The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - Narcissism, Psychopathy, Borderline： How to Spot It and What to Do About It ｜ W. Keith Campbell

00:00:00.000 What personality does a narcissist have?

00:00:02.480 Okay, so grandiose narcissism, people who are sort of have a sense of entitlement,

00:00:10.100 they're self-centered, they might think they're better than other people,

00:00:12.640 but they're also driven, assertive, extroverted, charismatic.

00:00:16.740 These are people we end up in relationships with.

00:00:19.380 We end up voting for them, we work for them, and then we kind of like them,

00:00:23.300 and then we kind of hate them too.

00:00:24.700 It's complex.

00:00:26.200 You know, people are always like, how do you tell who's a narcissist, who's a bad person?

00:00:29.600 It's hard to know.

00:00:30.680 If I meet somebody really narcissistic, I usually walk away going, I really like that person.

00:00:34.300 What you see in the research is that people who are narcissistic sort of know it.

00:00:39.100 But with Borderline, you end up feeling gaslit sometimes.

00:00:41.920 I love you.

00:00:42.560 I hate you.

00:00:43.020 Like, what did I do?

00:00:44.160 Well, nothing.

00:00:45.040 The person changed.

00:00:46.580 Gaslighting.

00:00:47.240 And you make people insane because they can't test reality effectively.

00:00:51.580 And then they can manipulate you and exploit you.

00:00:54.340 When I was little, I thought that everybody was good.

00:00:57.340 And then I came across a couple of people that lied about everything.

00:01:01.800 It's like, are they a witch?

00:01:03.040 What's happening?

00:01:04.440 They're not like you.

00:01:05.800 You look around the room, you care about these people.

00:01:07.820 They don't.

00:01:08.780 Like, they will do bad things and that doesn't bother them.

00:01:12.240 And you can't believe that because you can't believe anyone can do that.

00:01:16.260 And when I get vibes like that, I start thinking psychopathy.

00:01:19.860 So what is it that narcissistic people want?

00:01:22.420 What are they looking for?

00:01:23.620 Yeah, that's a real issue.

00:01:28.220 Okay, Keith, let's start off. Can you give a very brief background about who you are and

00:01:33.940 what you do? And then I have more questions than we can possibly get to.

00:01:38.840 Okay. So, Keith Campbell, I'm a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia

00:01:45.380 in Athens, Georgia, which is well-known for college football and not so much psychology,

00:01:51.040 but it's where I am. I've studied, let's see, I did my undergrad at Berkeley. I studied,

00:01:59.860 I finished up in social personality psychology at Chapel Hill. I did a postdoc with a guy named

00:02:04.920 Roy Baumeister. My advisor was Konstantin Sadekidis, if you want to know the deep background.

00:02:10.200 And I've been an academic for about 23 years in the field, studying primarily narcissism and sort

00:02:17.700 of issues around the self. So I'm not a clinician. I'm not a clinical psychologist. I'm a psychological

00:02:24.300 researcher. And I work with some clinical researchers, but my focus is research.

00:02:30.940 So why did you specialize in narcissism?

00:02:34.980 A couple of reasons. It was, well, I'll tell you the true story because one of my friends

00:02:40.040 asked me last night. It's really curious. And the real story, I was in University of

00:02:45.380 Madison or University of Wisconsin, Madison. And we were studying a process called the self-serving

00:02:51.420 bias, which is this basic phenomenon you've seen with people is we like to take credit for

00:02:56.480 success and blame other people for failure. So like if my students get an A on the exam,

00:03:01.880 like, man, I'm smart. And if they get an F, they're like, Dr. Campbell, you've made it too hard.

00:03:06.700 Like, yeah. And that's a useful thing because it keeps us feeling positive about ourselves. But

00:03:12.360 I was curious if everyone did that, especially in close relationships, because what happens in

00:03:18.120 close relationships, I'm with my wife and Keith, you did that. And I'm like, no, my wife did like,

00:03:23.660 that's going to mess up my relationship. So what I learned is it's like, Keith,

00:03:27.100 your wife did that. I'm like, no, I did it. Blame me. Don't blame my wife. And my, you know,

00:03:31.160 and so I, I changed things. So this, the selfishness, that self-serving bias changes

00:03:36.860 when you become, you get in close relationships because you care about the other person and

00:03:41.400 yourself sort of expands to a company or encompass that individual and so i was interested in this

00:03:48.800 question i'm a young grad student and so we went out to yield hand cake shop in madison with

00:03:55.460 constantine and glenn reader and remember glenn saying hey we should look at narcissism with this

00:04:00.740 and i was kind of a closet freudian back in the day and so i was like narcissism i love freud

00:04:06.820 let's do it man and so that's why that was kind of how it started was really

00:04:12.400 trying to understand how people differ on this sort of self-enhancement

00:04:16.960 processes these sort of basic self processes and then I was always

00:04:21.880 interested in Buddhism and sort of more of the spiritual idea of what is the

00:04:25.600 non-self what is non attachment you know not being ego attached and I could never

00:04:31.060 figure out how to study that so it's sort of like I studied the big ego to

00:04:34.880 figure out what egolessness was because it's narcissistic when you watch people are narcissistic

00:04:40.900 you can watch them it's very easy to see the ego it's like hey look at me and people like look at

00:04:45.740 you and you're like I feel good my ego's great and you see those dynamics because with these

00:04:50.660 big personalities it's easy to study and so I thought well I'll study ego and narcissist and

00:04:56.080 that'll help me figure out ego but my goal wasn't to be a narcissist or treat narcissism it was sort

00:05:02.240 more like what is the ego and how can we learn to kind of let that go a little bit to be more

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00:06:00.240 15 off linked in the comments enjoy the rest of this episode so i i thought we should start off

00:06:07.540 by i like i'm interested in how narcissism uh is shown in the big five personality traits but i

00:06:15.740 figured you should explain briefly like what are the big five personality traits before we get into

00:06:20.720 that? Yeah. So this is a great question. So when we do personality science and psychology of

00:06:27.500 personality, we use a couple of different models, more than a couple, but there are a lot of very

00:06:33.240 specific models of personality, something like, well, narcissism or type A personality or thrill

00:06:38.920 seeking or grit. So we talk about these traits. They're also what we call general models of

00:06:44.200 personality. So these are sort of bigger models that are designed to capture as much as we can

00:06:49.700 get of the entirety of personality at once. And of those more general models of personality,

00:06:57.480 the one that's over the last 20, 30 years proven to be the most useful is what's called the big

00:07:04.280 five. Now, there's nothing, you know, God didn't stamp five things in our genes. You know, it's

00:07:11.380 just these are things we agree on as academics that work, but five seems to work pretty well.

00:07:17.260 And it turns out, if you take all the thousands of personality traits out there, imagine you had a thousand traits, you know, creative, kind, crazy, caterwauling, cantankerous, charitable, compassionate.

00:07:31.760 Sorry, I'm just trying to think of C words.

00:07:33.480 And you said, hey, let's put them in buckets.

00:07:35.520 And we have five big buckets out there.

00:07:37.660 And the ones that are similar, they go in the same bucket.

00:07:40.660 Well, when you start doing that process of throwing things in buckets, you get like five big buckets of traits.

00:07:47.260 And those are the big five. And they're easy to remember because the first letters spell ocean or canoe.

00:07:54.880 So we usually spell ocean because people like oceans. So I'll go through it in that order.

00:08:01.080 So the big five traits in the order of ocean would be number one, which is openness to experience,

00:08:06.660 which has aspects of love of complex ideas and philosophy, but also an appreciation of art, poetry, aesthetics.

00:08:14.400 um conscientiousness which is a combination of sort of industrious work ethic self-efficacy and

00:08:22.560 the ability to get stuff done along with organization focus on detail etc so it's sort

00:08:29.780 of a detailed oriented but also industrious individual extroversion which most people

00:08:35.460 know of is the more so this aspect of sociability likability but there's also an aspect of

00:08:41.200 extroversion which is assertiveness has to do with leadership or dominance and then uh agreeableness

00:08:48.400 which is a combination of sort of compassion caring and warmth but also uh cooperativeness

00:08:56.720 sort of following rules getting along with people be nice and then uh neuroticism and neuroticism

00:09:05.520 has these components of sort of more anxiety, depression, and also volatility or instability

00:09:12.240 of the self.

00:09:13.820 Neuroticism is what we see with a lot of the disorders like depression or anxiety.

00:09:18.940 So you think about those big five traits as sort of a very broad map of personality.

00:09:25.640 But then when you talk about a specific trait like narcissism, you can mix them together

00:09:30.300 in different ways to get these more complex traits, which I can do if you want me to keep

00:09:34.680 going, but I'm chatting a lot. Yeah, no, that was a perfect overview. I love personality. My dad

00:09:40.960 taught me so much about personality when I was a kid, and I think it was so useful in understanding

00:09:46.160 the differences between people. That was a perfect overview. So yeah, what personality

00:09:52.840 does a narcissist have? Yeah. So here's what happens with narcissism. So the trait of narcissism

00:09:59.120 is sort of made up of these broader traits or can be described with these big five traits.

00:10:04.680 When we talk about the trait of narcissism, there's two different forms we tend to focus

00:10:10.080 on in the literature.

00:10:11.960 One form, the one most of your audience is thinking about or familiar with, is what we

00:10:16.200 call grandiose narcissism.

00:10:18.060 It's people who have a sense of entitlement, they're self-centered, they might think they're

00:10:22.000 better than other people, but they're also driven, assertive, extroverted, charismatic.

00:10:28.160 These are people we end up in relationships with, we end up voting for them, we work for

00:10:33.260 them and then we kind of like them and then we kind of hate them too. It's complex. You know,

00:10:37.860 Tony Stark, pick your politician. It's that narcissism. And then there's this more vulnerable

00:10:44.060 form, which has that same kind of core of self-centeredness and entitlement and disagreeableness,

00:10:50.680 but also has a more neuroticism, more self-focus, more concern, more uncertainty,

00:10:57.980 lower self-esteem so the more vulnerable narcissist presentation is like secretly in their head like

00:11:04.140 i'm better than everybody else but they're kind of sometimes we say basement narcissist or covert

00:11:10.160 or playing video games downstairs okay yelling at people on the internet because of all my hostility

00:11:15.420 and no because no one appreciates my genius so there are these two different faces of narcissism

00:11:20.960 the grandiose one we're familiar with this more vulnerable form which we don't which looks a lot

00:11:25.220 like anxiety and depression, unless you get to know the people clinically or you maybe see their

00:11:30.780 hostility come out in other ways. So those two forms of narcissism have a little bit different

00:11:36.740 recipe with the big five. So to make grandiose narcissism, what you do is you take this core

00:11:43.040 trait of agreeableness, but it's low agreeableness or what we might call trait antagonism.

