Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - The Sociopaths Among Us: How to Spot (and Avoid) a Dark Triad

Starting point is 00:00:00 I want to talk to you today about the people around you who might have made you the most unhappy you've ever been in your life. They took your money. Maybe they escalated the breakup, and it was the ugliest thing you've been involved in. What's wrong with that person, you might have been asking yourself? It's all about me. Everything is all about me. Everybody, look at me. I'm the most important person. A lot of politicians, they tend toward the dark triad constellation. And, you know, no kidding, right? Dark triads think that rules don't apply to them. That's why. Hi friends, welcome to office hours. I'm your host, Arthur Brooks. I'm a behavioral scientist dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using

Starting point is 00:00:45 science and ideas. And this is a show about how to do just that. Not so I can, but so that you can, armed with the science and information about the art of happiness and the science of happiness and how you can use it in your ordinary life. So you can be a happier person and you can help other people to be happier as well. I'm a professor at Harvard University at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School. I'm also a columnist at The Atlantic where I write a column called How to Build a Life. You can read that column every Thursday morning. 33 columns that are most popular in the past five years have been compiled in this book right next to me right here, the happiness files.

Starting point is 00:01:24 It's new. It's on the market as of just a couple of weeks ago. So pick up a copy. It talks about how you can be happier at work and have. happier in life. Since this is a new show, I'd love to hear your feedback. Send us an email at OfficeHours at Arthurbrooks.com. It's right here, printed below me right now, and you can also leave comments if you're looking at this on any of the major platforms, most notably YouTube or Spotify. And I'd love it if you would just like and subscribe and follow us. And most importantly, if you could bring two million of your closest friends. That would be great.

Starting point is 00:01:58 That's how we build a movement and that's how we build a happier world. Today, my topic is not exactly happiness. It's actually kind of unhappiness, as a matter of fact. I want to talk to you today about the people around you who might have made you the most unhappy you've ever been in your life. Baffling relationships that you've had with people that seemed wonderful and then weren't. This is a show about dark triads, specifically that dark triad personality constellation. This is a very strange phenomenon, but very common nonetheless. Think about it this way.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Imagine somebody that you've been in a romantic relationship with, somebody who swept you off your feet, the most wonderful suitor you've ever had in your life. It looked like it was going everywhere. The person was in love with you. It was so great. But before along, you started to notice there was a little bit of shading of the truth, a little bit of grievance mongering. Maybe you found that they were actually openly lying to you about their past. And little by little, you find out that they're probably still in contact with somebody they used to go out with. They were kind of cheating on you emotionally. And then later on, maybe even physically, and then it got worse from there. They took your money. Maybe they escalated the breakup. And it was the ugliest thing you've been

Starting point is 00:03:18 involved in. What's wrong with that person? You might have been asking yourself. Or let's just say that somebody came to work with you, a colleague, the best colleague you've had, years, as a matter of fact, really charismatic, but you found out pretty quickly that that person was willing to take credit for your work and to lie about it, to exaggerate their own importance. And then when you confronted them on that, maybe they escalated the conflict and took it to HR. Just a weird reaction. Why would somebody behave that way? Somebody who looked so wonderful, really terrible. Or maybe a fascinating new friend, somebody who really appeared to like you for who you are as a person, but your first and minor disagreement with that person made them

Starting point is 00:04:02 trash you to all your other friends, or maybe even denounce you on social media. Why would somebody do such a thing like that? Well, there's an answer to that, and that is that the person you're thinking of, the person with whom you had such a bad experience was a dark triad personality. Now, I need to define that. The dark triad personality constellation was first identified in 2002 in a very famous article in the Journal of Research and Personality, the article is called the Dark Triad of Personality, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy. Great combination, huh? That's Paulus and Williams,

Starting point is 00:04:38 wrote that. And is, of course, in the show notes. Go read it. It's the first article. And it really set off an interesting body of research. Now, let me define the terms. A dark triad person, or a person with the Dark Triad constellation of personality characteristics, has these three parts. narcissism, which is to say, it's all about me. Everything is all about me. Everybody, look at me. I'm the most important person. Machiavellianism, which is a personality trait named for Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote the prince about 700 years ago. And the concept is, it doesn't matter who you hurt if you're serving your own objectives. So that personality trait means, look, it's all about me, and if you get in my way, I'm willing to hurt you. The linchpin is the third. The thing,

Starting point is 00:05:25 third part of the personality dark triad, which is psychopathy, traits of a psychopath. Now, that sounds like I'm talking about acts murderers, and that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about people who simply are very low in empathy and don't feel remorse when they hurt you. Okay, so here's what we're talking about. A person with a dark triad personality is somebody who only thinks about themselves, or primarily so, who to get what they want are willing to hurt you, and when they hurt you, feel no remorse or empathy for doing so. They're above average in each one of these things. Now, they can be just slightly dark triad or extremely dark triad.

