with higher levels of these traits engaged in Duchenne's smiles, which is the activation around the eyes.

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And they also used a lot of hand gestures.

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Where does this come from?

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Well, research suggests that abuse, cold, uncaring parenting style, but also overvaluation of a child early in life may lead to more narcissistic views later.

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Is there any other fascinating questions you've pursued in your lab?

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Yes.

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We studied the extent to which psychopathic personality traits could increase the amount of influence you have in government.

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And also there are three common mistakes people make when dealing with dark personalities.

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We'll get into this more later.

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And I'm wondering if you can spot any of these dark personality traits just by looking at dating profiles.

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All right.

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So this is Ryan.

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This feels like a red flag.

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And then there's Haley.

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That would be associated with psychopathy.

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Okay, David is a brain surgeon.

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Very impressive.

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But I'm seeing narcissism.

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So I guess this begs the question, that if someone has those traits you've described, can they be cured?

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So in my lab, what we found is that...

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Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins.

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But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better.

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professor leanne tenbrink at the very heart of your motivations why is it you do what you do i want to make people less cynical about human nature

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which I think might seem kind of paradoxical given what I study, because I study deception and dominance and so-called dark personality traits.

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But I think when you understand those topics, and also that there's something you can do about it to, like, make these interactions better, it's incredibly powerful and can give us a more accurate view of the world, absolutely.

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And why are the population at large so interested in these subjects?

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Because they are.

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They're fascinated by it.

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But what is underneath all of the sort of fascination and curiosity, what are they trying to figure out when people are interested in psychopathy?

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Mm-hmm.

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You know, I think...

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One of the reasons why we are so interested in psychopathy is because it's quite foreign to us.

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So most of us move through life caring about other people, having compassion for other people, telling a few lies here and there, but by and large being very truthful and honest and kind of playing by the rules.

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And that's like the opposite of psychopathy.

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what's going on.

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And I want to understand that.

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I think there's also an element, there actually is some research on like true crime specifically, and why people are interested in true crime tends to be a largely female audience.

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And some of the motivations that people report is like wanting to understand and wanting to avoid, you know, becoming a victim of these people.

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Is it possible to spot someone who is a psychopath?

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Yes.

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Yes.

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How long, according to the research, does it take someone to spot a psychopath?

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Okay, you can get a kernel of truth about someone's personality, the extent to which they're psychopathic, in about five seconds.

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Explain the research to me.

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Okay, so this is research by Scott Lillenfeld and his colleagues.

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And basically what they did is they showed people...

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five-second, 10-second, and 20-second clips of these interviews where criminal offenders were being interviewed by a psychologist and rated on their psychopathic personality traits.

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And then you had random psychology student volunteer for research watching five seconds of that interaction and making a rating of like, you know, how callous do they seem?

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How manipulative do they seem?

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And they found that there is actually a pretty reasonable correlation between the ratings of these, like, you know, naive folks who watch five seconds and the trained clinical psychologists who did hours-long interviews and gathered collateral information.

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And so we partnered with Scott and we got these videos and we coded the, like, verbal and nonverbal behavior.

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Like, are these people behaving differently?

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And what are people paying attention to?

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Yeah.

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And what we found is that people with higher levels of these trades engaged in these what we call Duchenne smiles.

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They're a genuine looking smile.

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But they, yeah, that's the one.

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Okay, so...

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What distinguishes these two kinds of smiles is the activation around the eyes.

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And it's the creation of like crow's feet.

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So you kind of get, you know, lines in the corner.

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So a genuine person will have crow's feet when they smile, theoretically.

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Theoretically.

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Again, there can be Botox and all kinds of things getting in the way of this, but...

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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So it's in the eyes.

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Yes, it's totally in the eyes.

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Whereas a non-Duchenne smile, you know, you have the same kind of upturned lips and maybe you're showing your teeth, you get a big grin, but no activation around the eyes.

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So you don't get those crow's feet.

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people who were high in these psychopathic personality traits, they were showing these kinds of like, you know, very happy looking smiles as they were saying really hostile things.

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So they were using like happy expressions, hostile language.

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at the same time.

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So you get this kind of like weird emotional presentation.

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They also used a lot of hand gestures.

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We call them illustrators.

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Those seem to be things that just, you know, random observers paid attention to and used to help guide their judgments, which of course

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course, is like such little information to go on.

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But it does suggest that, you know, you can get a sense of someone relatively quickly.

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But again, personality is something that exists across time and context.

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So you're going to get better data, the more data that you have across those different times and places.

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I've got two more facial expressions here.

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So this is sadness.

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So some of the research that I've done has actually looked at people who've gone on TV and asked for help trying to find their missing loved one.

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And in some proportion of those cases, they were actually guilty of killing that person.

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So they are like falsely pleading for help for someone they know is never coming back.

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Wait, wasn't this your PhD?

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This is my PhD, yeah.

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What was your PhD in?

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In psychology, but I was in a more like forensic context at that time.

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So I was studying behavioral cues to emotional high stakes deception.

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Yeah.

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I.e.

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trying to spot someone who was, say, in the media saying, I can't find my wife, please help me.

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A thousand percent.

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But they had killed their own wife.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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So I was comparing a bunch of those cases to a bunch of cases where people genuinely had no idea where their missing loved one had gone.

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And they were, you know, desperately pleading to have them home.

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And this is one of the differences that we saw in that set of videos where like, maybe you can try to do this with me, Stephen.

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Are you up for it?

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I'm up for it.

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I'm always up for everything.

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Okay.

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So in genuine sadness, you get the like downturn lip corners.

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Okay.

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So you did that pretty easily.

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What tends to be more difficult is this combination in the eyebrows.

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So you're just your inner eyebrows comes upward and together.

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oh, you're pretty good.

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Nicely done.

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It was hard.

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So what we saw in the people who were lying was more like surprise.

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So like they were able to kind of pull the lip corners down.

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But instead of like the inner eyebrows going upward and together, the whole inner and outer eyebrows would go up, but not together.

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So it's kind of like... And you could predictably tell from footage if someone had done it or not.

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Like was there correlation?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, so we were able to use four different cues, so two verbal and two nonverbal, to predict with about 90% accuracy who was lying and who was telling the truth.

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Caveat to that, we tried to replicate that more recently, and we found much more modest effects.

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But we did find consistencies, especially with the verbal stuff.

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And there was the number of words that people used, as well as tentative words.

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So...

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Liars would tend to say things like, if you see this, come home or call or whatever.

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It was kind of like a little vague about what this person should do if they saw it.

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Saying things like, it wasn't like an argument per se that we were having.

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So they kind of left a lot of like gray area in the things that they were saying.

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Whereas the truthful people were like, when you see this, call me.

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They were more sort of high conviction and precise.

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Yes, exactly.

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I think down there we have some cards that say three signs someone is lying.

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So one cue to deception is sparse or ambiguous information.

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So the most consistent effect we have that differentiates people who are telling the truth from people who are lying is the amount of detail that they give.

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So people who are lying tend to give fewer details.

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Interesting.

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I thought it was the opposite effect.

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Yeah, I hear this a lot where people are like, no, but liars will like, you know, natter on and on and on.

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That's not what we find in the research whatsoever, especially, especially when people don't have time to prepare.

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So whenever people have time to prepare, they can start to look pretty much like a truth teller on the amount of information they have.

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But if you get someone on the spot...

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The truth teller just has to, like, say, remember what happened and, like, spit it out and tell you, right?

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And you can even ask for more information, like, tell me more about that.

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And they can come up with more information about that because they were there, right?

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The person who is lying has a much harder task.

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We call this, they have increased cognitive load, which means that, like, they need to come up with details on the spot.

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They need to...

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not contradict themselves.

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They need to make sure they remember it for the next time they need to tell this lie.

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They also need to try to imagine like, what do you know already?

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And how do I not contradict or essentially step in it, right?

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Whenever I'm trying to explain what actually didn't happen.

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They must have higher blood pressure anyway, just from knowing that they're not telling the truth.

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And that must make your cortisol spike to know that you're like,

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Yeah, we've done some research in my lab to show that people who are lying tend to have an increased cortisol reactivity relative to people who are telling the truth.

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You know, on this one, the reason why I was surprised to hear it is because when I...

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I'm a big true crime fan, like obsessed.

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And I often watch the interrogation videos.

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And I think...

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I thought I heard before that when they're interviewing someone who is guilty, they will give lots of like irrelevant detail on other parts of it.

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I was watching the Jesse Smollett interview he did on TV.

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Yeah.

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Again, he had time to prepare.

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So maybe that's the caveat.

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Yes.

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And he really described a bunch of pointless stuff.

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He was talking to the journalist.

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He was like, you know, and then I landed and I called my manager who was in Australia because my manager is on tour with someone else.

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And then even when he talked about going to Subway and getting the Subway wrap, he mentioned that it was like a tuna wrap.

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So like the details he was sure on, and that were probably true, he seemed to really expand out.

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And then when it gets into the other stuff, which is where the bulk of the lies took place, allegedly, it was quite vague.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So we call that embedded lies, right?

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So like he's giving lots of detail where it's truthful.

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Yeah.

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And then almost no detail where it's a lie, right?

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And then lots of detail where it's truthful.

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So you can also kind of like compare someone's like baseline.

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Yeah.

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Do they tend to give lots of detail?

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Do they tend to be sparse on information?

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You can look for kind of deviations.

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And so if you notice that, like, someone tells you a really long story, there's tons of detail about all these other things.

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And then in this part of the story, there's like...

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Very little information, very sparse or ambiguous information, right?

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That can be a red flag.

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And I think what's important to remember is that there is no Pinocchio's nose.

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There's no like one cue.

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And so what you're looking for is just like these subtle cues that are like red flags and encourage you to follow up, ask more questions, dig in to that topic a little bit further.

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You know, in the same way they did the research to figure out if members of the public could, just on the surface, tell if someone was a psychopath in 5, 10 or 20 seconds, have they ever done that with lying to figure out if people can spot lies?

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Literally thousands of times.

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Really?

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Yeah.

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So in my lab, we've actually had them steal a $100 bill from a room.

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And then we had someone come in and essentially interrogate them.

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And everyone had to deny it, right?

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So the people who took it were lying.

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And the people who did not take it were telling the truth.

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And we put $100 on the line, right?

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So like if you're able to convince this person that you didn't take it when you actually did, you can keep that at Benjamin.

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And then we showed these videos to other people, right?

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People are not very good at detecting these lies or really any kind of lies.

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On average, people perform at about 54% accuracy.

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Like if I gave you 12 videos, six are liars, six are truth tellers, you'll get like six or seven, right?

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What if someone is trained?

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Do the stats increase?

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So they can increase a little bit, yes.

223
00:14:57.116 --> 00:14:59.898
What is better actually is learning how to ask better questions.

224
00:15:00.358 --> 00:15:00.738
Oh, really?

225
00:15:00.878 --> 00:15:01.159
Yeah.

226
00:15:01.619 --> 00:15:07.362
So instead of just being like, here's a video of someone lying or telling the truth, like that's all you get.

227
00:15:07.902 --> 00:15:11.024
And just like, look at that and tell me if they're lying or telling the truth.

228
00:15:11.524 --> 00:15:14.706
Good lie detectors ask for more information.

229
00:15:15.346 --> 00:15:16.087
Or they ask...

230
00:15:16.847 --> 00:15:21.012
unanticipated questions where people haven't prepared for them.

231
00:15:21.092 --> 00:15:30.782
And then those cues of deception, that like sparse information, that like sense that they're thinking really hard is really going to kind of go off the charts.

232
00:15:30.842 --> 00:15:37.550
And so learning how to ask good questions is actually a really kind of essential tool for detecting lies.

233
00:15:38.473 --> 00:15:40.594
I mean, we're going to have to go into that rabbit hole.

234
00:15:40.934 --> 00:15:44.216
I've got to be careful here because people are going to take this out of context.

235
00:15:44.596 --> 00:15:47.737
Say that I suspect my partner is cheating on me.

236
00:15:47.877 --> 00:15:48.077
Uh-huh.

237
00:15:48.838 --> 00:15:51.459
And I sit them down and I go, babe, listen, are you cheating on me?

238
00:15:51.479 --> 00:15:52.639
And they go, no, absolutely not.

239
00:15:53.400 --> 00:15:58.402
What would be a good question to ask, to ascertain if they are actually cheating on me?

240
00:15:59.232 --> 00:16:04.256
So I think where you first made a mistake is you asked a closed-ended question.

241
00:16:04.496 --> 00:16:05.857
You're like, are you cheating on me?

242
00:16:06.538 --> 00:16:06.718
No.

243
00:16:07.379 --> 00:16:12.022
You didn't even give them an opportunity to, like, have to come up with something more difficult, right?

244
00:16:12.723 --> 00:16:18.828
If you were like, okay, well, I think last Friday night you said you had to work late, but I don't really believe that.

245
00:16:18.848 --> 00:16:19.809
I think you were out with someone else.

246
00:16:21.062 --> 00:16:23.864
you would say, tell me about, you know, work on Friday night.

247
00:16:25.104 --> 00:16:28.587
And so then you're, you're asking an open ended question.

248
00:16:28.827 --> 00:16:29.787
Okay, let's role play.

249
00:16:30.148 --> 00:16:30.388
Okay.

250
00:16:30.628 --> 00:16:30.828
Okay.

251
00:16:30.908 --> 00:16:32.449
You're the one that suspects I'm cheating.

252
00:16:32.549 --> 00:16:32.789
Okay.

253
00:16:33.109 --> 00:16:34.910
And last Friday night, I was up to something.

254
00:16:35.031 --> 00:16:36.832
So that's the context.

255
00:16:36.852 --> 00:16:37.592
Let's let's do this.

256
00:16:37.872 --> 00:16:38.132
Okay.

257
00:16:38.553 --> 00:16:41.054
I know you had to work late on Friday night.

258
00:16:41.414 --> 00:16:42.135
What were you working on?

259
00:16:42.851 --> 00:16:48.096
Yeah, it was a big investment deal that we were working on with a couple of the colleagues we had to get a deck together.

260
00:16:48.176 --> 00:16:53.481
So I stayed until, what, 3am in the morning or something crazy like that, and I ended up falling asleep on my desk.

261
00:16:53.501 --> 00:16:55.583
And yeah, that's a long one.

262
00:16:55.963 --> 00:16:57.164
Anyway, what's for what we're doing today?

263
00:16:57.225 --> 00:16:57.625
What's for dinner?

264
00:16:57.645 --> 00:16:57.745
Yeah.

265
00:17:02.052 --> 00:17:04.695
Yay, red flags flying up.

266
00:17:04.995 --> 00:17:06.356
So I would ask more questions.

267
00:17:06.396 --> 00:17:09.840
I would be like, oh, like what client were you working on this for?

268
00:17:09.880 --> 00:17:11.081
What's the deck about?

269
00:17:11.542 --> 00:17:13.884
Yeah, it's doing an investment deal with Google.

270
00:17:13.904 --> 00:17:15.546
So it's Google's, yeah, it's Google.

271
00:17:18.406 --> 00:17:22.227
I could ask you, like, okay, tell me about, like, what was in the deck, right?

272
00:17:22.247 --> 00:17:25.229
And you give me a little bit kind of sketchy information.

273
00:17:25.789 --> 00:17:29.230
A great question to have in your back pocket is just tell me more about that.

274
00:17:29.310 --> 00:17:34.272
Like, you don't even have to, like, try very hard to figure out, like, where am I going to stump him, right?

275
00:17:34.932 --> 00:17:37.373
If you just ask, tell me more about that.

276
00:17:38.447 --> 00:17:45.834
At some point, the liar is going to have a lot more trouble coming up with additional details than the truth teller.

277
00:17:46.294 --> 00:17:49.518
The truth teller is going to be like, oh, well, this is what the project was about.

278
00:17:50.038 --> 00:17:56.304
Like, it was actually super annoying because I couldn't get the font on the, you know, on the slide deck to stay on the slide, whatever.

279
00:17:56.724 --> 00:17:58.326
Like, you as a truth teller.

280
00:17:58.646 --> 00:18:04.711
You were there and you know all those annoying little things that maybe you didn't include in the first version of the story.

281
00:18:05.212 --> 00:18:08.575
But if someone asks you for more detail, you could go into more detail.

282
00:18:09.095 --> 00:18:15.320
Whereas the person who's lying, who's making this up, that's much more difficult for them to do because that didn't actually happen.

283
00:18:15.561 --> 00:18:16.902
So they're going to be somewhat vague.

284
00:18:16.922 --> 00:18:17.102
Yeah.

285
00:18:17.506 --> 00:18:18.547
Yes, vague.

286
00:18:19.107 --> 00:18:22.210
And the details are going to be really difficult to verify.

287
00:18:22.891 --> 00:18:31.758
So if they do give you some details, it might be like things that you don't know the coworkers that you are working with, right?

288
00:18:31.818 --> 00:18:33.019
Oh, it's the new guy at work.

289
00:18:33.199 --> 00:18:34.400
Like, you don't know him.

290
00:18:34.700 --> 00:18:35.021
So...

291
00:18:35.581 --> 00:18:39.845
In general, liars tend to give fewer verifiable details.