00:11:48.160 so low agreeableness so people who are disagreeable and they're extroverted

00:11:55.880 so they're they're energized they're sort of disagreeable extroverts which is really

00:12:02.460 interesting so you have somebody who's sort of selfish not to end up caring about people

00:12:07.440 but really sociable energetic likable so they do really well socially but they're also kind of mean

00:12:15.320 and they cause problems so my favorite example of this lately has been the tiger king which i

00:12:20.940 sometimes call the lion king but i don't know if you saw that show on netflix with the tiger king

00:12:25.280 yeah i saw a bit of it yeah okay so there's pandemic stuff but there's this guy and he's

00:12:31.120 like i'm the tiger king and he has all these tigers and he's probably kind of a bad dude

00:12:37.620 you know when you look at the show and i don't know if he killed a he's not he's kind of a

00:12:42.380 sketchy guy, but you like the tiger king. Why do you like the tiger king? Why do you let this guy

00:12:48.180 say he's the king of the tiger? I mean, it's rhetorical. It's that extroversion. He's very

00:12:53.220 energized. He has a lot of positive emotionality, a lot of extroversion, and that draws people to

00:12:58.320 him. So you're like, I love the tiger king, man. He blows stuff up. He's got that great energy.

00:13:04.080 That's that combination is grandiose narcissism. And that's why it can be dangerous because it's

00:13:09.440 like weaponized antagonism or energized antagonism in the big five sense. Does that make sense

00:13:15.900 a little bit? Yeah, yeah. That does make sense. That's perfect. Are there people who are low in

00:13:21.500 agreeableness? So you call that antagonism, basically high in antagonism. But is it always

00:13:27.860 the case that somebody who's low in agreeableness is high in antagonism? Well, we sort of use the

00:13:33.220 word antagonism for the opposite pole. We just use that term, but antagonism itself can have

00:13:40.540 different flavors. So you can have some people that are emotionally callous. They don't feel a

00:13:45.040 lot. You can have some people that are more mean, which is not classically narcissistic. It's more

00:13:51.060 sort of emotionally like I'm not that invested in warmth. I'm sort of more self-focused and a lack

00:13:57.520 of humility can be in there so low agreeableness includes like low humility so it's capturing like

00:14:04.660 a sense of superiority callousness lack of emotional warmth lack of empathy all those

00:14:10.320 things go under the trait of antagonism okay that makes sense do do people who have so oh yeah i'm

00:14:18.580 assuming like like high levels of extroversion low levels of agreeableness does that just make

00:14:24.840 you into a narcissist or are there like societal factors like does that just make you into a

00:14:29.740 narcissist well there's got to be some of those people that still are like what if you're really

00:14:34.700 high in conscientiousness as well yeah so that's it so sort of the the recipe with narcissism or

00:14:40.860 prime the primary recipe for grandiose narcissism is that high extroversion low agreeableness

00:14:46.120 i should say for vulnerable narcissism what you see is you see the low agreeableness and also but

00:14:52.640 you see high neuroticism. So sort of a neurotic disagreeable. That's what vulnerable narcissism

00:14:58.800 is. And that's why people don't really like vulnerable narcissists. Not that they don't

00:15:04.120 like, but they don't like them because they don't have the extroversion. They're sort of insecure

00:15:08.560 and antagonistic. So they can't hide it. And what they look like is they might present themselves

00:15:15.500 as a little more depressive or maybe hostile and depressed, but they don't have the extroversion

00:15:22.060 to really make navigate life effectively as well um so i you could describe both those those aspects

00:15:30.140 of narcissism with the traits but they're a little more than that so you might see a little you know

00:15:35.020 with with grandiose narcissism you might see a little bit more a little bit of openness conscientious

00:15:41.180 might be a little high they might report a little elevated which is weird because you might think

00:15:45.180 low uh with with vulnerable and with psychopaths and um trying to think what else i don't i don't

00:15:52.780 know what i missed but i probably missed one in there yeah so you can describe them differently

00:15:56.940 the other way to think about it is this is sort of the foundational traits underlying these

00:16:01.900 expressions of narcissism but they get expressed through specific social dynamics so grandiose

00:16:09.580 narcissism, what you need to do is you need to use the world to boost your ego. Like if I,

00:16:16.100 I would say like, if I think I'm a 10, but I'm really a seven, how do I go through life feeling

00:16:21.400 I'm a 10? Well, I can dress up really well and I can, I can make myself so I can groom to make

00:16:28.140 myself into an eight. And then I can get a lot of power and money. So people kind of attracted to

00:16:34.260 that and then i can surround myself with people who tell me i'm great and i can build a little

00:16:39.860 posse around myself build like kind of a identity bubble that keeps me feeling good and when there's

00:16:46.500 a chance to jump on a podcast with you i can jump on the podcast hey look at me i'm great you know

00:16:52.180 i can go be popular i can i can drag draw attention to myself so i do a lot of these

00:16:57.460 self-regulatory strategies that have to do with narcissism to maintain that ego so there's a

00:17:03.060 a trade aspect to it, but there's also an interpersonal dynamic aspect to narcissism

00:17:08.300 as well. Are you able to make narcissistic people, one, aware of their narcissism and two,

00:17:15.960 wanting to change? Or does the low in agreeableness just, they don't want to change?

00:17:22.340 It's a great question. So the old idea where the people who were narcissistic weren't really aware

00:17:28.800 of it. That they just were kind of blind to this. But what you see in the research is that people

00:17:35.500 who are narcissistic sort of know it. They might not use that term, but they might. But they will

00:17:42.260 say, you know, I really want to be a leader. I'd like to look at myself in the mirror. If I rule

00:17:46.360 the world, there'd be a much better place. People will believe whatever I like. You know, they'll

00:17:50.700 agree to a lot of those things. And even, you know, even when you look at psychopathy with

00:17:56.580 things like you know um it's better to look out for number one people are psychopaths like yeah

00:18:02.400 you should look out for number one screw everybody else you guys are idiots to care for about people

00:18:07.020 so there is there is some self-awareness with narcissism they might not see the damage it's

00:18:13.180 doing but there is some self-awareness and that's why our self-report measures work

00:18:17.640 like that's funny you know if if people weren't aware of it they'd be like i don't know and we'd

00:18:23.980 have to use we'd have to instead of using self-report we'd have to get their friends or

00:18:29.280 peer reports we'd have to get their parents reports we'd have to get their wives or husbands

00:18:33.380 reports but instead we can use self-report because people are kind of aware of it

00:18:37.740 in terms of change the challenge with narcissism isn't so much the change it's the motivation to

00:18:45.180 change which i think you're kind of getting that yeah is if you think you're really good

00:18:50.560 and when you fail it's usually somebody else's fault because they're always kind of messing

00:18:55.740 with you and no one really sees how brilliant you are and god darn it if they did you'd really be a

00:19:00.500 winner and you'd have your own podcast um you don't you don't want to change you know what you

00:19:07.000 want to do is change all those idiots around you who are bringing you down and maybe if you just

00:19:12.840 had a better looking girlfriend and got a new car people would really see how great you are

00:19:17.220 so the the change it's hard to do the change part and when you get into the clinical when

00:19:23.960 and we're just talking about traits but when you get into the more clinical aspect of this

00:19:27.840 a more disordered aspect this is what you see in psychotherapy where psychotherapy can work for

00:19:34.040 narcissistic personality disorder but the challenge is keeping people in therapy they just drop out

00:19:40.240 very quickly because it's that ego it's like if you've built up a narrative about how great you

00:19:45.520 are and therapy involves breaking that it pushes people away which is which means if you want to

00:19:53.040 change somebody you got to go at a different angle but that's another question yeah uh my dad's so

00:19:59.100 i've done my dad has a personality test online at understand myself.com that gives you a breakdown

00:20:05.060 of your five you know personality traits and the 10 aspects uh and my personality which he's pointed

00:20:13.080 it out many times i've got like everything set up to be a narcissist except agreeableness you know

00:20:21.260 splits into what is it compassion and politeness yeah and my politeness is at zero yeah but my

00:20:29.300 agreeable my compassion's at 87 so i'm actually not that disagreeable in total but he's been like

00:20:36.220 you have to be careful because you're set up to be somebody who like likes status and likes power

00:20:41.620 and all these things. But I think one of the things that's helped me maybe mitigate the ego

00:20:47.500 part of that is he also taught you're responsible for everything that happens in your life. Like

00:20:53.700 even those things that you don't really feel responsible for, everything in your life is

00:20:58.460 your responsibility. And so maybe there's a way to teach people who are more prone to narcissism

00:21:04.120 that if they take, Jocko talks about this with radical responsibility for everything,

00:21:09.020 as long as you don't blame other people for your problems you think that's one way to mitigate this

00:21:14.080 absolutely so uh so what you're talking about is like with the big you know with these personality

00:21:20.680 traits you can take the five and then you can divide divide them each into two aspects which

00:21:24.780 i know your dad has done and uh colin de young your dad's student uh he's a brilliant personality

00:21:30.780 guy i know colin pretty well but i know he's looked at those aspects and they're really useful

00:21:35.600 And one of that breakdown is exactly what you're talking about is the agreeableness.

00:21:41.240 So you are like a lot of academics like me, where I'm generally compassionate.

00:21:46.380 I want people to, I want people, I love people.

00:21:48.680 I want people to be loving.

00:21:50.360 I don't really listen to authority.

00:21:52.780 Like I have a little bit of a challenge.

00:21:54.980 Like if you tell me what to do, that's a little challenging for me.

00:21:58.520 If you ask me nice, I'm like, hey, I'm your best friend.

00:22:01.140 But if you tell me what to do, I'm like, yeah.

00:22:05.600 And I don't. Yeah. So that that politeness piece, I don't have as much. And that's pretty common with a lot of academics, because if your idea is I've got to come up with something new, that means I got to break something old.

00:22:19.860 So if you're in a creative career, you're always breaking stuff and creating stuff and you've got to be comfortable breaking stuff. But but also what your dad's saying about relationships as a buffer or compassion as a buffer to narcissism is dead on.

00:22:35.000 And that's that is really why I got in the topic was how do these close relationships buffer egotism?

00:22:40.940 How do they buffer self-enhancement?

00:22:43.300 And when I talk about this for with people, I people like, you know, a lot of parents like, how do I make my kids narcissistic?

00:22:50.700 I'm like, well, I don't know, but I have to give them something.

00:22:52.840 So I say CPR and because it's memorable, but that's compassion, passion and responsibility.