Starting point is 00:06:04 It's the people who are above average in each of these three personality traits. You can take the test to see if you are a dark triad. I kind of think you're not if you're still watching. Or you maybe might want to take it on behalf of a boyfriend or girlfriend or a colleague or a friend or a parent or somebody in your life. and you can do that at my website, Arthur Brooks.com. I'll put that website here. That's the website for all my stuff, as a matter of fact, and you can go take that the test.

Starting point is 00:06:31 And it's a psychometrically valid test that's been tested in a lot of academic journal articles. Now, how many of them are out there? And the answer to that question comes from really the best researcher on this topic that's currently going. The Scott Barry Kaufman, a friend of mine, he also has a great podcast to recommend called The Psychology Podcast. So go check that out,

Starting point is 00:06:51 and you'll find his latest stuff every single week. He's really the research expert on dark triads, and he's estimated how many people score above average on these three traits, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, and he finds that they're about 7% of the population, 1 in 14. You know what that means? That means that you meet them all the time. They're in ordinary life.

Starting point is 00:07:13 You've almost certainly dated one. You've worked with a bunch. You probably worked for one. You might be in a family with at least one of these. And it's important to understand how they tick, what makes them act the way that they do, and when you can, how to avoid them. Once your family member, it's not so easy to be sure, or maybe not even possible. But one way or the other, you need to defend yourself, because if you don't, you're not going to like actually how things turn out for you.

Starting point is 00:07:40 And I'm going to show you why that is, in fact, the case. Now, first question, are dark triads fixable? Or is this some immutable set of personality characteristics? And the answer is we can fix ourselves of anything. We absolutely can. But here's the thing. You've got to want to change. That's the most important thing.

Starting point is 00:07:57 If you drink too much and you come to me and say, hey, Arthur, I drink too much. I'll say, well, do you want to change? If you're like, no, not really. Okay, well, thanks. Thanks for your input. I used to smoke cigarettes. And I knew I needed to stop, but for a long time deep down I didn't want to stop. And so I didn't.

Starting point is 00:08:15 And it was only when I wanted to that I was able to do so. The problem with dark triads is they're not very motivated to change because of these personality characteristics. And that's why this set of traits seems so hard to fix. It is fixable, but people have to understand it and want to change themselves. Now, you might be thinking of a dark triad as some sort of evil genius prowling about, you know, trying to wreck people's lives and out on the loose all the time. The truth is that there's some pretty interesting research out there, research from a journal called Jurometrics, which is really about social science and the criminal justice system that shows that the prison population is way disproportionately

Starting point is 00:08:58 full of dark triad personalities. Why? Because people who are way out in the extreme of narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathic traits, they're way more likely than average people to take the risk of committing crimes that hurt other people. And when you do that, if you do that over and over and over again, you're probably going to get caught. That's why prisons, they appear to have so many people with the dark triad personality constellation. This is an urgent call to figure out better and better ways to treat people. So they recognize what's going on and help urge them to regret that such that they can not be dark triads, have normal lives, normal loving relationships.

Starting point is 00:09:36 This is the key. Dark triads typically don't have normal loving relationships because they're predatory toward other people. However, they're really good at looking like they have loving relationships, and this is what leads to a lot of problems, not if you're a dark triad, but if you're the victim of a dark triad, which you probably have been, and I don't want you to be going forward, which is why I'm doing this edition of the podcast. Okay, now, a couple of quick ideas here that I want to bring up. Actually, the first question is, is who tends to be a dark triad more? Men are women, and the answer is men. And part of the reason for that is that we're way more likely to find to find these personality characteristics in men that we are in women. We don't know why. But that is just in point of fact the case, that men tend to score higher,

Starting point is 00:10:23 especially in Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Men and women are pretty equal than narcissism, but it becomes metastatic and especially damaging when you add in those other two characteristics. In some, especially men, you find a fourth characteristic that rides on alongside it, which is sadism. In other words, it's all about me. I'm willing to hurt you, I don't feel bad if I do. As a matter of fact, I kind of enjoy it.

Starting point is 00:10:47 That's really, really terrible. And that's not the dark triad anymore. That's called the dark tetrad because it's actually these four characteristics. A number of psychologists have said that that's the one we need to worry about the most. But look, it's bad enough with just the three. So that's what I'm going to be talking about here. Okay, let's talk about the ways that you can find them, what you need to look out for and how you can protect yourself against dark trias. so you don't fall prey to their behavior. Because, again, if somebody only thinks about themselves and they're willing to hurt you, that means you're going to take advantage of you.

Starting point is 00:11:19 And that's what you probably found in your life. The dark triads and romantic relationships have taken advantage of you and done bad things. They've broken your heart and drained your bank account in the past. At work, they take credit for your work. They lie about what you're doing and what they're doing. And they're doing it for their own personal gain. And that actually doesn't benefit you at all. On the contrary, it's really, really terrible.

Starting point is 00:11:43 So let's find out where we can find them to begin with, and then let's talk about what you can do about it. Now, to begin with, the research is really clear about where we find them in work situations, the kind of jobs that they gravitate to. I don't want this to be the case, but I'm just looking at the research here in the public interest. Dark triads tend to work in artistic, creative, and social careers.

