The Sociopaths Among Us–and How to Avoid Them | Hacker News Reader

The Sociopaths Among Us–and How to Avoid Them

theatlantic.com

20 pointschapulin38 comments

One missing observation from this article is the existence of the sidekick gang that normally follows these types. Unlike their leader, then tend to be generally good people, but tolerate their leader as a means to an end. We see this everywhere, and it helps destroy our business, politics and social lives.

What I've come to realize over the years is that good people are reluctant to take the job in power, but allow bad people to float into those positions without much thought. That's a simplification, but it takes a warped personality to be able to distance yourself from the social or civic responsibility of having that much control. Speaking a bit from experience, the times when I actually managed a team larger than a few dozens, I couldn't actually cope (internally, not outwardly mind you) without thinking about people's well-being every waking hour. Most leaders with more responsibility above me in work seem to be able to suppress those worries (or maybe hide it like I did). I've come to believe a little narcissism is somewhat required in those roles. You really need to believe in yourself above others. The good folks always seem to step down after they've achieved whatever manner of success they set out to achieve.

It seems to me that the issue might be that most companies don't consider doing right for their team members to be one of their objectives. Therefore, effort that a leader spends on doing right for their team is viewed as a liability.

I think part of the issue is also that our culture lacks a belief in Nobless Oblige. We're told from a young age that good people don't aspire to have power over others, but of course, that doesn't affect the need for the position, just the kind of people who aim to fill them. I wonder whether this relates to Thiel's observation that a disproportionate number of founder-CEOs have autism and what this might say about the messages we're putting out there about that kind of leadership.

It was called trickle down economics and it failed.

For what it's worth, Nobless Oblige is the idea that people with power (originally nobility but we could probably extend it to people like wealthy industrialists) have an obligation to behave with nobility; in this context to help those less fortunate.

It's sort of the opposite of trickle down economics in that trickle down said that the wealthy shouldn't be expected to directly work for the good of society because the wealth that they attain will trickle down and contribute to the good of society on its own.

One might say it was rebranded as trickle down economics.

Given the 'nanny state' that exists in London where there still is a culture of nobless oblige there might be an argument for benign neglect from the well-off. Of course, the ideal is a balance between the two extremes.

>Unlike their leader, they tend to be generally good people, but tolerate their leader as a means to an end.

That doesn’t sound like good people. A few bad apples…, as they say.

http://archive.today/X4KEX

>We can extend this ethical hygiene to the culture at large—by withholding our attention, time, support, and resources from the Dark Triads in public life who coarsen our society and threaten the commonweal.

"Ethical hygiene"? That sounds like an incredibly dangerous phrase or concept, with an attempt to lighten it by tying it to physical hygiene, which can be shown effective scientifically.

That aside (and it's hard to put it aside), while identifying this is important, you need to figure out if these traits are treatable. If it is treatable, it isn't fair to leave them untreated and ostracize them. If you aren't willing to highly encourage or force treatment, then you can't hope to address this issue as a society.

This article also paints this as these traits being intentional. What if someone can't help being like this? If someone is conditioned to be like this (and it's not a problem with the brain), then that's great since it's probably treatable.

If it is a problem with the brain, you really need to stop painting them as the bad guys, as these people are sick and not just assholes.

My understanding is that the Dark Triad traits are more or less sub-clinical personality disorders. As I understand it, personality disorders tend to be extremely difficult to treat.

Just an anecdote, but I once asked a counselor I know about treated psychopaths. They said that psychopaths are almost impossible to treat but they tend to mellow as they get older; so the strategy is to try to keep them from doing anything too bad until they get older.

