Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest. You will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's really great to have w. Keith Campbell on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Campbell is a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia,
Speaker 1: as well as the author of The Narcissism Epidemic, When
Speaker 1: You Love a Man Who Loves Himself, and most recently,
Speaker 1: The New Science of Narcissism. He also has more than
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty peer reviewed articles, and he lives
Speaker 1: in Athens, Georgia. Keith, so excited to talk to you today. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's fun to be here, Scott. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: We go, we go way back. I remember I was
Speaker 1: writing an article for Psychology today. Do you remember that,
Speaker 1: like twelve years ago on? It has been a long
Speaker 1: time we've been kind of talking about these issues of
Speaker 1: narcissism and the good side and the bad side, and
Speaker 1: you know the challenges. It's been a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really appreciated your your insights on that article as
Speaker 1: running back then and then I've been blessed to be
Speaker 1: a colleague of yours now. But I want to just
Speaker 1: jump into this, this question of narcissm and what is it?
Speaker 1: What is narcissy? I feel like everyone says if they
Speaker 1: don't like someone, they'll say, oh, that's person is such
Speaker 1: a narcissy. That's that's become the phrase for anyone you
Speaker 1: don't like. Yeah, well if they're successful and better lucky
Speaker 1: than you, yeah, they're narcissism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's the risk. You know, it's sort of the sort
Speaker 1: of meta narcissism, as you use someone else's narcissism as
Speaker 1: a defense against your own inadequacy. Yeah, it's a term
Speaker 1: that gets used a lot, and it is usually sort
Speaker 1: of pejored. But as you know, we think of narcissism
Speaker 1: like a personality, Like a lot of personality traits is
Speaker 1: being really trade offs. They have some good sides and
Speaker 1: some bad size depending on contexts and situation. But when
Speaker 1: we talk about narcissism in the field, we're talking about
Speaker 1: two different forms, the first being the individual different form
Speaker 1: of grandiose narcissism. You know, this combination of a sense
Speaker 1: of entitlement and need for admiration and attention seeking and
Speaker 1: maybe some exhibitionism, but also some drive and charisma and
Speaker 1: real ambition that goes with it, kind of kind of
Speaker 1: like driven antagonism, energized antagonism. And then there's this other
Speaker 1: form of narcisism we talked about, which is the more
Speaker 1: vulnerable form, which has the entitlement. Yeah, there's a sense
Speaker 1: of entitlement and that's my favorite. You know, you think
Speaker 1: you deserve special treatment, you think you're important. But at
Speaker 1: the same time there's some low self esteem and some
Speaker 1: insecurity that goes with that. So you have two different
Speaker 1: forms of narcissism. One that's driven and really more effective
Speaker 1: in the world but can do more damage because of that,
Speaker 1: and one that's more more depressive and a little more
Speaker 1: low self esteem, that's a little more hidden and doesn't
Speaker 1: do as much damage to people, but it's sadder and
Speaker 1: does more damage to him or herself. Yeah. Thanks, there's
Speaker 1: these these emerging models of these three factor models and narcissism.
Speaker 1: That that our research as well as other research teams
Speaker 1: confirm that there's these three factors. So it seems like
Speaker 1: entitlement is a thread that runs through both forms of narcissism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: truly the center. So we sometimes say there's there's two
Speaker 1: two faces of narcissism, or two dimensions, this more grandiose form,
Speaker 1: this more vulnerable form. But underneath those are three factors
Speaker 1: and sort of the key factor in both of them
Speaker 1: is this antagonism and you know, callousness, sense of entitlement,
Speaker 1: sense of superiority, sense of self importance. And then with
Speaker 1: that key feature, you either get this more agentic or
Speaker 1: driven extraversion. And we use the term agency to mean
Speaker 1: like drive. So with the charisma and energy and ambition,
Speaker 1: and then with the more vulnerable form you get the
Speaker 1: more you know, neuroticism, so you get insecurity, low self esteem,
Speaker 1: fragile self esteem, and those three factors exist and they
Speaker 1: can exist together, so you can have people who are
Speaker 1: grandiose and vulnerable. You can have people who seem really
Speaker 1: really energized and self confident, but they also have some insecurity.
Speaker 1: So it gets more complicated. Yeah, I say to people,
Speaker 1: if you really you want to be a narcisst. It's
Speaker 1: much better to be a grandiose narcissist than a vulnerable
Speaker 1: narcissist if your role is to be a narcissist. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's the vulnerable form of narcissism is really challenging because
Speaker 1: you have a lot of these fantasies or illusions of
Speaker 1: being successful or important, but you're not really equipped to
Speaker 1: succeed your low energy, you're in secure. I mean that's
Speaker 1: a hard that's a hard set of skills to be
Speaker 1: out there, go out there and beat the world with.
Speaker 1: But if you're more grandiose and you're confident, you're full
Speaker 1: of yourself, I mean, those are great traits in the
Speaker 1: modern world to go out there and get noticed and
Speaker 1: get attention and make things happen. But you can just
Speaker 1: do that by being an extrovert, right, Like, what is
Speaker 1: the antagonism by you? Because we in our research, remember
Speaker 1: we parceled out the antagonism facet and we found that
Speaker 1: extraversion was really doing most of the positive prediction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's really important. Is that boldness, that extraversion,
Speaker 1: that's what it's predicting a lot of what we think
Speaker 1: are the good thing with narcissism. So the number of
Speaker 1: connections on Facebook is largely driven by extraversion. The social
Speaker 1: likability that you have with narcissists initially is largely driven
Speaker 1: by extraversion. What you see with antagonism though, where things
Speaker 1: like you make more money. So being antagonistic in hierarchical
Speaker 1: or state out of seeking situations can be beneficial, you know,
Speaker 1: riding up in leadership. But it's only one way to
Speaker 1: do it. There's multiple ways to succeed, and you can
Speaker 1: succeed based on extraversion and be a nice person, and
Speaker 1: dare I say one can succeed as an introvert as well,
Speaker 1: Absolutely say that. I mean there's lots Oh yeah, it shouldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's lots of ways to skin the success cat.
Speaker 1: The more narcissistic way is more being grandiose and attentions
Speaker 1: seeking to bring people in. But you know, you can
Speaker 1: just do it with work ethic. You can just grind
Speaker 1: and be conscientious and keep your head down and really
Speaker 1: outperform people. So there's there's lots of ways to get ahead.
Speaker 1: Just that the narcissism is the more showmen technique. And
Speaker 1: also obviously not everyone wants to get ahead, they'd rather
Speaker 1: get along. Yeah, and that's a yeah. I love those
Speaker 1: terms too, the old Karen horneye. But but a lot
Speaker 1: of that is that I know you're but a lot
Speaker 1: of its selected, and you're like, who wants to have
Speaker 1: this job? And like all the narcissists like we do.