Starting point is 00:12:06 The social part really kind of makes sense because they want to be around people. They prey on people, so they need to be in a social context. It doesn't really benefit a dark triad very much if they're working all by themselves, because there's nobody to take advantage of here. But artistic and creative careers really benefits them as well, because narcissistic people, in particular, like to do creative and artistic stuff. They're more likely to do these things so that everybody will look at them,

Starting point is 00:12:30 because it's really all about them. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that people who are in creative careers are all dark trias, even all narcissists. I'm in a creative career. I don't think I am. I certainly try not to be narcissistic. I try to make sure that I have a well-balanced personality. Fortunately, I've taken the test on my own website and so far so good is all I can say, but we do find dark trads over-representative and over-represented in these walks of life, especially narcissists. Machiavellians, on the other hand, they tend to add on one layer and this kind of makes the whole

Starting point is 00:13:07 career decision a little bit more interesting here. They avoid careers that involve caring for other people, which makes sense. You know, they're fundamentally anti-social. Machiavellians don't care about other people. That's why they're willing to hurt other people. So they tend to avoid careers where they have to have hands-on care, you know, TLC toward others. You don't find Machiavellians in nursing, for example. You don't find them in the kinds of things where, you know, physical therapy, where they're dedicated with a pretty moderate salary to helping people enough a lot. Those are caring professions in which people who have a lot of heart are choosing those walks of life. So the result is that we find these dark triads and professions that involve human contact and performance and applause,

Starting point is 00:13:52 but very little hands-on care for individuals. So that means, for example, politics and show business are who are very likely to find dark triads. A lot of politicians, they tend toward the dark triad constellation. And, you know, no kidding, right? Now, here's the problem. You're thinking about that politician you like the least. You got it. But you've got to think about this in terms of the person that's on your own political side.

Starting point is 00:14:18 You have political opinions. I have political opinions. That's great. This is America. Well, maybe you're not in America watching this, and that's great too. But most likely there's politicians that people are voting for freely wherever you happen to be watching this podcast from. And the key for having the knowledge that is the power of understanding dark triads is not just applying the constellation of characteristics to the people that you agree with,

Starting point is 00:14:41 but that you disagree with, excuse me, but the people that you agree with. That's the important thing to keep in mind, because when you actually start to see it and the people with whom you agree that you find attractive, then you're less likely to be taken advantage of you. Look, somebody in politics that you think is an idiot to begin with, that person can't take advantage of you, right? So it doesn't really matter if you identify them as a dark triad. Look for people on your own side, especially in politics, especially in show business, whatever it happens to be. Now, somebody in show business can't really take advantage of you, but certainly in politics

Starting point is 00:15:15 they can. Now, here are, according to the research, the five things that dark triads do in the workplace, these predatory people who are coming in to take advantage of you for their own benefit. Here are the five things to be looking for, and I'll put them up on the screen. Number one, they exaggerate their own worth. This is the first tell. It's somebody who's good, maybe, but they act as if they're great, and their accomplishments don't quite add up.

Starting point is 00:15:46 They're gilding a lily a little bit. They're acting like they're a little bit more important than they've been in the past. You know, the kind of person where they don't need to exaggerate but they do, that's your first tell that you might have a dark triad in your hands. Second is that they don't trust others. Now, here's the thing. When people are not trustworthy, they don't trust others. And this is what I found all throughout my career.

Starting point is 00:16:09 There would be people that when they're sneaky, they think everybody else is sneaky. A family counselor one time told me somebody I was interviewing for some work that I was doing, some writing I was doing. He said that when a couple comes in and the husband says, I'm sure that my wife is cheating on me, The first thing he says is, sir, how long have you been being unfaithful to your wife? Because this is the first thing that I was think under the circumstances. He says it sometimes fails, but doesn't. For years earlier in my life, I made my living as a classical musician. I was playing in the Barcelona Symphony, for example.

Starting point is 00:16:47 And the dark triads that I most commonly met were conductors of orchestras. These are people that didn't have any TLC for much of anybody. They were really, really narcissistic. Hey, everybody, look at me. they were willing to do terrible things to others. I saw a conductor that reduced a flute player in my orchestra, a man of 66 years, to tears in front of all of his colleagues. And he appeared to kind of enjoy it. Maybe he was a dark tetrad. Maybe there's a little sadism put in there. We used to say, conductors, many conductors are evil geniuses, but all are evil. I didn't know what I was talking about, but I wasn't a social scientist in those days. But boy, did I see an awful lot of it. And you see a little bit of that. And you see a little bit of that. steer clear of those people because the closer you get to them, the more you get used and the more you get hurt, as a matter of fact.