There seems to be a pop-psychology obsession with sociopaths which doesn’t seem much based on reality. One’s ability for empathy is something of a spectrum, and there’s no magic number where a specific lack of empathy renders someone a sociopath. Further, lack of empathy doesn’t necessarily render someone a sociopath; they also need to be aggressive and cruel. (Many people who lack empathy are perfectly nice, and are simply socially awkward-but-well-intending)

People seem to be afraid of the “sociopath” in their midst, but I wonder what they’re not just misidentifying people who disrespect them, or don’t get along with them very well. For instance, perhaps the “sociopath” bullies a victim, but is perfectly empathetic to some of the other people in his life. His empathy is applied at least somewhat selectively. And selectively applying empathy seems to me to be a description which could fit almost anyone.

On the other hand, there seem to be people who have extreme lack of empathy for others, and some subset of those are capable of doing moderate-to-extremely harmful things to those around them. Most people have probably met one of the more extreme examples once in their lives, and there was no doubt to you that the way that person approached the world (and other people) was very different than the way you did.

We don't understand enough about the human brain to predict reliably who has these issues, but it's useful to know that for the extreme cases at least, it isn't just a disagreement.

Sure the use of the term may be inflated these days, but if one is level headed, they'll really know when they've encountered one.

I pray never to allow one to slip into my life ever again after personal experiences. If you find yourself praying, and I'm not religious by any length and I'm confident enough to consider myself pretty resilient, then yeah...

Edit: Just to note, my experience isn't limited to actions that just affected me directly, but also from observation of actions/behavior towards others on a daily basis.

Yes. While I'm sure sociopaths exist, there's nothing more subjective and relative than one persons opinion of someone else.

And its very easy to mislead oneself with an explanation of what is happening that pushes the problem onto the other.

Any two people having a disagreement could call each other "bully" or "narcissist".

I don't think sociopathy is simply a lack of empathy, rather, it's a stress-response characterized (among other things) by an inability to express and possibly experience empathy. It's probably perfectly adaptive in many situations, I wouldn't want e.g. a sniper for my country's military to express empathy for the enemy in his sights (whether I'd want my country to have a military is a separate question here). The trouble more seems to be that a lot of organizations trigger this stress response particularly among its leadership. We talk about sociopaths as being born bad and then getting drawn to CEO positions, but what if we have it backwards? What if it's really difficult to be a CEO without eventually displaying sociopathic characteristics?

Because my mother, and the last mentee I had, are both dark triad people and neither of them came close to CEO. It’s quite the opposite their behavior is self defeating and they accomplish little in life because it’s more like a disability.

They’re unable to experience empathy, are convinced others who do are just pretending and are foolish for pretending, and they prey on those that do for thrill of superiority at great personal cost. The feeling of superiority is only in their own mind as any objective observer would note that they’re harming themselves and coming across as weaker.

Yeah, and to my understanding that kind of repeated failure is par for the course for dark triad types. None of the psychos I've come across are the type to make it to CEO in even the most negligent organization.

But if dark triad behaviors are the result of handling stress poorly, CEOs becoming CEOs by being normal people capable of forming strong relationships first and then becoming psychopathic due to the stress of the job makes a lot more sense. And some people just handling stress so poorly that they become psychopathic from a normal adolescence, then stumble from failure to failure ever after (barring some kind of effective treatment. I formed this theory after reading about decompression therapy for psychopathy).

There is a seductive aspect to articles like these that play on a lot of common insecurities. The articles always lead with a story about a person being charming and charismatic and then attribute the readers disappointment in them to some deeply pathological evil.

Given the exceptional occurrance of extreme charm and charisma, let alone co-occurring with high intelligence, statistically for them to co-occur with these other pathological traits makes this sociopath character a kind of evil unicorn, and effectively an object of superstition. They may plausibly exist, but the likelihood of encountering one, or that the person you are mad at happens to be one - is vanishingly small. They aren't masterminds, and they shouldn't be elevated to the level of a folk devil. Like most people, they're just people with some shitty tools. Sympathy pieces like this that encourage readers to call the people they don't like sociopaths are misleading, dehumanizing, and actively stupefying. I hope the author sees this comment.

