#411 — The Victimhood Pandemic
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman joins me to talk about what it's like being a professor at Columbia University after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He talks about the impact of the attacks, how to prepare for the next pandemic, and why he thinks Columbia is better than most.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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I'm here with Scott Barry Kaufman. Scott, thanks for joining me.
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Sam, it's so great to be here again five years later.
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Yeah, we talked like right when the pandemic started.
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Right. Did we know there was a pandemic at the time? Was it?
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Uh-huh. What did you predict? Do you remember anything?
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Yeah. Okay. I think something I said is, we're going to come out stronger from this. We're going
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to come out of the pandemic with a newfound sense of appreciation for life. I guess something like
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Um, for some people, I think that is true. And for some people, it's far worse. But that's un-pandemic
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Don't you think at the societal level, we're much weaker? I mean, I, my sense is that we're much
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less prepared for the next pandemic than we would otherwise be socially, politically.
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Yeah. In terms of being prepared. Yeah. That's a really good point. But I also think, you know,
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we, we sort of forget what it was like to be in the pandemic. I mean, this is like anything. It's
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like, if you get a bad headache, you're like, all you want is to not have the headache. And you're
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like, forevermore, the rest of my life, I'll be so appreciative that I don't have the headache.
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And then five, you know, about 30 seconds after you're recovered, you forgot what it was like
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to have that. It's not, it's not like you live up to that promise, you know?
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Yeah. Yeah. We can put that in the stoicism bucket, which, uh, it seems it relates to a lot
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of your work, actually. I mean, you, you, you do a lot of work on emotional resilience and well-being
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and so you're, we should remind people you have a book that just came out this week titled Rise
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Above, which, um, goes into the problems of, um, seeing oneself as a victim and, you know, the kind
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of durable basis for self-esteem and, and how we navigate, uh, the various, uh, personality quirks of
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narcissism and neuroticism. And I want to get into all that, but before we do, you just moved back to
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New York and have begun teaching at Columbia again. Have you started teaching yet? No, I started
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preparing for the fall semester, but I don't start till the fall till September. So, um, that Columbia
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has been very much in the news, you know, right in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. And
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it was the epicenter of a lot of the, um, protests around the war in Gaza. I know you kind of just got
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back, but do you have a sense of, of what campus life is like now? You know, for most
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students, it's business as usual. You know, I think it's very easy to watch the news and to
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catastrophize the whole school and say, Oh, I, you know, I hear a lot from parents. I'm never sending
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my son or daughter to Columbia when you're actually in it. As I've been in it, I taught last year for
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semester. It's pretty calm once you're in it, you know, once you're teaching, uh, the students are
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great. You may step outside and, and see, you know, a group of 10, 20 students who are very loud.
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But I just need to emphasize it's, it's the, it's the strong, strong minority of students.
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I mean, a big part of my book as well is to limit catastrophizing limit, you know, lots of
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cognitive distortions. And I do fear the media fuels into a lot of this where, you know, suddenly
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we should, we should be fearful of Columbia or Columbia students. And that's really not the
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normal business as everyday, everyday business.
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So the sense of victimhood, I mean, many people feel that that has been amplified in the, in this
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younger generation, maybe two generations culturally in the, in the West, in the most prosperous
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societies, you know, especially in America, there's a sense that, that are, um, the sense of what
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constitutes trauma has been amplified to the point where basically everyone of a certain age views
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themselves, uh, somewhere in recovery from something awful. And that's something awful could
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be, uh, almost homeopathic in its level of dilution. Do you think we are witnessing a culture of
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victimhood that needs a course correction? I mean, just, and how much of that is just the
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catastrophizing of the media reports about culture?
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I've never quite put it this way, but I do think we're living in a victimhood pandemic there. You
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get there. I just coined that phrase. So yeah, I do think there's something going on in our culture
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where it's almost like everyone feels like they need to one up each other. Everyone needs to compete
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for victimhoods. We're living the age of the victimhood Olympics. And I think that implicit in
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that is there is this assumption that there can only be one victim and everyone's competing for this
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one spot to get all that attention, to get all those resources. There is a large psychology base
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and, um, Kurt Gray has done some really good research on this called moral typecasting. And
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psychologically, if you're put in the, if you're perceived as the victim, you're perceived as an
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angel who can never do anything wrong. And if you're perceived as the perpetrator, you can't do
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anything right. And so for good reason, you know, it's a very coveted, coveted spot to be
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perceived as the victim. It didn't used to be the case though. I mean, when did this flip? It used
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to be that you would want to diminish. I mean, that certainly there's no sense of higher status
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accruing to somebody who's a victim. I mean, most people would want to hide whatever wounds they
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think they're carrying around at a certain point. When did that flip culturally? No one knows the exact
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answer to that question, but people like Jonathan Haidt and, uh, Gene Twenge have, have done some
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analysis to know some trends, um, in the last seven years, I would say, you know, you're right.