00:22:58.440 so the third of those things is you have to practice taking responsibility for everything

00:23:04.460 especially negative stuff so when you screw up you go yeah that was me screwed this one up

00:23:09.280 i'll do better next time and i think as a practice that keeps your ego out of it you're not pointing

00:23:15.100 fingers at people you're just saying hey i'm responsible i'm going to take care of this

00:23:19.080 and when you do when you do take responsibility for failure you get a sting you're like god i

00:23:24.380 screwed that went up that kind of hurt my ego but by taking responsibility it shows i'm capable of

00:23:29.780 action so i'm learning that i have efficacy i'm learning i have the capability to act

00:23:34.340 and it also makes people respect me because i'm not one of those people who blames people i'm

00:23:39.240 somebody who takes responsibility so it kind of it it in a weird way taking responsibility for

00:23:44.860 failure actually helps you become a more successful person and be seen as more successful

00:23:49.160 because you're willing to take that responsibility and go and then that and then obviously the

00:23:53.760 compassion piece is what you were talking about is that aspect of agreeableness if you can bring

00:23:58.960 up that compassion and really care about people your ego is always in check because i'm not going

00:24:04.380 to do something hurts my kid just never going to happen and so if you have people like that in your

00:24:09.240 life a marriage a relationship a parent you respect a child you love that keeps you grounded

00:24:15.920 you know keeps you from going out outside the outside the ego lines um and then the third one

00:24:22.240 I add a little off topic, but it's passion. And it's just one people don't think about, which is

00:24:26.500 like people, if you do things that you love with a lot of passion, you lose your ego because you

00:24:34.640 get involved, you get in a flow state, you get excited. And so, it's almost like an egoless state,

00:24:42.560 but afterwards, you kind of feel stronger because you went through it and people look like you

00:24:47.900 because they love passion people love to see passion you know they love people who are stoked

00:24:52.460 doing what they're doing um so if you if you just focus on being passionate you can get a lot of

00:24:58.060 those ego needs met without having the ego in a weird way i like that okay so it's not it's not

00:25:05.800 necessarily a lost cause if you're very extroverted and low and agreeableness if you try to implement

00:25:12.120 this CPR. Can you actually get somebody who's low in compassion to be more compassionate?

00:25:21.080 Don't they just not really care in the first... Really? Okay. How do you do that?

00:25:24.140 So, well, personality can change. And what we found in the last 10, 20 years of research,

00:25:33.720 especially the last 10, is you can really change personality. Not huge amounts, but

00:25:37.880 you know you can move people around the second thing is when you said lost cause i would never

00:25:44.620 say that personality is a trade-off all of our traits have pluses and minuses if i were more of

00:25:52.020 a jerk i would be rich my wife my excuse me my ex-wife in my jerk life you know would have half

00:26:01.080 my money so i might not have as much but i would have made a lot more money you know so these things

00:26:07.880 are trade-offs and so i wouldn't ever think about it as a lost cause and in terms of hey i want to

00:26:15.240 increase my compassion well there's techniques to do so one of the classic ones people talk about

00:26:20.920 are like loving kindness meditations which i think come out of some of the tibetan buddhist traditions

00:26:25.640 which is, you know, you start off thinking how much you love your mom. And then you say,

00:26:30.500 and you expand that love once you get to think about how much you love your mom to, you know,

00:26:34.700 maybe your friend, and then maybe from your friend to a stranger, and then maybe from a stranger to

00:26:39.480 somebody you don't really like, like, I really love that, you know, so you practice feeling love

00:26:43.980 for somebody you don't like, which is a challenge. But I saw the Dalai Lama back in the day talk

00:26:50.420 about his great gratitude to china for destroying tibet said i'm grateful to the chinese for

00:26:56.580 destroying tibet because if it didn't happen we wouldn't have moved out and now tibetan buddhism

00:27:01.320 is spread around the world and i sat there and i thought he is a better man than i am you know

00:27:09.320 i'm still pissed and i won't even my country um so so that kind of practice but but a lot of the

00:27:16.820 practices i think are literally just being intentional about being a better person so

00:27:22.000 for myself i i i like to get stuff done and i drive and i i used to get incredibly angry driving

00:27:30.720 because like everybody's an idiot the world's falling apart i'm driving like the world's

00:27:34.780 falling apart oh my god i'm an idiot i'm screaming i'm yelling and my heart's just pumping i'm like

00:27:42.040 my cardiologist is like, he's just buying, my cardiologist is like buying a new G wagon

00:27:46.380 because he's like, dude, he's going to need so many bypasses. I'm going to be just a legend.

00:27:51.360 And I realized this isn't helping me. And I, and I was at yoga one day and one of my yoga

00:27:56.180 teachers go, well, whenever you're stressed, just say, God wants me to be slow. I'm like,

00:28:01.340 well, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard, but I'll try it because it's whatever I'm doing,

00:28:05.080 it's not working. And so whenever I get frustrated, I start going, well, God wants me to be slow.

00:28:10.580 I just started doing it. Just a very, very basic behavioral intervention. This is like

00:28:15.920 just the basic cognitive behavioral therapy. I mean, I could have just had a rubber band or

00:28:21.080 something. It worked. Just took a few months of doing that. And pretty soon I became a not

00:28:26.920 aggressive driver. But it's dedicated action and intention over time towards a goal. It's a

00:28:33.580 practice. So you make it a practice to be a nice person. I'm going to be a nice person to people.

00:28:39.020 I'm going to just shake hands, be nice.

00:28:41.340 And you say, I'm going to do that.

00:28:42.720 When I'd fail, hey, that's okay.

00:28:44.300 You're never perfect and I'm going to get better.

00:28:46.680 So I'm a big believer.

00:28:48.420 And if you want to be a different person, just make an effort.

00:28:51.140 And if you do that over time, because what happens is you start being, in the case of

00:28:58.900 nice, you start being nice to people.

00:29:00.640 And at first it's not going to work because people aren't going to believe it.

00:29:03.520 But after time, people are going to be nice back to you and you're going to get reinforced

00:29:08.060 for it.

00:29:09.020 And you're going to start going, oh, this being nice to people helps people like me.

00:29:12.960 And then you're going to get attacked because you did something, you got canceled.

00:29:16.540 You said the wrong thing.

00:29:18.380 I won't even say it because I'll get canceled.

00:29:20.560 I don't want to do that.

00:29:22.080 And then everyone attacks you.

00:29:23.240 But because you're nice, people are like, hey, don't kill Keith.

00:29:26.020 He's a pretty nice guy.

00:29:27.860 So you go, oh, I'm glad I was nice to people.

00:29:30.460 It didn't seem to do any good, but they didn't want to attack me.

00:29:33.800 Before, everyone used to want to attack me.

00:29:36.080 Now they don't like to.

00:29:38.100 They will, but, you know, so I'm a big believer in change via just intentional practice over time.

00:29:44.400 I think we can do it.

00:29:46.600 I like that.

00:29:47.800 I think I did something similar with situations that I like to, like, control as much as I can.

00:29:55.420 And I think part of that is because I was taught this, like, radical responsibility.

00:29:59.480 I was like, okay, well, if I'm responsible for everything, then I should be able to change certain situations.

00:30:04.420 and there are some situations you actually can't change and you're not responsible for but it's

00:30:09.280 better to just err on the side of you're responsible for everything and so I started

00:30:13.580 for these situations that were just like okay I've tried everything I can't really change it

00:30:18.120 um I like figured this is only in the last couple years really let go and it was the

00:30:24.420 it was the same kind of like God wants me to be slow but more like you know this is some sort of

00:30:32.120 this is just something that's happening and it'll end and i didn't have to enforce my control on it

00:30:38.600 and that helped a lot like that you're not necessarily in control of everything even

00:30:43.640 though things are your responsibility it's like a balancing act but that helped me

00:30:48.920 i really like that because i might have a control issue or two myself and that kind of more taoist

00:30:57.320 process of just standing back and lets things happen and just not try to go in there and

00:31:01.740 change it and break it because a lot of times you can't yeah and then sometimes you realize

00:31:07.800 when you're not in there messing with things they work out by themselves yeah which is so you kind

00:31:13.800 of trust the process i never believed that my mom was much more like hippie dippy uh it is what it

00:31:20.560 is and i was always like it never is what it is you can always do something about something bad

00:31:25.800 happening. But then the more I've kind of relaxed on that, while taking responsibility for what I

00:31:31.520 can, the more I've realized, like, sometimes things do work out, you know, meddle around

00:31:35.800 with them, even if it takes a while. I have, I have, I have gotten to that place to kicking

00:31:41.700 and screaming. And sometimes I think about it in sort of Jungian terms, which is usually not what

00:31:47.500 I work, but it's almost like moving from thinking to intuition, where the Jungian system, instead

00:31:53.860 thinking and trying to control and logic, you go up to the intuitive system and you just kind of

00:31:59.160 let the vibes happen and you vibe. Is that? Yeah. I mean, that kind of makes sense.

00:32:04.900 That's exactly, that's exactly it. Yeah. And I think like taking after my dad, I never took that,

00:32:11.360 the intuition part or feeling things out without being able to logically explain them. I never

00:32:16.540 took that seriously. I was always like, that's my mom. I don't know what she's doing and I don't

00:32:21.580 understand it at all but it doesn't seem right um and then i don't know the last couple years of

00:32:27.240 like no there's something to that if if you're if you are intuitive and you can kind of relax a

00:32:33.720 little bit sometimes things work out so that's a bit of a relief yeah i was talking my sister's a

00:32:38.600 a psychotherapist out in the bay area i was talking to her about this actually today

00:32:42.900 and she's like i get these vibes i said yeah i do too sometimes i said you know if you look at a lot

00:32:48.760 the the writing on religious practice or you know like i said jung jung's writings on this

00:32:55.560 it seems like a natural progression that if you you learn stuff you practice eventually you kind

00:33:00.520 of get this ability to use your intuition effectively you know you see it in the in

00:33:05.000 the yoga sutra they talk about it about like cities or whatever um you see it in young but

00:33:10.520 i think that if you practice thinking you realize there's a limit to thinking because you can't

00:33:15.800 really define everything the variable like we're living in an incredibly complex world

00:33:20.920 and our us academics we we kind of cut the world into a real small box like i could figure out that

00:33:26.280 box but like dude that's not the world that's the box you made but the whole complicated thing like

00:33:31.640 maybe your your thinking part isn't enough that's really useful at times but you've got to kind of

00:33:36.760 use your and this is again this is young talking about your intuition you need to recognize patterns

00:33:41.880 into deep level and sort of start navigating those patterns like swimming through the patterns of

00:33:46.860 life okay that's cool i didn't know that that was young i'd i'd figured when i started kind of

00:33:53.760 tapping into that and realizing that that was actually real i didn't even know that was real

00:33:58.280 um what did i what did i notice we don't teach it it's our fault i mean i'm a personality yeah

00:34:04.680 right yeah but yeah well it's also like it's hard to explore it's kind of it kind of sounds woo

00:34:11.360 yeah and i figured out like once i started seeing patterns and realizing that it was real

00:34:16.260 um i thought intuition was a recognition of patterns that you couldn't logically explain

00:34:23.020 and your body's giving you these signals because you've you've learned what the pattern means but

00:34:27.780 there's nothing logical going on so sometimes it's just better to go with that feeling especially if

00:34:32.920 strong than to try and figure out because maybe there are too many variables involved and you

00:34:37.800 just can't explain it to yourself but i had no like no idea it's very hard to predict complex

00:34:44.920 systems look at meteorologists or economists or anyone else they're terrible at it because it's

00:34:50.780 hard it just doesn't because our models don't they break down with complexity very quickly

00:34:55.760 and if you're in a complex world you have to use a different kind of decision in the old days you

00:35:01.520 know they go have oracles and people like well what kind why would you have an oracle you're an

00:35:05.980 idiot well the dalai lama went to an oracle or the greeks went to an oracle um because in a complex

00:35:13.660 world you know that kind of work the oracles you know think of the vikings like that show vikings

00:35:18.720 you go to the oracle the oracle goes up to the clouds he talks to the gods he goes down to the

00:35:23.600 underworld talks to the gods and the oracle gives you some kind of vague information and that sort

00:35:28.980 of sparks your intuition and that makes you go. They're doing that because how else do you make

00:35:34.100 a decision in an incredibly complex environment with limited information? Like, well, I got to

00:35:39.040 find the guy with the vibes, you know, or the woman with the vibes, the vibe woman who's, you know,

00:35:44.960 sitting over a gas chamber in Delphi and I'll ask her what she thinks and she'll go into a trance

00:35:50.300 and tell me something. I got to run with that. Yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, it is interesting.