292
00:18:39.865 --> 00:18:48.613
And there's this actually really fascinating study that, you know, sometimes we're like we're trying to like dissect, right, someone's behavior.

293
00:18:48.633 --> 00:18:49.814
We're trying.

294
00:18:49.834 --> 00:18:50.215
We're trying.

295
00:18:50.635 --> 00:18:51.616
paying attention to their words.

296
00:18:51.636 --> 00:18:55.599
We're paying attention to, like, oh, are they fidgeting or something, which is actually not a good cutie deception.

297
00:18:55.979 --> 00:18:58.921
We're looking at their eye contact, also not a good cutie deception.

298
00:18:59.501 --> 00:19:08.588
And we are trying to, like, create this crazy algorithm in our head, like, adding up all of these different behaviors to try to determine whether I think you're lying or telling the truth.

299
00:19:09.508 --> 00:19:14.432
Actually, research suggests that if you just ask how verifiable was that statement,

300
00:19:15.542 --> 00:19:23.985
That's a better strategy for trying to accurately detect lies than trying to use all of these other cues that actually don't work.

301
00:19:24.145 --> 00:19:30.146
If you ask yourself, how verifiable is the excuse this person I think his line gave me?

302
00:19:30.306 --> 00:19:31.087
Yes, exactly.

303
00:19:31.107 --> 00:19:31.547
Interesting.

304
00:19:32.007 --> 00:19:43.470
I think the broader finding is just that it is better to focus on one cue that works than to try to put together all of these little cues that mostly don't work at all.

305
00:19:44.311 --> 00:19:44.591
Okay.

306
00:19:44.831 --> 00:19:44.991
Yeah.

307
00:19:45.914 --> 00:19:46.875
And the third one there?

308
00:19:46.895 --> 00:19:50.596
The third one, you know, we've kind of touched on, but it's just visible cognitive effort.

309
00:19:50.636 --> 00:19:57.460
So all of this stuff, you know, the details that people need to come up with is really hard to do, right?

310
00:19:57.820 --> 00:20:00.621
And they might be speaking really slowly.

311
00:20:01.102 --> 00:20:03.743
They might be using lots of ums and ahs and errs.

312
00:20:03.803 --> 00:20:07.625
They might be kind of like furrowing their brow trying to figure things out.

313
00:20:08.726 --> 00:20:10.887
Again, it's important to remember that like...

314
00:20:11.857 --> 00:20:17.080
You could pause for a million different reasons that are not deception related, right?

315
00:20:17.541 --> 00:20:19.702
You could just be trying to remember something.

316
00:20:19.882 --> 00:20:23.124
You could be furrowing your brow because, I don't know, your forehead's itchy, whatever.

317
00:20:23.504 --> 00:20:29.188
So none of these are Pinocchio's nose, but they are reliably associated with deception.

318
00:20:29.608 --> 00:20:30.829
What about body language?

319
00:20:30.849 --> 00:20:32.109
People always talk about body language.

320
00:20:32.810 --> 00:20:37.412
People put a lot of stock into body language, particularly into like gaze aversion.

321
00:20:37.512 --> 00:20:43.174
So if you go around the world and you ask people, what's the number one cue that someone is lying to you?

322
00:20:44.035 --> 00:20:46.276
They will say sketchy eye contact.

323
00:20:47.370 --> 00:20:50.211
And there's no research to suggest that that is true.

324
00:20:50.631 --> 00:20:55.073
And if you think about it for like a hot second, it makes so much sense, right?

325
00:20:55.133 --> 00:20:57.654
Because I sometimes tell a lie.

326
00:20:58.074 --> 00:20:59.535
You sometimes tell a lie.

327
00:21:00.115 --> 00:21:03.296
We all know the stereotype that liars can't look you in the eye.

328
00:21:03.317 --> 00:21:07.598
So if I want you to believe me, I'm going to make sure I control my eye contact.

329
00:21:09.199 --> 00:21:11.740
And that's something that's well under our control.

330
00:21:12.142 --> 00:21:21.807
And there's neurodivergence and things like that, which means that some people who have sort of certain neurodiversities struggle with eye contact, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're lying.

331
00:21:22.487 --> 00:21:22.927
Exactly.

332
00:21:23.127 --> 00:21:33.332
So there's some emerging research to suggest that people who are on the autism spectrum are perceived as lying more when they're actually telling the truth.

333
00:21:33.372 --> 00:21:38.995
And that's because of this eye contact thing, which people are using as a cue to deception, but in fact...

334
00:21:39.515 --> 00:21:41.235
is unrelated to deception.

335
00:21:41.595 --> 00:21:43.636
I mean, there's also like cultural differences, right?

336
00:21:43.656 --> 00:21:48.117
In some cultures, it's more respectful, like not to look at you in the eye.

337
00:21:48.717 --> 00:21:52.898
And so that can also lead to kind of errors in our judgment.

338
00:21:53.218 --> 00:21:59.679
And there's this sort of dark personality trait thing I hear a lot.

339
00:21:59.699 --> 00:22:00.119
Is it a triad?

340
00:22:00.159 --> 00:22:00.879
It was a triad.

341
00:22:01.980 --> 00:22:03.040
Now we get a tetrad.

342
00:22:03.060 --> 00:22:03.240
Okay.

343
00:22:04.400 --> 00:22:05.702
Okay, so is that what this is?

344
00:22:05.922 --> 00:22:06.123
Yes.

345
00:22:06.443 --> 00:22:09.547
Okay, so if you want to reveal what each of those is one at a time.

346
00:22:10.008 --> 00:22:11.170
Psychopathy, for example.

347
00:22:11.210 --> 00:22:12.011
What is psychopathy?

348
00:22:12.423 --> 00:22:17.506
Psychopathy is a constellation that is a set of personality traits.

349
00:22:17.726 --> 00:22:18.626
So it's not just one thing.

350
00:22:19.146 --> 00:22:20.867
Having kind of a superficial charm.

351
00:22:21.608 --> 00:22:22.908
They're quite manipulative.

352
00:22:23.248 --> 00:22:24.549
And they tend to be pretty grandiose.

353
00:22:24.569 --> 00:22:26.790
So they've got a pretty inflated view of themselves.

354
00:22:27.391 --> 00:22:29.592
There's also emotional components.

355
00:22:29.872 --> 00:22:33.534
So they tend to have pretty shallow emotional experiences.

356
00:22:34.514 --> 00:22:43.217
a lack of remorse and guilt for harming other people, and they tend not to take responsibility for their own actions.

357
00:22:44.357 --> 00:22:47.298
In addition, they tend to be pretty impulsive.

358
00:22:47.718 --> 00:22:55.360
So they are kind of living life by the seat of their pants, and they're not really, you know, planning far out into the future.

359
00:22:55.820 --> 00:23:00.442
And so they might, you know, kind of mooch off of family members or a romantic partner.

360
00:23:01.082 --> 00:23:03.284
And then lastly, they tend to break a lot of rules.

361
00:23:03.604 --> 00:23:11.569
So this might be just like workplace rules or social norms, but psychopathy has largely been studied in criminal populations.

362
00:23:11.669 --> 00:23:13.270
So this could also be laws.

363
00:23:14.161 --> 00:23:22.170
The other three of the so-called dark tetrad share some elements, but also have some like unique flavors.

364
00:23:22.991 --> 00:23:26.034
So the next one we've got here is Machiavellianism.

365
00:23:26.835 --> 00:23:36.145
And that is, you know, named after Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote The Prince, which is a kind of how-to manual to like gain and wield power.

366
00:23:36.645 --> 00:23:36.865
Okay.

367
00:23:58.247 --> 00:24:05.153
And, you know, when I need to manipulate or like a blackmail you in the future, right, they'll have that available to them.

368
00:24:05.193 --> 00:24:09.756
So this is they're very interested in power, which, of course, is where the name comes from.

369
00:24:10.357 --> 00:24:11.538
Next one is narcissism.

370
00:24:11.758 --> 00:24:14.040
You know, that's one that people know pretty well.

371
00:24:14.540 --> 00:24:14.740
Right.

372
00:24:14.800 --> 00:24:22.306
So these are people who tend to be very entitled and they're very willing to exploit other people in order to get what they think they deserve.

373
00:24:22.486 --> 00:24:22.686
Right.

374
00:24:23.087 --> 00:24:27.110
So it's like very relentless kind of self-focus.

375
00:24:27.552 --> 00:24:29.373
This word has been used quite a lot in culture.

376
00:24:29.773 --> 00:24:30.074
Aha.

377
00:24:30.474 --> 00:24:32.896
It's thrown around all the time.

378
00:24:32.916 --> 00:24:33.976
Constantly, yes.

379
00:24:34.016 --> 00:24:34.897
What's your view of that?

380
00:24:35.517 --> 00:24:39.720
I mean, narcissism, like all of these traits, exists on a continuum.

381
00:24:40.060 --> 00:24:40.300
Okay.

382
00:24:40.360 --> 00:24:40.541
Okay.

383
00:24:40.981 --> 00:24:48.626
So you or anyone else, myself, could take a measure, a self-report measure, of the extent to which I have these traits, right?

384
00:24:48.946 --> 00:24:51.928
And you can land anywhere from very low to very high.

385
00:24:52.689 --> 00:24:55.590
Now, some of these traits, narcissism being one of them,

386
00:24:56.531 --> 00:25:19.925
actually has a there's a personality disorder diagnosis at the incredibly high end right so this appears in the diagnostic and statistical manual which is basically like a list of different mental disorders you could go to a psychologist or psychiatrist they could assess you and diagnose you if you have like extreme levels of narcissism

387
00:25:20.565 --> 00:25:23.347
But, like, people land everywhere, right?

388
00:25:23.848 --> 00:25:30.092
So I think part of the problem is that people say, oh, she's a narcissist, right?

389
00:25:30.492 --> 00:25:31.693
He's a narcissist.

390
00:25:31.934 --> 00:25:34.495
Are they a narcissist or a psychopath?

391
00:25:34.936 --> 00:25:39.699
And they make this kind of very binary distinction there, right?

392
00:25:39.739 --> 00:25:39.940
Right.

393
00:25:40.720 --> 00:25:44.961
I guess I have qualms with those words for a couple of different reasons.

394
00:25:45.321 --> 00:25:47.642
You know, these exist on a continuum.

395
00:25:47.902 --> 00:25:55.023
There's no clear like moment where it becomes you are a narcissist versus not a narcissist.

396
00:25:55.063 --> 00:25:58.784
And so as with all of these other traits, it's a bit of a mouthful.

397
00:25:59.144 --> 00:26:07.626
But I think it's more accurate to say they have relatively high levels of narcissism or psychopathy or whatever the case is.

398
00:26:07.906 --> 00:26:10.427
And you said that there's two main types of narcissist.

399
00:26:11.328 --> 00:26:18.794
Yeah, so increasingly, personality psychologists are identifying this kind of vulnerable type and a grandiose type.

400
00:26:18.834 --> 00:26:23.378
And so grandiose is like one that we all know well, where it's like, they've got this ego.

401
00:26:24.539 --> 00:26:25.480
It's huge.

402
00:26:25.620 --> 00:26:27.061
It like cannot be popped.

403
00:26:27.582 --> 00:26:31.886
It's like, they get this negative feedback, and it's like, nothing gets through to them.

404
00:26:32.166 --> 00:26:34.268
And they always think they should be the one in charge, etc.

405
00:26:34.308 --> 00:26:34.508
Yeah.

406
00:26:34.788 --> 00:26:41.813
For those individuals, they tend to get very angry with a particular kind of threat to their ego.

407
00:26:42.374 --> 00:26:44.535
And that is like a failure to achieve.

408
00:26:44.575 --> 00:26:47.497
Like they wanted this promotion at work.

409
00:26:47.537 --> 00:26:48.138
They didn't get it.

410
00:26:48.938 --> 00:26:54.422
Vulnerable individuals actually have kind of a very fragile ego.

411
00:26:54.803 --> 00:26:55.083
Yeah.

412
00:26:55.943 --> 00:26:56.583
Interesting.

413
00:26:57.604 --> 00:27:01.865
So it can be popped very easily, essentially.

414
00:27:02.325 --> 00:27:11.108
So if they get negative feedback from people, maybe they get socially rejected, that's when they become quite angry.

415
00:27:11.128 --> 00:27:12.569
That's more of a trigger for them.

416
00:27:12.789 --> 00:27:17.551
And is it you using the word angry as the outcome of both those types of narcissists?

417
00:27:18.171 --> 00:27:22.913
But I guess one would assume that maybe just from the wording that a vulnerable narcissist would get...

418
00:27:23.814 --> 00:27:26.810
more upset or more self-critical or something like that.

419
00:27:27.538 --> 00:27:33.542
The research at least was focused on anger in response to these kinds of threats to their ego.

420
00:27:34.122 --> 00:27:36.924
But certainly emotional, you know, like combative.

421
00:27:37.244 --> 00:27:37.584
Oh, combative.

422
00:27:37.624 --> 00:27:40.646
This is when you're going to get like a really negative response.

423
00:27:40.666 --> 00:27:51.573
Like someone who is relatively low on narcissism of both kinds, you know, could take that kind of feedback that like, no, I don't think a second date is really for us.

424
00:27:51.653 --> 00:27:51.853
Right.

425
00:27:51.913 --> 00:27:54.415
Like someone with vulnerable narcissism is...

426
00:27:55.481 --> 00:27:56.942
going to respond badly.

427
00:27:56.962 --> 00:27:58.223
Do you know why I asked the question?

428
00:27:58.403 --> 00:28:13.435
It's just a friend of mine because of a conversation I was having the other day where we were interviewing someone and during the interview process, they were very quick to say, to claim credit for like all of the things the company they worked at had done.

429
00:28:14.256 --> 00:28:17.058
And they were also very quick to say that they were like good at everything.

430
00:28:17.078 --> 00:28:17.318
Right.

431
00:28:17.438 --> 00:28:21.360
Even as I walked out of the room with them and I said, oh, can I message you on this particular app?

432
00:28:21.380 --> 00:28:22.401
They said, I'm amazing at that app.

433
00:28:22.801 --> 00:28:26.202
Again, I'm anonymizing, so a lot of this is slightly changed.

434
00:28:26.723 --> 00:28:33.246
And I walked out of the room weirdly, having interviewed thousands and thousands of people over the years, thinking to myself, they were so lovely.

435
00:28:33.446 --> 00:28:36.348
But it felt to me like it was more coming from a place of insecurity.

436
00:28:36.448 --> 00:28:36.868
Mm-hmm.

437
00:28:37.538 --> 00:28:50.088
And when you look at their story, it's a story of someone who has been continually counted out, overlooked for opportunities, and almost has a bit of a chip on their shoulder to try and prove themselves.

438
00:28:50.849 --> 00:28:56.053
Now, another person, I think, would look at that same pattern of behavior and say, oh, that husband's a narcissist.

439
00:28:56.333 --> 00:29:01.998
So when I had a vulnerable narcissist versus the sort of grandiose one, I was wondering if, is at all linked to what I'm saying?

440
00:29:02.018 --> 00:29:02.178
Like,

441
00:29:02.837 --> 00:29:16.103
For vulnerable narcissism, the reason that they would respond so poorly to this kind of rejection is that they need kind of constant admiration and positive feedback from other people to keep their ego, like, going.

442
00:29:16.704 --> 00:29:25.968
I called this person's former employer to get a reference, and they said about him that one of the quotes was, he always needs a gold star.

443
00:29:27.149 --> 00:29:29.970
What's the difference between deep insecurity and narcissism in this regard?

444
00:29:30.208 --> 00:29:35.332
The deep insecurity, it would need to be coupled with these, like, entitlement.

445
00:29:35.932 --> 00:29:38.074
Like, there's still a grandiose sense of self.

446
00:29:38.374 --> 00:29:40.055
It's just that it is quite fragile.

447
00:29:40.255 --> 00:29:47.000
So they're like, they think they're really good and they're willing to exploit other people to get what they think they deserve.

448
00:29:47.020 --> 00:29:49.382
And they may feel like they've been victimized, right?

449
00:29:49.422 --> 00:29:53.965
And that's why they haven't gotten all of the accolades that they think they deserve.

450
00:29:53.985 --> 00:29:54.245
Yeah.

451
00:29:54.445 --> 00:30:04.557
Now, I think kind of regardless of where this person, you know, sits on this continuum, you know, they might still have like incredible skills.

452
00:30:04.637 --> 00:30:07.801
They might have the abilities that you're looking for.

453
00:30:07.921 --> 00:30:13.088
And so is this something you can manage or is this going to create problems?

454
00:30:13.108 --> 00:30:13.368
Yeah.

455
00:30:13.597 --> 00:30:19.281
I didn't get any sense that they were entitled or that they would use other people to their advantage.

456
00:30:19.361 --> 00:30:23.545
I got the impression that people would generally like them and that they weren't entitled at all.

457
00:30:23.585 --> 00:30:26.107
But they still had these sort of self-promotional traits.

458
00:30:26.127 --> 00:30:33.953
And I think in society, the minute someone's overly self-promotional, we run to the sort of narcissist category versus it could be other things, I'm presuming.