Starting point is 00:17:36 Even if they're attractive, even if they have power, even if it looks like it's in your interest, stay away from a dark triad. Think about the politician that you like the least and they're toxic to all the people around them. Well, that's what's going on with all these dark triads, as a matter of fact. They're distrustful of the vices that they actually have themselves. The third is they tend to act impulsively and ironsory. responsibly at work. They do weird things. They do things that people shouldn't do. They might act

Starting point is 00:18:04 out and audaciously. They might yell at other people. They might treat people with just open and blatant disrespect at times. That sort of surprises you for somebody who seems so wonderful. That's the third trait. The fourth is that they can't not break rules. Sorry for the double negative. They break rules. They can't stop doing it as a matter of fact. Why? Because guess what? Dark triads think that rules don't apply to them. That's why. And so the result is that following rules might be a kind of a prudent thing for them to do when they're thinking clearly. But when they're not thinking clearly, they're not going to abide by rules that they don't have to, that they feel like morally that they don't have to because they're above all these things. That's a narcissist think who are

Starting point is 00:18:45 willing to do things that hurt other people. Last but not least, dark triads always lie. I've actually never met a Dark Triad or never seen in literature evidence of Dark Trias that are fundamentally truthful people. They'll even lie when they act like they're telling the truth. They'll tell you things that, like, let me let you in a little secret. I'm going to give you some inside knowledge to get some sort of leverage over you in a particular way. You can't even trust that is the way that this works. So those are the five characteristics of the Dark Triad at work. And when you start to see these things, steer clear.

Starting point is 00:19:19 If you're an employer, separate as much as you can from these people. When you're working for a dark triad, well, figure out how you can get away from this sort of boss. That means looking for a new job if you can. And if you have people working for you and you work for a dark triad, then shield the people who work for you as much as you possibly can. That's a good and honorable and noble thing to do and get a new job if you can. Okay. There's a bunch of interesting articles on this on the dark triad at work, and I'll put one or two in the show notes, so you can actually go read these things yourself. Now, I know what you really want to think about in this context, which is dark triads and romantic relationships. This is really where the damage tends to get done. And it's especially the case that women have in, who have relationships with men who are dark triads are the ones who have the most horror stories. Why? Because men tend to be dark triads more than women, and they're most predatory toward women that are looking for a relationship and tend to get swept off their feet. In relationships, they have these characteristics.

Starting point is 00:20:25 Let me give you the five characteristics and then talk a little bit more about what they look like. Number one, they tend to be extremely confident and outgoing. Here's what dark triads are good at in romantic relationships, knowing what you want to hear. Let me back up. When you get into a romantic relationship, whether you're a man or a woman, what do you want? You want somebody, if you're falling in love, who's also falling in love with you. What you don't want is somebody who will never fall in love with you, but act like they will so they can get what they want out of you.

Starting point is 00:20:56 If they want to use you physically, if they want your money, if they just want your companionship, if they want your status, whatever happens to be, you don't want somebody to use you. You want somebody who actually loves you. Dark triads are really good at acting like they love you, even though they don't. They're confident and outgoing because they have skills in figuring out what you want to hear, as a matter of fact. And this is really bad, especially for a, there's a syndrome that I've written about in the past a little bit called emophilia. I'll put something I've written about that in the show notes as well. And that's not hemophilia.

Starting point is 00:21:33 That's not with an H. That's a blood disorder. Emophilia is E-M-O-P-H-I-L-A. Emophilia. And that is the tendency to fall in love very. very quickly to go through the stages of falling in love. And falling in love is a neurochemical phenomenon that starts with the stimulation of sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone.

Starting point is 00:21:55 It goes into neuromodulator activity, most notably dopamine and neurodrenaline, so you get the feeling of anticipation of reward and euphoria. And then it goes into serotonin, which will make you kind of ruminate on the other person. All this is happening within a period of weeks until you're getting more of this oxytocin and vasopressin release. Those are neuropeptides that will bond you to the other person. That takes time. It doesn't necessarily take years. As a matter of fact, if it's taking years, it means it's not happening. But it certainly doesn't happen in two days. And there are people in the literature, a non-trivial number of people, especially women, who go very, very quickly through it.

Starting point is 00:22:34 Dark, if that's you, Dark Trias know who you are. They know how to pray on you. And that's a really scary thing because they're going to say exactly what they know you need to hear because they have lots and lots of experience dealing with emo Felix. So you have to protect yourself. Now it's a good thing to know that if you follow them out too quickly to how to protect yourself from that in general, but especially when dark triads come into the picture. So number one, they're outgoing and confident because they know what you need to hear. Second, they have a strong preference for short-term mating. Okay, this is just how behavioral scientists talk about hookup culture. They want to hook up.