Speaker 1: And then you get some other people like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to do some good in the world. I want
Speaker 1: it too. But whenever you're ever searching for people who
Speaker 1: want power, status or success, you're always getting a few
Speaker 1: more narcissists in your search. That's a great point. So
Speaker 1: what is the narcissism recipe? I you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of what we're talking about, I think, And I
Speaker 1: don't know if we're the same in this, but I
Speaker 1: think of personality traits as really being well described by
Speaker 1: sort of the Big five and the fastest I think
Speaker 1: the way I'm joking, I'm joking. I know you're a classicist,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to I'm joking. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun. I would use for yeah, not
Speaker 1: a not really for the for the research, but I
Speaker 1: like to think of these basic traits as like ingredients
Speaker 1: in a recipe. And we tend to use the Big
Speaker 1: Five sort of like you know use you know, carbon
Speaker 1: rates and protein and spices and stuff when we make food,
Speaker 1: and we can combine these an interesting way to make
Speaker 1: different traits. And when you combine this, you know, this
Speaker 1: agentic or driven extraversion with this antagonism and willingness to
Speaker 1: manipulate people and knock them over to get your own ends,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting it's an interesting recipe for an interesting
Speaker 1: kind of person If it was somebody who was just
Speaker 1: mean but wasn't really extroverted, that's another kind of recipe.
Speaker 1: It's not as interesting, but it's another recipe, and it
Speaker 1: really could be a recipe for narcissism. So I like
Speaker 1: to think of how we can mix these traits up
Speaker 1: to get different ingredient profiles. And that keeps me from
Speaker 1: thinking that somebody is narcissistic as somewhat completely different from
Speaker 1: somebody who's got another personality profile. They're all similar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point, and I think it's also probably
Speaker 1: important to point out that you know, within the Big
Speaker 1: five framework, you have aspects and then you have facets,
Speaker 1: and the two aspects of extroversion are assertiveness and enthusiasm,
Speaker 1: positive emotions. It seems like this grandest narcissism is more
Speaker 1: tied to the agentic, assertative aspect of extroversion. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I like, I really like breaking things down into
Speaker 1: aspects when you talk about narcissism, because this aspect is
Speaker 1: really key. The more sociability or positive emotionality is great,
Speaker 1: but it's not really a core feature of narcissism. It's
Speaker 1: it's really it's really a nice trait to have if
Speaker 1: you want people to like you and you want to
Speaker 1: be happy. It's the it's the number one the number
Speaker 1: one predictor yeah, life satisfaction. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: Well as you could tell, we we we really can
Speaker 1: get nerdy here today. So this is this is good.
Speaker 1: I like this. You know, what are the primary goals
Speaker 1: and motives of narcissists? And I'm being a little bit
Speaker 1: ware of using the term narcissists because you're we're talking
Speaker 1: about a personality perspective. So those who score hard in
Speaker 1: narcissm it's not sexy. It's not sexy, is it? Those
Speaker 1: who score above true standard deviation the mean on a
Speaker 1: narcissism personality questionnaire yeah. Yeah. To be clear, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about a personality disorder. We're using the term narcissists
Speaker 1: the same way you use the term like extrovert. It's
Speaker 1: it's a placeholder for what you just said, high on
Speaker 1: the profile. You know, something that's really interesting about narcissism
Speaker 1: and as opposed to a lot of traits, is that
Speaker 1: it involves a lot of self regulation, meaning that people
Speaker 1: are a narcissistic involved have goals that reinforce their ego
Speaker 1: being forced self esteem or the positivity of themselves. We
Speaker 1: say self enhance. So when you look at somebody's narcissistic
Speaker 1: and you look at how they act, a lot of
Speaker 1: it is serving the master goal of making themselves look good,
Speaker 1: have high standards, be important. So what are those goals specifically,
Speaker 1: And if you really boil down the literature, it's it's sex,
Speaker 1: status and stuff stuff, So narcissist stuff materialism, having a
Speaker 1: having a fancy car, having a fancy watch, having fancy
Speaker 1: clothes in the trophy house, I mean we so it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a certain form of materialism. It's
Speaker 1: not being a hoarder. It's you know, it's collecting status goods.
Speaker 1: And using status goods to self regulate. I mean, the
Speaker 1: industry is built around narcissistic status regulation via buying products,
Speaker 1: for sure, you know, and obviously you know, status is
Speaker 1: a big one, social standing, social status, leadership as one.
Speaker 1: But it can be popularity. It can be being a
Speaker 1: cool kid. Then have to be being a leader and
Speaker 1: and set. So Narsison predicts a lot of short term
Speaker 1: mating and fidelity, what kind of things. But you can
Speaker 1: be interested in short term sex and not be a narcissist, right,
Speaker 1: you can do all these things and being not a narcissist.
Speaker 1: They tend to gravitate together. They tend to correlate. And
Speaker 1: when you start, you know, you look at a picture
Speaker 1: of Napoleon Bonaparte and he's on a horse and he
Speaker 1: looks awesome, and he's conquering the world, and he gets
Speaker 1: somebody to paint it at the same time, because just
Speaker 1: conquering the world wasn't enough. He needed a picture of it.
Speaker 1: That's when you start, Ah, this stuff's all feeding together.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some narcissism here, but little bits and
Speaker 1: pieces don't have to be And even something like vanity
Speaker 1: could be used for something else. It could be used
Speaker 1: for signating, you know, social status, or maybe not just
Speaker 1: membership in a social group. Perhaps you know, I always
Speaker 1: dress well because it shows him a good number of society.
Speaker 1: There could be different reasons for this thing, could be
Speaker 1: a uniform. So things are always more complicated than they seem. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a very profound statement, that's for you. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not usual stuff, but that's just well, yeah, it
Speaker 1: is complicated because it's a multi dimensional construct. And at
Speaker 1: some point when you just talk about some of the
Speaker 1: facets in isolation of the others, you start to lose
Speaker 1: the narcissism aspect to it. I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: there is the core entitlement, then there's integment. But for instance,
Speaker 1: vanity people just like to look themselves when they pass
Speaker 1: the mirror. I think a lot of people probably score
Speaker 1: high in that and maybe don't necessarily score high in
Speaker 1: the others. Yeah, there's something that seem a little bit
Speaker 1: more tangential the vanity. The vanity questions that were almost
Speaker 1: like I like to look at myself in the mirror.
Speaker 1: It's really it's not just checking yourself out, which can
Speaker 1: be neuroticism or just you know, just making sure you
Speaker 1: look presentable. It didn't have to be. You're supposed to
Speaker 1: look like they have a job. I mean, sorry, I walk,
Speaker 1: I walk into the barber and they're just like, hey, homeless, Jesus.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm like, I should have probably paid attention
Speaker 1: for a while. So there's a lot of reasons you
Speaker 1: look in the mirror. But with narcissism, there's that enjoyment
Speaker 1: of it, with the grandiose narsium, there's enjoyment of looking
Speaker 1: in the mirror. And so vanity has been central to it.
Speaker 1: I guess since the myth of narcissist has fallen in
Speaker 1: love with his own reflection. But yeah, it's there, but
Speaker 1: it isn't it's not central to the com Well, people
Speaker 1: narcissistic do look better. They tend more to make more
Speaker 1: effort on the parents, They make more effort to make
Speaker 1: their social media appearance look good. Yeah, it's there, it's there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about gender differences for a second, because there's
Speaker 1: this cultural narrative that men are entitled bastards and and
Speaker 1: women are angels, perfect angels. Yeah, non overlapping distributions, yeah, yeahs.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but that's not what the science suggests. When
Speaker 1: you look at the nuance. There's more to the story, right,
Speaker 1: Science never says that. No, with narcissism. You find a
Speaker 1: difference in grandiose narcissism where men are a little bit higher.