459
00:30:33.973 --> 00:30:34.293
Yeah.

460
00:30:34.393 --> 00:30:34.673
Yes.

461
00:30:34.893 --> 00:30:39.874
I mean, I think in that situation, right, you need to be quite mindful of the situation as well, right?

462
00:30:39.894 --> 00:30:45.736
So like our behavior is kind of a combination of both our personality and the situation that we're in.

463
00:30:46.216 --> 00:30:52.777
And so if you're at a job interview, like, your whole goal is to show people like, I can do this job.

464
00:30:53.297 --> 00:30:55.058
I've got the skills that you need.

465
00:30:55.198 --> 00:31:03.680
And so in a job interview, we might kind of come across as like a more confident, more, you know, we're presenting ourselves in the best possible light.

466
00:31:05.081 --> 00:31:09.726
I think we're very quick to rush to a personality assessment.

467
00:31:09.746 --> 00:31:12.789
It's called the fundamental attribution error.

468
00:31:13.330 --> 00:31:17.554
So it's like when I see someone behave in a particular way, like they're, they're,

469
00:31:18.107 --> 00:31:24.870
maybe being self-promoting, saying all the things that they can do really well, I could be like, oh, that's narcissistic, right?

470
00:31:24.910 --> 00:31:26.951
That's a personality trait.

471
00:31:27.712 --> 00:31:30.753
And we tend to be more likely to do that to others.

472
00:31:30.893 --> 00:31:36.076
But if I was in their shoes, I would be like, I was just trying to show Steven what I could do.

473
00:31:36.176 --> 00:31:41.738
It's the situation that made me act kind of bigger than my britches, right?

474
00:31:42.259 --> 00:31:44.900
So we need to also be aware of like,

475
00:31:46.288 --> 00:31:57.818
The situation can impact our behavior, and so we want to be not too quick to make a personality attribution where the situation could explain that.

476
00:31:58.338 --> 00:32:09.507
And that's maybe a really important point to make here is that personality is a consistent pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time and across contexts.

477
00:32:09.628 --> 00:32:11.869
So if you've only got one interaction with this person—

478
00:32:12.710 --> 00:32:14.232
You've only got one interaction with this person.

479
00:32:14.252 --> 00:32:23.165
You probably get a sense of their personality, but you might see them, you know, out with their friends or with their family, and they might not be kind of so boastful, right?

480
00:32:23.426 --> 00:32:27.672
And that might suggest that this is really the situation, talking, not the personality.

481
00:32:28.212 --> 00:32:33.057
What are the gender differences in narcissism in terms of both different types of narcissism?

482
00:32:33.077 --> 00:32:36.201
You mentioned vulnerable narcissism and also grandiose narcissism.

483
00:32:36.901 --> 00:32:42.087
And then I guess there might be some other gender differences in our ability to spot these behaviors.

484
00:32:42.107 --> 00:32:42.727
Hmm.

485
00:32:43.408 --> 00:32:50.310
So when it comes to all of these traits that we're talking about, men tend to score somewhat higher than women.

486
00:32:50.490 --> 00:32:53.351
And that's quite a consistent finding.

487
00:32:54.192 --> 00:32:58.093
That is not to say that women cannot score very high on these traits.

488
00:32:58.133 --> 00:33:00.974
There are certainly cases and there's quite a bit of overlap.

489
00:33:01.414 --> 00:33:06.816
But on average, the averages for men tend to be higher than the averages for women.

490
00:33:07.256 --> 00:33:08.036
And there's a fourth brick.

491
00:33:08.503 --> 00:33:12.066
That's the newest and latest one, which is sadism.

492
00:33:12.726 --> 00:33:15.329
When you hear sadism, you might jump to like pretty extreme.

493
00:33:15.349 --> 00:33:18.091
Yeah, I was thinking of like the devil and stuff.

494
00:33:18.151 --> 00:33:25.037
Yeah, I mean, I first started studying sadistic behavior in the context of like...

495
00:33:25.677 --> 00:33:26.797
sexual homicides.

496
00:33:26.837 --> 00:33:35.779
Like I was reading through these descriptions of criminal behavior and I was looking for signs of sadistic treatment of the victim.

497
00:33:35.819 --> 00:33:39.279
So it's like it can get incredibly extreme, right?

498
00:33:39.319 --> 00:33:40.620
And that's probably where our mind goes.

499
00:33:40.660 --> 00:33:43.540
But there's also like kind of more everyday versions.

500
00:33:44.220 --> 00:33:46.441
One good example is like online trolling.

501
00:33:46.861 --> 00:33:53.402
So we know that people who are relatively high in sadism tend to, they take pleasure in other people's pain.

502
00:33:53.762 --> 00:33:53.942
Right.

503
00:33:54.062 --> 00:33:58.626
And so you could do that in incredibly like gruesome, horrifying ways.

504
00:33:58.826 --> 00:34:04.010
Or you could just be like pushing people's buttons online, trying to get people upset.

505
00:34:04.630 --> 00:34:06.672
They all share kind of three things.

506
00:34:07.798 --> 00:34:10.880
They are callous, so they don't care about other people.

507
00:34:11.340 --> 00:34:14.642
They don't care about your feelings or your outcomes.

508
00:34:15.443 --> 00:34:19.045
They're manipulative, so they're willing to lie and cheat to get what they want.

509
00:34:19.586 --> 00:34:21.867
And they're hostile toward other people.

510
00:34:21.907 --> 00:34:24.989
So that's kind of like the core of all of these traits.

511
00:34:25.009 --> 00:34:25.689
That's what they share.

512
00:34:26.510 --> 00:34:27.010
Facades.

513
00:34:27.691 --> 00:34:28.051
Mm-hmm.

514
00:34:28.591 --> 00:34:29.432
Are they good at hiding it?

515
00:34:30.093 --> 00:34:30.353
Yes.

516
00:34:30.694 --> 00:34:37.719
In fact, some of the earliest descriptions of psychopathy in particular described it as like a mask of sanity.

517
00:34:38.380 --> 00:34:42.303
And so it's like they can seem quite kind of normal on the surface.

518
00:34:42.503 --> 00:34:49.249
But if you kind of get a look underneath the hood, you see that they're not running the same kind of operating system that you are.

519
00:34:49.768 --> 00:35:09.111
what is the inverse of all this stuff because we've pointed at the traits and a lot of those are things people understand but there's also some misconceptions there's also the opposite which is like people think narcissists or psychopaths can't hold eye contact is one of the ones you hear all the time what are some of these ones that through your research you've been able to debunk as not being true

520
00:35:09.540 --> 00:35:14.644
So I think one of the biggest ones is that all people with high levels of psychopathy are violent.

521
00:35:15.444 --> 00:35:16.685
And that's absolutely not the case.

522
00:35:17.426 --> 00:35:19.527
It kind of links to your tweet here.

523
00:35:19.668 --> 00:35:19.888
Yeah.

524
00:35:20.048 --> 00:35:22.610
So most people think a psychopath looks dangerous.

525
00:35:22.690 --> 00:35:26.673
They picture the villain in a movie, but that's not how it works in real life.

526
00:35:27.333 --> 00:35:36.957
So you probably noticed that like in that description that I gave you, kind of a long-winded description of psychopathy with all those four different elements, I did say that there was rule breaking, right?

527
00:35:37.597 --> 00:35:39.658
And sometimes that's criminal rule breaking.

528
00:35:39.678 --> 00:35:43.740
So that could be violent behavior, but it's not necessarily so.

529
00:35:44.260 --> 00:35:50.663
So psychopathy is like a risk factor for violent behavior, but there's plenty of people who would score relatively highly and –

530
00:35:51.623 --> 00:35:53.284
never engage in violent behavior.

531
00:35:53.304 --> 00:35:55.065
They might break rules in other ways, right?

532
00:35:55.545 --> 00:36:02.048
So I think whenever we hear the word psychopathy, what comes to mind is like a Ted Bundy, right?

533
00:36:02.208 --> 00:36:03.329
Ted Bundy type character.

534
00:36:03.729 --> 00:36:17.816
He reportedly scored, I think 39 out of 40 or something on the psychopathy checklist revised, which is a measure that psychologists will use to assess how psychopathic someone is.

535
00:36:18.436 --> 00:36:28.379
So yeah, he's a bit of a poster boy for those traits, but certainly people can score highly without being a serial murderer.

536
00:36:29.319 --> 00:36:36.802
In terms of the amount of the population that have one of these dark personality traits, what are the numbers?

537
00:36:37.002 --> 00:36:37.922
How common is it?

538
00:36:38.687 --> 00:36:45.069
So this is a complicated question because, as I told you, you know, all these traits exist on a continuum.

539
00:36:45.089 --> 00:36:51.631
So the proportion of people that we say are high on these traits depends on where you put that cut point, right?

540
00:36:52.371 --> 00:37:01.354
If we're talking about psychopathy and clinical levels, that means a score of 30 out of 40 on the psychopathy checklist revised or higher.

541
00:37:01.374 --> 00:37:03.775
That's about 1% of the population.

542
00:37:04.235 --> 00:37:13.379
Narcissistic personality disorder, so again, very extreme levels of those traits, enough to warrant a diagnosis, that would be 2 to 5%.

543
00:37:14.640 --> 00:37:19.242
We don't have clinical cutoffs for sadism and Machiavellianism.

544
00:37:20.042 --> 00:37:26.583
What we do have is a ton of data of people who have completed self-report questionnaires.

545
00:37:26.603 --> 00:37:38.906
So, like, one way that you can kind of get a sense of how many people are high on these traits is by looking at the proportion of people who, on average, agree with the items.

546
00:37:39.266 --> 00:37:43.667
Like, if I say, I am a born leader, to what extent do you agree with that?

547
00:37:43.727 --> 00:37:45.767
That's a narcissism item.

548
00:37:46.487 --> 00:37:47.848
If you say, yeah, I agree with that.

549
00:37:48.168 --> 00:37:50.590
To what extent do you say you like to see other people get hurt?

550
00:37:51.191 --> 00:37:51.851
Say it doesn't trade.

551
00:37:52.011 --> 00:37:52.852
Yeah, I agree with that.

552
00:37:52.972 --> 00:37:53.172
Right.

553
00:37:53.192 --> 00:38:04.741
So if you just look at the people who on average agree with the items that we use to self-report, assess these traits, it's about 10% of the population.

554
00:38:05.385 --> 00:38:06.846
And where does this come from?

555
00:38:07.287 --> 00:38:09.809
Does this come from childhood trauma?

556
00:38:09.869 --> 00:38:20.038
When you think about some of these individuals you have on these photos in front of you here, where do you think their antisocial or dark triad or dark personality behavior stems from?

557
00:38:20.599 --> 00:38:22.260
Is it something happened in their childhood?

558
00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:23.201
Is it genetics?

559
00:38:23.361 --> 00:38:24.042
Is it something else?

560
00:38:25.230 --> 00:38:26.171
The answer is both.

561
00:38:26.311 --> 00:38:31.176
So the research suggests that with respect to psychopathy, narcissism, quite similar.

562
00:38:31.837 --> 00:38:39.284
The variation in someone's score on that personality trait is about 50% genetic and about 50% environmental traits.

563
00:38:41.847 --> 00:38:42.468
experiences.

564
00:38:42.548 --> 00:38:53.137
And so, you know, it can in some ways make us realize that these people didn't ask to be this way because, I mean, you don't get to choose your parents, so you don't get to choose your genetics.

565
00:38:53.557 --> 00:38:59.923
And then when it comes to those environmental experiences, often they're like early life experiences and not good ones.

566
00:39:00.403 --> 00:39:13.491
So research suggests that, you know, abuse, really kind of cold, uncaring parenting style early in life can increase the likelihood that someone will have higher levels of these traits later in life.

567
00:39:14.151 --> 00:39:24.958
For narcissism, another variable is like overvaluation of a child early in life may lead to more narcissistic abuse later.

568
00:39:24.978 --> 00:39:25.798
What does that mean, over-evaluation?

569
00:39:25.818 --> 00:39:26.559
Over-evaluation?

570
00:39:26.839 --> 00:39:28.260
So there's one study.

571
00:39:28.420 --> 00:39:29.760
It was a longitudinal study.

572
00:39:29.780 --> 00:39:35.342
And they asked parents like the extent to which they, you know, told their kids like, you're special.

573
00:39:35.362 --> 00:39:37.723
You're like better than other kids.

574
00:39:38.383 --> 00:39:46.225
And the more the kids got that kind of feedback, the more likely they were to be more narcissistic later down the road.

575
00:39:46.245 --> 00:39:47.646
Like they thought they were exceptional.

576
00:39:47.746 --> 00:39:50.847
They thought they were entitled to things that other people were not entitled to.

577
00:39:51.950 --> 00:39:54.271
And that's different than self-esteem.

578
00:39:54.471 --> 00:39:56.352
We want our kids to have high self-esteem.

579
00:39:56.392 --> 00:40:00.513
We want them to know that they are, you know, cared for and worthy.

580
00:40:01.093 --> 00:40:02.554
That comes from something different.

581
00:40:02.574 --> 00:40:06.415
That comes from like a warm, responsive parenting style.

582
00:40:06.776 --> 00:40:08.676
In that study, I was thinking about causation.

583
00:40:08.796 --> 00:40:14.859
And I was wondering if the parents themselves had a genetic disposition to be narcissistic, is it conceivable that they then...

584
00:40:15.999 --> 00:40:17.820
spoke highly to their children.

585
00:40:18.020 --> 00:40:18.200
Yeah.

586
00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:21.342
And actually, maybe it wasn't the nurturing part.

587
00:40:21.402 --> 00:40:22.683
It was their nature, i.e.

588
00:40:22.983 --> 00:40:28.806
that child also shared the genetics as the parent who had the proclivity to tell them that they were the most amazing thing ever.

589
00:40:29.006 --> 00:40:29.146
Yeah.

590
00:40:29.166 --> 00:40:29.627
Does that make sense?

591
00:40:30.067 --> 00:40:30.507
Totally.

592
00:40:30.607 --> 00:40:37.711
I mean, mostly I think about this in the context of psychopathy, where sometimes you've got a perfect storm, right?

593
00:40:37.731 --> 00:40:43.835
So you might have a parent who has really high levels of these traits, so they're passing on that potential genetic risk factor.

594
00:40:44.495 --> 00:40:58.281
But if you've got someone, you know, a parent in your household who is callous, manipulative, impulsive, it's going to be very difficult to maintain like a pretty stable home life for that child.

595
00:40:58.562 --> 00:41:10.267
And so they might end up experiencing, you know, some of those like abuse and cold kind of parenting styles that are also environmental risk factors for developing psychopathy later in life.

596
00:41:10.287 --> 00:41:12.268
So they kind of get like a double whammy.

597
00:41:14.073 --> 00:41:24.747
From all the research you've done and all the studying of these dark personality traits you've done and self-esteem and everything in between, is there any way to increase one's probability of being a good parent?

598
00:41:25.568 --> 00:41:28.832
Like, from everything you've seen, what is the, like, right approach?

599
00:41:29.172 --> 00:41:32.356
I know that's a difficult thing to say because kids are all different, but…

600
00:41:33.017 --> 00:41:46.406
I mean, warm and responsive parenting is that like when you look at treatment for kids who are showing early warning signs of these callous and unemotional traits, that's the treatment that seems to work.

601
00:41:46.846 --> 00:41:56.172
And actually, that's kind of like the silver lining in this whole, you know, kind of dark research area is that early intervention with kids is.

602
00:41:56.752 --> 00:42:04.153
really can help reduce the likelihood of them developing high levels of psychopathic traits as they grow older.

603
00:42:04.633 --> 00:42:07.194
And usually it's like, it's training parents.

604
00:42:07.794 --> 00:42:12.655
You know, it's not like a kid comes in and talks to a therapist like once a week and then we're good, right?

605
00:42:12.775 --> 00:42:24.837
It's more training parents about how to respond in ways that don't like escalate, create these kind of like dominance contests when the kid acts out, but also to respond.

606
00:42:25.437 --> 00:42:30.679
reinforce and kind of model this warm and responsiveness.

607
00:42:31.219 --> 00:42:42.703
But what's fascinating about psychopathy and callous and unemotional traits in kids is that they tend to be not very responsive to punishment.

608
00:42:42.723 --> 00:42:44.624
They're very responsive to rewards.

609
00:42:45.224 --> 00:42:50.746
So if you see kids doing something kind or helpful, it's

610
00:42:51.341 --> 00:42:59.183
The parent-child interaction training teaches parents to repeat what they said, say, that was a very kind thing to say.

611
00:42:59.223 --> 00:43:08.385
Just like repeating, showing, responding to them, paying attention to their behavior when they do something good or kind.

612
00:43:08.965 --> 00:43:15.247
Reinforcing it and giving that attention to increase the likelihood that you see it in the future.

613
00:43:15.733 --> 00:43:27.216
And so the inverse of that, in terms of a bad way to respond to a child that might lead to some of these dark personality traits in the future, would be… A cold and unresponsive parenting, getting angry, getting frustrated with them.

614
00:43:27.436 --> 00:43:29.876
I mean, physically harming them.