Starting point is 00:23:14 They don't get married. Or if they want to get married, it's hugely incidental to the kind of relationships that they typically have. They're really, really good at figuring out how to induce you, no matter who you are, into a short-term relationship by making you feel like you've been swept off your feet so much. As a matter of fact, they favor short-term relationships so much because some would say they're kind of incapable of falling in love, which is the essence of a long-term relationship, that they're almost incapable, as far as the data have shown, of being faithful to their partners. They cheat all the time. That's one of the characteristics of when I say, number two, being strong preference for short-term relationships, that means infidelity among. other things. So they go from person to person to person unethically, and they tend to be unfaithful in a relationship that's supposed to be monogamous. This is a very, very strong trait in relationships

Starting point is 00:24:12 of dark triads. They're extremely attractive. They're really, really good at coming off as extremely attractive. And once again, especially to women, because they know how to make themselves extremely attractive. Look, somebody who wants a mutual loving relationship has no incentive for you to fall in love if they're not falling in love. That's just a fact. Somebody who wants you to fall in love even though they're not, that's evidence of a broken person. And so somebody who's trying to do that

Starting point is 00:24:41 on the basis of superficial characteristics, that's going to tend to be a dark triad as well. Number four is that they tend to exaggerate their success status and commitment. Once again, this tends to be a male characteristic. There's a fantastic, one of the great social scientists of our time is David Buss at the University of Texas at Austin, who does work on, he's really the leading expert in evolutionary psychology.

Starting point is 00:25:07 In other words, understanding psychological patterns with respect to our ancestral environment. When people behave the way they do, you can usually find a reason in our ancestral environment. Why? Because our brains were really formed in an environment that suited us to what we were doing 250,000 years ago, the place to seem. We haven't evolved physically very much, our worlds have evolved. So when we see weird anomalous behavior in mating, for example, usually there's a reason for it that goes back a long, long time. One of those things is that when we're looking at new potential mates for the very first time, that men tend to look for cues of youth and fertility, and women tend to look. And again, your results may vary. I'm not

Starting point is 00:25:53 being dispositive about your situation, but this is not case closed. This is a tendency that David Buss talks about in the evolutionary psychology, women tend to look more at, because of the investment that they have to make in family life and raising children and status and success and commitment and resources. The result of that is that dark triads, they tend to, when they're meeting somebody, to exaggerate those things. I'm more successful than they really are, higher status than they really have, more committed than they really are going to be richer than they really are.

Starting point is 00:26:28 What are they trying to do? They're trying to seduce you. is the bottom line. Typically that's the case. Again, they specialize in saying and doing what you want to hear, not what is authentic and honest. They're con men and con women. Now, when you have a relationship, a romantic relationship with the dark triad, and the breakup comes, and it inevitably does, it's going to, you're probably not going to change the dark triad. I have literally never seen a case where somebody falls in love with the dark triad and saves the dark triad. It's saves the dark triad from her or himself. When the breakup comes, it's always ugly. You don't get

Starting point is 00:27:07 out nicely from a dark triad. They're known for what what psychologists call cost escalation. They're going to make you pay. That's what they're going to do. Why? Because they don't care how much they hurt you and they feel the remorse. Look, if you break up with a normal person and it's hurtful and something bad happened, you know, they're not trying to hurt you per se because they don't. They don't want to because they have some love for you. They have some tenderness for you. And besides, they don't want to be a horrible person. They think of themselves as somebody who's fundamentally ethical, at least not a completely horrible human being. But Dark Triads don't think that way. That's the problem. They will cost escalate and manipulate you and openly confront you

Starting point is 00:27:49 because they're Machiavellian and they have psychopathic tendencies. I'm willing to hurt you for my interests and I don't feel any empathy and I don't feel any remorse. Okay, avoid those characteristics. Trust me on this. This is how you protect yourself. Next, I want to talk about one that's a little bit more sensitive actually. I mean, sensitive enough at work and in romance, but I want to talk a little bit more about politics and activism.

Starting point is 00:28:17 Because politics and political activism is an area, as I mentioned before, where we are most likely, especially likely to find dark triad personalities. They create a lot of damage. Why? Because narcissists in particular are motivated by self-aggrandizement over public service, and they're willing to lie. They don't feel bad about actually lying. I know what you're saying because you're really cynical. Find me a politician who doesn't lie. Look, I know lots of members of Congress. The job that I had before I was doing what I'm doing now is I ran a big think tank in Washington, D.C. I knew tons of senators and members of Congress. They're mostly awesome. They're mostly people like us. They just felt motivated to engage in public service. And I realize that that's not how people think of them, but it is the truth for most of them. The problem is that a few kind of spoil the bunch. And who are the few spoiling the bunch? The dark triads.

Starting point is 00:29:08 They can be really, really successful, especially when they're well-spoken and smooth and intelligent, et cetera, et cetera. Once again, you're thinking of somebody right now. I know you are. It's the person on the other side. Look for the person on your side. That's how you'll be able to protect yourself. Now, what we find is that, again, you can find some papers that talk about, you know, certain dark triad characteristics are more on one side and other dark triad characteristics are on the

Starting point is 00:29:37 other side. But what we really find is that people with psychopathic characteristics, they're most attracted to extreme positions in a radicalized society. And that's, my friends, that's now in America and in a lot of other countries. We have a very polarized politics, which means that, we are tending to be manipulated by people in the 5% margins on either side of politics. And again, I got my views and you have your views, but we need to talk about this as behavioral scientists that we are and people trying to be in the happiness movement.