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In my youth, when you were submitting college essays, you were rewarded for talking about how
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you've overcome your challenges and your adversities. Now college essays, you, they're all competing to
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just have the best sob story in order to get to the, get into the college. That's simply what's
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rewarded, not overcoming it. Interesting. What's the alternative here? I mean,
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in your book, you talk about a healthy sense of vulnerability. I mean, you're not, you're not,
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you're not asking people to deny the slings and arrows they've encountered in life. Just keep
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calm and carry on. There's something, what is, what is the balance here? I mean, maybe, maybe this is
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the point to introduce your transformation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which you, you've changed
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from a pyramid to a sailboat where the, the hull is the basic needs of safety, connection,
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and self-esteem and the sail is exploration, love, and purpose. I mean, we'll probably cover some of
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those, but I guess I'm thinking of self-esteem in this connection. What, what is the, what is the
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Really, really insightful. In a lot of ways, this book is a, is a, is a double clicking or a zoom in
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on transcend. Transcend was so focused on the higher self. And I was like, you know what? We need to
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return to fundamentals because I don't think most people are there yet. Most people are not there
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right now. Let's double click on the boat, not the sail, but the basic needs of the boat, which are
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the need for connection, the need for self-esteem, um, and the need for safety. When those three needs
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are thwarted, it's kind of, they kind of operate as a system. Um, and you can spiral downward quite
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quickly, um, if one of the three and pull, it'll pull down the other two. So if your need for
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connection is not satisfied to an adequate level, your self-esteem will take a hit. If your safety
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is not satisfied, your connection and your self-esteem. So it's all, it's all a system. So in a lot of
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ways, this new book really is a, a double clicking on that and the mindsets that can take its way from
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that. But then I do talk about the mindsets that are productive and I call it the empowerment
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Yeah. So if, in just in terms of thinking about self-esteem, what is, what is its healthy basis?
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If you, if you met somebody who's, you know, in their mid twenties and you had a sense that
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they had a major hole in the, in the hull of the boat and, uh, their self-esteem needed to be shored
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up. Obviously there's a delusional version of self-esteem, right? There's this, uh, thoughts about
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oneself that, um, can fail to track one's actual place in the world and this, and the, the health
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of one's relationships, et cetera. I mean, so presumably there's, there's some, you want some
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reality testing, uh, which is to say you actually, you require some reasons to feel good about your
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place in the world. You can't just be psychotically enthusiastic about how good things are going.
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And I mean, how do you recommend that someone dig their way out of that hole? If a lack of
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self-esteem is really the, the kind of the point of the crisis?
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Yeah. To answer that question, I just want to just take a bit of a bird's eye view for a quick
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second and say that when we often think of a victim, you're being victimized. We think about
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you being victimized by external circumstances. And actually part one of my book are all the
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different ways we are victim to ourselves. And one way is you can be a victim to your
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self-esteem and you can become a victim to your self-esteem when you have to always feel
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good about yourself. I kind of, I try, I try to challenge the notion that you always have to feel
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good about yourself. And I argue, I have a whole section called the benefits of feeling bad about
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yourself. There is this notion that you should always feel good about yourself no matter what you
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do in this world. And no, we need to take accountability. We need to, sometimes are we,
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we're, we need to have a reality monitoring, like accurate reality checking. Are we coming
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across as a valued social partner? Are we, you know, there are evolutionarily evolved mechanisms
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that cause us to not feel good about ourselves when we act in certain ways or when we're getting
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certain feedback. And that is valuable information. There's a reason why that sociometer evolved,
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as Mark Leary, the social psychologist called it, the sociometer. There's a reason why it evolved.