615
00:43:30.416 --> 00:43:36.618
That's child abuse is associated with increased likelihood of developing these traits over time.

616
00:43:36.898 --> 00:43:40.819
You mentioned dominating, in terms of dominating conversation, trying to outdo them.

617
00:43:41.757 --> 00:43:55.571
Yeah, so, I mean, and this is something that I think is not exclusive to parenting kids with CU traits, but sometimes, you know, if a kid is having a tantrum, you'll like, you'll see a parent saying like, no, you can't have that.

618
00:43:55.591 --> 00:43:59.755
And then they'll like, you know, increase the tantrum level and like, no, you can't have that.

619
00:44:00.175 --> 00:44:02.678
But then once it gets to a certain point, you like give in.

620
00:44:03.158 --> 00:44:03.399
Right.

621
00:44:03.919 --> 00:44:04.379
What that means.

622
00:44:04.960 --> 00:44:27.030
teaches is that you just need to escalate your behavior you need to continue to like dominate your parent like kick it up a notch kick it up a notch and then at some point you're gonna win as a kid so that kind of parenting is is not um going to extinguish the negative behavior very effectively and there's a brain scan there in front of you what is that brain scan

623
00:44:27.755 --> 00:44:31.398
This is a scan of functional MRI.

624
00:44:31.498 --> 00:44:36.881
So what they're pointing out there is the prefrontal cortex.

625
00:44:36.901 --> 00:44:46.828
So research suggests that people who have high levels of psychopathy tend to have less active and less connected prefrontal cortex.

626
00:44:46.848 --> 00:44:48.569
That's associated with impulse control.

627
00:44:48.810 --> 00:44:51.892
It's also associated with kind of moral reasoning, moral thinking.

628
00:44:52.132 --> 00:44:55.995
If their brains are less active during the same moral or...

629
00:44:56.675 --> 00:45:15.827
impulse control task in those regions this might help us to explain why they're more likely to behave impulsively to you know not be empathetic to other people there's also um the amygdala which i don't think you can see on here but and it's on the inside you can open it up oh okay let's see

630
00:45:16.347 --> 00:45:27.315
So other research on psychopathy suggests that the amygdala, which is deep within our brain, is also associated with emotional response, particularly fear.

631
00:45:27.495 --> 00:45:32.499
And so we know that people with high levels of psychopathy tend to have – they experience pretty low fear.

632
00:45:33.380 --> 00:45:38.023
And they're not very good at, like, aversive conditioning, right?

633
00:45:38.043 --> 00:45:40.184
So, like, if we get punished for something –

634
00:45:41.025 --> 00:45:49.308
We learn that whenever we, you know, come up against that stimuli again in the future, we're like, oh, that turned out really badly last time.

635
00:45:49.348 --> 00:45:50.168
I'm going to avoid that.

636
00:45:50.488 --> 00:45:56.310
So amygdalas in people with high levels of psychopathy tend to be both smaller and less active.

637
00:45:56.950 --> 00:46:05.373
So there is like, you know, brain differences, neurological differences between people with high levels and low levels of psychopathy.

638
00:46:06.275 --> 00:46:15.451
So I guess this begs the question that if someone has those traits you've described, or if there are any one of these four things in this dark triad, these dark personality traits, can they be cured?

639
00:46:16.473 --> 00:46:18.918
So some change is possible.

640
00:46:21.618 --> 00:46:24.841
But I mean, some.

641
00:46:26.143 --> 00:46:27.904
Some being an operative word there.

642
00:46:27.964 --> 00:46:34.210
So most of the research we have on psychopathy in particular comes from criminal offenders.

643
00:46:34.331 --> 00:46:40.256
So individuals who are incarcerated have to take part in some treatment while they're inside.

644
00:46:41.337 --> 00:46:45.761
And the research finds that they're not particularly motivated to change.

645
00:46:45.781 --> 00:46:51.646
So that's a big problem with like all of these things because they don't particularly care about other people.

646
00:46:52.107 --> 00:46:55.510
And it tends to be other people that they are hurting with their behavior.

647
00:46:55.730 --> 00:46:57.391
And so it's like, why would I change?

648
00:46:57.431 --> 00:46:59.813
This is like a you problem, not a me problem.

649
00:47:00.093 --> 00:47:00.334
Right.

650
00:47:00.914 --> 00:47:04.637
So motivation can be difficult to come by.

651
00:47:05.598 --> 00:47:06.599
with this population.

652
00:47:06.679 --> 00:47:15.749
But if they do consistently engage in cognitive behavioral therapies, you can reduce the likelihood of recidivism.

653
00:47:16.009 --> 00:47:18.692
So the likelihood that they will reoffend upon release.

654
00:47:18.752 --> 00:47:21.595
Again, we're talking about incarcerated individuals.

655
00:47:21.975 --> 00:47:31.029
When it comes to lower levels of these traits, it's really interesting research by Nathan Hudson had people do these agreeableness challenges.

656
00:47:31.409 --> 00:47:34.914
And agreeableness is kind of like the opposite of these traits.

657
00:47:35.515 --> 00:47:35.755
So,

658
00:47:36.957 --> 00:47:42.702
You would just like ping them on their smartphone every day and would say like, oh, you should give a compliment to a friend.

659
00:47:43.243 --> 00:47:46.926
You should reach out to a friend and just offer them some encouragement.

660
00:47:47.247 --> 00:47:51.851
You should, you know, buy coffee for the person behind you in line at the cafe today.

661
00:47:52.752 --> 00:48:00.839
These little things where people were encouraged to be kind, be helpful to other people, to see other people's perspectives.

662
00:48:00.859 --> 00:48:01.620
Yeah.

663
00:48:01.880 --> 00:48:10.147
And people who actually followed through on those did report having lower levels of these traits after four months than at the start.

664
00:48:10.628 --> 00:48:18.855
And in your book, under the section that says, Hard Truths, Dark Personalities Persist, you write, Poisonous people aren't likely to change very much.

665
00:48:19.315 --> 00:48:22.078
Personality traits are, by definition, enduring,

666
00:48:22.498 --> 00:48:26.041
Although some evolution of our character happens naturally, it takes decades.

667
00:48:26.161 --> 00:48:37.571
Data suggests that people become a bit more agreeable over time, and research with incarcerated men finds that even those with clinical levels of psychopathy are less likely to re-offend as they get older.

668
00:48:38.472 --> 00:48:43.135
Even so, waiting it out is likely to be a painful strategy.

669
00:48:43.716 --> 00:48:52.302
One study asked more than a thousand people who knew individuals who were psychopathic for a long time whether their behaviour had improved past the age of 50.

670
00:48:52.702 --> 00:49:05.731
Almost all respondents, 93%, said that as researchers put it, quote, the behaviour was just as bad or worse after age 50 than it had been previously.

671
00:49:06.736 --> 00:49:07.937
just as bad or worse.

672
00:49:08.778 --> 00:49:10.399
I mean, this is our personality, right?

673
00:49:10.779 --> 00:49:14.142
So it's kind of like asking a tiger to change their stripes.

674
00:49:14.202 --> 00:49:19.886
So if you're not motivated to do it, as we know, people with these traits tend not to be very motivated.

675
00:49:20.367 --> 00:49:23.609
That's where that, you know, 90 some percent of folks come in.

676
00:49:23.669 --> 00:49:29.934
It's like they're not they're not dramatically changing unless they find some reason to do so.

677
00:49:31.033 --> 00:49:37.600
One of the smartest things a business can do is build like a bigger company without actually hiring like one.

678
00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:41.323
But the problem we all face is that most companies don't have every skill in-house.

679
00:49:41.463 --> 00:49:47.509
So when I look at the businesses seeing real success today, the consistent pattern with all of them is how quickly they move.

680
00:49:47.609 --> 00:49:51.173
They bring in specialists with skills in emerging areas to keep themselves ahead.

681
00:49:51.333 --> 00:49:52.054
Even in our company,

682
00:49:52.214 --> 00:49:58.635
We spent the last year pulling in talent across areas like AI-native strategy, no-code builds, and product workflows.

683
00:49:58.775 --> 00:50:01.356
And we find this talent through our long-time partner, Fiverr Pro.

684
00:50:01.636 --> 00:50:14.619
Their premium service only shows you vetted talent, so you've always got the safeguard that anyone you pull in to help you with a complex project has the skills that you're after and will deliver to the same high standards as your internal team.

685
00:50:14.859 --> 00:50:16.699
And, most importantly, they'll keep up with the pace.

686
00:50:16.819 --> 00:50:20.300
It's a simple strategy, but it lets us stay agile without compromising on quality.

687
00:50:20.500 --> 00:50:26.606
So if you need these kind of skills in your business, head to pro.fiverr.com to find pioneering talent to fill your business's gaps.

688
00:50:26.946 --> 00:50:28.528
That's pro.fiverr.com.

689
00:50:29.289 --> 00:50:31.731
Hello, I wasn't able to make that finance meeting.

690
00:50:31.791 --> 00:50:33.853
Can you tell me what I missed?

691
00:50:33.953 --> 00:50:36.736
What I have in front of me is Whisperflow's new Notetaker.

692
00:50:36.776 --> 00:50:38.618
And for me, it's been an absolute game changer.

693
00:50:38.678 --> 00:50:42.840
I spend most of my life sat in very, very long meetings with lots of different teams and lots of different departments.

694
00:50:42.960 --> 00:50:47.141
In any given week, I could have 40, 50 meetings and sometimes more.

695
00:50:47.181 --> 00:50:52.424
But also I sit in podcasts where lots of very interesting things get said and I need to focus on the conversation.

696
00:50:52.704 --> 00:50:58.746
What Whisperflow's Notetaker does for me is it captures the entire context of everything that's happened throughout my entire week.

697
00:50:58.866 --> 00:51:01.567
It labels who the people are that said what.

698
00:51:01.727 --> 00:51:02.728
And I can ask it.

699
00:51:03.348 --> 00:51:08.230
for things that I might have forgotten, for actions, things that I said I would do that I haven't yet done.

700
00:51:08.430 --> 00:51:12.131
It's building this sort of broader context of everything that's happening in my life.

701
00:51:12.491 --> 00:51:14.392
And it's an incredible, incredible superpower.

702
00:51:14.492 --> 00:51:19.514
I love the fact that so many of you come up to me in the street because you know I'm an investor in Whisperflow and tell me how much it's changed your life.

703
00:51:19.634 --> 00:51:22.275
It is the worst kept secret in productivity.

704
00:51:22.475 --> 00:51:28.137
If you want to give it a go, head to whisperflow.ai.com to download it right now and give it a try.

705
00:51:28.157 --> 00:51:30.677
And once you try it, I think you'll realize well, we let them sponsor this podcast.

706
00:51:30.898 --> 00:51:31.398
It's amazing.

707
00:51:32.401 --> 00:51:34.001
Is there anything else in this bucket that you find interesting?

708
00:51:34.041 --> 00:51:43.284
Because I know you may or may not be working on a book that really focuses on deception, but is there anything else that we haven't covered here that you think is pertinent or any research that you uncovered that was fascinating?

709
00:51:44.564 --> 00:51:54.426
So in my lab right now, I've become increasingly fascinated with how we respond to people who are lying to us when we're not suspicious at all.

710
00:51:54.446 --> 00:51:56.327
Because most of the research is like,

711
00:51:57.598 --> 00:52:03.363
I give you a bunch of videos and I tell you some of these people are lying, some are telling the truth, and you make judgments about them.

712
00:52:03.663 --> 00:52:06.345
But that's not how real life works like at all, right?

713
00:52:06.806 --> 00:52:09.688
So usually we're having some sort of interaction with people.

714
00:52:09.768 --> 00:52:13.531
No one comes in and says, you need to judge the veracity of this person.

715
00:52:14.032 --> 00:52:15.533
We're just having a conversation.

716
00:52:15.673 --> 00:52:25.741
And so I've been really interested in how conversations unfold, how interactions unfold when one person is lying and the other person is just like none the wiser.

717
00:52:25.761 --> 00:52:25.862
Yeah.

718
00:52:26.582 --> 00:52:38.007
And so we keep finding these pretty small but consistent effects that people feel less close to their interaction partner when someone is lying to them.

719
00:52:38.588 --> 00:52:38.988
Close.

720
00:52:39.208 --> 00:52:39.908
Yeah.

721
00:52:40.208 --> 00:52:46.191
So we actually had this study where we got people to just converse, right?

722
00:52:46.211 --> 00:52:47.012
Talk to a stranger.

723
00:52:48.112 --> 00:52:49.973
One person was told to lie in response to everything.

724
00:52:49.993 --> 00:52:52.073
The other person had no idea that was going on.

725
00:52:52.654 --> 00:53:05.158
And at the end of that study, the dyads that had a liar in them said, like, I feel, you know, less connected to this other person than dyads where both people were telling the truth.

726
00:53:06.178 --> 00:53:16.485
And so we also found that the more lies that people tell, they just, you know, self-report on how much they lie in their everyday life, the more lonely they feel.

727
00:53:17.586 --> 00:53:21.469
And so we're finding this kind of bi-directional effect.

728
00:53:21.649 --> 00:53:22.550
And I think often...

729
00:53:23.270 --> 00:53:27.752
People lie to, like, spare the feelings of others.

730
00:53:28.152 --> 00:53:29.972
That's for the average person.

731
00:53:30.513 --> 00:53:35.655
Not necessarily these traits here, but for the average person, most of the lies that we tell are pro-social in nature.

732
00:53:35.715 --> 00:53:37.915
Like, I tell you a lie because I don't want to hurt your feelings.

733
00:53:38.336 --> 00:53:46.459
But we are finding that that actually creates this, like, social distance between us as opposed to bringing us closer together.

734
00:53:46.479 --> 00:53:49.580
And so I've been really interested in just kind of, like, the negative...

735
00:53:50.380 --> 00:54:06.370
impacts of telling lies even when we do it for quote-unquote good reasons in that you talked about how when if we were both sat down and you were asked to lie to me i would walk away feeling like i was less close i slash connected to you what is it in your in your behavior that

736
00:54:07.596 --> 00:54:12.639
or in my perception, that you think is causing this feeling of disconnection?

737
00:54:12.659 --> 00:54:13.119
Mm-hmm.

738
00:54:14.060 --> 00:54:26.627
So, we are finding that people who are lying are perceived as less warm, they're perceived as less competent, they're perceived as less moral.

739
00:54:27.207 --> 00:54:28.548
Also, if we think about, like,

740
00:54:29.408 --> 00:54:38.835
Some of the cues to deception that we talked about earlier, when people give relatively few details about themselves, conversations are based on this reciprocal exchange, right?

741
00:54:38.875 --> 00:54:45.680
Like, I tell you something about myself, you tell me something about yourself, and, like, we start to know each other, right?

742
00:54:46.221 --> 00:54:54.687
And so if you've got someone who's lying to you, they're giving you less information about themselves, for example, and so I don't feel like I know you at the end of our conversation.

743
00:54:54.707 --> 00:54:54.807
Yeah.

744
00:54:55.187 --> 00:55:06.196
Even though I'm not like actively suspicious that you're lying to me about your likes and your interests and what you did on Friday afternoon, it comes across because you gave me less information.

745
00:55:06.437 --> 00:55:09.199
And maybe I think he didn't really want to talk to me.

746
00:55:11.121 --> 00:55:14.463
I mean, I'm so fascinated by the fact that you have a lab that tests this stuff.

747
00:55:15.024 --> 00:55:18.627
What are some of the fascinating questions you've gone in search of answers for in your lab?

748
00:55:19.879 --> 00:55:25.517
One that I love is how much sympathy people feel for

749
00:55:27.355 --> 00:55:31.298
individuals who are lying or telling the truth about how sad they are.

750
00:55:31.338 --> 00:55:34.180
So like, think back to the pleaders, right, that we talked about.

751
00:55:34.801 --> 00:55:41.806
If you look at this face, right, versus this face, like how much empathy do you have for that person?

752
00:55:41.846 --> 00:55:43.167
How sad do you feel?

753
00:55:43.187 --> 00:55:48.992
How willing are you to donate money to whatever cause they're looking for?

754
00:55:49.052 --> 00:55:50.613
So like, we studied this with

755
00:55:52.172 --> 00:55:53.692
the pleaders that we talked about.

756
00:55:53.712 --> 00:56:01.134
So people who went on TV and asked for help trying to find their missing loved one, half of whom were actually responsible for killing that person they pleaded to find.

757
00:56:01.755 --> 00:56:10.397
And we showed people, again, they weren't aware that some of these folks were lying and some were telling the truth, but we showed them these videos and we said, how much sympathy...

758
00:56:10.697 --> 00:56:15.139
do you feel for this person who's asking for help trying to find the missing individual?

759
00:56:15.619 --> 00:56:22.622
And how much money would you donate to a theoretical GoFundMe that would like help support the search for this missing person?

760
00:56:23.342 --> 00:56:32.486
And we find really consistently that people are more willing to donate money to the genuine pleaders relative to the deceptive ones.

761
00:56:32.986 --> 00:56:37.628
And they feel more kind of sympathy and compassion for them, even though they're not willing

762
00:56:37.883 --> 00:56:43.107
you know, they don't know that some of these folks are actually, like, deceptive murderers.