Starting point is 00:30:09 We want a happier world, including the people who disagree with us, right? Right? Anyway, you get my point here that when we have a polarized environment, an ecosystem that's highly oriented toward rhetoric that's over the top, when we have policies that are not just about winning but the other side losing, the people that are drawn into that are dark triad politicians disproportionately. And that's what we find today. The people who are most audacious, the people who are loudest, I'm sorry they have the dark triad characteristics. They just do. So when we see this, we need to be more active in making sure that we're not hitching our wagons to those people in

Starting point is 00:30:52 in political activism or in politics itself, or let alone the media, who are saying those forbidden things that we think on our worst days? Because, look, we all have a little tiny bit of dark triad in us, but we're not overwhelmingly that personality constellation, so we try to suppress it, as we should. That's a good thing to do. But there's always somebody who gives you that sort of forbidden fruit, a little bit in the way they talk.

Starting point is 00:31:17 That's what to look out for. That's really what to look out for, because in times like ours, then all the people represent us are the choices between dark triads on this side and dark triads on that side. And that's very bad for our society. That's very bad for our countries and very bad for, quite frankly, our future. Okay, another area I want to talk about. And again, there's a bunch of interesting research out there on dark triads, not in politics, but in activism per se. people in again in highly charged times who are the heads of you know activist movements they're

Starting point is 00:31:52 more way more likely than average to be dark triads to have these characteristics so look out when somebody's trying to fire you up for their cause that's the bottom line protect yourself because we need you to we need a better world what about online you know what do you think online dark triads are ever present social media is the perfect place for you dark triads is the best place ever for the dark triads. Why? Because it's anonymous. And you can scream and you get an automatic platform. And the more outrageous you are, the more people actually will follow you. That's what's going on. It's kind of outraged theater. It's a perfect place for all three. Narcissists to love social media because it's constantly looking in a mirror. How many

Starting point is 00:32:34 likes did I get? How many followers did I get? That's classic narcissistic behavior is to be over-involved in social media, especially checking your mentions all the time. Machiavellianism, you hurt people with almost complete impunity and you don't have to feel bad about it at all because you're never held to account. It's perfect for the dark triads. Basically, internet trolls who get their jollies from hurting your feelings or frightening you or insulting you. They're all dark triads. And again, there's a good paper out there. I'll put it in the notes. Trolls just want to have fun is the name of the paper. And it shows that people who troll on social media, on sort of any place on the internet, anonymously writing things that stir up

Starting point is 00:33:24 controversy and stir up bad blood, that they almost all have, especially psychopathic characteristics. They're kind of psychobats, as a matter of fact. And they don't have to be held to account because nobody knows who they are. That's the kind of the whole point of trolling. They usually exhibit also social media disorder. They tend to have. really disordered lives. They actually are quite pathetic, but be that as it may, they're going to make you miserable as much as they can. One side note on that, to put two of these things together, relationships and social media, when you're first out on a date, ask this question, just like this. Do you like to post anonymously on the internet a lot? Do you like to go, you know, have some laughs

Starting point is 00:34:06 by kind of stirring up trouble on X or on Instagram? And they're like, yeah, I love it. that, get away. You have just detected a dark triad. That person is going to create a whole lot of problems for you. Just throw it out there. Innocently, this is a great test. Okay, so let me talk about in general how to detect a dark triad. I've given you kind of the characteristics in relationships and in politics and online and certainly at work. But let me give you the kind of the meta list of things to look out for to detect a dark triad so that you can protect yourself through avoidance, most importantly. Number one, self-importance. I'm the most important person in the world. When they exhibit traits of self-importance, be very wary. Second, is a sense of entitlement.

Starting point is 00:34:54 Look, it's all about me, and when things aren't going my way, they should be. Come on. Number three is vanity. You know, the whole idea of the vanity of wanting everybody to look at them is, and again, that can be as simple, by the way, and when you're going out with somebody for the first time, every time they go by a car window, they look at themselves. That's a tell. I mean, that doesn't mean they're a dark triad, but at least your spider scent should be tingling about that. Number four is a victim mentality.

Starting point is 00:35:23 People who are willing to hurt other people are always suspicious of the motives of others, and they tend to think that anything that goes wrong for them, it's because people had it out for them. They tend to be paranoid. They tend to be aggrieved. They tend to act like their victims, which activists always do, by the way. And so do politicians, generally speaking. politicians, but a lot. Number five, they tend to bend the truth or even openly lie. Why? Because

Starting point is 00:35:46 they don't care if they're doing something that hurts you, something that's damaging. Well, they don't realize, of course, is damaging to them because ultimately people are going to figure it out. Number six is manipulativeness. They want you to be bent to their will, and they will manipulate you with pretty untruthful means, if necessary. Number seven is grandiosity because they're going to exaggerate. They're going to exaggerate their accomplishments. They're going to exaggerate their past. They're going to exaggerate their status. They're going to exaggerate their ambition. Why? Because they want to insinuate themselves with you. They want to get into your good graces as quickly as possible, not because they love you, because they want you to love them. Number eight is a lack of remorse

Starting point is 00:36:29 when they do things wrong, which is baffling to normal people. It's so weird. I've met people who they do something and I think it's impossible that they did that. I would, never do that. Well, it turns out that doesn't work when you're working with a dark triad. And number nine is an absence of empathy and remorse. They don't care when they do these things. Those are the nine characteristics of when you're dealing with the dark triad. And generally speaking, if you have a long-term relationship, sorry, but you're going to see all these things. One of the thing that actually shows up in the literature, that's really interesting, that is a technique that dark triads use when they get caught. So let's say that you're in a romantic relationship with the dark triad.