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And we should be accurately tracking our sociometer and work toward, of course, self-compassion
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and mindful awareness. A lot of really great stuff you talk about in your app and in your own work as
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well. But that's all separate from having an accurate assessment. If your sociometer is broken,
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you can, you know, be a psychopath who doesn't care at all about your effects on the others of the
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world or how you're coming across. And yet you're continually set at that high self-esteem switch. And
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So then what, what accounts in your view for the success of some prominent psychopaths or at least
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psychopath adjacent people that we might name? I mean, there are people who come readily to mind now
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all too often who seem to have a sociometer that, uh, never moves, you know, it's always pointing
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toward the fact that they are the, uh, increasingly triumphant center of the universe. How do these
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people succeed in a social context that would seem to, um, want to crush that attitude in, in most people?
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I knew you'd ask the good questions today. I actually told a bunch of people at my party last
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night, I was like, I'm talking to the same house tomorrow. I know he's going to ask me good questions.
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So first of all, how do you define the word success? I think in a lot of ways, the success
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of certain people, uh, might not be how you define success. Like you might not be willing
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to make a certain trade-off, but you're right. There's undeniable achievement, societal achievement
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among lots of people who probably are high on the psychopathy spectrum. And you can get ahead
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in a lot of ways by disregarding the needs of others. First of all, people are attracted to
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narcissists to grandiose narcissists. People want to be in their orbit because, well, if,
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if you're winning, quote, winning, um, that's a very attractive to a lot of people who aren't
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winning, you know, to be able to, to hitch your, whatever, to hitch your wagon or whatever
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the expression is to someone who's quote, winning can make you feel like you're winning
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too. So you're, you're, I mean, if you're being honest with yourself, you're, you're using
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their power and, and quote, success for your own power and success. So that's a big part
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But what is charisma? I mean, how does charisma relate to narcissism? Do you think when, when
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you are noticing a kind of star quality in someone who kind of seizes the attention of
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a room, that that is always drawing energy from narcissism or is it a separate, entirely
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Yeah. The construct of, of charisma is something that has interested me my whole life. I think
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there's quiet charisma. I think there's different forms of charisma. I don't think it always has
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to take the form of a narcissistic persona. It often does because confidence is strongly
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tied to, to charisma. So, but you can have a hugely introverted, kind, gentle soul that is
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intensely confident in believing in their cause. Gandhi perhaps had a lot of charisma, you know?
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And I, so I do think there is a quiet kind of charisma, but I think something that is a very
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common there is there's a, there tends to be a strong conviction where you don't tend to be a
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people pleaser. I do have a whole chapter in my book on being a victim to your people pleasing
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tendencies and people with people playing people pleasing tendencies tend to not come across as having
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a lot of charisma. So I think that's part of the story as well.
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So it's being somewhat disagreeable can be, uh, yeah, charismatic.
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Yeah, it can. Yes. It absolutely can be a route to charisma, but it doesn't have to be to obviously
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doesn't have to be the route to charisma, but it can, because I think that it's the confidence
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thing there that really matters. It's like, it's like saying, do, do women really like
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narcissistic psychopathic assholes? And I, and I, my research has shown they don't, but they are
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attracted to confidence and they often, you know, discover later that, oh, there's confidence
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and there's also a narcissistic asshole behind that as well that I didn't want to sign up for.
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So if you were going to create the, uh, the most attractive candidate for whatever, for
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president, for boyfriend, for girlfriend, and you were going to just adjust these, these
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variables in the lab, how would you tweak the canonical? I mean, you could, you could go for
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the big five personality traits. Is there an optimal setting of the dials in your view, or is
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there, are there several variants of, of optimal? How, how do you think about extroversion versus
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introversion, conscientiousness, et cetera, you know, openness to experience, or I mean, you can take any
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other dials you want, but what do we know at this point with respect to the ingredients of human
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happiness and success as a social primate, uh, at least in the current context of 21st century
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culture? Yeah. I don't like the question. No, I don't like it. I think there's multiple paths.