763
00:56:43.227 --> 00:56:51.814
And the effects are, like, you know, not gigantic, but it does suggest that, like, we're not completely clueless moving through the world.

764
00:56:52.194 --> 00:56:57.478
But when we reduce it to a simple binary, is this person lying or telling the truth?

765
00:56:58.319 --> 00:57:04.806
we lose a lot of kind of like the nuance of how we move through our relationships.

766
00:57:04.866 --> 00:57:08.790
And like, oh, I'm feeling kind of close to this person, closer to that person.

767
00:57:08.830 --> 00:57:11.293
I'm willing to help this person more than that person.

768
00:57:11.913 --> 00:57:14.196
Yeah, so those are the kinds of things I've been interested in.

769
00:57:14.677 --> 00:57:20.979
One of the things, I spoke to Vanessa Van Edwards on this podcast a few times, and she does a lot of stuff around like body language and how you show up.

770
00:57:20.999 --> 00:57:23.539
And she talks about warmth and competence.

771
00:57:23.599 --> 00:57:23.799
Yeah.

772
00:57:24.480 --> 00:57:30.601
And how some people can over-index on warmth, and maybe that brings them down on competence, or they can over-index on competence but be less warm.

773
00:57:31.541 --> 00:57:33.262
Wanted to know if you had a perspective on this.

774
00:57:33.322 --> 00:57:37.403
Like how, like, through your research and through all the studies you've done...

775
00:57:39.392 --> 00:57:41.513
can you be warm and competent at the same time?

776
00:57:41.753 --> 00:57:43.214
Or is there a bit of a trade-off?

777
00:57:43.374 --> 00:57:46.295
And like, even you used the word warmth a second ago.

778
00:57:46.656 --> 00:57:47.676
What is it to be a warm person?

779
00:57:47.716 --> 00:57:48.576
Is it to be like, how?

780
00:57:48.596 --> 00:57:50.197
Or is it like, you know, like?

781
00:57:50.998 --> 00:57:55.460
No, it's like, it is the sense that someone is kind.

782
00:57:56.100 --> 00:57:57.681
And honest and trustworthy.

783
00:57:57.922 --> 00:58:02.985
It is your benevolent intentions toward another person, right?

784
00:58:03.486 --> 00:58:17.257
So we trust people to the extent that they are both warm and competent in the sense that, like, I'm going to trust you if I think you have benevolent intentions toward me, that I think you, like, want to be kind to me.

785
00:58:18.077 --> 00:58:27.864
But also, if I think you can actually execute on that thing, like, do you have the competence, the ability to actually, you know, do that thing, make that connection for me at work, right?

786
00:58:28.304 --> 00:58:39.672
It's like, if you are just warm, but like, you've got no, you don't have like the ability to back it up, then we tend to trust those individuals less.

787
00:58:39.692 --> 00:58:44.776
So this warmth, high warmth, high competence tends to be associated with high trustworthiness.

788
00:58:45.157 --> 00:58:48.477
And does high warmth come with certain behaviours?

789
00:58:49.244 --> 00:58:51.386
Yeah, I mean, one is just smiling.

790
00:58:52.026 --> 00:58:52.327
Okay.

791
00:58:52.527 --> 00:58:52.867
Yeah.

792
00:58:53.007 --> 00:58:54.869
Eye contact, you know.

793
00:58:55.689 --> 00:59:01.334
It reminds me of the research by Alison Woodbrooks, who I know has been here before as well.

794
00:59:01.614 --> 00:59:08.480
And, you know, being engaged and interested in your conversation partner, right?

795
00:59:08.540 --> 00:59:10.322
These, like, immediacy cues.

796
00:59:10.342 --> 00:59:11.383
Like, you're leaning in.

797
00:59:11.823 --> 00:59:12.844
You're paying attention.

798
00:59:13.284 --> 00:59:14.225
You are smiling.

799
00:59:14.245 --> 00:59:15.426
You're making eye contact.

800
00:59:15.526 --> 00:59:16.827
These things are associated with warmth.

801
00:59:17.127 --> 00:59:17.668
What about...

802
00:59:19.283 --> 00:59:20.124
Resting bitch face.

803
00:59:22.645 --> 00:59:27.767
I am occasionally guilty of this thing when I concentrate.

804
00:59:28.348 --> 00:59:35.872
So when we have very little information about a person, we're just trying to pick up on anything, right, in their...

805
00:59:36.632 --> 00:59:41.736
in their body language, their nonverbal behavior, to try to make an assessment of them.

806
00:59:42.116 --> 00:59:49.601
If we've just got like a quick look at your face and there's a bit of a scowl on it, that signals to us anger.

807
00:59:50.322 --> 00:59:54.165
And anger is not a very, that's not a warm thing, right?

808
00:59:54.565 --> 00:59:57.867
And so that tends to decrease our perceived trustworthiness of people.

809
00:59:58.127 --> 01:00:00.169
Any other fascinating questions you've pursued in your lab?

810
01:00:00.645 --> 01:00:07.810
So I've been really interested in psychopathy as it relates to leadership outcomes.

811
01:00:08.631 --> 01:00:11.333
So whenever I finished my PhD,

812
01:00:12.387 --> 01:00:15.149
I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next.

813
01:00:15.389 --> 01:00:18.971
And I was kind of bummed out thinking about murder all the time.

814
01:00:18.991 --> 01:00:25.596
I was like, I really love these topics, but I got to go somewhere else and think about this in a different context.

815
01:00:26.076 --> 01:00:30.159
It was shortly after the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme kind of fell apart.

816
01:00:30.179 --> 01:00:33.641
And I was like, oh, maybe business school.

817
01:00:33.861 --> 01:00:39.425
I could go to a different context and study these same personality traits just in a different context.

818
01:00:39.565 --> 01:00:39.805
area.

819
01:00:40.646 --> 01:00:53.336
And I was also interested in like this notion of successful psychopathy because like since really early descriptions of psychopathy, there's been this suggestion that these traits can actually help you to succeed.

820
01:00:53.696 --> 01:00:53.956
Right.

821
01:00:54.536 --> 01:01:01.182
And I often hear that from people where they're like, yeah, like that's terrible behavior, but like, you know,

822
01:01:02.181 --> 01:01:03.282
Sometimes that helps, right?

823
01:01:03.302 --> 01:01:04.942
And I'm like, does it?

824
01:01:05.262 --> 01:01:07.283
What does the data say on that?

825
01:01:07.383 --> 01:01:10.085
And so I work with Dacher Keltner.

826
01:01:10.105 --> 01:01:11.605
Oh, Dacher's been here as well.

827
01:01:11.925 --> 01:01:12.305
Has he?

828
01:01:12.386 --> 01:01:12.566
Yeah.

829
01:01:13.146 --> 01:01:13.846
I love that guy.

830
01:01:13.886 --> 01:01:14.967
He's so wonderful.

831
01:01:15.187 --> 01:01:15.667
I love him.

832
01:01:15.867 --> 01:01:27.212
And so we studied, you know, the extent to which psychopathic personality traits could increase the amount of influence you have in government and also the amount of money that you make as a hedge fund manager.

833
01:01:27.232 --> 01:01:28.252
Those are kind of the two.

834
01:01:28.272 --> 01:01:29.513
Because I was like, these people.

835
01:01:29.833 --> 01:01:32.054
hyper-competitive context, right?

836
01:01:33.754 --> 01:01:38.996
Where maybe in government you can kind of like backstab and backroom deals and whatever.

837
01:01:39.096 --> 01:01:44.318
You might be able to get lots of co-sponsors on your bills if you're using kind of these backroom tactics.

838
01:01:44.898 --> 01:01:49.919
And then I thought with respect to money, maybe you're willing to take more risks, right?

839
01:01:50.019 --> 01:01:53.601
You're willing to cut people or companies down in public.

840
01:01:53.641 --> 01:01:53.781
You're

841
01:01:59.596 --> 01:02:03.838
I, of course, was like, these are situations where people with high levels of psychopathy can shine.

842
01:02:04.398 --> 01:02:07.719
Dacker was like, no, it won't be.

843
01:02:07.739 --> 01:02:12.101
So we were kind of pitting these like good versus evil concepts against each other.

844
01:02:12.661 --> 01:02:19.123
And consistently, we found that high levels of psychopathy was associated with less influence in government.

845
01:02:19.543 --> 01:02:28.887
It was also associated with making less money as a hedge fund manager, whereas it's very like counterintuitive, I think, to people.

846
01:02:29.707 --> 01:02:32.268
What about some of these other ones, like narcissism and Machiavellian?

847
01:02:32.328 --> 01:02:33.309
What about those ones?

848
01:02:33.909 --> 01:02:36.871
So it really depends on how you define success.

849
01:02:36.931 --> 01:02:45.536
So there is some research to suggest that narcissism, Machiavellianism can be associated with rising up in ranks, maybe having a higher salary level.

850
01:02:45.716 --> 01:02:45.916
But

851
01:02:47.198 --> 01:02:51.621
They're not associated with, like, teams doing great, right?

852
01:02:51.961 --> 01:02:56.184
And honestly, most of the research is on psychopathy.

853
01:02:57.104 --> 01:03:04.589
The work that I'm interested in is that people with high levels of psychopathy, they talk a really good game.

854
01:03:04.909 --> 01:03:08.412
And they make people think that they're a great, like, tactical communicator.

855
01:03:08.832 --> 01:03:10.473
They're very strategic thinkers.

856
01:03:10.913 --> 01:03:13.175
But if you actually ask them, like, how good are they at their job?

857
01:03:14.023 --> 01:03:15.844
They say they're a terrible manager.

858
01:03:16.324 --> 01:03:18.865
They tend to bully their subordinates.

859
01:03:18.885 --> 01:03:22.706
They create a huge amount of stress for other people on their team.

860
01:03:23.386 --> 01:03:25.027
And their teams have worse outcomes because of it.

861
01:03:25.887 --> 01:03:34.550
So when you're talking about team performance, you're saying narcissists typically aren't good at leading teams over the long term?

862
01:03:35.080 --> 01:03:38.883
They tend to come across as like leadership material early on.

863
01:03:39.223 --> 01:03:43.126
And there's this one study by Del Paul House, which shows this quite nicely.

864
01:03:43.166 --> 01:03:46.569
It's like they had these student groups and they worked together throughout the term.

865
01:03:46.769 --> 01:03:51.993
After the first meeting, they all made judgments about each other, how likable they were, etc., etc.

866
01:03:52.353 --> 01:03:56.076
Whether they seemed confident and smart and agreeable.

867
01:03:56.697 --> 01:03:59.058
The people who were high in narcissism.

868
01:03:59.919 --> 01:04:03.543
came across really well in that first interaction.

869
01:04:03.603 --> 01:04:05.545
Like, they said they knew what they were doing.

870
01:04:05.565 --> 01:04:07.086
They came across very confident.

871
01:04:07.587 --> 01:04:09.488
They seemed like they could lead.

872
01:04:09.528 --> 01:04:11.030
They wanted to lead.

873
01:04:11.671 --> 01:04:21.180
But then as the course of the term went by, people were like, this person is actually really hostile and, like, doesn't do their work, and they're a pain in the butt.

874
01:04:21.460 --> 01:04:21.760
So...

875
01:04:23.125 --> 01:04:33.078
Certainly, the, you know, the thing that can make narcissism look good at the outset is our confusion of confidence and competence.

876
01:04:33.658 --> 01:04:38.484
So when someone says they can do something and they say it very confidently, we're like, oh, they got this, right?

877
01:04:38.925 --> 01:04:42.009
But that's not the same thing as actually being able to do it.

878
01:04:42.369 --> 01:04:46.214
We have some cards here, which are people's dating profiles.

879
01:04:46.335 --> 01:04:46.715
Okay.

880
01:04:47.256 --> 01:04:54.245
And I'm wondering if you can spot any of these dark personality traits just by looking at dating profiles or any clues that might be associated with it.

881
01:04:54.586 --> 01:04:54.786
All right.

882
01:04:54.806 --> 01:04:55.126
All right.

883
01:04:56.883 --> 01:04:57.823
So this is Ryan.

884
01:04:58.324 --> 01:05:03.606
He's a chief of staff in Washington, D.C. Professionally trained to argue my point.

885
01:05:03.786 --> 01:05:06.927
So, yes, I'm probably going to win the debate about what to have for dinner.

886
01:05:06.947 --> 01:05:09.728
Okay, this feels like a red flag.

887
01:05:10.349 --> 01:05:13.050
Savvy, strategic, and persuasive by trade.

888
01:05:13.190 --> 01:05:17.592
I mean, this feels very much like Machiavellianism, right?

889
01:05:17.632 --> 01:05:22.534
Kind of like controlling the situation, being kind of a smooth talker.

890
01:05:23.034 --> 01:05:24.375
Savvy meaning like...

891
01:05:25.195 --> 01:05:27.056
They're controlling you.

892
01:05:27.117 --> 01:05:31.100
They're maybe using information to get you to do what they want.

893
01:05:31.780 --> 01:05:32.581
Strategic, right?

894
01:05:32.601 --> 01:05:41.487
We talked about that very kind of strategic social style where like they're not kind of impulsively behaving like someone with psychopathy.

895
01:05:41.507 --> 01:05:45.330
They're more like playing three-dimensional chess, right, to get what they want.

896
01:05:45.670 --> 01:05:47.172
So that's quite a strategic behavior.

897
01:05:47.192 --> 01:05:47.292
Yeah.

898
01:05:47.892 --> 01:05:54.779
Off the clock, you'll find me exploring the city, enjoying great food, traveling, and keeping life interesting, looking for someone who makes me laugh.

899
01:05:54.799 --> 01:06:11.154
So I think the words to me that are like, might be used as like euphemisms, essentially, for some of the Machiavellian traits would be savvy, strategic, persuasive, like I can get anybody to do anything because I'm just going to manipulate them into doing it.

900
01:06:11.174 --> 01:06:12.115
Okay.

901
01:06:13.658 --> 01:06:15.379
These could be red flags.

902
01:06:15.439 --> 01:06:17.159
He could be a perfectly nice guy.

903
01:06:17.619 --> 01:06:25.522
But these are things that I would like go into that conversation thinking like, okay, does he seem very cynical of people?

904
01:06:25.602 --> 01:06:27.063
Is he quite power hungry?

905
01:06:27.543 --> 01:06:33.165
Is he willing to manipulate other people to his own ends and kind of step over other people for what he wants?

906
01:06:33.405 --> 01:06:35.488
What about that last line about makes me laugh?

907
01:06:36.049 --> 01:06:42.398
I found that to be quite self-serving in a way because, I don't know, you're looking for something yourself there.

908
01:06:43.119 --> 01:06:44.140
That obviously can be true.

909
01:06:44.160 --> 01:06:45.502
We're all looking for someone that can make us laugh.

910
01:06:45.542 --> 01:06:48.005
But whether you'd write that is, I don't know.

911
01:06:48.326 --> 01:06:48.426
Yeah.

912
01:06:48.446 --> 01:06:48.806
Just interesting.

913
01:06:48.826 --> 01:06:49.167
Interesting.

914
01:06:49.307 --> 01:06:49.827
Potentially.

915
01:06:49.847 --> 01:06:50.467
All right.

916
01:06:50.487 --> 01:06:52.528
So this is Haley, who is a lawyer.

917
01:06:53.248 --> 01:06:55.468
My friends call me Hurricane, but you can call me Haley.

918
01:06:55.568 --> 01:06:57.669
Equal parts chaos and good company.

919
01:06:58.049 --> 01:07:04.791
Chaos is immediately bringing up potential psychopathy because that's like that impulsivity.

920
01:07:04.871 --> 01:07:06.871
Like you kind of don't really know where she's at.

921
01:07:07.371 --> 01:07:18.694
In women in particular, psychopathy can be associated with like pretty volatile emotions and like connecting with like we seem really close one day and then I'm really angry at you the next day.

922
01:07:19.374 --> 01:07:25.860
I'll happily spend the weekend trying to trying a new workout class or plotting a harmless prank on my friends.

923
01:07:26.681 --> 01:07:28.142
That's a sadism.

924
01:07:29.083 --> 01:07:29.704
Red flag.

925
01:07:29.744 --> 01:07:34.528
So someone who is, you know, maybe delighting in someone else getting hurt.

926
01:07:35.069 --> 01:07:36.750
That could be concerning.

927
01:07:37.251 --> 01:07:39.753
Outspoken, tough enough to handle myself.

928
01:07:39.993 --> 01:07:42.436
Toughness is associated with psychopathy.

929
01:07:42.636 --> 01:07:43.937
Do you think you can handle me?

930
01:07:46.825 --> 01:07:47.606
That's up to you.

931
01:07:47.626 --> 01:07:49.767
Okay.

932
01:07:50.028 --> 01:07:52.129
David is a brain surgeon.

933
01:07:52.790 --> 01:07:53.390
Very impressive.

934
01:07:53.450 --> 01:07:57.774
So he's a surgeon by day, theater enthusiast, and cocktail appreciator by night.