Starting point is 00:37:06 And terrible. You're going to probably find this person is unfaithful to you emotionally or physically as being unfaithful to you. And when you confront the dark triad, they have a technique that's called Darvo, D-A-R-V-O. That's an acronym. It means deny attack and reverse victim and offender. Number one is they lie and say they didn't do it. Then they turn the whole thing around and attack you. Then they reverse the victim and offender by saying you're the offender.

Starting point is 00:37:36 and they're the victim. And so it goes something like this. No, no, I didn't sleep with that person. No, I've been completely faithful to you. Well, I got the receipts, man. I got the receipts. I mean, it's like, what is this Marriott bill, you know, in our city? And it's like, oh, yeah, well, look, it's really your fault because you've been driving

Starting point is 00:37:58 me away. So the first one was deny, and then when you can't anymore, it's attack. And then they say, and you know what? I'm pretty tired of this line of questioning all. the time and the suspicion that we have. And that's really what's been driving me away. And it's been, you've been a pretty terrible partner for a long time. You know, I'm the person who really is the victim here. So if you start seeing that, you know you're a full-blown dark triad, and you've gone down the path to the point where they're actually using Darvo on you,

Starting point is 00:38:25 it's time to move on. I don't see too many exits besides the big exit of the relationship itself. I want to end on a happier note. And then I want to go to some questions that you've written in. The questions are great. Really appreciate it. What should you look for instead while you're trying to avoid the dark triad? Scott Barry Kaufman, I talked about him earlier. He talks about something called a light triad.

Starting point is 00:38:50 That's the opposite of the dark triad. This is somebody who has faith in humanity. They trust others. Humanism. That's what Scott Barry Kaufman talks about, you know, believing in the dignity and the worth of every individual. and a belief that is a universal moral law. There's just right and wrong, things you shouldn't do to anybody,

Starting point is 00:39:07 even if you don't like them. Those three things he finds actually are characteristic of about 50% of the population, and that's where you want to look. Authentically good people, and how do you know? There's a lot of work in psychology on something called moral elevation where when somebody has these characteristics, you feel warm inside.

Starting point is 00:39:26 Not the kind of warm inside. Like, I think this person is falling in love with me because there's a dark try and trying to manipulate me, but because that's somebody I really morally admire. That's kind of a tell on that. It's a beautiful thing. And you've all felt that. That's what to look for.

Starting point is 00:39:40 A colleague, in a friend, in a partner, a romantic partner, those are the people you should actually look for. Look for that. And when you do, they might not be displaying all the things that you want to see in the very first moment you meet them. And the reason is because they're trying to figure out if they like you. and that's exactly what you want, to have a mutually beneficial,

Starting point is 00:40:03 mutually loving relationship. That's what we all should be looking for. Look for the light triad, just as you avoid, the dark triad. Okay, a couple of questions I want to get to. Some great questions this week. The first is from Catholic coffee time.

Starting point is 00:40:18 I'm Catholic and I like coffee, so what's not to like about Catholic coffee time? What's the difference between happiness and joy? Joy is an emotion and happiness is not. Happiness is a combination of three, three phenomena, elements, macro-nutrients, if you will, enjoyment of life, satisfaction with activities and accomplishments, and the meaning of life. Those are the three things to be looking for, and all three of them have an enormous

Starting point is 00:40:44 scientific literature behind them. So when we're getting happier, we're also going to bear up under a lot of unhappiness and be fully alive in our lives. Why? Because enjoyment, sometimes it means passing on transitory pleasures. They're not the same thing. means deferring your gratifications, which sometimes can be harder, even painful. And the meaning of life, it means learning and growing through suffering. In other words, what I'm saying is that

Starting point is 00:41:10 happiness and unhappiness are not incompatible with each other. You actually need some unhappiness to become happy so you can have enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning in your life. Okay, so what's joy? Joy is the feeling of a bullion that you get because of the activity of your limbic system. The limbic system of your brain is a console of tissue deep inside your brain that was evolved between two and 40 million years ago. It gives you your basic emotions. It takes the signals that you're perceiving around you and it translates them into negative or positive emotions simply so that you will have information about whether you should approach something or avoid something. That's what it comes down to. That's what feelings are.