Speaker 1: And I think the correlation is about point three point
Speaker 1: twenty five. Maybe you've looked at this more recently, Scott.
Speaker 1: But it's not a D D point two nine h
Speaker 1: D two nine, but the R would be about point one. Fine, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I inflated that by an order of two. Is
Speaker 1: it so a D of about point but two nine,
Speaker 1: So that's a small effect. When you look at vulnerable narcissism,
Speaker 1: I don't think you find much, nothing at all. Nothing nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was surprised. Actually I thought maybe females because because
Speaker 1: just because of neuroticism, there's a gender difference. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would make sense too. It almost maybe the two poles
Speaker 1: are kind of pulling at each other and you equalized it.
Speaker 1: The guys are a little mot a little more antagonistic,
Speaker 1: and it equals out neurotic and kind of vulnerable nursomic balances.
Speaker 1: Maybe because when you look at just psychological entitlement, it's
Speaker 1: a small benefit to men. But that D is about
Speaker 1: point two so these are is that right? Just got
Speaker 1: my am, I I just I mean, I did this
Speaker 1: paper and I can't even remember. It's very small. Well,
Speaker 1: the the the explotations slash entitlement facet in particular, that's
Speaker 1: the one that did show the D equal point two nine.
Speaker 1: That's that's the decals like the classic PES psychological entitlement scale. Okay, cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is other research other than that met analysis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's about point. But anyway, these effects are pretty small.
Speaker 1: There is something that they've talked about in the literature
Speaker 1: in the nineties about, you know, women should be more entitled,
Speaker 1: so they asked for raises more and that that might
Speaker 1: some difference in performance job salary. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's true. But other than that, I don't see huge
Speaker 1: differences on narcissism at the trade level. When you start
Speaker 1: looking at disorders, you know, when you start looking way
Speaker 1: at the continuum, you're going to find more men diagnosed
Speaker 1: as MPD than women by about three to one. But
Speaker 1: that's at the clinical level. Wow. Okay, Well that's really
Speaker 1: important information because we do know that things that may
Speaker 1: seem like small differences between males and females at the
Speaker 1: center of the distribution that the tales can actually have huge,
Speaker 1: huge impact on society. The absolutely different at the both
Speaker 1: high and the tails. We know that the male variability hypothesis.
Speaker 1: You know, with other things traits like intelligence and other traits,
Speaker 1: you know there's greater variability. So it seems like maybe
Speaker 1: something somewhere is going on there with narcissism as well
Speaker 1: at the very very extreme. Yeah, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's a variability difference. And that's literally some character
Speaker 1: analysisis on this, and I forget, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's a variability difference, and I should have looked
Speaker 1: at that. We just don't look at that as a
Speaker 1: matter of course, and a lot of these things, but
Speaker 1: there is a mean level difference and a small mean
Speaker 1: level difference. You know at the extremes that the tails
Speaker 1: can become a much bigger difference. If you're looking at
Speaker 1: one percent of the population is having NPD narcissistic personality
Speaker 1: or two percent, you're at the very high end of
Speaker 1: the tails. Plus there might be some diagnostic bias to
Speaker 1: diagnose men more than women, So you can get big
Speaker 1: differences at extremes with small average differences on the other
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum. There's not more males at the
Speaker 1: very very low end of MPD, not that I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I mean, usually the trait they compare it to in
Speaker 1: the cluster b would be something like borderline and where
Speaker 1: you get a little bit of the reverse, which with
Speaker 1: much more women diagnosed than men, and that that's the
Speaker 1: personality disorder that's got a lot more neuroticism, a neuroticism
Speaker 1: and at the narcissism. Okay, wait, this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's this there's a lot of implications to what you're
Speaker 1: just saying. So it seems like there may be gender
Speaker 1: difference at the tales in vulnerable narcissism that we are
Speaker 1: not showing up at the So maybe we need to
Speaker 1: look at a different level of analysis or difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or they're diagnosing vulnerable narcissism that's more extreme as borderline personality.
Speaker 1: Just there. If you go back to the old psychoanalytics
Speaker 1: stuff and that you know, Kernberg and Cohat and the
Speaker 1: you know, structure of self idea, these objects, you know,
Speaker 1: even the object relations ideas, those two those two diagnoses
Speaker 1: MPD and BPD, borderline and narcissistic our scene is very related.
Speaker 1: They're so strong with Corterly, I mean, but the questionnaires
Speaker 1: you know are like zero point nine to zero or
Speaker 1: well with the vulnerable side, yeah, the vulnerable and borderline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so, it's so common. So anyway, I think that
Speaker 1: that's interesting. And maybe the gender differences are more pronounced
Speaker 1: for both grandiose and vulnerable and opposite directions at the
Speaker 1: extremes at the tails and anyway, I just I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of looking into that more now. Yeah, so what are
Speaker 1: the four triads? All those triads are really interesting. So
Speaker 1: this idea popped out by you know, Dell Paulus, And
Speaker 1: I don't know where this idea, like, I don't know where.
Speaker 1: I amn't talking about where he came up with it,
Speaker 1: But this idea of a dark triad of personality traits.
Speaker 1: In this dark triad was a combination or collection of psychopathy,
Speaker 1: factor psychopathy, grandiose narcissism, and machiavelianism, which is this trait
Speaker 1: which has to do with manipulativeness and willingness to exploit people.
Speaker 1: And so those traits were called a dark triad because
Speaker 1: they all shared this trait of antagonism. So this core
Speaker 1: antagonism was the darkness, so antagonism becomes a dark triad.
Speaker 1: So then later talking about saying some of these issues
Speaker 1: with borderline and vulnerable narcissism, you know, Josh and I
Speaker 1: were some of our students, looked at it, and it
Speaker 1: seems like you can make another triangle, which is more
Speaker 1: vulnerable dark triad, triad which has to do with the
Speaker 1: vulnerable narcissism factor to psychopathy, which is the more impulsive
Speaker 1: you know, it's this more impulsive form and vulnerable narcissism.
Speaker 1: So you can have that factor and then there's this
Speaker 1: more energized group. You say, well, let's not go off there,
Speaker 1: let's not go off antagonism. Maybe let's think about let's
Speaker 1: think maybe about the extra version in grandiose of narcissism.