935
01:07:57.874 --> 01:08:03.138
I'm confident enough to pick the restaurant, self-assured to admit when I'm wrong, occasionally...

936
01:08:03.979 --> 01:08:06.460
And my friends would describe me as the life of the party.

937
01:08:06.780 --> 01:08:11.721
So this is giving like potential narcissism cues, right?

938
01:08:11.741 --> 01:08:21.684
So loves a lot of attention, life of the party, confident enough to pick like he won't be wrong about picking the restaurant, self-assured enough to admit when I'm wrong.

939
01:08:22.104 --> 01:08:23.805
Occasionally, he put in brackets.

940
01:08:24.405 --> 01:08:26.906
So you might not see a ton of that behavior.

941
01:08:27.326 --> 01:08:27.806
Don't worry.

942
01:08:27.886 --> 01:08:30.127
I'm sure I can find the time for you somewhere.

943
01:08:31.408 --> 01:08:33.729
winky face.

944
01:08:34.149 --> 01:08:36.210
So you might not be a priority.

945
01:08:37.270 --> 01:08:41.831
But you know, again, so I'm seeing narcissism vibes here.

946
01:08:41.871 --> 01:08:48.573
That's something I would, you know, pay attention to in our conversation would be like, does he ever ask anything about me?

947
01:08:48.974 --> 01:08:52.435
Or do we just talk about him and how fabulous and amazing his

948
01:08:57.551 --> 01:09:01.639
You know, profiles are like an advertisement that you put out there.

949
01:09:02.280 --> 01:09:05.085
So this is not an entire person's personality.

950
01:09:05.366 --> 01:09:08.432
So we can gather more information over time, but some red flags there.

951
01:09:10.325 --> 01:09:11.106
This is Chad.

952
01:09:11.426 --> 01:09:13.327
He's in law enforcement in Texas.

953
01:09:13.668 --> 01:09:16.550
He's barbecuing in the picture, which feels on brand.

954
01:09:16.810 --> 01:09:19.052
Looking for my wife who will join me for life.

955
01:09:19.372 --> 01:09:20.693
No debt and no kids.

956
01:09:21.114 --> 01:09:22.034
Don't worry, ladies.

957
01:09:22.195 --> 01:09:23.055
I'm house trained.

958
01:09:23.816 --> 01:09:25.757
When I'm off duty, I'm very independent.

959
01:09:26.298 --> 01:09:32.983
Y'all find me hunting, outdoors, grilling, or challenging my buddies, looking for someone genuine to share life's adventures with.

960
01:09:35.485 --> 01:09:35.866
Nice car.

961
01:09:36.786 --> 01:09:37.407
Seems okay.

962
01:09:37.667 --> 01:09:37.947
Yeah.

963
01:09:38.548 --> 01:09:38.748
Yeah.

964
01:09:40.647 --> 01:09:41.308
Wonder what he's growing.

965
01:09:41.608 --> 01:09:41.768
Yeah.

966
01:09:42.389 --> 01:09:42.609
Okay.

967
01:09:43.030 --> 01:09:58.668
If I was to go on a date with any of these people, Hayley, Ryan, David, Chad, from these dating cards that we just read out, what are the type of verbal and nonverbal cues that I would be looking for, whether I was dating them or in a relationship with them, to figure out if they had any of these dark personality traits?

968
01:09:59.168 --> 01:10:01.689
Again, these are kind of early warning signs that you can look for.

969
01:10:02.169 --> 01:10:08.052
Things like, do they interrupt you often but refuse to tolerate it when you interrupt, right?

970
01:10:08.072 --> 01:10:13.695
And so this is kind of an indication of that impulsivity as well as potential dominance over other people.

971
01:10:13.715 --> 01:10:15.016
They want to dominate you.

972
01:10:15.496 --> 01:10:19.198
And I mean, sometimes people get excited and they just want to, like, interject and share something.

973
01:10:19.618 --> 01:10:26.501
Here, what we're really interested in is it's a cue to impulsivity, but, like, refusing to tolerate it when you interrupt.

974
01:10:26.521 --> 01:10:28.182
That makes them quite angry.

975
01:10:28.722 --> 01:10:32.383
Do they consistently ignore personal or professional boundaries?

976
01:10:33.104 --> 01:10:38.446
So, you know, maybe you're at work or maybe you're on one of these dates, right?

977
01:10:38.466 --> 01:10:42.287
And you say, I'd really rather not talk about my family right now.

978
01:10:42.768 --> 01:10:45.109
And they continue to ask you about your family.

979
01:10:45.129 --> 01:10:47.209
And you're like, I really don't want to talk about that right now.

980
01:10:47.229 --> 01:10:47.449
Okay.

981
01:10:47.509 --> 01:10:47.730
Yeah.

982
01:10:47.770 --> 01:10:50.691
Tell me about your brother and this terrible relationship you have with them.

983
01:10:51.071 --> 01:10:56.273
So kind of always pushing on boundaries, even when they're set explicitly.

984
01:10:56.613 --> 01:10:58.334
Do they seem weirdly calm?

985
01:10:58.394 --> 01:11:02.557
This is related to psychopathy and that kind of shallow emotional affect.

986
01:11:02.837 --> 01:11:10.723
Like they're not experiencing fear or sadness or concern for other people when you expect they would in a conversation.

987
01:11:13.147 --> 01:11:15.148
Do they seem to be an authority on every subject?

988
01:11:15.188 --> 01:11:17.570
This is a narcissism vibe, right?

989
01:11:17.610 --> 01:11:22.513
Like they know everything about everything and you don't know anything, right?

990
01:11:22.533 --> 01:11:24.634
So they need to be the authority.

991
01:11:25.254 --> 01:11:30.538
Do they offer impulsive, off-the-cuff responses to your questions so they're not really thinking about things?

992
01:11:30.558 --> 01:11:37.562
They're just saying whatever comes to their mind immediately, a sign of potential impulsivity that's associated with psychopathy.

993
01:11:37.882 --> 01:11:41.044
Do they seem to come across as tough, combative, or cruel?

994
01:11:41.064 --> 01:11:41.164
Yeah.

995
01:11:41.784 --> 01:11:48.729
So psychopathy associated with aggression, wanting to dominate people, cruelty, of course, sadism.

996
01:11:49.009 --> 01:11:53.392
So Hayley here, she said about throwing pranks, she's called herself tough.

997
01:11:53.813 --> 01:11:54.173
Mm hmm.

998
01:11:54.893 --> 01:11:56.053
and asked if we could handle her.

999
01:11:56.373 --> 01:11:57.714
So maybe that's Lynx.

1000
01:11:57.954 --> 01:11:58.954
Yep, exactly.

1001
01:11:59.675 --> 01:12:00.455
This one's interesting.

1002
01:12:00.495 --> 01:12:05.076
So, do they make intense eye contact with you, seeming to peer into your soul?

1003
01:12:05.536 --> 01:12:11.458
One of the things that clinicians have noted with people with high levels of psychopathy is that they tend to make really intense eye contact.

1004
01:12:12.419 --> 01:12:12.599
Hmm.

1005
01:12:13.579 --> 01:12:13.879
Okay.

1006
01:12:14.530 --> 01:12:18.912
Do they seem to lack emotions related to self-awareness, such as embarrassment or shame?

1007
01:12:19.172 --> 01:12:28.715
These are the kind of broader self-conscious emotions, like remorse, like guilt, that are associated with a psychopathy, a deficit in those.

1008
01:12:29.556 --> 01:12:33.017
Do they spend a lot of time talking about themselves and show much less interest in you?

1009
01:12:33.797 --> 01:12:35.178
That's our old friend, narcissism.

1010
01:12:36.938 --> 01:12:41.420
And when others are struggling, do they find it enjoyable, annoying, or boring?

1011
01:12:41.940 --> 01:12:43.941
And that would be associated with sadism.

1012
01:12:44.972 --> 01:12:47.113
This is something that I've made for you.

1013
01:12:47.193 --> 01:12:51.355
I realize that the Diary of a CEO audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health.

1014
01:12:51.596 --> 01:12:53.477
We all have big goals that we want to accomplish.

1015
01:12:53.797 --> 01:13:05.563
And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards.

1016
01:13:05.943 --> 01:13:09.185
The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tasks.

1017
01:13:09.205 --> 01:13:10.767
Tiny, small steps.

1018
01:13:10.867 --> 01:13:12.389
And we call this in our team, the 1%.

1019
01:13:12.609 --> 01:13:16.954
And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here.

1020
01:13:17.134 --> 01:13:23.702
So, what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have, is we've made these 1% diaries...

1021
01:13:24.463 --> 01:13:26.845
And we released these last year and they all sold out.

1022
01:13:27.165 --> 01:13:33.270
So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary.

1023
01:13:33.290 --> 01:13:37.734
So now we have a better range for you.

1024
01:13:37.934 --> 01:13:47.522
So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again.

1025
01:13:47.602 --> 01:13:50.365
And you can get yours at thediary.com.

1026
01:13:50.605 --> 01:13:52.326
And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.

1027
01:13:53.400 --> 01:13:54.160
with two things in mind.

1028
01:13:55.240 --> 01:14:00.381
The first thing is that these dark personality traits are very common relative to the impact they can have on lives.

1029
01:14:00.401 --> 01:14:01.401
I think they're extremely common.

1030
01:14:01.981 --> 01:14:06.802
And the second thing is that, according to your book and some of the research, people don't tend to change.

1031
01:14:07.062 --> 01:14:11.163
So this leads me to the conclusion that we might have to figure out how to deal with these people.

1032
01:14:11.183 --> 01:14:19.284
Because if we work in a company or a team, or even if we work in a family, if I look at some of those stats around antisocial personality behaviors, it would suggest

1033
01:14:23.125 --> 01:14:26.906
So we can't just hope to avoid them in our lives.

1034
01:14:27.446 --> 01:14:28.226
No.

1035
01:14:28.607 --> 01:14:30.467
I mean, everyone's got a story, I think.

1036
01:14:30.727 --> 01:14:40.590
And I think people feel relatively powerless, like, because the approaches that we tend to take with other people when they hurt us don't work very well for these individuals.

1037
01:14:40.650 --> 01:14:45.991
Like, when someone hurts us, we might be like, we show them, we tell them, that really hurt me.

1038
01:14:46.331 --> 01:14:48.612
And then they feel guilt and they might apologize, right?

1039
01:14:49.172 --> 01:14:51.856
Or we might punish them in some way.

1040
01:14:52.136 --> 01:14:55.280
And then that leads them to avoid that behavior in the future.

1041
01:14:55.680 --> 01:15:01.367
These are precisely things that people with psychopathy, for example, like doesn't really work, right?

1042
01:15:01.387 --> 01:15:04.230
And so we're left being like, how do I deal with this?

1043
01:15:04.270 --> 01:15:05.371
Like my tools are not...

1044
01:15:06.012 --> 01:15:06.352
working.

1045
01:15:06.612 --> 01:15:11.514
But I think what's really kind of powerful to know is that there are things that you can do.

1046
01:15:11.754 --> 01:15:15.796
So we've got seven rules for dealing with people with dark personalities.

1047
01:15:16.556 --> 01:15:21.278
So the first one is to establish clear boundaries.

1048
01:15:21.998 --> 01:15:28.721
And I want to kind of preface this by saying like setting out the rules is not like a guarantee that they won't be broken, right?

1049
01:15:28.761 --> 01:15:32.142
We've talked about with respect to psychopathy that they tend to break the rules.

1050
01:15:32.162 --> 01:15:34.583
So it's like a defining feature of that personality.

1051
01:15:35.868 --> 01:15:46.428
But research suggests that establishing clear rules, making them explicit, decreases the likelihood of kind of selfish behavior, for example.

1052
01:15:47.532 --> 01:15:50.734
compared to if there's no rules whatsoever, right?

1053
01:15:50.874 --> 01:15:51.154
I care.

1054
01:15:51.494 --> 01:16:01.880
So sometimes, like, you know, in my workplace, we have a respectful workplace policy, which when I read it was like, why do people need a respectful... Like, why do people need to be reminded of this?

1055
01:16:01.920 --> 01:16:03.340
This seems so obvious, right?

1056
01:16:03.761 --> 01:16:06.762
But there's really good reasons to have a respectful workplace policy.

1057
01:16:06.882 --> 01:16:11.765
One is that it makes very explicit how we expect people to be treated here.

1058
01:16:12.365 --> 01:16:15.407
That is going to decrease the likelihood of people, even with...

1059
01:16:15.787 --> 01:16:20.911
with, you know, kind of moderate levels of these traits, let's say, will violate those rules.

1060
01:16:21.372 --> 01:16:27.637
And more than that, if they do violate the rules, you've got something written down that's like, you're not supposed to do this.

1061
01:16:28.197 --> 01:16:31.020
Otherwise, it's very hard to kind of do anything about it, right?

1062
01:16:31.400 --> 01:16:36.164
In a relationship, you can make this really clear, like, what's okay, what's not okay in this relationship?

1063
01:16:36.304 --> 01:16:37.805
And you've got to tell the other person that.

1064
01:16:37.845 --> 01:16:39.526
It can't just be in your head, right?

1065
01:16:39.926 --> 01:16:42.628
So you've got to make these rules explicit.

1066
01:16:43.068 --> 01:16:45.770
And it can also help to, like, read in a buddy.

1067
01:16:45.930 --> 01:16:51.753
Like, if you've got a friend and you're like, okay, these are the things that I want out of a relationship partner.

1068
01:16:51.793 --> 01:16:53.254
These are, like, no-gos.

1069
01:16:53.314 --> 01:16:56.136
These are behaviors that cross the red line.

1070
01:16:57.437 --> 01:17:04.801
Having, you know, a friend that knows what those are that can tell you when your boundaries are slipping can be really useful.

1071
01:17:05.492 --> 01:17:11.013
I was thinking of one particular context that I know, and I'll keep it anonymous as well, where there's five people that I know.

1072
01:17:11.294 --> 01:17:14.054
It is a family that I know of, and they have five kids.

1073
01:17:14.854 --> 01:17:26.938
And one of the family members was telling me that they are the only one that has maintained a boundary against one of the older parents who's got a track record of some of these dark personality traits.

1074
01:17:27.058 --> 01:17:28.018
And she was telling me,

1075
01:17:28.538 --> 01:17:38.741
That because she has always maintained a boundary against the father, who is the person that has personality traits, the father has almost left her alone and has gone for the other four siblings, more so.

1076
01:17:39.421 --> 01:17:42.562
And that the other four siblings are suffering because they don't have an established boundary.

1077
01:17:42.602 --> 01:17:54.866
Whereas what I'm saying here is it's interesting that someone who has a boundary seems to be preyed on less by the narcissist or person with Machiavellian personality than those that haven't established one.

1078
01:17:55.406 --> 01:17:57.707
And if that is true, then what is it about the...

1079
01:17:58.707 --> 01:18:06.095
the psychopathic or narcissistic person that is choosing easier targets or boundary-less targets?

1080
01:18:06.115 --> 01:18:06.295
Mm-hmm.

1081
01:18:06.315 --> 01:18:07.516
Does that hold as truth or...

1082
01:18:08.455 --> 01:18:09.275
Or is that just anecdotal?

1083
01:18:09.555 --> 01:18:24.318
So we do know from research that this is mostly in workplaces, that workplaces that have kind of codes of fairness, people with high levels of these traits are less likely to, you know, keep a bunch of the bonus money for themselves instead of share it among their team fairly.

1084
01:18:24.678 --> 01:18:32.920
So there's evidence of like having rules in place increases the likelihood that they will follow those rules relative to like a no holds bar kind of situation.

1085
01:18:33.740 --> 01:18:45.452
There's also research on, you know, how people with high levels of psychopathic traits kind of choose who to prey upon, essentially.

1086
01:18:45.472 --> 01:18:53.279
And individuals who are not very assertive tend to be more likely to, you know, kind of...

1087
01:18:54.020 --> 01:18:58.345
It's almost like they're like picking, you know, the weakest of the herd or something like that.

1088
01:18:58.405 --> 01:19:07.815
So having asserting, asserting some boundaries can help to, you know, not have that target on your back.

1089
01:19:08.440 --> 01:19:13.062
I was thinking about a guest that I interviewed on this podcast that was telling me she had gone through domestic violence.

1090
01:19:13.102 --> 01:19:21.005
And she was telling me about the love bombing process as to how this individual had broken down her boundaries and her confidence over time.

1091
01:19:21.786 --> 01:19:29.949
And then had isolated her from her friends and family, wouldn't allow her to call her mum, would give her a script when her mum called and those kinds of things.

1092
01:19:30.009 --> 01:19:38.273
And one of the remarkable things I observed is how over time they'd sort of broken down their confidence in order to be able to seemingly control them.

1093
01:19:39.494 --> 01:19:41.317
Is this common practice?

1094
01:19:42.218 --> 01:19:46.744
Yeah, in a domestic violence situation.

1095
01:19:46.964 --> 01:19:53.774
You know, it kind of reminds me of the kind of emerging research on gaslighting, where someone would...

1096
01:19:55.457 --> 01:20:01.944
You know, make their partner kind of doubt their sense of reality, kind of, you know, correcting them all the time.