Starting point is 00:41:50 People talk about good and bad feelings. There's no such thing as bad feelings. You need all of your emotions. One of the positive emotions that people really, really want is joy. And how do you know that you're experiencing a lot of happiness, which is not a feeling? It's that you have feelings that are associated with it. So think of joy as the smell of the turkey on Thanksgiving Day and happiness as the turkey itself. Happy, happiness is the dinner and it's tangible and you can make it and you can get better at making it.

Starting point is 00:42:21 And the smell that says something special is going on is Thanksgiving Day. but it wears off and it's evanescent. It's just evidence of dinner. That's the feeling. That's joy. That's how the two things are related. Second question. Christodoulodus Christos asks,

Starting point is 00:42:38 what's the connection between intelligence and happiness? I've looked at that a little bit, as a matter of fact, and I've written about that in the past, and the answer is not much connection. You find little things, you know, you find slight variations as people go through education, But a lot of it has to do with the fact that perceived intelligence is also quite connected to whether or not people are comfortable materially. And when people are more comfortable materially, especially off low levels, they have lower levels of unhappiness.

Starting point is 00:43:12 And so unhappiness is relieved when people are better able to take care of themselves, but up to very low levels. Here's the real connection between intelligence and happiness. When you use your intelligence to benefit others, you will get happier. Best, the bottom line. When you use your intelligence only for your own benefit, you'll get unhappier. I mean, I guess it's probably scant comfort, but comfort nonetheless, that genius dark triads, they tend to be incredibly miserable people. Why? Because they're using their talents only for themselves. They're isolated. They're lonely. They're miserable. They're all alone. And at the end of the day, people don't like them. People don't like them because they shouldn't. And they've heard a lot of

Starting point is 00:43:52 people to boot, which means that they've burned a lot of bridges, whether they care or not, they don't like the cost that comes from having done so. On the other hand, if you use your manifest talents, your creativity, your time, your talent, your treasure, and you use those things, especially your cognitive horsepower in the benefit of other people, you'll gather people around you, you'll have more love and you'll have the satisfaction of having made the world a better place, which is exactly what we're trying to do with this podcast. Question three, Ritz Baby, says, how do I comfort my ailing and aging parents about their imminent death? I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you're dealing with this.

Starting point is 00:44:29 And it's a really hard thing. I mean, look, we all know the natural order of things. You get older and you die. And it's not, in a way, it's not a tragedy, but it's still really sad. And it can be really hard and scary for your parents themselves. I get it. It turns out that the fear of death is most acute for people who've spent a lifetime living in the future. This is one of the reasons that very successful people, strivers, entrepreneurs, they struggle the most with the end of life because they spent their whole lives thinking about a better future for themselves and for others, better future, better future, and when they're confronted with no future, at least no future on Earth, it can be really, really hard. And so that's the case with your parents, where they've been very future-oriented, what we behavioral scientists call prospective, very prospective, thinking about the future themselves. Side note, the average person spends 30 to 50% of their time thinking about the future. Entrepreneurs, some estimates suggest, they spend up to 80% of their time thinking about the future.

Starting point is 00:45:29 So if that's your parents, that's going to be really, really hard. And there's two ways to deal with this. The first is to be here now, to do the best you can to bring your parents back to right now, thinking about what's happening now and beautiful things that have happened in the past. Help them to time travel in a way that's less deleterious to their happiness. The second, if you're religious, is thinking about what the future brings, not here. If you belong to a religion that believes that there is something better waiting for us, this is a very beautiful way to explore their beliefs on that, to share different readings

Starting point is 00:46:05 and points of view on a better future, not here, but in paradise. Whatever that means to you. Well, we come to the end. I hope you've learned a lot. Don't be a dark triad, but protect yourself from the people around you who have a very much. these characteristics. Again, one in 14 is no joke. You know them right now, but you need to avoid them for your own happiness, and you need to protect your loved ones as well. Be on the lookout. You don't need to be a jerk. You don't need to be terrible, but you can do a lot to protect

Starting point is 00:46:33 yourself from predators around us in ordinary life. Remember, if you want to read more of the kinds of things that we're doing in this podcast, my book right here, The Happiness Files, gives all kinds of information that I hope you can use about work and life. Pick that up. 33 essays, all of which were pretty popular in Atlantic over the past five years, in one simple place. And if you want, I'll even read it to you. Well, actually, I read the first chapter and somebody else read the rest. But you can go to sleep with the dulcet tones of my work on happiness. And that's what you like to do.

Starting point is 00:47:05 Please, once again, feedback. Office Hours at Arthur Brooks.com is our email address for comments. Like and subscribe and leave your comments. And even if you have critical comments about, I don't know, my T-shirt. anything. My looks, you don't need to do that. But anyway, I'll take your comments seriously and change whatever I can. I want you to have a good experience. And please, please, please do recommend this podcast to your friends, especially if you're finding it beneficial. And until I see you next week, you don't have to leave your happiness up to chance. Thanks for joining me at office hours.

Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - The Sociopaths Among Us: How to Spot (and Avoid) a Dark Triad

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.