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I'm not, I feel like it's a trap. Um, I think that's the basis of the question. Is there one
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setting that you think is normative, like, you know, a character in Dungeons and Dragons that
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obviously is the most normative? Normative? Yes. But what it should be the case? No. So I think we
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need to distinguish between a couple of things here. I think that the people who tend to rise to power
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are not the people that society I think needs in power. And, and unfortunately, a lot of people who
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would make really good, powerful people don't have that ambition. And so a big part of my research
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and dare I say activism as well is getting those people into positions of power who would,
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who would make good leaders. I've made the distinction between dark triad leadership and
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light triad leadership. Dark triad leaders is they, they, those are the ones that tend to,
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tend to dominate the leadership space. I mean, we did an analysis of the U S Senate and we did analysis
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based on speeches and we coded for malevolent traits as well as benevolent traits. We found that across the
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board, there's a huge preponderance of dark triad characteristics. So I think that's a problem.
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And you find that the more dark triad leaders, the higher the score in dark triad, by the way,
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the dark triad stands for Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. So it's, it's all
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three combined. Actually, could you, could you just double click on that and, and define each of
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those a little more? And I think people have a sense of what you mean by psychopathy and narcissism.
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You might have to spell out Machiavellianism, but say what you want about all three.
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Yeah. Uh, the dark triad is a combination of those three personality characteristics that we all
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are somewhere on the spectrum for each of them. Narcissism, grandiose narcissism. And, uh, we can
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talk later about vulnerable if you want, that's a different special kind, but grandiose narcissism,
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Machiavellianism, which is your strategically manipulating things in the longterm for some
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ultimate goal, selfish goal, usually. And psychopathy, where you're prone to lying and
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deceit and thrill seeking. Uh, you get it, you got to actually get a thrill out of causing
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destruction. So the white triad incorporates, oh, faith in humanity. You believe humans are
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basically good, even though you see their flaws. Um, humanism, you tend to treat everyone
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with dignity and respect. And, uh, we call it continism, which is not seeing people as a means
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to an end, but seeing people as an end to themselves. And yeah, we've just found over and
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over again that dark triad traits are just far more predominant in leadership positions than
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white triad traits. And I don't think it's logical to conclude that therefore that means though, that,
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that, that, that you need those traits in order to be a good leader. In fact, I think we've seen over
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and over again, how those traits lead to downfalls of civilizations and societies.
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But what you're calling light triad sounds more like a system of ideas or beliefs, you know,
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than it is traits, psychological traits that somebody would naturally exhibit. You know, I mean,
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maybe faith in humanity is some kind of, you know, positive social, you know, pro-social
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emotional tone. But, um, you tell me, but you know, what you're talking about is Kantianism,
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for instance, that's a realizing at some point in your life, you know, that ethics entails not
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treating people as, as instruments toward an end, but as ends in themselves. That really is a kind of a,
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that's kind of hard one territory on, on the, on the field of, of ideas and knowledge,
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more than it is a quality of somebody's personality that you might identify earlier in life.
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That's the thing is that I think these things are far more intertwined than we
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realize. Your worldview and your personality are, are so tightly connected. And I'll give you an
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example that maybe will give you an insight. The dark triad is, is a worldview. And that worldview
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is at the extreme, Ted Bundy has a quote that we always use as the prime example of a dark triad
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way of thinking. And that's, well, what's one less person on the planet anyway? And so that's a
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worldview. Um, the light triad worldview is consistent with, uh, Anne Frank, who was as the, as the Nazis were
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trying to find her, you know, her last days, she wrote in her journal, I still believe in spite of
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everything that humans are truly good at heart. And so, I don't know, I really think that our
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personality is, is colored by a certain worldview and, and, uh, belief in certain things. We can go
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through every single personality trait to figure out what that is, but I do think those things are
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very tightly connected. I guess it runs the other direction too, that your, your worldview is often
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fairly obviously anchored to your psychology and your personality. I mean, even if only it's the
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worldview you find attractive, you know, I mean, I, I often see examples where it seems like a
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philosopher's philosophy is much more of a, an advertisement for their psychology than anything
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else, right? They're the kind of, I, I, I think I often catch people mistaking one of their
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psychological proclivities for a philosophical insight. I mean, I certainly,
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could you give me an example? I've certainly seen this in the case of people who, who arrive at
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some very dark place where they think, you know, the, the life is no longer worth living. And they,
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they believe they have this as on the basis of some kind of philosophical epiphany into,
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rather than it's, it's like, it's a, clearly if, if they felt better, if they had a higher level of
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wellbeing, they wouldn't find this insight to be insightful, but because they feel so lousy,
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then it's really kind of a captivating kind of, you know, singularity of pessimism.
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It's actually a really, really profound point. You, you hear people with bipolar disorder,
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they literally, they, they literally feel like they're two different people.