Speaker 1: What are traits that link to that? And there you
Speaker 1: start getting narcissism and fearless dominance and boldness and uh
Speaker 1: and hypomania kind of this low level mania and those
Speaker 1: traits kind of hold together. But they have that that
Speaker 1: extra version is kind of what drives them. And then
Speaker 1: there's the light triad, which is what you did. What's
Speaker 1: that for yours? Man? It's basically the and I can't
Speaker 1: remember them because it's I thought it was like cont
Speaker 1: riding a whrse, which content is a sort of humanism.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't dig this this stuff. I can't
Speaker 1: even get in my head. Yeah, but it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I think that's really important, because saying like, let's not
Speaker 1: look at just the you know, let's not say you
Speaker 1: know everything's dark or zero, but let's try to look
Speaker 1: at different ways you can be bright. And they're different
Speaker 1: ways you can take this more. I guess you'd say
Speaker 1: low antagonism and bring it into these different traits. So
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty interesting idea. Yeah, say, these triads
Speaker 1: are all sort of arbitrary structures. You don't there's nothing
Speaker 1: magic about them, but they're they're useful to think about
Speaker 1: how trades work together. And a lot of the traits
Speaker 1: that sound different can predict similar things. Now, you just
Speaker 1: mentioned three triads, which is appropriate because we're talking about triads.
Speaker 1: But what's the fourth one? Yours? The light triad. You've
Speaker 1: only mentioned three, the vulnerable, dark, energized, and dark triad. Classic. Oh,
Speaker 1: the dark, the class and dark we should call that classic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the classic, which now some psychologists have said is like
Speaker 1: there's a dark core that's even you know what, it's
Speaker 1: just antagonism think, yeah, I mean, you know, you can
Speaker 1: fight over what flavor antagonism it is. But darkness is
Speaker 1: kind of trade antagonism and different manifestations. Darkness is darkness.
Speaker 1: It's I almost view the D factors like the G
Speaker 1: factor of intelligence. You can get indifference of the indicator.
Speaker 1: It was a Charles Spearman principle. You know, at almost
Speaker 1: a certain level, it doesn't matter what more indicators you
Speaker 1: include in the factor. Now leaden factor, it's still the
Speaker 1: same leading factor. I actually hadn't thought of that, but
Speaker 1: I like that way of thinking about it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think this darkness just comes up and then people
Speaker 1: are like, well we've got a dark triad. Oh, we've
Speaker 1: got a dark ted traad. Oh we've got a dark
Speaker 1: you know, and then we do all the Aristotelian solids
Speaker 1: and darkness and you know, these these these peatures are
Speaker 1: out there. But yeah, I think it's probably just the
Speaker 1: Big five. But what's interesting is how we take these,
Speaker 1: you know, these basic Big five traits and why what
Speaker 1: becomes important in our culture? What traits are we talking about?
Speaker 1: How do we what complex traits do we build and
Speaker 1: why don't we have a trade that describes somebody who's
Speaker 1: open and antagonistic? Or do we do we need to
Speaker 1: what exactly, I don't know. Is there a trade for
Speaker 1: somebody who's you know, open and antagonistic do we have
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting point. You know, it's interesting you
Speaker 1: raise a point just about how, you know, we have
Speaker 1: general population level of correlations, but then we have those
Speaker 1: who buck the trends and they have unique configurations of
Speaker 1: the Big five. And I've always been fascinated with that.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's been a construct recently research paper on
Speaker 1: the dark end path, so that's another example of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's even farther. Yeah, yeah, you don't tend to see
Speaker 1: those go together. But they identified a certain leading class
Speaker 1: of the population that high antagonism but also high like empathy,
Speaker 1: like the ability to figure the ability right, you know,
Speaker 1: like a cat well mouse kind of thing. Or I
Speaker 1: think they actually also have they feel it, I think
Speaker 1: they care, you know, I don't know, it's it seems paradoxical,
Speaker 1: but I think it's kind of related to this pathological
Speaker 1: altruism work I'm doing as well, research that I've published
Speaker 1: on recently showing that helping can come from a profoundly
Speaker 1: selfish place, you know, profoundly like ego boosting, ego boosting place,
Speaker 1: right for sure. But if they're a dark EmPATH, doesn't
Speaker 1: that mean they like really care but they're still mean
Speaker 1: or what does that? Who is that person who is
Speaker 1: a dark EmPATH? It's a good it's a good question.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to wrap my head around that. That
Speaker 1: one that paper. I could send you the paper and
Speaker 1: see what you think. I wouldn't begin to say I
Speaker 1: have all the answers. I fully wrapped my head around it.
Speaker 1: But it's it's an interesting they did identify that some
Speaker 1: people do kind of it's almost similar in the sense
Speaker 1: that my colleague Craig Newman and I found when we
Speaker 1: did deleat in class analysis. There there are certain people
Speaker 1: who do score high on the dark end the light
Speaker 1: they're mixed. Oh, and that makes sense. You know. There's
Speaker 1: those characters and Joseph Campbell talked about this, these characters
Speaker 1: that were sort of psychopathic but altruistic and yeah, like
Speaker 1: James On being an example, or like the Harrison Ford
Speaker 1: and Star Wars. It's kind of like I look out
Speaker 1: for myself only, but you know, it comes down to it.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of going to do what's good for everyone.
Speaker 1: Are these combination people that are really interesting characters, and
Speaker 1: they come up in literature probably because they're interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because things correlate. There's plenty of people that they don't.
Speaker 1: These trades don't go together, and sometimes there's super interesting
Speaker 1: people super interesting. I think those are the ones I
Speaker 1: like to hang out with. Weird. I love it. I
Speaker 1: think I'm like that, and like I'm like autistic and schizophrenic.
Speaker 1: So there you go, just to com about too much
Speaker 1: and too dopamine. I got, I got, I got menia
Speaker 1: and detail oriented, you know, geekiness. So it's all anyway,
Speaker 1: I should say hypomania, because which is different. It's a
Speaker 1: different thing. It's a personality trait. But yeah, so I
Speaker 1: can relate to weird juxtapositions of traits, and I think
Speaker 1: that's what makes that makes as interesting as a species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of creativity comes out of
Speaker 1: that combination of that sort of that tension between tracks,
Speaker 1: and it can be creative, but it's also always a
Speaker 1: little more challenge. I mean, it'd be easiest to be
Speaker 1: kind of average, you know, you fit in the seat,
Speaker 1: you fit in the car, your personality fits. Yeah, it's easier.
Speaker 1: But if you're weird and you pull it off, it's
Speaker 1: sometimes more interesting of a ride. Yeah, we'll put Well,
Speaker 1: so let's go to relationships because this is a topic, relationships, narcissm.
Speaker 1: It's a topic you've been You're in a whole other
Speaker 1: book you know about. Uh, when was it when he
Speaker 1: when she loves a man who loves himself or something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you love a man who loves himself? Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: that what it's called. Yeah, yeah, it was. I love
Speaker 1: that title. It was a while ago. You know, it's
Speaker 1: really in grandiose narcissism. You know, it's amazing how much
Speaker 1: we've learned in the last decade or so about the trade.
Speaker 1: But yeah, NARCISSI. Well, I love that book. Though, I
Speaker 1: love that book. It's a big issue for relationships. I mean,
Speaker 1: arcissism is a problem. Yeah. Now I get way way
Speaker 1: more women emailing me saying my ex husband was a
Speaker 1: narcissis bastard. Then I get men emailing me. Men don't
Speaker 1: seem to email me saying my wife was a narcissistic
Speaker 1: crazy person. Now why is that? Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: that at first, I say, there's an exception to that.