1097
01:20:01.984 --> 01:20:03.545
Like, you're being too sensitive.

1098
01:20:03.986 --> 01:20:06.248
You don't see the truth around you.

1099
01:20:06.868 --> 01:20:12.814
And I think what's kind of so insidious about that is that it makes you dependent.

1100
01:20:13.635 --> 01:20:14.856
on that other person.

1101
01:20:15.076 --> 01:20:31.023
And then the isolation can really decrease your ability to kind of like get out of it because you don't have someone else who can, you know, check your sense of reality that you really are seeing and feeling and remembering things that really did happen, even though they're telling you that it didn't.

1102
01:20:31.543 --> 01:20:32.523
What is gaslighting?

1103
01:20:32.603 --> 01:20:34.724
Because we throw around the term all the time.

1104
01:20:34.764 --> 01:20:36.664
The minute someone lies, we say, you're gaslighting me.

1105
01:20:36.804 --> 01:20:37.084
Yeah.

1106
01:20:37.584 --> 01:20:42.905
It's a pattern of denying someone's version of reality.

1107
01:20:42.965 --> 01:20:47.866
So you might tell people that they shouldn't be feeling the way that they're feeling.

1108
01:20:48.066 --> 01:20:54.108
Things didn't happen like they are remembering they happened, that they can't trust their own sense of...

1109
01:20:56.509 --> 01:20:58.250
perception of reality.

1110
01:20:58.891 --> 01:21:03.216
And so it can be incredibly kind of destabilizing and isolating.

1111
01:21:03.296 --> 01:21:11.685
And what is worrisome about that is that we really need other people to help us see reality.

1112
01:21:11.725 --> 01:21:12.106
And so if

1113
01:21:16.470 --> 01:21:17.331
We can't be trusted.

1114
01:21:17.412 --> 01:21:19.594
Our own eyes, our own memory can't be trusted.

1115
01:21:20.115 --> 01:21:26.523
We start to depend on their perception, which is essentially a control tactic.

1116
01:21:26.603 --> 01:21:30.227
And research does suggest that people with high levels of these traits

1117
01:21:31.198 --> 01:21:33.339
endorse these tactics.

1118
01:21:33.359 --> 01:21:40.483
They don't see anything wrong with doing that to a romantic partner, which would probably follow that they would be more likely to engage in it.

1119
01:21:40.803 --> 01:21:48.328
A lot of romantic arguments would sound like gaslighting, I think, within that definition of like, you know, let's go back to the cheating example we said.

1120
01:21:48.548 --> 01:21:50.529
Last Friday, I was doing something dodgy.

1121
01:21:51.149 --> 01:21:52.130
You suspect I'm lying.

1122
01:21:52.210 --> 01:21:53.951
So you say to me, no, you weren't, Stephen.

1123
01:21:54.071 --> 01:21:56.792
You weren't at the office till 3 a.m. And I go, yeah, I was.

1124
01:21:57.373 --> 01:21:58.113
I was at the office.

1125
01:21:58.233 --> 01:21:59.374
You don't know what you're talking about.

1126
01:21:59.394 --> 01:21:59.694
Mm-hmm.

1127
01:22:00.014 --> 01:22:01.355
Leanne, you weren't there.

1128
01:22:01.715 --> 01:22:02.896
You're making this up in your head.

1129
01:22:04.077 --> 01:22:05.118
Who was gaslighting who there?

1130
01:22:05.138 --> 01:22:08.801
Because you said you denied my reality, and now I'm denying your reality.

1131
01:22:08.821 --> 01:22:10.742
Wait, but were you actually at the office?

1132
01:22:11.022 --> 01:22:11.543
Does it matter?

1133
01:22:12.003 --> 01:22:14.585
Like, Jeremy, I'm trying to figure out if the behavior...

1134
01:22:15.126 --> 01:22:16.907
Which one of us was gaslighting behavior there?

1135
01:22:17.367 --> 01:22:27.035
Yeah, I think it would be like, if I say, like, you know, I feel insecure, I feel threatened by, like, whatever you were doing on Friday, and you're like...

1136
01:22:28.076 --> 01:22:28.656
No, you don't.

1137
01:22:28.696 --> 01:22:29.136
You don't.

1138
01:22:29.637 --> 01:22:31.197
Like, or you shouldn't feel that way.

1139
01:22:31.798 --> 01:22:33.498
There's no reason for you to feel that way.

1140
01:22:33.518 --> 01:22:35.219
You're blowing things out of proportion.

1141
01:22:35.759 --> 01:22:40.361
It's essentially like denying someone's actual, my experience is that I feel threatened.

1142
01:22:40.561 --> 01:22:45.423
And so it's like, even if I might be wrong about that, that is my experience.

1143
01:22:45.573 --> 01:22:48.014
So I could deny the facts, theoretically.

1144
01:22:48.154 --> 01:22:51.777
I could say, no, at 2am I was falling asleep on my desk.

1145
01:22:52.437 --> 01:23:01.522
I could maybe argue with the facts, but it's when you start arguing with someone else's perception of reality, of their own subjective experience, that's when you stray into this gaslighting.

1146
01:23:01.662 --> 01:23:01.882
Okay.

1147
01:23:02.863 --> 01:23:05.824
In the example I gave earlier from my guest, that's exactly what happened to her.

1148
01:23:05.884 --> 01:23:11.408
What he started to do is he started hiding her stuff in places, so he put her car keys in the fridge.

1149
01:23:11.768 --> 01:23:12.128
Yeah.

1150
01:23:12.228 --> 01:23:13.531
to make her feel like she'd gone crazy.

1151
01:23:13.571 --> 01:23:13.972
Yeah, yeah.

1152
01:23:14.132 --> 01:23:15.414
Which is fucking crazy.

1153
01:23:15.434 --> 01:23:16.316
That's wild.

1154
01:23:16.897 --> 01:23:17.619
Okay, that makes sense.

1155
01:23:17.839 --> 01:23:19.783
So that was establishing clear boundaries.

1156
01:23:19.803 --> 01:23:23.289
Really what I was getting at is, do they try and erode those boundaries or do they leave you alone?

1157
01:23:23.794 --> 01:23:29.297
So they're likely to try to push on them, but less so than if you have no boundaries at all.

1158
01:23:29.537 --> 01:23:29.937
Okay.

1159
01:23:29.957 --> 01:23:30.037
Yep.

1160
01:23:30.798 --> 01:23:33.799
So the next one is don't give them power over others.

1161
01:23:34.199 --> 01:23:41.303
We've talked about kind of all of these different traits and that they, you know, Machiavellianism is actually kind of named after the pursuit of power.

1162
01:23:41.503 --> 01:23:43.964
Psychopathy is associated with domineering people.

1163
01:23:44.364 --> 01:23:45.805
Narcissism, I'm better than you.

1164
01:23:45.885 --> 01:23:46.705
I'm a born leader.

1165
01:23:46.765 --> 01:23:48.806
All of these are kind of related to power.

1166
01:23:48.827 --> 01:23:48.927
Yeah.

1167
01:23:50.238 --> 01:23:55.744
People with these traits tend to be very interested in having power over other people.

1168
01:23:56.104 --> 01:24:02.471
But we know from research that this does not tend to go well for those individuals who are working underneath them.

1169
01:24:02.571 --> 01:24:10.639
So at work, for example, we know that people who are working under a boss with more psychopathic traits report being more stressed out.

1170
01:24:11.180 --> 01:24:16.122
They also tend to be more likely to bring that stress home, and that creates more family conflict.

1171
01:24:16.142 --> 01:24:16.943
So it kind of spreads.

1172
01:24:16.983 --> 01:24:18.643
It doesn't stay where it is.

1173
01:24:19.123 --> 01:24:22.225
They tend to create division within teams.

1174
01:24:23.085 --> 01:24:26.587
They also tend to increase the likelihood of turnover and tension.

1175
01:24:26.667 --> 01:24:32.129
So, you know, if you're working for a boss with these traits, you're like, I got to get the hell out of here.

1176
01:24:32.149 --> 01:24:35.410
So you're churning through staff, right?

1177
01:24:35.471 --> 01:24:35.731
So...

1178
01:24:36.751 --> 01:24:44.317
Giving them power over others is not a great way to deal with them.

1179
01:24:44.637 --> 01:24:48.740
So you don't want to give them power over others even when they want it.

1180
01:24:49.060 --> 01:24:51.262
But there's other things that you can give them that they do want.

1181
01:24:51.322 --> 01:24:54.685
And this is essentially like negotiating 101, right?

1182
01:24:55.105 --> 01:25:01.130
So you can look for win-wins when you're negotiating with them, recognizing that

1183
01:25:02.112 --> 01:25:09.077
what they consider motivation to get to this win-win might not be what you consider to be motivation to get to this win-win.

1184
01:25:09.117 --> 01:25:29.652
So imagine that you've got this employee who is bullying his subordinates, and you're like, you really need to treat your team better because they are so stressed out, and they are going home from work, and they're crying to their spouses, and they're bringing it home, and they're getting sick because of this.

1185
01:25:30.948 --> 01:25:38.695
You're trying to make them feel compassion for other people to get them to behave better toward their team.

1186
01:25:39.355 --> 01:25:41.197
That's not motivating to them, right?

1187
01:25:41.497 --> 01:25:49.544
It might be motivating to other people, but people who with high levels of these traits, right, were callous, not concerned about other people.

1188
01:25:49.964 --> 01:25:50.425
However...

1189
01:25:51.617 --> 01:25:54.939
That doesn't mean that they can't do something kind or helpful, right?

1190
01:25:54.979 --> 01:25:56.239
They might just do it for a different reason.

1191
01:25:56.699 --> 01:26:11.467
So if you know that the team is suffering under this person's current, like, bullying management style, you could say, you know, you've got this, you know, sales bonus that's coming up, but your team is so stressed out that you're not going to meet that target and you're not going to get your...

1192
01:26:12.238 --> 01:26:13.499
Your bonus, right?

1193
01:26:14.039 --> 01:26:16.581
You need to treat your team differently.

1194
01:26:17.181 --> 01:26:18.602
Money, they like money.

1195
01:26:19.283 --> 01:26:20.143
They like power.

1196
01:26:20.563 --> 01:26:21.504
They like status.

1197
01:26:21.664 --> 01:26:24.606
And so it's not that they can't behave better.

1198
01:26:24.686 --> 01:26:26.968
It's that they might do it for a different reason.

1199
01:26:27.408 --> 01:26:31.951
So trying to understand what motivates them and trying to figure out how you can use that.

1200
01:26:32.391 --> 01:26:34.633
The next one is use the carrot, not the stick.

1201
01:26:34.653 --> 01:26:44.359
So we've talked about this a little bit where people, particularly with high levels of psychopathy, very reward sensitive, but not very punishment sensitive.

1202
01:26:44.680 --> 01:26:47.582
So you can try to punish them, but...

1203
01:26:48.542 --> 01:26:51.043
Literally, their brains don't process punishment in the same way.

1204
01:26:51.083 --> 01:26:56.725
They don't develop that kind of link between, if I do this behavior, then fear of punishment.

1205
01:26:56.745 --> 01:27:01.227
So they're more likely to repeat it than people with low levels of these traits.

1206
01:27:01.627 --> 01:27:09.330
So punishment, there's a place for it, I suppose, but it's not going to be as effective with these personalities in particular.

1207
01:27:09.910 --> 01:27:18.534
And I think what's terrible, what we are losing a huge opportunity on, is that we don't use the carrot instead when the carrot is so powerful.

1208
01:27:18.614 --> 01:27:21.696
So sometimes people are like, they're a bad person.

1209
01:27:22.016 --> 01:27:23.937
I'm not going to reward anything that they do.

1210
01:27:24.037 --> 01:27:29.300
Like, I'm not going to give them any kind of positive feedback because I think they're terrible, right?

1211
01:27:30.646 --> 01:27:35.687
But if they do something kind or honest or helpful, oh my God, reward them.

1212
01:27:36.607 --> 01:27:42.189
Reward them not with power over others, but maybe with like a bonus at work, with like a job title.

1213
01:27:42.429 --> 01:27:47.590
Because they really care about status, that's a reward that they will really like.

1214
01:27:47.750 --> 01:27:51.851
And you are going to increase the likelihood that you get more of that behavior in the future.

1215
01:27:52.493 --> 01:27:56.137
I think there'll be some people listening right now that are thinking, shouldn't you just fire these people?

1216
01:27:56.157 --> 01:28:03.606
Shouldn't you get all of these people out of your life if they've got sadism, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy?

1217
01:28:04.066 --> 01:28:04.867
Psychopathy, yeah.

1218
01:28:04.887 --> 01:28:05.348
Psychopathy.

1219
01:28:06.028 --> 01:28:07.150
Shouldn't you just throw them out of your life?

1220
01:28:08.240 --> 01:28:21.548
Yeah, I think given that there are, you know, a reasonably sized minority of the population has some elevated level of these traits, you're going to be chucking a lot of people, right?

1221
01:28:21.928 --> 01:28:27.031
And they also might genuinely have some, like, really useful skills that...

1222
01:28:27.871 --> 01:28:34.013
Just, you know, you want in your company, you just need to learn how to manage these, this personality trait.

1223
01:28:34.114 --> 01:28:42.337
And so I think even if, you know, you have kind of a low tolerance for these personality traits, you're not going to be able to completely avoid them at all times.

1224
01:28:42.677 --> 01:28:45.898
It might not be your decision to chuck them out of the company.

1225
01:28:45.918 --> 01:28:46.779
Oh, like a sibling or something.

1226
01:28:46.999 --> 01:28:47.999
Yeah, exactly.

1227
01:28:48.219 --> 01:28:55.602
It might be a person that you like, you want to have a relationship with them, even if that relationship is not perfect at all.

1228
01:28:55.702 --> 01:28:57.763
You know, maybe it's a brother-in-law, right?

1229
01:28:57.783 --> 01:29:04.527
And you're like, he's such a pain in the ass, but I see him like twice a year and I don't want to cut him out because that means I don't get to see my sister anymore.

1230
01:29:04.567 --> 01:29:06.608
And I love my sister and I want to support my sister.

1231
01:29:06.628 --> 01:29:16.793
And so I think there's just like the, you know, stay or go question is just so complicated and there's so many reasons why you might not be able to do that.

1232
01:29:16.813 --> 01:29:21.356
And so we need to learn the skills to manage interactions with these people as well.

1233
01:29:21.696 --> 01:29:24.238
Next one is emphasize your common identity.

1234
01:29:24.698 --> 01:29:34.964
People with high levels of narcissism are not particularly interested in, like, being fair to you or, like, you know, being kind to you.

1235
01:29:35.184 --> 01:29:38.165
But they are interested in loyalty.

1236
01:29:38.586 --> 01:29:48.772
There's these studies that are really fascinating where they just tell people, like, oh, you guys have the same birthday or you have the same fingerprint type, which I don't even think is a thing.

1237
01:29:48.872 --> 01:29:49.312
Is that a thing?

1238
01:29:49.332 --> 01:29:49.552
Uh-huh.

1239
01:29:49.752 --> 01:29:52.733
Anyway, but people think we have some sort of commonality.

1240
01:29:53.333 --> 01:30:02.337
Then people are people with high levels of narcissism get less angry when you give them negative feedback if they think you've got something in common with them.

1241
01:30:02.637 --> 01:30:13.721
So if you start your conversation with, you know, maybe that that uncle at Thanksgiving who's like always combative and talks about himself all the time and you're like, oh, you know, we went to the same university.

1242
01:30:13.761 --> 01:30:15.982
We root for the same football team, whatever it is.

1243
01:30:16.002 --> 01:30:17.743
You start with what you have in common.

1244
01:30:17.883 --> 01:30:18.403
You're like, OK.

1245
01:30:18.643 --> 01:30:19.184
We are one.

1246
01:30:19.644 --> 01:30:19.885
Right.

1247
01:30:20.365 --> 01:30:31.598
And then if you need to say, you know what, you really need to pick up your game and help him with the care of grandma, then he might be more willing to listen to that as opposed to just like getting negative feedback.

1248
01:30:31.998 --> 01:30:35.062
You know, people with high levels of narcissism don't like that.

1249
01:30:35.122 --> 01:30:37.925
So emphasizing your common identity can help to tamp that down.

1250
01:30:38.664 --> 01:30:44.509
I'd sat here with Tali Sharot, who's this neuroscientist, and she'd looked at the subject of disagreement quite extensively.

1251
01:30:44.529 --> 01:30:51.515
And she'd put people in these brain scanners and basically got them to disagree with each other at some point and looked at what happened in their brain.

1252
01:30:52.055 --> 01:30:54.397
And what she told me she observed is essentially...

1253
01:30:55.278 --> 01:30:59.300
you know, I'm generalizing wildly here, so please do fact check me on the screen.

1254
01:30:59.821 --> 01:31:02.882
She basically observed that the brain changed when someone disagreed with you.

1255
01:31:03.122 --> 01:31:10.287
And I was on a phone call the other day with about 10 different people from a company we're doing a deal with.

1256
01:31:10.667 --> 01:31:12.368
And I just observed that...