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And it's very confusing to wake up one day and feel everything you see around you is colored by
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darkness. And then the very next day you wake up and the world is literally your oyster.
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Mm-hmm it, it, it, so that can be very confusing to people with certain psychological disorders. So
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the extent to which our emotions and our biochemicals and a lot of things that have nothing to do with
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the outside world can influence and color our personality that day. It's, it's really,
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it's a really important point. I'm glad you made that.
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So back to the dark triad for a moment, how do you view Trump on the landscape of
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psychology that, I mean, is he a dark triad character or do we, do you feel like you,
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you don't know enough about him? You do, I know you, I know there's a taboo around,
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I mean, you're not a clinician, right? So you, you don't, you're not covered by the Goldwater
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rule, are you? Can you, you can diagnose freely from your armchair, can't you?
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But Dr. Harris, Dr. Harris, if the word psychopathy is to mean, or let me just say this,
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Dr. Harris, if the word narcissism is to mean anything, Trump would have to be a narcissist.
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I mean, we've never, I've never seen a case study so clearly consistent with the research
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Well, I mean, he's obviously the, I mean, he's the, I think he's the greatest example
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of narcissism anyone can name, you know, outside of the original grandiose narcissism.
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But what about the other two? Do you, do you feel as confident in talking about the other
00:23:20.100
Yeah. The Machiavellianism, see, I don't know how long-term thinker he is to, to give him
00:23:27.400
enough credit to say he's high in Machiavellianism, to be honest, because usually people who screw
00:23:32.340
high in Machiavellianism are very, they're very thoughtful people, like Machiavelli, the prince,
00:23:38.340
you know, like very strategic, long-term. I think we give Trump too much credit sometimes,
00:23:46.000
like, you know, right now with the tariffs, like, oh, he don't know, he has a long, trust
00:23:50.120
me, he has a plan, you know, like a long-term plan. I don't think he really has thought this
00:23:55.820
through in all honesty. So I don't know about that one, but then let's think about psychopathy.
00:24:00.880
That's perhaps a more controversial one than the, than the narcissism one. So let's, let's
00:24:07.280
think about psychopathy a second. So a real key characteristic of psychopathy is callousness.
00:24:12.740
And I think we do see quite a high level of, of being very callous, but I, I think there's
00:24:19.280
something interesting going on where you see in certain cases of the dark triad, a fascinating
00:24:24.360
interaction between their narcissism and their psychopathy, where the extent to which you view
00:24:31.500
someone as connected to your own sense of self is the extent to which you show compassion to that
00:24:37.100
person. And my, my thinking, my, my take, my intuitive take, and I've never met the guy is
00:24:43.380
that if you're really loyal to him and you're really in his orbit as in his own mind as part,
00:24:50.320
just an extension of his self, of his own self, and he loves himself so much, he probably comes
00:24:56.500
across as, as, as quite compassionate and caring towards those people, but can be quite callous.
00:25:03.820
The farther you move away from that, the, the, the vice versa, the farther you move away from that
00:25:08.280
all the way to the, to the end where, where he views you as someone who has caused him narcissistic
00:25:13.760
injury, someone who is a threat to his own ego. Um, he, I think he would have no problem being
00:25:18.840
extraordinarily callous towards those people. So that's my nuanced answer.
00:25:22.120
Hmm. I think we've been talking about grandiose narcissism. What is vulnerable narcissism?
00:25:28.460
That's my favorite one. Vulnerable narcissism is a topic I've studied, uh, that for well, well over
00:25:35.340
a decade. And I've argued that the field of psychology needs to pay it more attention and to
00:25:40.860
treat it as a personality trait, not just like as a clinical thing, because it has deep implications
00:25:46.320
for a person's functioning every day. And with grandiose narcissism, there's a form of entitlement
00:25:51.580
there, which is I deserve special privileges because I am superior to others. I am the best.