00:35:57.520 It's very interesting.

00:35:59.280 So if the personality traits that can lead to narcissism, if they're low in agreeableness

00:36:04.700 and high in extroversion, are men more likely to be narcissistic or do you see a pretty

00:36:10.900 even split?

00:36:13.300 Yes, but it also depends on the form of narcissism.

00:36:16.880 So with grandiose narcissism, with the high extroversion, low agreeableness, you see more

00:36:21.600 men. When it gets to the clinical disorder or the narcissistic personality disorder, it's about

00:36:29.140 75% men with the diagnosis. So there's two explanations for that. One is if you get a few

00:36:37.560 more men on average, when you get to the extremes of the distribution, you're going to end up with

00:36:42.340 a lot more men. It also could be that clinicians tend to kind of bucket men as narcissistic,

00:36:48.400 Whereas they say a woman with similar traits, they might say, oh, she's borderline, or they

00:36:52.620 might say she's histrionic.

00:36:54.660 So they might use a little different language.

00:36:56.820 So something like histrionism, which is really the extroversion, this diva-like disorder,

00:37:01.840 they might use that instead of narcissism.

00:37:04.120 Whereas in men, they might say, oh, it's more narcissistic.

00:37:06.900 So that could be a reason too.

00:37:08.700 It's hard to know.

00:37:10.140 But with vulnerable narcissism, which has a lot of neuroticism in it, that seems to be

00:37:14.840 equal between men and women because on average women are a little more narcissistic a little

00:37:20.940 more neurotic than men men are a little more antagonistic than women so you add it up and

00:37:26.320 with the vulnerable narcissists you end up with about the same even though we always think i don't

00:37:32.300 know i always think of men with vulnerable narcissism in particular because i think of

00:37:36.860 some of the school shootings and things um but equal it's equal so you mentioned borderline

00:37:44.240 what's the difference between in personality traits what's the difference between borderline

00:37:48.080 and narcissism uh it's a great question a little complicated borderline itself is the term borderline

00:37:55.720 originally meant the line or the border between neurosis which is sort of everyday unhappiness

00:38:03.140 misery and psychosis which is more extreme delusion so the psychoanalyst said the borderline

00:38:08.480 between those that's why they call it borderline it's not a good term for it so that's what it

00:38:13.680 means. You're borderline psychotic. But that's really not what it is. What it is, it seems like

00:38:19.320 when I talk to people who do this work really well, is at core, it's difficulties regulating

00:38:25.260 emotions. So it's really loaded on trait neuroticism, primarily with this emotional

00:38:31.020 dysregulation. But you also see some antagonism. You also see a lot of neuroticism with some

00:38:40.640 antagonism and some low conscientiousness and impulsivity, you know, when you get behaviors

00:38:45.140 like cutting or things that you see with borderline. So it's kind of a disorder, but when

00:38:51.240 you look at it like a trait, it looks like narcissism, but with more neuroticism and

00:38:56.480 less conscientiousness. It's kind of, sometimes the clinicians almost talk about it as like less

00:39:01.580 well-formed narcissism. Like narcissism is when you got it together and you have a well-structured

00:39:07.360 defense mechanism and borderlines when it's not quite as well structured and that's kind of the

00:39:11.940 kernberg cohort you know i sorry this is getting a little wonky with old school psychodynamic stuff

00:39:17.880 but at a trait level it's that more neuroticism with borderline uh lower conscientiousness

00:39:24.840 and probably less extroversion that sounds brutal yeah borderline is a real hard thing because um

00:39:34.220 Yeah, because it's that emotional dysregulation. And I remember working with like, I'm not a clinician, just want to say that. But when I did work in hospitals and with borderline patients, there's just so much because people feel when they're out of control emotionally, or sometimes they feel empty inside, they can't connect anything, they want to feel something.

00:39:53.980 So sometimes they cut themselves, you know, just to feel that pain, which kind of focuses the cell, makes them feel real.

00:40:02.100 It's not, it's a tough condition.

00:40:04.420 We have some real good treatments for it now because there's a lot, you know, it's a, you know, so there are good, you know, dialectic behavior therapy.

00:40:11.040 There's some other good therapies for it to kind of focus on, but it's a hard one.

00:40:16.220 My dad always said, if you meet somebody borderline, just run.

00:40:21.140 That was it.

00:40:21.900 He had no solutions.

00:40:23.520 He's just like, just avoid that person.

00:40:25.780 It's a very, it's very hard because, you know, in the movies, it's you sometimes what they'll

00:40:31.740 show to show borderline is, is what they call split object relations.

00:40:35.720 How do I say that?

00:40:36.860 I love you.

00:40:37.760 No, I hate you.

00:40:39.160 So the, it's very hard to have an integral.

00:40:41.860 So we're all kind of good and bad.

00:40:43.660 You know, we're all, we've all got the shadow.

00:40:45.660 It's, you know, we're all kind of a mess.

00:40:47.200 I try to be a good peep person, but I do bad things.

00:40:50.720 I yell at my kids sometimes.

00:40:52.180 I hate myself for it. And then I hate myself for hating myself. Then I double hate myself.

00:40:57.040 And then I'm praying, you know, I'm just a mess. So we all we all we all we all have these these

00:41:04.760 challenges kind of in life. But but with borderline, it's just harder to control the emotions.

00:41:12.420 And so I hate to say avoid people like that. But really, it's harder to have relationships with

00:41:17.860 somebody who has that emotional dysregulation because you end up feeling gaslit sometimes i

00:41:23.040 love you i hate you like what did i do well nothing the person changed so sometimes people

00:41:29.180 say that they definitely say with narcissism you know if you were somebody narcissistic you know

00:41:33.820 i was it's my my line my dad said to my dot my sister which is you know get a u-haul leave a

00:41:40.220 note. That was his suggestion. I put that on a t-shirt. So it's obviously, people stay in

00:41:50.180 relationships with people with even disorders because they're committed. They have children.

00:41:55.960 They want it to work. They do the hard work of therapy. They bring it back together. It can work

00:42:00.400 out great, but it's a lot of work. Okay. So one more question about, I think,

00:42:05.460 kind of these topics I've met a few people in my life when I when I was little I thought that

00:42:11.420 everybody was good and I don't think that anymore but I thought that everybody I met

00:42:17.520 was kind of the same as me not that I'm saying I'm like good necessarily but I just

00:42:21.900 put my personality on everybody I met until I was about 23 um and then I came across a couple people

00:42:29.120 i think i've come across four people now um that lied about everything and i mean like you know

00:42:38.600 very weird way they'd even recounting what happened it wouldn't be quite true so whatever

00:42:45.400 reality they were living in just wasn't real in my opinion and it was everything and it made it

00:42:52.260 very difficult like vibes were way off if we're talking about vibes vibes are way off very like

00:42:57.900 dangerous feelings situation. Have you ever come across people that just twist everything a little

00:43:04.760 bit? And what is that about? Well, yes. What you said before was exactly right on. So there was a

00:43:14.560 psychiatrist named, last name Masterson in Manhattan back in the day, he was the narcissism

00:43:21.320 legend. And when he used to talk about it with people, he'd say, look, because people who are

00:43:28.800 narcissistic just don't care. I mean, this is at the extremes, okay? This is sort of at the extreme

00:43:33.660 level. They're not like you. You look around the room, you care about these people. They don't.

00:43:39.180 Like they will do bad things and that doesn't bother them. And you can't believe that because

00:43:44.580 you can't believe anyone can do that. And I get snookered by narcissists all the time because

00:43:50.520 I'm like, I can't believe you'd show off, get attention.

00:43:54.620 But when people do the evil stuff or the massive deception or dishonesty, which has this little

00:44:00.820 psychopathy feel to it, you go, why are you doing that?

00:44:05.620 Like, I don't even see the upside to it.

00:44:08.180 You know, you got some skills you don't even need to.

00:44:10.680 This is insane.

00:44:13.220 Yes, there are people like that.

00:44:16.400 You look at some cult leaders.

00:44:19.040 There's a cult, the N-V-I-X-M cult.

00:44:22.320 Oh, yeah.

00:44:22.960 Remember that?

00:44:23.900 Where they branded the celebrities.

00:44:26.020 And it was a...

00:44:26.780 Anyway, I talked to one of the guys in that cult.

00:44:29.520 And he was telling me the same thing you just said about the cult later.

00:44:32.320 Like, bad guy.

00:44:33.480 Heard about other people.

00:44:34.900 You know, you think they're good guys, just bad guys.

00:44:37.000 So, yeah, that's a real issue.

00:44:39.120 The term we use in the narcissism world, not in the world, but it kind of came up, is gaslighting.

00:44:45.060 so you end up with these people and you feel like they're distorting reality all the time and it

00:44:51.000 makes you feel uncomfortable and so the term people will use is hey you're gaslighting me

00:44:56.520 and that i mean if people aren't familiar with it comes it's a weird word because it comes from an

00:45:01.320 old movie which i think was a play before that where a husband was trying to mess with his wife

00:45:06.520 make her think she's going crazy so he'd like change the gas put the gas lights down she's

00:45:10.640 like the gas lights are down you go like no they're not honey are you going crazy and they

00:45:15.380 turn it back up but you're like they're messing me like oh you're must be you know so admit you

00:45:20.260 know there's noises in the attic i don't hear anything and it spreads up they're pounding the

00:45:24.060 door i just made that one up that and you make people insane because they can't they can't test

00:45:29.480 reality effectively so people when they feel detached from reality they start to freak out

00:45:36.640 very fast. Because we're always dialed in. And when that reality connection breaks,

00:45:41.620 that reality testing breaks, it can make you very uncomfortable. And they do that. They're

00:45:47.480 kind of doing that to break your hold on reality. And then you can't control yourself. And then they

00:45:53.180 can manipulate you and exploit you. So I'm a cult leader. I'm like, I could start a cult, right? I'm

00:45:59.880 an extroverted guy. And I seem confident. So I could start a cult, no problem. I get people to

00:46:06.120 come in. I'm nice at first. And then what I do in a cult is I start gaslighting them. And then

00:46:12.180 I start cutting them off from their old friends and family. Because if I'm gaslighting them,

00:46:17.940 they go back to their friend. And the friend's like, dude, Keith, the cult leader's a jerk.