What's more likely, that someone reading that article has encountered one of these evil unicorns, or that the article is cooing and excusing for normal and flawed people people whose own occasional malice, fibs, and viciousness doesn't have the patina of charm and charisma they envy? Take care of yourself, set boundaries and standards for yourself, and these bogeymen just aren't a thing. I'm surprised "victimhood porn," isn't a more widely known commonsense filter, as I would recommend not being seduced by something that is about as healthy and edifying as porn.

I don't think that the idea is that people with dark triad traits are necessarily super geniuses or manipulative masterminds. They could be people with just above average charm who are willing to use it to hurt people. Or they could be people who are able to superficially appear charming long enough to get what they want; even if they don't have the charisma to keep up the act long term. Even someone with below average abilities could cause significant harm. E.g. a co-worker incompetently throwing teammates under the bus could hurt the team even if they don't actually help their own career.

The irony of the dark triad sociopath trope is that it justifies the very malice toward the bad people that it affects to predict or explain in them.

The point I'm emphasizing is the dark-triad trope misdirects from the less interesting, low-cunning of most psychopaths, and arguably that of just the banal people you see trying to survive in institutions who are much more common. When you see someone motivated genuinely by malice, there is no difference between them and these more abstract ideas about psychopaths. None of the criteria for psycho/sociopathy are necessary conditions for behavior (like malice) that is objectively equivalent either.

> More useful for the other 93 percent of us is advice on how to identify and avoid Dark Triads. The traits to look for are self-importance, a sense of entitlement, vanity, a victim mentality, a tendency to bend the truth or even openly lie, manipulativeness, grandiosity, a lack of remorse, and an absence of empathy.

> So rather than spend time dodging Dark Triads, look for their opposite. Happily, Kaufman and a team of psychologists profiled this type for us as well, which they call the Light Triad.

> The characteristics of a Light Triad include faith in humanity (trusting in people’s fundamental goodness), humanism (believing in the dignity and worth of each person), and a Kantian adherence to the idea of universal moral law (in this context, refusing to objectify or instrumentalize others). Compared with the 7 percent that are dark, Kaufman finds that fully 50 percent of his international population sample qualify as Light Triads, and that the average person has more light than dark personality traits.

> Look for these three characteristics in people you might date, work with, or befriend. One way to test for this is simply to see how you feel around a particular person. Do they inspire you to be a better, more loving person?

It seems that large (American?) institutions draw psychopaths like moths to a flame. Every large company I've worked for seems to be primarily a vehicle to turn psychopathy into money, and so I mostly tend to avoid them as much as possible.

Tell me about it. Last place I was at I had two managers that matched this perfectly and take the top two as worst people I've ever encountered in my life. Just awful excuses for human beings who robbed myself and others of life. If anyone ever gets a whiff of this in their leadership, gtfo asap. It ain't worth it

Its inherent to hierarchical organizations. To get to the top of the pyramid you literally have to step on human bodies.

You need both very thick skin and little empathy for others as these are traits that will hold you back.

Managing people thus becomes managing numbers. This is what MBA programs are for. To filter out those who get distracted by their human nature. Accounting purely on the basis of money fits like a glove because it is a simple, morally agnostic metric.

Unless and until we can create productive organizational units that are far less hierarchical we are bound to be selecting and promoting these sociopathic traits.

It should be possible. Its all about finding the right designs for coordination, information exchange, less idiotic incentives etc.

There is no law that says that organizational structures that are good for conducting clan wars and the like are also the optimal way to build a sophisticated society.

It's hardly surprising, the incentives are structured to reward psychopathy. Ideas like "a company's primary goal is to maximize shareholder value" reward winning at any cost. Lofty ideals like ethics only enter the picture if lack thereof hurts the bottom line.