00:25:58.100
I'm inherently the best. So I deserve special privileges. Those who score high in vulnerable
00:26:03.420
narcissism feel entitled to special privileges, not because they think they're the best, but because
00:26:08.800
they view themselves as fragile or I deserve special privileges because I've suffered more than anyone
00:26:15.140
else. Hmm. And so what, in what context do you see? I mean, is this giving energy to the victimhood
00:26:22.860
culture we're talking about? It's like, is vulnerable narcissism being rewarded on TikTok or by other,
00:26:28.740
you know, cultural trends? Yes. Um, I had, uh, Jean Twenge on my podcast. We talked about this. I
00:26:35.200
asked, cause I, I, I thought that, uh, there's a trend that, uh, we're seeing in this generation,
00:26:40.460
higher levels of vulnerable narcissism, narcissism than we've ever seen before. And she agrees.
00:26:44.840
She agrees that that is the case. Um, it used to be grandiose narcissists. Like the prior
00:26:49.320
generation was like, we're the, we're the best. Now it's, we suffer more. We've suffered more than
00:26:54.480
any other generation. We all have Tourette syndrome. Yes. Yeah. Maybe we should, should we remind people
00:26:59.980
who Jean Twenge is, what her work is? Cause Jonathan Haidt has referenced it a lot. Yeah. She wrote a book
00:27:06.200
called Generations. Um, and, but she's done research for many, many, uh, years, uh, multiple
00:27:11.600
decades on generational trends and what explains those generational trends. And, uh, you know,
00:27:20.120
she's tracked the self-esteem movement to, it looks like it morphed into a grandiose narcissism
00:27:26.740
movement, but it looks like that has morphed into this vulnerable narcissism way of thinking
00:27:32.280
where you really do feel entitled to special privileges because of your suffering. And there
00:27:38.520
also is a lot of hostility there. Um, a lot of victim mindset kind of hostility where the finger
00:27:45.680
is, is pointed at cyst, you know, system, we're going to take down the systems. There's a great
00:27:50.440
injustice everywhere, everywhere there's injustice. Usually when you double click on that, it's meaning
00:27:56.920
there's an injustice against your own ego, you know? So is this expressed when you're talking
00:28:03.540
about a culture of victimhood, when I try to map that onto the political landscape, I more readily
00:28:09.380
see it on the left, but it's victimhood, victimhood. But I think as I, you know, think for two seconds
00:28:16.240
longer, I, I see it on the right too. It's just expressed differently. Well, how do you, how do you
00:28:21.520
map the victimhood pandemic onto our politics? Hmm. I think, I think that's what you should call
00:28:27.160
this episode, the victimhood pandemic. Teddy, did you think about that already? Uh, no, but, uh, I
00:28:32.700
will take your direction there. I very likely will work. So I think that's interesting because I think
00:28:39.080
there's a victimhood mindset. We should distinguish between victimhood and a victim mindset. They're not
00:28:44.280
necessarily the same thing. You can have been horribly victimized and have a victim mindset or not
00:28:49.180
have a victim mindset, but can also not have been victimized and have a victim mindset. And I think
00:28:53.280
that's what we're seeing a lot of today. And I do think there are so many clear, obvious examples of
00:28:58.240
it on the right. I would disagree with you and say that my perception is that it's more prominent on
00:29:04.400
the right right now. If you listen to virtually any far right podcast now, you listen to now there are
00:29:11.560
comedians that are opining that they know the answers to everything and they're, they're, they're the
00:29:15.500
victim to, you know, big pharma and, and powerful people. It's almost like everywhere I listen on
00:29:20.960
the, on the far right, I'm hearing victimhood. So where I'm even curious, where are you seeing it on
00:29:27.260
the left right now? Not now. I understand me five years ago, but like right now, I'm thinking about
00:29:32.220
the, the hangover we all had from identitarian politics and, and wokeness and, you know, yeah.
00:29:39.400
What, what, what Elon calls the woke mind virus, that, that seems to have been a correlation between
00:29:45.300
being a credible, a credible claim of victimhood, you know, and certainly even an intersectional
00:29:51.800
claim of victimhood, you know, having enough victimology points would allow you to claim high
00:29:57.220
status and, and that the, the only truly guaranteed low status position there on that landscape would
00:30:05.080
be to be, you know, the, the white cisgendered man who has no right to complain about anything
00:30:12.480
So I want to say something that might trigger you, but I, I, let's go, let's, let's watch.
00:30:17.160
I said that jokingly and lovingly, but, uh, I miss wokeness a little bit and, and I want to unpack
00:30:23.360
what I mean by that. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm not sure, I'm not sure that phrase has ever been uttered
00:30:28.780
left or right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I, if you'd like to continue listening to this
00:30:35.880
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