Speaker 1: I've run across or in marriages, in divorce, I've heard,
Speaker 1: you know, divorce cases where guys have just been thrashed.
Speaker 1: You know, So it does happen. But most of the
Speaker 1: time I hear exactly what you do. It's women complaining
Speaker 1: about men primarily, and probably that's because men are a
Speaker 1: little more narcissistic, but also because of social roles we have.
Speaker 1: You know, men are out there, if they're working more,
Speaker 1: they're more driven, they get away with more stuff, they're
Speaker 1: causing more problems. Can be just links with male mating strategies.
Speaker 1: Men are much more likely to be unfaithful. But maybe
Speaker 1: that's even changing, Scott. You've probably looked at those data
Speaker 1: more than I have. The infidelity data with men and
Speaker 1: women might be equalizing a little bit. Yeah, when you
Speaker 1: go down that rabbit hole of research, you you see
Speaker 1: a lot of things that you realize are so different
Speaker 1: than the narrative that's put forward in our society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then you almost don't want to even
Speaker 1: talk about it. That's why I'm sorting to mention it,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, I just know there's something weird there
Speaker 1: that I don't you know, like there's a whole population
Speaker 1: of of women who've been identified who just love uh,
Speaker 1: seeking out married men for sex. They that that's the fetish.
Speaker 1: So there's always what do you do with that that? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I bet it with coil, it with narcissism.
Speaker 1: You know, I bet if you I bet if you coil,
Speaker 1: if you found that latent class of people or whatever
Speaker 1: that would they would have a hire average narcissism score.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's usually you know. And the other thing is,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is true, but I just
Speaker 1: I get the sense when I was talking to people
Speaker 1: about relationships a lot is women were more dialed into
Speaker 1: the relational process and we're like, yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: like my wife, it's good, and they were thinking about
Speaker 1: it all the time. You know. That's just that was
Speaker 1: my sense writing the book. Had the same experience you did.
Speaker 1: But again, I've talked to plenty of men who've had
Speaker 1: terrible experiences with narcissistic walk. Yeah, maybe men aren't as
Speaker 1: open about it. It's not as in a way, it's
Speaker 1: it's almost more socially sanctioned. Yeah, to be a woman
Speaker 1: and say it's like cool to be a woman and
Speaker 1: say men are so narcissistic pigs. But you know, do
Speaker 1: you want to be that guy who goes on Twitter
Speaker 1: and says women are narcissistic crazy people? Like? Do you
Speaker 1: want to be that guy? Yeah? And all my wife
Speaker 1: was doing was talking about how how attractive she was
Speaker 1: and how she wanted to go out and got attention
Speaker 1: and she was the cutest person town. And you think
Speaker 1: guys would care. They'd be like people will say, play
Speaker 1: a violin, play live, Yeah, exactly. So, Yeah, the narrative
Speaker 1: is probably a little harder too. It's a great research question.
Speaker 1: If there's any young kids out there, young aspiring researchers
Speaker 1: looking into some of this, it's kind of I think
Speaker 1: it'd be a great it'd be a really great, great
Speaker 1: research topic. But I think, you know, just keep going
Speaker 1: back to the gender difference of research. The reality of
Speaker 1: the matter is that it's not as uh. Narism doesn't
Speaker 1: go across gender gender lines as much as we make
Speaker 1: it out to be, you know, and there's narcisism comes
Speaker 1: from lots of different stripes and sizes, and and also
Speaker 1: lots of good people on both sides. No, but but
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, think about it this way.
Speaker 1: When we've looked at a lot of the narcissism findings,
Speaker 1: we find men and women are different. Men are a
Speaker 1: little more narcissistic if you look at things that have
Speaker 1: to do with, you know, being less committed in relationships,
Speaker 1: and men are well, I shouldn't even say, are usually
Speaker 1: a little less you know, desired number of sex partners
Speaker 1: men or more that that'll replicate. And so you find
Speaker 1: those gender differences, but you don't really find gender interactions,
Speaker 1: meaning narcissistic men are sort of just like narcissistic women,
Speaker 1: just a little more narcissistic and a little more into infidelity,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of they kind of work the same. Narcissism,
Speaker 1: at least from from the work we've looked at in
Speaker 1: those samples, seems to work pretty similarly for men and women.
Speaker 1: Now you found a study, a finding that a long
Speaker 1: time ago, which I wonder if it still replicates, but
Speaker 1: you find that in relationships there's a point, like a
Speaker 1: two year or nine month point. You know, I remember
Speaker 1: a graph where all the ship hits the fans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember it was like six to nine months somewhere
Speaker 1: in there where kind of things to start to fall apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the because you know, in our culture, you date
Speaker 1: people because you're you find them attractive and they're exciting,
Speaker 1: and so you meet people and people who are attractive
Speaker 1: and exciting that you meet when you're at a bar,
Speaker 1: you know online because they're good at presenting themselves online.
Speaker 1: Those people are going to have more narcissism than if
Speaker 1: you met them by a random draw or if you
Speaker 1: let your parents pick them out for you. So you
Speaker 1: end up meeting people narcissistic and you start these relationships
Speaker 1: and they're and they're often very positive because you're dating
Speaker 1: and dating somebody who's sort of energetic and aggressive and
Speaker 1: self important. Can be kind of fun if you're just
Speaker 1: going out and doing stuff. You're not sitting there talking
Speaker 1: about your feelings. But over time relationships usually move from
Speaker 1: the more extrinsic and more exciting to something that's more
Speaker 1: committed and internal and caring and empathetic. Boring, well, boring,
Speaker 1: boring if you're self centered and narcissistic and shallow, but
Speaker 1: kind of nice if you want to have a long term,
Speaker 1: committed relationship with somebody. So that transition is where things
Speaker 1: start to break. So what is the research show on
Speaker 1: whether or not narciss and narciss go together. Do they
Speaker 1: go well together? Oh? In a bunch of studies, there
Speaker 1: seems to be if you find anything, it's a small
Speaker 1: positive correlation between partners narcissism scores. So people more grandiose
Speaker 1: have partners a little more grandiose. But there isn't a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't find really stables findings and say, look,
Speaker 1: if you have this combination of a high grandiose partner
Speaker 1: and a low grandiose partner, you're going to get this
Speaker 1: and this combination will lead to this. I just don't
Speaker 1: have enough data that I'm comfortable with giving an answer
Speaker 1: to that. Wow, So no one's really done like a
Speaker 1: meta analysis on that. They haven't and it's hard to
Speaker 1: get the marriage samples, and you know, so you end
Speaker 1: up with marriage studies that are you know, you find
Speaker 1: a big data set like Justin Latner had some cool
Speaker 1: work come out on this looking at it over time,
Speaker 1: and you know, Meetcha Bach and some of those guys
Speaker 1: over in Germany have had some cool work on relationships.
Speaker 1: So we're seeing some of these processes happen. And it
Speaker 1: also could be that it's that, you know, the extra
Speaker 1: version piece is really useful at the beginning and then
Speaker 1: not so useful as it goes. But the but the
Speaker 1: disagreeable piece of narcissism doesn't really matter at the beginning.