00:46:22.560 He's lying to you. So I'm the cult leader. I'm like, no, you got to stay with me. You got to

00:46:26.760 hang out with the cult. And then the cult all talk to each other. And they take that gaslit

00:46:32.240 narrative and because they all agree on it it's it turns from gaslighting into reality

00:46:38.560 because reality becomes socially constructed right so then you have everybody in the cult

00:46:44.080 believing this gaslit reality and then if somebody outside comes to threaten them

00:46:50.880 they will all attack that person right because they they're defending their belief systems

00:46:56.720 well i'm getting off base here but what the heck you you guys are smart you've got a smart audience

00:47:03.140 so when psychologists started looking at something like this back in the day a psychologist at

00:47:08.860 stanford who was interested in in self-processes named leon festinger wrote a wrote a book called

00:47:15.440 when prophecy fails and maybe people are familiar with this but he wanted to study cults this was

00:47:21.680 back in the 50s 60s and they weren't worried about the cult leaders killing you or anything

00:47:25.560 that people were nice. He sent a student up to a cult near Chicago. I think it was like Marion

00:47:32.920 something. I always think it's like Mayor from the planet Claire, like the B-52 sign that was

00:47:38.080 from before you were born. And the cult predicted the end of the world. Everyone in the cult thought

00:47:45.440 the world was going to end on a certain day. The cult later said it would. The world didn't end.

00:47:50.020 everyone in the cult's like mad and the cult leader goes and goes and prays and comes back

00:47:57.140 and said, hey, good news, guys. I skipped a couple chapters, but good news, guys.

00:48:01.660 The world didn't end because God was so impressed with you that he decided to spare the world. You're

00:48:06.800 like the new Noahs. And then people started believing that. They're like, yeah, that story's

00:48:12.280 good. This is the root of cognitive dissonance. The dissonance would be I gave myself up for a

00:48:17.820 cult. I'm an idiot. But the new story is I'm the smartest person ever. I gave myself up to a cult

00:48:25.340 and saved the world. And then those people started proselytizing. So meaning they started going out

00:48:33.380 and telling other people, hey, join our cult. We just saved the world. So they started recruiting

00:48:38.820 people into it. So this gaslighting at this extreme level seems like it wouldn't work. But

00:48:45.960 if you can control people enough and get three people to believe the gas-lit story, it can

00:48:52.240 become something like a cult and become self-reinforcing.

00:48:56.200 That's terrifying.

00:48:58.020 Absolutely, freaking literally terrifying because you just watch the world and it has

00:49:03.060 been one big fest in your experiment.

00:49:05.420 It's unreal.

00:49:06.900 Yeah.

00:49:07.860 Yeah.

00:49:08.840 I think I understand that better after meeting a couple people that really confused me where

00:49:13.580 was just like I'm like dizzy after talking to you like what what is that about it's like are

00:49:19.660 they a witch I don't even believe in witches but like what's happening right now during this

00:49:25.240 conversation I don't understand what's going on it's just the weirdest experience and when I get

00:49:31.700 vibes like that I start thinking psychopathy and what is what is psychopathy for versus narcissism

00:49:39.500 well they're kind of this they're kind of cousins you know i don't know but when i think of that

00:49:43.500 real exploitation real manipulation real intentional that real kind of nefariousness

00:49:51.240 you know a lot of narcissism you know classic narcissism is hey look at me i'm a big deal

00:49:56.180 you know and if people look at you and you're big deal you're okay like you're you're fine as long

00:50:01.660 as you feel like people think you're cool but when you're out there really just systematically

00:50:06.660 breaking people and destroying them in a malicious and intentional way, it kind of spills into

00:50:12.720 psychopathy and even sadism. And yeah, you get vibes like that, just get the heck out of there

00:50:18.140 because you don't need that in your life. And people will sneak up on you because they're good

00:50:22.800 at it. I mean, I voted for some real bad politicians because they're pros. And the

00:50:29.400 people who go through life like this are professionals. So don't blame yourself for

00:50:33.340 getting taken advantage of because they're good at it you know it's what they do do you think

00:50:38.780 so there's one person in particular i don't even know if they were aware like because i would say

00:50:48.560 that's not true like i know and once i figured out what was going on i was like okay that's not

00:50:52.720 true that's not what happened that this entire framework of like is wrong and they didn't i don't

00:50:59.660 know if it was like manipulation but it seemed so deeply entrenched that they were believing it

00:51:07.140 so it was harder to pick up on because you want you know normally when you when I lie which I

00:51:12.140 really try not to do I am acutely aware that I'm lying and it's like it's for a purpose especially

00:51:18.860 when I was a teenager I'd be like oh I did something bad I don't want to get in trouble

00:51:22.740 and i'm gonna lie about it very like top level surface level lies and this kind of manipulation

00:51:30.100 of reality that i'm talking about it feels like that person believes what they're saying yeah

00:51:34.740 you're a terrible you're gonna be a terrible narcissist feeling guilty lying to people like

00:51:38.500 that but yeah um yeah no um i know exactly what you're talking about i i'm like trying to think

00:51:46.420 if we have some great research on this and we don't because i think this is deep stuff

00:51:51.060 i know in a lot of the evolutionary work they talk about lying that if you believe it yourself

00:51:55.220 you're more effective at it yeah and you almost get the sense of there's this sort of confabulation

00:52:01.140 like people are just making up reality and they're like i'm just going to go with this reality and

00:52:05.380 if it doesn't work i'll just drop it and go with another one um there's a movie called regarding

00:52:10.580 henry back in the day and i can't even remember who was in it but i just remember that a great

00:52:14.420 character like that who was kind of a mimic and would just sort of embrace these roles um very

00:52:20.660 narcissistic so i i think that i know that is a thing because i've experienced it and i do get

00:52:27.220 the sense like you that there is people it's almost like they just put on this outfit like

00:52:32.980 it's real but you also see well they'll cast it off and just grab another one you're lying okay

00:52:38.420 well this is what happened well dude that's a lie too yeah like what you don't even know what the

00:52:44.100 reality is well that's not how i operate i just put on an act and then when i get my needs met

00:52:50.340 i put on another act and i'm just going real fast making this all work and when you see people

00:52:56.740 so when i when i you know people are like how do you tell who's a narcissist who's a bad person

00:53:02.100 um it's very hard to know directly so like i'm talking to somebody i especially in a

00:53:08.660 short communication it's hard to know if i meet somebody really narcissistic i usually

00:53:12.260 walk away going, I really like that person. So what you need to do is you need to either look

00:53:17.560 at their history of relationships. So what you'll see with somebody like you're talking about is

00:53:23.360 you're going to see train wreckage through their life. You're going to see damage. You're going to

00:53:27.140 see lost relationships, bad, broken business deals, dishonesty, maybe criminality if you're

00:53:33.760 dealing with some real impulsivity. You'll see a train wreck. They did not get through life

00:53:39.400 killing it up to that point they might hide it but it will be there um so always like in

00:53:45.500 relationships in particular like see a history of that person look at how they relate to their

00:53:49.740 parents you know the whole thing and then um the other thing is look at how they treat people

00:53:55.660 they're not interested in so you know maybe somebody's you know you're a high status person

00:54:00.980 so maybe he's really interested in you but they go how are they treating the wait staff

00:54:04.420 up here? How do they treat the bellhop at the hotel? How do they treat other people?

00:54:12.120 And what you'll see is people who are narcissistic, it's harder for them to sort of

00:54:17.340 treat people who are below them, in quotes, on the social hierarchy, treat them like humans,

00:54:25.240 because it's a status thing and they think they're better. So sometimes you can see it that way. You

00:54:29.600 could see flashes of meanness or things but it's real hard to tell i think yeah it's so creepy i

00:54:36.000 had no i'd like until i met a couple of people that i was like oh wow you don't you're not even

00:54:40.880 in the same world as me uh i had no idea that even existed i couldn't fathom how that existed

00:54:46.440 it's really like the human brain is so complicated it's crazy and i just like i'm just the older i

00:54:55.420 get, the more I learn how complicated belief systems are and reality.

00:55:02.520 I've been doing this a long time. I don't really understand the human condition and I've really

00:55:08.220 tried. I also think, and we don't have great data for this, but I hear stories like that I often

00:55:16.740 wonder about early trauma. Because trauma is something that doesn't turn you into a narcissist

00:55:22.720 this because it but it does because the trauma can go all sorts of ways like it can make you

00:55:29.500 depressed it's it's a but it's associated with all sorts of negative psychological outcomes

00:55:34.260 sexual abuse emotional abuse physical abuse all those kind of things other you know being in a

00:55:40.400 war zone when you're a kid whatever uh losing a parent uh you know having an alcoholic father

00:55:46.600 all those kind of things can lead to trauma and people trying to build a life to kind of not have

00:55:53.460 to go through that again. And again, it's not specific to narcissism, but I think when you

00:55:59.220 see people where there's a break in their personality, that can be something to at least

00:56:03.640 look at as maybe a source for it. Now, that makes it sad, right? Because a couple of these people I

00:56:10.060 met that twisted reality and I was like, you're just, every sentence you say, there's a lie in

00:56:15.680 it because it's bad um had really difficult things happen to them really early on and so

00:56:22.300 when they go back and say well this is what my life looked like and you see all these train

00:56:27.200 wrecks but you're like oh but this really these really terrible things happened and that kind of

00:56:32.980 is what hap like what made the train wrecks so then if you're a forgiving person that's dangerous

00:56:39.600 I feel like just avoidance is a, is better.

00:56:43.420 Well, I think it's in terms of, if it were my dad I'm talking to, I'm like, be avoidant,

00:56:48.820 you know, just stay away.

00:56:50.740 It's not worth the, you know, people have to go through stuff.

00:56:53.800 On the other hand, I think it's useful to have compassion for people, even when sometimes

00:56:59.260 they're kind of bad people, because you see, there's a source to this and they were at

00:57:03.060 one point a victim.

00:57:04.820 And I think, and, you know, like I said, we're all good and bad.

00:57:09.460 We all can be bad people.

00:57:11.140 We might not think we're being bad.

00:57:12.860 I could, you know, yell.

00:57:16.660 I guarantee you there is something I stressed or yelled at my daughters about for five or

00:57:23.760 10 years that I thought I was helping them be better people.

00:57:28.800 And really what it was, was my own fear about the future or something from my childhood

00:57:34.400 that I was projecting out to them in an effort to save them from my past that wasn't their issue.