1257
01:31:13.378 --> 01:31:20.780
one person would often open up their rebuttal when they felt had a difference of opinion with the phrase, I completely disagree.

1258
01:31:21.420 --> 01:31:22.560
And then they would make their point.

1259
01:31:23.301 --> 01:31:38.985
And so funnily enough, I got straight off the call, even though I'd written about this previously, I got straight off the call and like, did a bit of research as to whether I, I just find that to be quite ineffective behavior or if there's research around it.

1260
01:31:40.277 --> 01:31:56.712
And what I found is it says, yes, there is extensive research across social psychology and behavioral economics and linguistics showing that opening a counter argument or a rebuttal with explicit adversarial phrasing like I disagree actively will hinder your ability to persuade somebody.

1261
01:31:57.013 --> 01:32:01.397
When you start a rebuttal with I disagree, several psychological mechanisms trigger in the other person's brain.

1262
01:32:02.232 --> 01:32:04.333
And it goes into the detail about what goes on in their brain.

1263
01:32:04.393 --> 01:32:09.234
I just, it seems somewhat linked to what you're saying there about like how you keep the other person receptive.

1264
01:32:09.254 --> 01:32:09.634
Mm-hmm.

1265
01:32:10.095 --> 01:32:10.455
Totally.

1266
01:32:10.795 --> 01:32:11.015
Okay.

1267
01:32:11.035 --> 01:32:15.316
So this reminds me of another study on, I think it's like really domineering bosses.

1268
01:32:16.196 --> 01:32:23.399
If you need to give them negative feedback, like, I don't know, say you hate the way that we're running this particular process.

1269
01:32:23.779 --> 01:32:25.559
These three forms should be one form.

1270
01:32:25.619 --> 01:32:27.320
Like why are we spending so much?

1271
01:32:27.340 --> 01:32:30.001
This is like, you know, the bane of office existence.

1272
01:32:31.513 --> 01:32:38.519
If you say, this is so stupid, you need to change the way that we're doing, you know, like kind of coming in hot.

1273
01:32:39.580 --> 01:32:45.365
Particularly people with high levels of narcissistic traits are like, we don't like this kind of, you know, ego threat.

1274
01:32:45.425 --> 01:32:47.146
You're criticizing me.

1275
01:32:47.186 --> 01:32:48.487
You're giving me negative feedback.

1276
01:32:48.527 --> 01:32:49.648
I'm just like shutting it down.

1277
01:32:49.908 --> 01:32:50.389
Right.

1278
01:32:50.429 --> 01:32:52.310
I don't even hear what you're saying.

1279
01:32:52.831 --> 01:32:57.835
Whereas if you phrase it as a question, like, what do you think if we turn these three forms into one form?

1280
01:32:58.796 --> 01:32:58.976
Yeah.

1281
01:32:59.652 --> 01:33:04.914
phrasing it as a question just kind of like makes it softer and makes them more willing to just hear it.

1282
01:33:04.974 --> 01:33:12.036
Like maybe you ultimately won't get to that one form, but you'll at least get a little bit further in that conversation.

1283
01:33:12.056 --> 01:33:21.719
I think that's true for, you know, it's true for everybody, but especially when it comes to people who are really domineering, which these personalities tend to be.

1284
01:33:23.277 --> 01:33:23.598
Okay.

1285
01:33:23.678 --> 01:33:26.439
So you kind of co-create the solution.

1286
01:33:26.839 --> 01:33:27.539
Mm-hmm.

1287
01:33:28.000 --> 01:33:28.500
Interesting.

1288
01:33:28.640 --> 01:33:28.820
Yeah.

1289
01:33:29.140 --> 01:33:29.340
Okay.

1290
01:33:29.880 --> 01:33:32.442
Become a detective and notice their cues.

1291
01:33:32.622 --> 01:33:38.684
So we know that they tend to lie a lot, being manipulative, telling lies is kind of part of their MO.

1292
01:33:38.704 --> 01:33:39.965
That's what all of these traits share.

1293
01:33:40.625 --> 01:34:01.076
And so being able to identify, know what those cues to deception are, know that we're not looking for gaze aversion, we're not looking for fidgeting, we're looking for those lack of verifiable details, we're looking for relatively few details, we're looking for signs of cognitive strain, and maybe like following up, right, if we start to see some of those red flags.

1294
01:34:01.496 --> 01:34:02.157
And finally...

1295
01:34:03.496 --> 01:34:05.677
Avoid face-to-face negotiations.

1296
01:34:05.897 --> 01:34:09.317
So this is like a really simple move that can be really helpful.

1297
01:34:10.398 --> 01:34:21.140
So some research out of the same university as me, University of British Columbia, had people with various levels of these dark traits engage in a negotiation.

1298
01:34:21.160 --> 01:34:23.061
It was just over like the price of concert tickets.

1299
01:34:23.461 --> 01:34:23.661
Mm-hmm.

1300
01:34:24.513 --> 01:34:37.240
But what they found is that whenever those negotiations occurred face-to-face, the person with the high level of psychopathic traits or any of these dark traits, they got a really good deal.

1301
01:34:37.260 --> 01:34:46.705
Like, they were able to command a whole bunch of money for these concert tickets, whereas if they engage in this negotiation over text, that wasn't the case.

1302
01:34:47.486 --> 01:34:50.988
So if you need to negotiate with someone...

1303
01:34:52.771 --> 01:34:59.956
These dark traits can be like really domineering, really kind of, you know, superficially charming sometimes in person.

1304
01:35:00.196 --> 01:35:04.018
And then you can kind of like let your guard down and they're going to take advantage of you.

1305
01:35:04.639 --> 01:35:09.302
If you reduce them to words on the page, they lose some of that like charisma, right?

1306
01:35:09.862 --> 01:35:11.804
But there's also other, like, practical reasons.

1307
01:35:11.844 --> 01:35:15.207
Like, you know, you've got a written version of what was agreed upon.

1308
01:35:15.247 --> 01:35:19.691
Like, you can't gaslight me and tell me, you know, I'm misremembering what we agreed upon later.

1309
01:35:19.751 --> 01:35:21.113
I've got a written version here.

1310
01:35:21.633 --> 01:35:25.597
I've got some time to think about how I want to respond.

1311
01:35:25.637 --> 01:35:26.538
Yeah, exactly.

1312
01:35:27.358 --> 01:35:42.445
And, you know, if violence is a concern, say you're talking about this is a domestic violence situation, you've got to get out of the house, you've got to maybe negotiate, you know, some sort of settlement in a divorce or something, like...

1313
01:35:43.508 --> 01:35:47.533
Being face-to-face can be dangerous, right?

1314
01:35:47.913 --> 01:35:52.959
It literally puts some physical distance between yourself and that other person if violence is a concern.

1315
01:35:53.259 --> 01:36:04.512
So there's all kinds of potential upsides to, like, if you've got to negotiate, like, pop it into text, put it into the chat, as opposed to sitting down face-to-face.

1316
01:36:05.195 --> 01:36:09.943
I was thinking about all the things that are linked to just having a bit more time, but also like the medium of text.

1317
01:36:10.043 --> 01:36:18.337
And one of the things that came to mind is if someone does have those dark personality traits, they are probably more cautious about what they say if it's permanent and it's written.

1318
01:36:19.475 --> 01:36:24.299
So like if I was sending you an email, I might say something to you in person, but would I write that same thing on an email?

1319
01:36:25.059 --> 01:36:35.808
And the other one is in written form, you as the person that's receiving the, being on the receiving end, you have time to show other people and get another perspective.

1320
01:36:35.928 --> 01:36:43.113
Even if it's like putting it into AI or asking Google or checking if the facts are right or asking your husband or partner if this is appropriate behavior.

1321
01:36:43.574 --> 01:36:44.014
Totally.

1322
01:36:44.434 --> 01:36:44.755
And like...

1323
01:36:45.921 --> 01:36:48.623
Involving other people can be so helpful.

1324
01:36:48.643 --> 01:36:58.071
So research suggests that whenever we discuss with other people before making a truth-lie judgment about someone else's statements, we tend to be more accurate.

1325
01:36:58.492 --> 01:37:04.316
Whenever we're making judgments about someone's personality, if we're talking as a group, we tend to be more accurate.

1326
01:37:04.557 --> 01:37:14.105
Another study that Dacher Keltner did, he talked to a bunch of girls in a sorority and asked them who gets talked about the most.

1327
01:37:14.685 --> 01:37:18.928
like in gossip and also had people rate their personality.

1328
01:37:19.389 --> 01:37:25.874
It was the Machiavellian, the more Machiavellian girls who were talked about the most.

1329
01:37:25.894 --> 01:37:26.995
Talked about positively or negatively?

1330
01:37:27.035 --> 01:37:27.635
Negatively.

1331
01:37:27.835 --> 01:37:28.056
Okay.

1332
01:37:28.076 --> 01:37:28.296
Yeah.

1333
01:37:28.716 --> 01:37:34.981
And so, you know, people sometimes hear about like whisper networks to like stay away from that guy at work or whatever.

1334
01:37:35.001 --> 01:37:35.061
So,

1335
01:37:36.522 --> 01:37:45.288
I would caution just believing everything you hear in the rumor mill, but sometimes people spread information about this is my experience with this person.

1336
01:37:45.848 --> 01:37:52.932
And we can learn from other people's experience before having to go through it ourselves if we pay attention.

1337
01:37:54.033 --> 01:37:56.555
And you've got three final cards down there, which I think are...

1338
01:37:57.015 --> 01:38:01.498
These are three common mistakes people make when dealing with dark personalities.

1339
01:38:02.845 --> 01:38:06.487
So the first one is, it's just believing there's nothing you can do.

1340
01:38:06.927 --> 01:38:20.072
So, you know, we've talked about how some of our go-to responses when people hurt us, like trying to make them feel badly, trying to make them apologize to us, like trying to punish them don't work so well.

1341
01:38:20.612 --> 01:38:21.993
But we've also talked about

1342
01:38:22.929 --> 01:38:25.011
All of the things you can do, right?

1343
01:38:25.492 --> 01:38:28.736
So we don't need to feel completely helpless.

1344
01:38:29.276 --> 01:38:32.900
Another is assuming they have the same inner experience as you.

1345
01:38:33.481 --> 01:38:38.667
You know, when we're trying to figure out what motivates people, again, we talked about this with respect to negotiation, right?

1346
01:38:38.667 --> 01:38:38.827
Right.

1347
01:38:38.847 --> 01:38:42.588
Like what motivates you to do a thing might not be the same thing that motivates me to do a thing.

1348
01:38:42.948 --> 01:38:52.331
I need to try to get into their head, figure out what their goals are, what would be motivating to change their behavior in this situation and try to, you know, frame our interaction in that way.

1349
01:38:52.371 --> 01:38:59.894
Try to convince them to change their behavior for that reason, not because I think they should or not because I would feel guilty if I did what they did.

1350
01:39:02.487 --> 01:39:04.968
But lastly, you know, is thinking you can change them.

1351
01:39:05.048 --> 01:39:16.914
So if your ultimate goal is like, I'm going to stick around and they're going to be kind and honest and they're going to be super conscientious and helpful all the time and never going to break any rules.

1352
01:39:16.974 --> 01:39:22.677
Like, I think we also need to be kind of clear eyed about the likelihood of that happening.

1353
01:39:23.557 --> 01:39:37.260
And so instead, we need to kind of deploy some of these strategies for making our day-to-day interactions a little more positive, as opposed to just hoping that someday they're going to wake up, you know, with a different personality.

1354
01:39:37.821 --> 01:39:43.742
What is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to your work?

1355
01:39:43.822 --> 01:39:47.223
And again, zooming in on the people that are listening that might benefit them in their lives.

1356
01:39:48.269 --> 01:39:50.851
I think it's like a matter of numbers.

1357
01:39:52.012 --> 01:40:00.457
So, you know, we've talked about the, you know, 10% of people would generally agree with items that we use to measure these traits.

1358
01:40:00.837 --> 01:40:04.980
That means that 90% of people would generally not agree, right?

1359
01:40:05.440 --> 01:40:14.186
So I want people to keep into perspective that like 90% of people, right, are good and kind and honest and not breaking the rules.

1360
01:40:14.587 --> 01:40:15.967
We've got this 10%, right?

1361
01:40:16.328 --> 01:40:16.528
Right.

1362
01:40:16.908 --> 01:40:19.872
That's not to say that 10% is causing little harm.

1363
01:40:19.972 --> 01:40:23.077
In fact, they're causing hugely outsized harm, right?

1364
01:40:23.097 --> 01:40:27.523
So, like, with respect to psychopathy, that's about 1% of the population.

1365
01:40:27.543 --> 01:40:29.345
They have clinical levels of it.

1366
01:40:29.366 --> 01:40:30.447
Yeah.

1367
01:40:31.124 --> 01:40:35.745
Offenders with clinical levels of psychopathy account for about 50% of all serious crime.

1368
01:40:35.905 --> 01:40:39.206
So these people are like doing incredibly outsized harm.

1369
01:40:39.246 --> 01:40:41.687
And we also feel that in our lives too, right?

1370
01:40:42.087 --> 01:40:50.489
Not necessarily in criminal rap sheets maybe, but we've got like one person who's like constantly making things hard because of these traits.

1371
01:40:50.609 --> 01:40:52.669
They're causing strife at work.

1372
01:40:53.129 --> 01:40:53.429
They're

1373
01:40:56.390 --> 01:41:10.696
If we can learn to mitigate the damage from just this small, relatively small group of people, then we can dramatically improve our lives, our workplaces, our interactions day to day.

1374
01:41:11.517 --> 01:41:15.478
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for.

1375
01:41:15.919 --> 01:41:16.219
Okay.

1376
01:41:16.679 --> 01:41:19.900
And the question that's been left for you is somewhat relevant.

1377
01:41:19.980 --> 01:41:22.001
I like that you got this one.

1378
01:41:22.221 --> 01:41:25.883
What is one great lie we've all been told?

1379
01:41:29.898 --> 01:41:36.523
I think one great lie we've all been told is that to be successful, you have to be in it for number one.

1380
01:41:37.064 --> 01:41:48.993
And you need to, you know, exemplify some of these traits in order to get that promotion, to get that raise, to run that company that's worth millions of dollars.

1381
01:41:49.734 --> 01:41:53.697
And, you know, even I went searching for evidence for that.

1382
01:41:53.997 --> 01:42:01.899
to show that people with high levels of psychopathy could use their kind of callous, cunning, you know, fearlessness in order to make more money as hedge fund managers.

1383
01:42:01.939 --> 01:42:02.840
And I found the opposite.

1384
01:42:03.300 --> 01:42:13.323
And so I think even in those areas where we think these traits lead to success, they fall short and really...

1385
01:42:14.910 --> 01:42:29.584
taking other people with us and thinking about success as, you know, prestige and like respect from other people, care and concern about us from other people is a much truer version of success.

1386
01:42:30.671 --> 01:42:31.352
Leanne, thank you so much.

1387
01:42:31.372 --> 01:42:40.761
Thank you for writing a book that is incredibly illuminating in a way that is research-based, whilst also being just unbelievably engaging.

1388
01:42:40.901 --> 01:42:46.207
And I think these subjects are so pertinent to everybody listening, and I know that they're going to love this conversation, because...

1389
01:42:47.667 --> 01:42:54.412
Much like you were when you started your career, we're all just trying to figure out the ultimate barrier and opportunity that all sits in front of us, and that's just other people.

1390
01:42:55.152 --> 01:43:03.038
And again, as you said on one of the cards, but you articulated really nicely earlier on, we kind of go through the world thinking that everyone else's internal experience is a mirror of ours.

1391
01:43:04.211 --> 01:43:11.534
And it's very easy to get frustrated or to feel like you're the problem or you're inadequate if that's the lens that you take to life.

1392
01:43:11.554 --> 01:43:20.618
And I think through your research, you do exactly what you said, which is, in a weird way, you do make us more empathetic and maybe more optimistic and less cynical about the nature of human experience.

1393
01:43:21.038 --> 01:43:23.699
And so this is a wonderful, wonderful book for anyone that wants more information.

1394
01:43:23.779 --> 01:43:24.519
I'm going to link it below.

1395
01:43:24.639 --> 01:43:27.741
Poisonous People, How to Resist Them and Improve Your Life.

1396
01:43:27.781 --> 01:43:32.743
But also, it might be a good opportunity to buy this book for someone else who you know is dealing with a...

1397
01:43:33.563 --> 01:43:34.584
slightly poisonous person.

1398
01:43:35.204 --> 01:43:37.726
Where do people go to support your work and to find more from you?

1399
01:43:39.167 --> 01:43:41.889
They can find that book, you know, wherever books are sold.

1400
01:43:41.909 --> 01:43:48.394
They can also find me on Instagram at Leanne Tenbrink on all the socials, TikTok, on YouTube.

1401
01:43:49.135 --> 01:43:55.399
And I post little things about studies and findings that I think are interesting and hopefully they'll find it interesting too.

1402
01:43:56.080 --> 01:43:56.720
Thank you so much.

1403
01:43:56.960 --> 01:43:57.761
Thank you, Stephen.

1404
01:43:57.921 --> 01:43:58.922
This has been so wonderful.