Speaker 1: It becomes negative over time. So it could be the
Speaker 1: sort of the factors of narcissism work differently across a relationship.
Speaker 1: Good really good point. God would suiting out here? What
Speaker 1: do you say we are nerding out? I'm like, are
Speaker 1: we at a lab meeting? This is the psycho this
Speaker 1: is what well, this is what I think is unique
Speaker 1: about the psychology podcast. I hope people find that unique
Speaker 1: about the Psychotic post. That sounds like a lab. Media listeners, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you thin get the inside scoop, you know on this stuff.
Speaker 1: Not this. I don't. I don't like this sugary sweet
Speaker 1: presentation of science. Sometimes it would be cool to really
Speaker 1: look at those three factors and narcissism. Get a really
Speaker 1: large sample, I mean, this is a large sample, follow
Speaker 1: them through relationship formation, you know, maintenance development. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you could really trace that need a two point
Speaker 1: three million dollars grant from somebody who's not going to
Speaker 1: give it to us, but That would be great, It
Speaker 1: would be great, great research. Yeah. Yeah, Ideally we'd have
Speaker 1: these huge studies going on and they'd be federally funded
Speaker 1: relationship studies, and the federal government would have ten million
Speaker 1: a year and we'd follow these people. But well, speaking
Speaker 1: of the federal government, the next topic I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about is leadership and narcissism. Now you must get
Speaker 1: asked all the time, right like Trump, Trump, Trump, narcissism?
Speaker 1: Do you I mean, does everyone keep bringing that up? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Except now I think people are tired of talking about
Speaker 1: politics and I'm trying to you knows exhausting. Well, it
Speaker 1: just makes people unhappy. And and but Trump is an
Speaker 1: interesting case because you know, I've after the election, we
Speaker 1: went back and this is Courtland Hyatt, one of Josh
Speaker 1: Miller's students who went back and loot looked at profiles
Speaker 1: of Trump made by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters.
Speaker 1: So they we had people rate the president based on
Speaker 1: the thirty facets of the Big Five. So we got
Speaker 1: facet level ratings from the two different camps. And then
Speaker 1: we're able to convert those facets into trades, so you're
Speaker 1: able to convert them to see how well they match
Speaker 1: onto narcissism or psychopathy or any other thing we wanted.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that both Trump's supporters and his
Speaker 1: detractors see him as narcissistic in terms of his basic
Speaker 1: structuries as a bold personality is larger than life. He
Speaker 1: puts his names on buildings, he flies rand in a
Speaker 1: plane with his name on it, as you know, trophy wives.
Speaker 1: He's you know, he lives in a penthouse. He's kind
Speaker 1: of got the whole narcissism thing down. He's a reality
Speaker 1: television star, for God's sakes. I mean he's he's kind
Speaker 1: of got the whole pack. He's got the royal flush.
Speaker 1: I mean, the developer is a reality television star. With
Speaker 1: the building and with Tiffany's in the basement, I mean
Speaker 1: they're in the downstairs. It's crazy. But the difference is
Speaker 1: that people who support him say, yeah, he's got a big,
Speaker 1: strong personality, but he's capable of getting the job done,
Speaker 1: and he cares about us, and he's our guy, and
Speaker 1: he's going to make the world better. Even though this
Speaker 1: is how he structured, this is what it takes to
Speaker 1: get things done. How do you think Lindon Johnson and
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon, and you know, FDR succeeded. They weren't little babies.
Speaker 1: People who don't support Trump say, he's got this narcissistic
Speaker 1: personality structure. He's completely out of control, he's incapable of
Speaker 1: doing things. He's only operating for his own business and
Speaker 1: his own interest, and he's going to be incredibly destructive
Speaker 1: for us and blow up the world. So you have
Speaker 1: two different sides seeing the exact same person and see
Speaker 1: the narcissistic traits, but they frame them differently because they
Speaker 1: set them differently in the other Big five traits. Basically
Speaker 1: they set them in high high conscientiousness or high competence
Speaker 1: or low conscientious and low competence. So it's it's a
Speaker 1: different perspective of the same style. But what isn't in
Speaker 1: doubt is that he obviously scores sky high on lots
Speaker 1: of facets of grandiose narcissism. Oh yeah, profile is very scissistic.
Speaker 1: But again, you know, look a look at LBJ and JFK,
Speaker 1: FDR or I mean, dare we say Clinton? Oh, dare
Speaker 1: we say Clinton? I mean, can he have some narcissistic characteristics? Scott?
Speaker 1: But Clinton had all that extra version and charm and
Speaker 1: charisma that made him super likable, and Trump's much more.
Speaker 1: He's a brawler, you know, he's a fighter, so he's
Speaker 1: not as likable unless he's on your side. Clinton is likable.
Speaker 1: That like, everyone likes Clinton because he's that charm and extroversion.
Speaker 1: New Dinnergridge would say, you know, I talk to Clinton,
Speaker 1: he just I'm just petty in his hands. Well, is
Speaker 1: Clinton just an extrovert? Then? I mean, what's the difference
Speaker 1: in Clinton and Trump in terms of the personality structure,
Speaker 1: because I don't think Trump Clinton has as much antagonism.
Speaker 1: How would you judge Clinton's I mean, does he have
Speaker 1: a stable marriage, does he have stable financial relationships? Does
Speaker 1: he seem like an ethical gentleman. Does he seem like
Speaker 1: he's looking out for other people or does he seem
Speaker 1: like he looks out for himself? I mean, those are
Speaker 1: kind of the questions to ask. I mean, as you know,
Speaker 1: and and LBJ is the one that they've done most
Speaker 1: of the work on who he is the most narcissistic
Speaker 1: and he was a he was a monster pretty much stories.
Speaker 1: But again, the norms of politicians have changed too. I mean,
Speaker 1: the stuff that you know you could get away with
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, you can't get away with anymore now.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Have you seen our current president. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean if you were having sex in the pool
Speaker 1: at the White House with intern you know, I mean
Speaker 1: it was the stuff JFK had going on. I mean,
Speaker 1: stuff is all was all buried, and they just don't
Speaker 1: bury it anymore. Everything gets lined up. I think that
Speaker 1: our current president gets away with a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that maybe other president wouldn't get away with it. You
Speaker 1: think it's having affairs, well in different ways. No, not
Speaker 1: in that regard, but in other regards and other policy decisions. Well,
Speaker 1: he was impeached, that's true. That's that's true. That's but
Speaker 1: he still got away with it. Didn't didn't matter well
Speaker 1: the day. The model is that narcissistic leaders get impeached.
Speaker 1: The model worked. The model worked fair enough to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. Okay, so let's move on to social media
Speaker 1: and narcissism. Now. I've been thinking a lot lately that
Speaker 1: we're we really reward on social media vulnerable narcissism these days.
Speaker 1: It seems like, you know, you get in lots of
Speaker 1: likes if you're you know, who's suffering more? Right now?