00:57:41.580 And I was doing it out of what I thought was love, but it was really out of fear. I don't know what

00:57:46.880 this is because if I discovered I'm going to do it, I guarantee I did that. And I don't think

00:57:52.760 that's uncommon because the more I learn about myself and my own kind of issues, the more I

00:58:00.680 realize my best stance with my kids is just to be loving. Everything else is kind of nonsense.

00:58:07.100 If I can be loving and be present, everything else takes care of itself. But especially when

00:58:12.600 I was younger, I was trying to, oh, I got to get them this way. I got to get them this way. I got

00:58:16.740 to come in from a good place, but also come in from fear. So I think that having compassion for

00:58:23.880 people is is useful at some point yeah some point in your journey and I think like dad taught me

00:58:32.400 that too is you're going to get screwed over by people people are going to do terrible things to

00:58:36.380 you and that can't like warp your view of people and I'm concerned at least at this point I'm

00:58:43.720 pretty I'm a little bit warped in my view of people I'm like hey just don't like my go-to

00:58:49.320 isn't trust anymore it's distrust until i trust and i think that's because i had really terrible

00:58:55.320 boundaries for a long time where i was just like everybody's good trust everyone and then i got hit

00:59:00.580 really hard a number of times i was like oh so i've just gone into the into the other direction

00:59:05.140 but like compassion with actual boundaries is somewhere where you want to end up yeah i when

00:59:12.620 I again, I don't give advice, but except to my kids. And even then, I'm tenuous about it. But

00:59:19.660 my one thing to consider in relationships is to go slow. You know, if you're if you're stepping

00:59:25.880 into relate, just take your time. Because if when you when I hear about people kind of get hit by

00:59:31.360 really narcissistic or psychopathic partners, often it's a very, you know, they they'll say

00:59:38.680 love bombing and the common parlance but often it's very quick it's very dramatic it's very

00:59:44.100 emotional um and i just say go slow just get just go slow and let and get to know the person well

00:59:53.880 you know and and that's hard to do with high energy narcissistic people sometimes so yeah

00:59:59.140 don't trust you know trust but verify or you know don't trust until it's earned i think is really

01:00:06.160 smart especially in this modern world where we're running into people we've never known that we meet

01:00:11.320 online like ah cool i like everybody yeah and uh there's always you know there's always sharks in

01:00:18.140 the in the dolphin pod that's it i don't know what kind of metaphor that was i was just trying

01:00:24.620 to make a meta sharks in the dolphin pod that might be my i never had a podcast but i did it

01:00:29.960 might be called sharks in the dolphin pod uh you know what that's great i i could stand behind that

01:00:37.020 i've got i've got a whole bunch of questions we didn't get to because we went off on so many

01:00:41.060 tangents but the tangents were better than the questions so it's fine responsibility for that

01:00:45.140 mikhail it's 100 me no no you don't get full responsibility for that um what do you yeah

01:00:53.020 yeah it's helpful that's been very helpful to me it also gives you a feeling like i said i like the

01:00:59.400 feeling of control if you take responsibility for everything it does stabilize you then there

01:01:04.220 aren't these external factors that like oh that might wreck my life that might wreck my life

01:01:08.460 this is wrecking my life it's like no it's all you like oh okay and then i and i also don't get

01:01:14.960 jealous of people because i look i look at people's success and what i see is hard work

01:01:20.540 and i go yeah i can be that successful too i just got to sacrifice these three things and i'm not

01:01:25.940 willing to do it but god bless that person who did i respect them for that yeah just makes it

01:01:32.420 better right that that it does make it better or as you just walk around jealous and resentful

01:01:37.680 miserable you guys are crushing it i'm just a loser yeah yeah respect people for doing it i the

01:01:44.960 reason i'm not there is because i chose not to i might not think that but that's what happened

01:01:49.560 it's up to me yeah or maybe you chose other things too right like people also look at look

01:01:55.740 at people who have tons of money and all this. And what exactly did they have to lose in order

01:02:01.780 to get there? They didn't just end up there. They either like worked flat out. Maybe their

01:02:07.220 relationship suffered. Maybe they don't have kids. Maybe they don't spend any time with their kids.

01:02:11.600 Like it's not just yachts. There's very often a price that you do not see for what people have

01:02:18.860 that looks really exciting yeah world's complicated very yeah um so what is it that

01:02:27.500 that narcissistic people want what are their goals what are they looking for um that so the simple

01:02:34.940 answer to that is sex status and stuff that's kind of how i just shorthand it in my own mind

01:02:40.620 but but the primary goal would say the primary goal would be something like social status and

01:02:46.540 esteem or attention seeking, or maybe in the clinical edition, they'd say admiration,

01:02:53.560 ego needs. So you're looking for something. And a lot of times that's associated with status.

01:02:59.020 So when I say sex status and stuff, that's kind of how it spills out. It's, I want multiple

01:03:06.580 sexual partners, attractive sexual partners, arm candy, because I mean, this was my dissertation.

01:03:13.080 It was basically like, I want somebody who's a high value mate so that it makes me look

01:03:17.720 good.

01:03:18.180 I don't care about the emotional stuff as much.

01:03:20.660 I care more about status.

01:03:23.860 And then with status, it's going to be, I want to be a leader.

01:03:27.420 I want to be a celebrity.

01:03:29.280 So people who want to be celebrities or want to be leaders, public speakers tend to be

01:03:34.300 more narcissistic.

01:03:36.200 This, I mean, this is me.

01:03:37.840 So I, you know, it's not a slam.

01:03:40.220 um you know you do research on church they did a study in churches in canada and more narcissistic

01:03:47.260 pastors or priests had longer larger congregation larger congregations so it's that status piece

01:03:54.380 and then stuff it's material goods that convey social status these are designer handbags you

01:04:02.340 know designer watches watches fancy cars i love watches too but they're their status thing and uh

01:04:09.640 you know, fancy car. I'm looking at my minivan out there, which is sort of an anti-status

01:04:14.100 minivan. So people will buy material goods. Once they own those, those kind of become part of

01:04:21.020 yourself. We call it the material self. And then you can get ego needs made. Hey, Keith, I love

01:04:26.400 your new car. I'm awesome. So that's kind of how they do it. They're regulating for status via.

01:04:33.360 And what's creepy about that, since that's where we're going, is because the goal is ego,

01:04:37.920 you can swap those things out meaning i could trade a new girlfriend for a new porsche and they

01:04:42.800 do the same thing for me they're substitutable right like if somebody like i have a great

01:04:48.320 girlfriend and somebody's like dude i'll trade you her for a porsche and you're like does it

01:04:52.320 that's the fin go up when i hit 70 like yeah one of those i'm like dude i'll trade how does that

01:04:59.600 make you feel to be in a relationship with somebody like that what the hell i'm a product

01:05:04.640 I thought I was a person you mean I'm a good that makes you feel good and you would trade me for a

01:05:11.300 Porsche just because the back went up at 70 miles an hour how do you yeah that that's not good how

01:05:19.120 do you tell because like I like I know throughout my life I'm definitely more attracted to extroverts

01:05:24.860 than introverts I'm extroverted I want someone else who's enthused about everything to maybe a

01:05:30.660 ridiculous degree um and so i'm sure women are attracted to these and i like i like people who

01:05:37.520 are disagreeable too i like i feel like and this could be wrong i feel like they're less likely to

01:05:43.540 lie to spare my feelings which i don't like when people do that so but what what what do you think

01:05:50.760 about narcissists and lying like if they're high in conscientiousness does that kind of hinder that

01:05:56.460 because they don't care if they hurt your feelings or are they prone to lying?

01:06:00.340 They're prone to lying, but I'm trying to think of like, I did a big, I really did this big

01:06:05.620 diary study. I can remember the stacks of paper in my office 15 years ago and we looked at it.

01:06:10.720 I don't think we published a lot on it. I did do one chapter with a student looking at honesty

01:06:15.080 and narcissism. And I think it does predict dishonesty, but I think it's primarily going

01:06:20.580 to be in self and sort of self-enhancing ways. So it might predict cheating if it's a way to get

01:06:28.060 ahead. So cheating on a test to get ahead, making up data so I get attention for a paper,

01:06:34.120 lying about my success so people think I'm a big deal. So it might be lies that are directed toward

01:06:39.920 those things. You're also more likely to lie if you care about yourself more than others,

01:06:43.960 you're more likely to lie about them. But here's where it gets complicated,

01:06:48.120 which you mentioned the agreeableness pieces, really nice people will lie all the time when

01:06:54.120 you start collecting lie data. And when you look at it, they go, well, those are white lies.

01:06:59.960 What does that mean? Well, I didn't want to hurt your feelings. So Michaela, when I told you all

01:07:05.480 that stuff, when you said, I really want to know how my talk went, and I said it was great, even

01:07:10.360 though it wasn't, I just didn't want to hurt your feelings. And you're like, I love you. And so I

01:07:16.120 wanted you to hurt my feelings so my feelings didn't get hurt in front of the live audience

01:07:21.400 yeah but the person cared too much they couldn't do it so there's a lot of dishonesty which if you

01:07:26.840 get a guy who's kind of like i can i've dialed this back a whole lot because i've lived in the

01:07:32.120 south a long time and softened it i i was into me i'll just tell us i was in meeting with a faculty

01:07:37.880 member and he walks in i'm like well dude i guess you're not a rising star you're not a superstar

01:07:42.760 but you're doing pretty well and i thought i was just being honest oh my god it's i mean he was

01:07:48.920 telling people about it five years later i'm like oh my god never doing that again with the millennials

01:07:55.400 you know and so that's funny i mean but but it was and i felt really bad because that's terrible

01:08:01.640 leadership i was just kind of being myself i should have kind of pumped him up and said you're

01:08:06.600 yeah man you're crushing it you're doing great you know here's what i think would make you a

01:08:10.600 superstar and i could have framed it like you're almost there and here's but i was like well you're

01:08:15.720 not a superstar and i was thinking well but here's how we get there yeah my point is that when you

01:08:22.200 say i look for people who are kind of jerks and extroverted because they'll tell me the truth

01:08:26.040 you're probably right because they probably will sometimes but they're also probably manipulate you

01:08:31.560 too because that's if they're more narcissistic perfect so what you're what you're saying is like

01:08:36.440 Like you're saying, I'm selecting for a kind of a cross-section of traits, and in that

01:08:43.840 cross-section of people with those traits are going to be a lot more narcissism than

01:08:47.940 their average population.

01:08:50.000 It's like saying, hey, where do you want to meet somebody?

01:08:52.660 At a nightclub or a bar?

01:08:55.200 Or do you want to meet them at a, I don't know, emoji conference or something?

01:09:01.300 I don't know what the introverts do.

01:09:03.080 And you go, I like meeting people at bars.

01:09:07.540 They're going to be great.

01:09:08.840 That's giving me more narcissism.

01:09:10.700 You know, that's just how it is because you're selecting and you're just getting more in that

01:09:14.940 sample.