The recent Netflix show "The Consultant" is a really good exploration of this. Christoph Waltz plays brilliant Hannibal Lecter meets Patrick Bateman meets Hans Landa sociopathic executive who embodies the meaningless pursuit of business value. Fantastic send-up of capitalist realism.

Moral judgement likes to pose as science, but that does neither any good. I understand that calling some of those things scientific can help someone to avoid hanging out with people who are bad to them, because "science" can feel like a good authority, but ultimately i don't think it's the best approach to taking more responsibility for one's life, if only because it's just slightly delusional

I'm not so sure that the Dark Triad model is that useful. Reading about narcissistic personality disorder and anti social personality disorder will probably yield a better understanding of these cluster B types. Both are low in empathy and high in selfish behaviour, but they have very different aims and produce very different results. The narcissist main goal is to acquire narcissistic supply and is willing to feast on those closest to them to get it. Psychopaths main goal can be sex, money, power, control and they usually do not care at all for the admiration and opinions of others (with the obvious exception of narcissistic psychopaths).

Thoughts?

Are all sociopaths narcissist ? I didn't think this was a requirement.

I'm not a psychiatrist, but my understanding is that the Dark Triad model describes three different personality types which may or may not occur in a single person. The article appears to misinterpret the model as being about people who have all three traits.

Interesting article, but I think the issue is that we are at an inflection point in human history where there are particular groups trying to manufacture sociopaths.

There are certain cults (I speak specifically of freemasonry but there are many affiliates) that seem to make a thing of trying to manufacture sociopaths through the application of behavioural psychology and coercion to Stockholm syndrome victims into joining their agenda but also to induce sociopathic behaviour.

Those inducted are led to believe that they are on a righteous path, are part of a special few that have the true knowledge (while the rest of society are ignorant) and that the agenda is ultimately for a greater good. Of course this greater good is used as the justification for a tyranny of little people; pretty much like every other sociopathic agenda through history. The only difference is that this time it's happening on a scale that's unprecedented, it's the cause of much of the strangeness in politics and indeed within the media and is all about re-engineering the human condition.

I've long held the belief that trying to prevent something often manifests it for we focus our energy on it. These sociopaths suggest that the world is heading for catastrophe and that's part of their justification for breaking the system for their perceived greater good. I offer the suggestion that this is uncharted territory and I suspect those behaving despicably thinking they are working to a righteous agenda may well go to their graves realising they created a greater evil than humanity has ever known. But of course such sociopaths never believe THEY are the problem - it's always everyone else, right?

> Those inducted are led to believe that they are on a righteous path, are part of a special few that have the true knowledge (while the rest of society are ignorant) and that the agenda is ultimately for a greater good.

You reference cults in the paragraph above, but honestly this sounds like a generalized recruiting message from everything from corporations to militaries to organized religion.

Given that the tactics use by masons seem to be an interesting amalgamation of military tactics, corporate tactics and organized religious tactics your analysis is indeed spot on.

One might even suspect you're an insider.

Agreed that cults are bad, but Freemasonry doesn’t[1] recruit people.

And they’re too busy arguing about what to serve at this week’s meeting to apply behavioral psychology to victims in order to recruit them into their agenda of (presumably) world domination.

Have you considered that perhaps your source of conspiracy theories (those red herring terms you use give it away) is doing it to you?

1. It sometimes happen but is widely frowned upon.

I'd suggest Freemasonry is just the interoperability layer. It's layer 3 cult-networking to allow disparate and traditionally incompatible cults to participate in an Open Conspiracy (as in H.G. Wells) fused with B.F. Skinner's Walden 2. I would have once suggested Walden Two was a farfetched work of fiction but it is apparent that the dystopia is all too real.

You described every religion.

>But of course such sociopaths never believe THEY are the problem - it's always everyone else, right?

You really closed the loop on that one.

> But of course such sociopaths never believe THEY are the problem - it's always everyone else, right?

Yup. The all-too-common combination of sociopathy and narcissim.

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