Speaker 1: Who's more, Who's grievance is louder than someone else's grievance.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed that? Yeah? I think that's actually true.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't thought about it like that until you
Speaker 1: said it, and I realized I have a student new
Speaker 1: studies that looks at people talking about, you know, of
Speaker 1: revealing things about themselves on social media, like revealing a stigma,
Speaker 1: coming out videos for whatever, and those are very popular people.
Speaker 1: I think they get when somebody reveals something about themselves
Speaker 1: it's painful or shameful. People relate to that and they
Speaker 1: feel drawn to that somehow. So it seems to be
Speaker 1: something that can work on social media, and so it's
Speaker 1: popular more than the classic I mean, there's the classic Instagram,
Speaker 1: lifestyle influencer social media too, but that seems like it's
Speaker 1: going away a little bit. I'm not a big media guy,
Speaker 1: but that's my sense a little bit. And then what
Speaker 1: about you this geek culture and the great fantasy migration,
Speaker 1: what's that all about? So that was that? So? Sorry?
Speaker 1: As student who was a in the LARPing like live
Speaker 1: action role play, like dressing up as a Druid warrior
Speaker 1: and playing games, I thought it was the craziest thing
Speaker 1: I ever heard. But you know what it is like
Speaker 1: hear something crazy and then you used to go, well,
Speaker 1: I better pay attention to that. Maybe there's something to it.
Speaker 1: I don't be a jerk and listen. I listened. I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. Kids are running around playing role games,
Speaker 1: and it turns out there's a huge number of young
Speaker 1: people and they're old people now too, that are engaged
Speaker 1: in geek culture. And geek culture is this general and
Speaker 1: because these geeks tracks were kind of separated at one point,
Speaker 1: they all came together to go to these conferences like
Speaker 1: Dragon Con or Comic Con, and so you end up
Speaker 1: with a combination of you know, sci fi, theater, nerds, anime,
Speaker 1: cause play, UFO, conspiracy, so all these different all these
Speaker 1: different tracks kind of blend together and it becomes this
Speaker 1: fantasy life for people. And what's happened, obviously economically and psychologically,
Speaker 1: is we took a lot of young people for a
Speaker 1: lot of decades and told them they were awesome and
Speaker 1: then said, Okay, the world's not awesome. So we didn't
Speaker 1: really make it easy for them to plug in the
Speaker 1: world and actually sort of actualize their awesomeness. So and
Speaker 1: some of these people thinking they're awesome that weren't there,
Speaker 1: so that well, maybe some of these people are expressing
Speaker 1: their awesomeness and more fantasy realms. So maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: awesome in real life, but I can be awesome. I
Speaker 1: can have an awesome avatar, I can be awesome in
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft. I can be awesome in gaming, so
Speaker 1: I can have my self esteem needs met in some
Speaker 1: of these fantasy worlds. And as a society, I sort
Speaker 1: of looked at how much acreage was being built digitally
Speaker 1: versus how much acreage was to be being built in reality,
Speaker 1: and the numbers are orders of magnitude different, and well,
Speaker 1: this is where everyone's going to move. I've got to
Speaker 1: move online. So that was the idea of great fantasy migration.
Speaker 1: As you have all these people who can't get their
Speaker 1: ego needs met in the real world. You don't want
Speaker 1: to fix the real world because you're kind of a
Speaker 1: dying empire, so you just have everyone migrate to fantasy
Speaker 1: worlds where they can get ego needs met. So that's
Speaker 1: the idea. In the research, we did find that Greek
Speaker 1: culture and then Greek cultural engagement was related to narcissism
Speaker 1: and grandiosissm. And people weren't happy about this, but all
Speaker 1: the data republic and they reanalyzed it like one hundred times,
Speaker 1: so I feel very confident in it. We did a
Speaker 1: lot of samples, but you also find vulnerable narcissism and
Speaker 1: sort of fantasy proneness or schizotippy or that facet of
Speaker 1: openness that more kind of odd, unusual facet of openness.
Speaker 1: So I guess it would be almost what do you
Speaker 1: call the aspect of openness. So it's an interesting combination
Speaker 1: of traits that puts you into that geek culture. If
Speaker 1: you're good with fantasy, if you're kind of a little
Speaker 1: bit insecure, a little bit narcissistic, it's it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a pull for you. I'm not labeling people, by
Speaker 1: the way. And I went down to dragon Con just
Speaker 1: to check it out. So you've been to some of
Speaker 1: these events, these nerdy events. Like I said, Scott, I've
Speaker 1: learned over my many years to respect things rather than
Speaker 1: the things that I questioned, to give them time. I
Speaker 1: went to dragon Con and I went there with my
Speaker 1: young daughter just to check it out. And first thing
Speaker 1: I realized with sell that cell phones don't work, and
Speaker 1: I was trying to find my grad students. None of
Speaker 1: the phones are working because there's so many people. So
Speaker 1: I look at these two nerds and they've got like
Speaker 1: a ham radio CB in their backpack, and they're like
Speaker 1: they're like helping me out. They're like nice people. Everyone's
Speaker 1: nice to me. And then I go watch this nerd
Speaker 1: parade and there's all these costume parade and Batman. They're
Speaker 1: all the different Batman coming. They're all dressed as different
Speaker 1: kinds of Batman. And I saw the Batman with a
Speaker 1: shark repellent and the surfboard from when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and I started screaming and everyone looked at me and
Speaker 1: they were like, shut up, Nerd. So it turned out
Speaker 1: to be the biggest start at the whole thing. It
Speaker 1: was cool, well, people are nice, having a good time,
Speaker 1: super creative. I really liked it, you know, it was
Speaker 1: an interesting, interesting experience. I just I love subcultures and
Speaker 1: it's such good stuff just without judgment. Yes, it's like
Speaker 1: when I can get over my like judgment that was
Speaker 1: instilled in me when I was fifteen by the big kids.
Speaker 1: This is sort of a nineteen seventy five if I
Speaker 1: can overcome now, but more like nineteen seventy eight. But
Speaker 1: I can overcome that. I can enjoy the world a
Speaker 1: lot more. Yeah, for sure. So how do we let
Speaker 1: some of us listening to this show might be like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I just realized I am such an narcissist? How can
Speaker 1: is there hope for us if we want to if
Speaker 1: we want to actively reduce it. Most grandiose narcissists don't
Speaker 1: want to reduce it though, right it's usually the vulnerable
Speaker 1: narcissists that want to. Yeah, the challenge, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of challenges there first, and I think maybe you agree
Speaker 1: with me. I hope. So is that what we've seen
Speaker 1: in the personality science in the last ten years is
Speaker 1: that personality can change. I mean it seems to me
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence that it can change, and
Speaker 1: therapy is away, but there are lots of ways. Plus
Speaker 1: it changes over time, so it's developmental effects and there's
Speaker 1: socialization effects. So I think the first thing to say is, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can change. It's not sett in stone like we
Speaker 1: used to think. The second issue is you got to
Speaker 1: want to change, which is what you're running into. And
Speaker 1: what the field shows is that people are narcissistic who
Speaker 1: get the therapy can change, but the drop out rate
Speaker 1: is very, very high because people don't really want to
Speaker 1: get the negative feedback. They're like, yeah, geez, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to let go of this part of my
Speaker 1: ego and it's sort of threatening, so they back off,
Speaker 1: especially because they're not suffering that badly. It's usually there.