01:09:16.780 But I get it because, you know, you like what you like.

01:09:20.300 You want somebody with some energy, but also who's loving.

01:09:23.600 So narcissism isn't all bad.

01:09:25.900 It's like I was saying, if you think about it in big five, high extroversion, high agency,

01:09:30.060 high assertiveness, plus low agreeableness. Well, if you took that person, the extroversion

01:09:35.720 side's really good. That's what you fell in love with, to tell you the truth. That's what you liked

01:09:39.640 initially. And the agreeableness, you go, man, if they were just nice, it would be perfect.

01:09:45.220 If they were really extroverted, but also a little nicer. So half of narcissism is attractive,

01:09:53.100 and the other half is not attractive.

01:09:55.760 And so we end up with these related...

01:09:58.820 They use a lot of narcissistic characters in movies

01:10:02.200 and there's this one, Doctor Strange.

01:10:04.240 Have you ever seen that movie?

01:10:06.140 He's like a Marvel character.

01:10:08.240 Yeah, inappropriately young.

01:10:10.340 My dad bought all that.

01:10:11.780 That's Kubrick, right?

01:10:14.460 Oh, I don't...

01:10:15.200 I would say...

01:10:15.960 No, that's Doctor Strange love.

01:10:18.240 Of course your dad did that.

01:10:19.580 Because that's actually the actual literary content

01:10:22.900 with slim pickings driving, you know, going yee-haw on the bomb out of that. It was deep

01:10:27.640 parody and Peter Sellers. No, this is garbage modern entertainment for the children. And so

01:10:33.860 it's a Marvel character who's Dr. Strange. Oh, of course. He's like a surgeon. So he's a classic

01:10:40.720 super narcissistic character. That's his whole character. He's narcissistic. He's a surgeon.

01:10:46.040 his hands break so he can't do his surgery. And because his entire value is wrapped around being

01:10:54.480 a great surgeon, he's lost. And he can't just say, dude, I'm going to start writing books and

01:11:00.200 be a teacher and all my friends. He can't do that because it's all ego. And then that's what breaks

01:11:05.720 him. And then he goes to that spiritual transformation. But he's a classic narcissist.

01:11:11.980 I mean, a freaking surgeon. What's more narcissistic that you think of than a surgeon?

01:11:16.620 And by the way, there's a reason surgeons are narcissistic because they kill people.

01:11:21.060 I mean, like I had a buddy who's a neurosurgeon because you kill people because you don't think

01:11:25.680 about it, but when it's a high-risk surgery, people will die on your operating table, very

01:11:29.980 rarely.

01:11:31.280 But if you care so much, that's going to ruin your career.

01:11:34.680 You can't be a surgeon.

01:11:36.080 So you've got to be a little callous to do the job, man, because you got the next patient.

01:11:41.160 You do it 100%.

01:11:42.400 You work as hard as you can.

01:11:43.600 you feel terrible, but only for a night. And the next day you feel good.

01:11:49.360 What are the main professions of people who are narcissistic?

01:11:54.640 That's a really good question. So if you imagine you're somebody who's narcissistic,

01:12:01.500 so grandiose, I want positive attention and status from people. What I like is people

01:12:07.500 looking up at me and thinking I'm a big deal. Well, where can I get that? Podcaster.

01:12:13.600 So I will talk about podcasts in a minute if you want, because I think it's a little more

01:12:17.580 complicated. But yeah, entertainment. I want to be famous because if I'm famous, then people say,

01:12:23.020 hey, Keith, I saw you on the Peterson show. You're famous. I go, oh, I love being famous. Thanks.

01:12:30.620 Or I will be a leader. So I will become a leader of a company, the leader in the military,

01:12:36.760 a leader of a church, because leadership is a way I can get status. So I'll try to be a politician.

01:12:43.120 I'll try to do something where I get status.

01:12:46.200 So entertainer, status seeker, I'll try to get power over people.

01:12:52.100 So I'll try to find some opportunity to control people.

01:12:55.500 So at least I have that kind of deep power.

01:12:57.780 That's probably politics, law, maybe.

01:13:00.660 And another place you see it is in the medical field.

01:13:05.740 Again, you see it in surgeons.

01:13:06.960 So there's a big study out of the UK.

01:13:09.520 And British narcissism is lower than in the US.

01:13:12.960 in general um but the higher narcissism scores were with the surgeons versus like general

01:13:18.380 practitioners uh yeah makes sense fighter pilots versus ground crew you know that the original

01:13:25.900 astronauts the chuck yeager that buzz aldwin those guys were kind of narcissistic that was their

01:13:31.700 profile risk takers and like i say in the original astronauts were narcissists were narcissistic

01:13:41.280 uh the new astronauts i say are canadian they're very nice and the reason for that is they because

01:13:47.920 they're all there's six of them in a tube together and floating around the world if you put six

01:13:53.280 narcissists and if you put chuck and buzz and all those guys in a tube they'd start breaking stuff

01:13:59.040 they'd be like this mission is ours they'd fight over leadership then one of them be like we're

01:14:03.400 going to mars screw those idiots on earth you know that they're problems you know these mavericks

01:14:09.020 of problems. So you find narcissists trying to get attention, trying to get places they can get

01:14:16.100 status, esteem, et cetera. Your podcaster comment was great because I've done a lot of podcasts.

01:14:25.260 And usually in a podcast, you end up chatting with somebody for an hour or two,

01:14:29.220 and it turns into kind of a real conversation. Sometimes you talk off air for half an hour

01:14:34.620 afterwards yeah sometimes you end up becoming buddies with people and if you're a podcaster

01:14:40.560 you can't you can't fake it you have to be authentic or it's not going to work

01:14:44.660 meaning so so like joe rogan's a nice guy oh yeah he's a nice dude and if you were a narcissist and

01:14:54.180 was a fake bs-er that would have come out you know i talked to the guy would have come out in

01:14:58.740 the first 30 minutes i would have figured that out but when you do old school television

01:15:03.800 you know you go in there and you do a piece like you jump on there you got two minutes to say

01:15:09.280 something clever and everybody looks good you know so if you do old television like the celebrities

01:15:14.420 are there sitting there and then the people right out and do the puff up there so you got the shine

01:15:19.440 off them and then they do their fake smile and you do your five minute shtick and they're gone

01:15:24.140 you can be really narcissistic and do that job i mean that that's perfect for narcissists so

01:15:30.600 So I think when they, Dr. Drew from the show Lovelines and a guy named Mark Young, who's

01:15:39.480 a real good dude, he's an accounting professor at USC, really nice guy, and they were interested

01:15:45.840 in celebrity narcissism, which is a really interesting concept or question, and no one

01:15:50.940 can get data on celebrities.

01:15:53.180 So what they did was before the Lovelines shows, Mark would show up in the green room,

01:15:57.760 which is where i've said this for your audience i'm sorry but the green room is where you kind

01:16:01.720 of hang out before going on a show and so he'd hang out in the green room chat with the celebrities

01:16:07.080 and he'd give them a version of the narcissistic personality inventory and a couple questions have

01:16:12.100 them fill it out not put their name on it so it was totally anonymous like so because no one that's

01:16:18.280 the only reason way these people would do it is if there's no way to trace it put them in a big bag

01:16:23.540 so we could never find out. But when they went through the data, it was fascinating because the

01:16:30.280 highest scores for narcissism, the celebrities were the reality television stars. And the second

01:16:38.300 highest was standup comedy. Then it went to actors and the bottom were musicians. So when

01:16:44.220 you think about it, you kind of interpret this, who knows, it's one study, but people who want

01:16:50.980 to go on reality television generally are being famous for being famous i uh you know i chatted

01:16:57.740 with chris williamson about that who you you must know chris but he's you know he's on that love

01:17:02.740 island show and yeah it was really interesting because he's not like that at all but he has

01:17:07.980 such great insight into it but he's like yeah that's pretty much it just shallow and narcissistic

01:17:13.140 not much more to it um stand-up comedy you got to be narcissistic narcissistic because you stand

01:17:19.160 in front of a room of a thousand people who are going to mock you and heckle you and you got to

01:17:24.600 go to war with them it's like being a professor but they don't they're kind of drunk and up for

01:17:29.180 a good time so it's harder it'd be like it'd be like me teaching but the students were wasted and

01:17:34.420 were and if they heckled me nothing would happen so you it's it's it's fun but it's more of a

01:17:39.940 contest and what happens with musicians is if you're too narcissistic you can't play in a group

01:17:45.900 so i talked because i'm in athensia yeah athensia is is kind of a music town so we're the home of

01:17:54.420 the b52s and rem and widespread panic a lot of these kind of old groups came out of here and

01:18:00.140 there's a lot of musicians so i talked to him about it and they laughed and they said oh yeah

01:18:04.780 that's what we call like lead singer syndrome you know sometimes and he goes they go yeah in

01:18:10.080 Athens, when that happens, we just send you to Nashville.

01:18:13.720 Oh, that's funny.

01:18:15.340 So they're using social control that if your musician gets too big of an ego, they can't

01:18:20.080 play with different groups.

01:18:21.240 They can't be humble.

01:18:22.820 They just like, we'll send them to Nashville with the other egomaniacs and they can kind

01:18:26.720 of do their thing there.

01:18:28.780 So I think there's, you know, the way we set up fame, some is more conducive to be

01:18:34.000 narcissistic or being a diva and some suppresses that more.

01:18:38.560 Yeah.

01:18:38.840 i had a couple questions about social media because i think you've done some social media

01:18:43.720 and narcissism research uh and so yeah i wanted to get your your input on selfies and instagram

01:18:54.120 and narcissism and then i had a question that i want to ask uh before i forget it but i what i

01:19:02.040 assume is people who are more prone to take selfies are more prone to not being narcissistic

01:19:06.900 is is that accurate uh since we yeah so when we when we looked at the data it's it's a little

01:19:14.740 more it's a little nuance um people who are more narcissistic are more comfortable taking and

01:19:20.740 sharing selfies oh comfortable comfortable they okay do it share it uh with grandiose narcissism

01:19:28.180 and they're more likely to share selfies but it's a certain kind of selfie so with narcissists you're

01:19:33.700 you're more likely to see a full body, you're more likely to see more skin, and it's more likely to

01:19:41.780 be a true selfie. Whereas people who are agreeable will take a lot of selfies, but they're often with

01:19:48.380 other people. So they're like capture a picture with their friends and send it to their friends.

01:19:53.860 And that is something that's more associated with some trait agreeableness.

01:19:57.200 so the selfie itself can have a little different connotation to it and people who are more

01:20:05.600 vulnerably narcissistic so sort of narcissistic but with a lot of neuroticism this they'll do

01:20:10.760 selfies but it's really hard so they'll do a selfie and they'll struggle with it because they're

01:20:15.820 like it's important for them to get good feedback but they're not really sure so it's so i talked to

01:20:22.320 a couple influencers. I talked to one reporter who did some in-depth reporting when people used

01:20:28.040 to do that on social media influencers. And what it sounds like to me is that that life can be

01:20:34.980 really, it can be very challenging because what we see is somebody confidently putting out one

01:20:40.820 snapshot in Dubai or wherever they do selfies, I guess Dubai and the beach. And what's behind the

01:20:46.860 scenes is, um, a lot of stress and a lot of taking five or 15 shots and maybe going through

01:20:57.340 a hundred shots, trying to get the right one and then putting out there and hoping the world thinks

01:21:01.320 they're a legend. Does that make sense? So with vulnerable narcissism, um, it is even, um, it's

01:21:12.220 really hard to take selfies but they still do it but it's work so in general narcissism more

01:21:17.560 selfies but more individual more body and again it's more about status and looking good versus

01:21:23.640 looking about being like you're closer connected with people that makes sense i don't think i like

01:21:30.540 taking selfies i i hate it so much the first one i had to do i had to fake it how did you fake it

01:21:37.920 well it's like a journalist it's like i did a paper it's like we want a picture of you with

01:21:41.660 a selfie and i'm like dude i feel like an idiot it's like i just put your arm out and i'll just

01:21:46.860 take a picture so i just held my arm out and he took a picture so i look like a selfie it does

01:21:52.100 though grow social media platforms which grows an audience which allows you to grow a business

01:21:57.600 so what happens then um social media when they built it i i look at it this way it's like social

01:22:08.960 media runs on ego not all ego it can also run on cat humor and anger but what makes people want to

01:22:16.720 post and share well it's ego that's a big part of the network so the people that are the people who

01:22:23.360 have more followers online are more narcissistic the people who post more selfies are more

01:22:28.800 narcissistic um and that's and so what that means is when i go on twitter or instagram when i look

01:22:36.400 at all the people i'm going to see a world that's overrepresented or oversaturated with narcissism

01:22:42.480 because the people putting out all the context of my network from the other side i'm gonna say

01:22:47.200 god this is a narcissistic world um it's not it's overrepresented in terms of who's posting online

01:22:56.800 but what you're running into is the absolute problem is we all need to have a social media

01:23:01.840 presence if you want to build a brand and get money so you can feed your children and pay your

01:23:06.520 mortgage so you have to do it and people struggle with this if it's not natural to them so if you

01:23:13.520 notice like i'm not on twitter because i i i love to talk to people but like on twitter i hate all

01:23:18.720 the angry stuff and i just i'm just kind of like i want to have a discussion without fighting in

01:23:24.140 politics so i like to start a stub stack but i can't even write it because i'm like everyone's

01:23:29.480 going to get pissed off. Who needs that nonsense? But it sucks for my brand. So what I should do is

01:23:36.580 suck it up and do it, or I should hire somebody to be my ego to go out there and promote me.

01:23:42.760 And in the media world, that's called a publicist. So you would hire a publicist and go do publicity,

01:23:49.240 and that would be a way to professionalize it. But the truth is that if you have an ego or a

01:23:57.320 comfortable self-promoting. It's a real advantage in the intellectual world just to get your ideas

01:24:03.500 out there. And it didn't used to be that way, but now it kind of is.

01:24:08.860 Interesting. That landscape is, yeah.

01:24:12.520 You kind of got to just suck it up and go for it. Oh, totally.

01:24:15.480 Yeah. Oh.

01:24:17.180 Yeah. My favorite, I mean, who was an advisor of mine, my favorite academic was a guy named

01:24:22.140 ched insko who was kind of on the spectrum which was rare for a guy born in the 30s he'd wear like

01:24:29.260 blue he'd what would he wear light blue pants a blue blazer and and new balance blue tennis shoes

01:24:35.660 every day same outfit and he couldn't really talk to people but god he was smart he knew he was a

01:24:41.660 great he was like one of the first great attitudes researchers hey the greatest conversations of my

01:24:46.620 life with him was in the bathroom uncomfortably at the urinal because he didn't understand social

01:24:51.340 relationships, explaining why Pavlovian conditioning and two-value logic and Heider's

01:24:57.520 balanced theory of interpersonal attraction were all the same model fundamentally.

01:25:02.380 Great conversation in the bathroom urinal with this guy who didn't know how to relate to people.

01:25:07.960 He never would make it in the modern world because he's not a self-promoter. But nowadays,

01:25:12.980 you kind of got to do it. The problem is we select for self-promoters. It hurts science or

01:25:18.780 hurts other things because we're pulling so much for self-promotion we're missing skill

01:25:24.140 so that's yeah it's it's just a tough world it's just the nature of it but

01:25:29.820 yeah you kind of have to train yourself to do this stuff i'm very comfortable with podcasts

01:25:34.300 because it feels like authentic conversation i'm not comfortable going out there and saying oh i'm a

01:25:39.500 legend i mean that's probably good though it's good i don't even think most people yeah yeah i

01:25:47.340 I don't even think most people, the crazy thing is that marketing does actually seem to work.

01:25:52.660 Like I was talking to a contractor the other day who said he was buying these classes online

01:25:58.200 that taught you how to like get rich quick using drop shipping and stuff like that.

01:26:03.200 And I know that there are people online who've made money that way, but he certainly hasn't.

01:26:08.500 He's spent a lot of money that way.

01:26:10.540 And I was like, don't those kind of scream, I was like, you have to be careful because

01:26:14.600 some of those kind of scream scam, no?

01:26:16.300 but apparently it doesn't yeah it's like apparently doesn't scream scam to everybody

01:26:21.260 even if some people look at it you're like well that's definitely not real i i notice uh i'm

01:26:28.220 always curious about people selling courses about how to get rich yeah i always wonder if you knew

01:26:36.060 how to get rich why are you selling courses why aren't you in maui i shouldn't say maui i guess

01:26:41.300 because they yeah but you know what i mean fiji right now yeah yeah yeah and then how did you get

01:26:49.140 rich did you get rich by selling courses and is that what you're teaching people to do some of

01:26:54.380 those courses teach you to sell courses it's like a course on course selling kind of meta meta course

01:27:00.580 i don't know i've had people say sell a course i'm like dude i you know i think i've done courses

01:27:05.340 for people it's cool i just like i couldn't do it myself because i i kind of i gotta get my

01:27:10.340 self-esteem up that's what i need to work on my self-esteem then i can sell a course so you'd sell

01:27:16.560 a great course what no i'm all in favor of you no i know i know it's just when i like people like

01:27:22.960 go do a course online i'm like man i can't even tweet you know i just it's hard for me to do all

01:27:27.660 that like i just like it you know it's good to have a publicist and stuff because self-promotion

01:27:31.640 is hard i mean even and i got a big personality it's not like i have any problem with the

01:27:36.540 extraversion piece i just was raised that if you're like promoting yourself you're kind of a

01:27:41.600 loser like i'm talking about students today um talking about vulnerable narcissism and there

01:27:47.720 was a school shooter in santa barbara back in the day and there's been so many of these now but one

01:27:52.340 of the things he wrote in his manifesto was i'm going to go shoot people because i'm going to

01:27:56.480 shoot i'm going to show them who the real alpha male is now and oh i said you know i said if

01:28:03.440 you're hanging out with a bunch of guys and somebody calls themselves an alpha male i can

01:28:07.340 tell you one thing they're not an alpha male that's all i can tell you because if you if you

01:28:13.000 just hang around with high status men and no one does that stuff it's a guy it's loser material

01:28:18.080 guys are quiet and uh you you you hang around with people that are incredibly accomplished you

01:28:23.440 will never know because they won't say a thing one of their buddies like oh you know my buddy

01:28:27.760 um people don't say that because that's just that's just gross it's just not what i mean i

01:28:34.620 i speaking for men just men don't do that successful men don't do that that's kind of

01:28:40.060 what boys do not even boys boys are cool no one does that it's narcissistic um

01:28:45.120 so the self-promotion comes hard for a lot of people yeah yeah that's probably why like now

01:28:55.100 so at the beginning when i was growing my uh instagram it was pretty painful like everything

01:29:00.740 you do is painful every bit of content is painful and so the more i did it the the less painful it

01:29:07.820 got because i was like oh well the repercussions to posting something i don't think is perfect

01:29:12.380 aren't that high no one really cares as much as you care but uh i have somebody else doing

01:29:18.860 social media so I don't have to do it so then solves that problem right but what you did was

01:29:25.660 you outsource that to somebody else which is the best thing to do it's still your content I mean

01:29:30.260 they can just take your content and they can do the promotion stuff and they can deal with the

01:29:34.580 people online and you don't have to just you don't have to put yourself through that all the time

01:29:40.860 I find it very difficult but some people are very natural with it and that's really

01:29:44.620 positive and no you know people are different i just do the fun stuff that's like replying to

01:29:50.000 comments and things and sometimes posting the odd selfie but like i've managed to outsource just

01:29:56.240 constant content uploads which is and then and then you don't have to be on it all the time like

01:30:01.540 a job yeah yeah then then you have yeah outsourcing a lot of this is hard and like the new media world

01:30:08.260 where you've got to run the whole show yourself is really hard for people i it's a this new world

01:30:14.020 is awesome uh with social media but it's also just kind of wild west in ways it's it's cool

01:30:20.940 i don't know yeah well keith that was very interesting we went in a bunch of directions

01:30:25.880 i wasn't planning on going that was good thank you good yeah i thought that was really a fun

01:30:32.720 conversation yeah the part about intuition that was good i like that those are the kind of similar

01:30:38.740 conclusions i've come to that was helpful yeah ask your dad about it because he he knows young

01:30:44.880 better than i do i've only made it most of the way through the red book and he's probably read

01:30:48.820 the black book too but uh but i do think that that i think that's what young was really working

01:30:54.960 on with with intuition yeah i'm gonna have to try those i've been meaning to like delve into that a

01:31:01.720 little bit more but i i want to delve into that because that's interesting yeah our models of

01:31:07.300 psychology are not dumb, we're pretty sophisticated, but still our understanding of the human condition

01:31:13.760 is very, very limited, that there's a lot more to do. And we're a very young science. And I think

01:31:21.400 sometimes people think, well, if you haven't studied it, it's not real. It's like, no, we

01:31:25.040 haven't got to it. And the feds aren't, you know, there's not a lot of federal grant money to study

01:31:28.820 intuition and vibes. So it's not like it's a big, big rush. So, you know, I think there's a lot of

01:31:34.440 interesting things we're going to see over the years come out yeah yeah um if people do want to

01:31:40.920 find you online is there a website or anywhere people oh um i have w keith campbell.com that

01:31:47.440 needs to be updated but i haven't found a person yet and uh i'm on twitter sometimes at w keith

01:31:53.680 campbell and that's perfect yeah okay well thank you for coming on oh that was fun thanks so much

01:32:04.440 Thank you.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - October 11, 2023

Narcissism, Psychopathy, Borderline： How to Spot It and What to Do About It ｜ W. Keith Campbell

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