Speaker 1: Their husband's suffering, their wife's suffering, their kids are suffering.
Speaker 1: They're not suffering. So then so then if you really
Speaker 1: do want to change, what I say is sort of
Speaker 1: focus on the aspect you want to change. And one
Speaker 1: of the things with narcissism is people go, well, you
Speaker 1: got to bring your ego down. It's hard to bring
Speaker 1: down your ego. You like your ego. So what I
Speaker 1: suggest maybe is instead of focusing on your ego at first,
Speaker 1: maybe focus on expanding your capacity for love and maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of open up that compassion part, that
Speaker 1: interpersonal part and connect with people. And over time, if
Speaker 1: you focus on that, it's not going to be it's
Speaker 1: not going to have as much ego threat. You're sort
Speaker 1: of working on being a little more loving person, a
Speaker 1: kinder person. But that should be a buffer for your
Speaker 1: narcissism over time without the threat. And the other thing
Speaker 1: I talk about a lot is passion, you know, just
Speaker 1: being passionate about what you do, doing it because you
Speaker 1: love it, not because you get a trophy, not because
Speaker 1: you want to get attention. And when you do stuff
Speaker 1: you love, your ego kind of breaks down and you
Speaker 1: bring people to you and you draw people in without
Speaker 1: having to work for it, and you know, be a
Speaker 1: carnival marker. So passion is really a good thing to cultivate.
Speaker 1: And obviously responsibility taking that's less fun. But accountability, you know,
Speaker 1: just being accountable, taking records, being accountable for what you do,
Speaker 1: taking a hard look at this is all your humanism stuff.
Speaker 1: Take it honest, look at your own fault, Suck it up,
Speaker 1: take a note. Figure out who you are transcend from
Speaker 1: there self? Transcending yes, okay, Hey w Keith Campbell? What
Speaker 1: does W stand for? What's what's the deal with the W?
Speaker 1: It stands for William. Everybody in my family is named
Speaker 1: William in some form or another. So there's lots and
Speaker 1: lots of Williams. And it turns out there are lots
Speaker 1: and lots of Keith Campbell's who are far more famous
Speaker 1: and successful than I am who took the name up
Speaker 1: rather one clone dollar the sheep. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of famous cricketers. So the w is what I got
Speaker 1: to do? Either that or I change it to be
Speaker 1: like a Hollywood guy and come up with a completely
Speaker 1: new name. Okay, well thanks for coming off that great mystery.
Speaker 1: So many people have been many asked about what's the
Speaker 1: w okay, and so we talked. We hinted to the
Speaker 1: story type of relationships. People complain that they are with
Speaker 1: narcissistic partners. But you can have narcissic bosses right like
Speaker 1: you can. You can deal with toxic people in all
Speaker 1: sorts of areas of your life. What can you do?
Speaker 1: Any tips for helping people to cope, you know, with
Speaker 1: a narciss or deal with it or how to get
Speaker 1: out you know. It's it's when you said that it
Speaker 1: kind of sprung to mind. Is we deal with talks
Speaker 1: to people all the time, the challenges when they have
Speaker 1: power over us, whether we're in a committed relationship with
Speaker 1: with us, when we're working for them, and and that's
Speaker 1: when we want to just so first off, try to
Speaker 1: avoid those situations. And it's the shortest answer, I can
Speaker 1: give to That is, look at people's history, because people
Speaker 1: a narcissistic have damaged people in the past. It will
Speaker 1: not be You're not the first one. It's fair ho
Speaker 1: to know when you meet somebody. The second thing is
Speaker 1: protect yourself, keep records, be sure that the person can't
Speaker 1: damage you to the extent they can. So do a
Speaker 1: lot of self protection and then just try to either
Speaker 1: get out of there or figure out how you can
Speaker 1: leverage the person's ego for your own benefit. So, you know,
Speaker 1: can be a suck up, you can be a yes man,
Speaker 1: you can kind of you know, you can do things
Speaker 1: like people who are narcissistic are open to manipulation because
Speaker 1: their ego is a weakness, you know. So I love
Speaker 1: your people narcissism. When I can deal with these people,
Speaker 1: you either give them what they want for their ego.
Speaker 1: You offer them ego, you offer to take away ego.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a tool you can use
Speaker 1: a lever. Wow, you're like outsmarting the narcissist. I don't
Speaker 1: want people to have to be in that position at all,
Speaker 1: But if people find themselves in that position, there's a
Speaker 1: way to think about it and how to use some
Speaker 1: of that narcissism for your benefit. It's hard if the
Speaker 1: person's really toxic and you know, really a little bit
Speaker 1: disorganized and vulnerable, because vulnerable narcissists, you give them any
Speaker 1: feedback and they can become disregulated. But the more grandiose forms,
Speaker 1: if you're kind of giving them their ego needs and
Speaker 1: they kind of know it, you can work with that. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: what about psychotherapy for vulnerable narcissism. You know, we publish
Speaker 1: this papers so and there's a lot of clinical implications
Speaker 1: of vulnerable narcissism. You know, what's the hope there for help?
Speaker 1: You know, I said, there's no good RCT clinical trial
Speaker 1: on narcissism at all. Vulnerable narcissism is interesting for therapy
Speaker 1: in a couple of ways. One is a lot of
Speaker 1: people argue that vulnerable narcissism is core to a lot
Speaker 1: of mental illness, this idea of sort of this sort
Speaker 1: of neurotic self centeredness that you're both anxious and depressed
Speaker 1: and really stuck in your own head. So back in
Speaker 1: the day when I was doing my masters, working on
Speaker 1: depressive mood, you find people who are depressed get a
Speaker 1: lot of self centeredness because they're depressed or thinking about
Speaker 1: themselves hy me. They're not out there just looking at
Speaker 1: the birds living in their dream. That's what happy people do.
Speaker 1: Happy people give energy, they're abundant. They looking at this guy.
Speaker 1: So there's vulnerabilities and a lot of things. So my
Speaker 1: guess is that lots and lots of therapists out there
Speaker 1: are skilled at treating vulnerable narcissism as part of cognitive
Speaker 1: behavioral therapy when they're dealing with people who are anxious
Speaker 1: and depressed and vulnerable. Meaning I bet people have tools
Speaker 1: for dealing with this because it probably comes up a
Speaker 1: lot in therapy for like I said, depression or anxiety
Speaker 1: even in BPD, so they might use some of the
Speaker 1: you know kind of the I'm thinking not the mindfulness
Speaker 1: based therapies, but maybe some like dialectic based therapy or
Speaker 1: dialectic based tactics for affect regulation helpful for burlins, right,
Speaker 1: So I think that might be be helpful for vulnerable
Speaker 1: narcissism because with vulnerable narissmies have that that those fluctuating
Speaker 1: grandiose fantasies. So people are vulnerable like I'm not getting
Speaker 1: the attention I want, and then they're fantasizing like, dude,
Speaker 1: I should be getting this award, or I should be
Speaker 1: winning this prize, or I should be on this TV show,
Speaker 1: or I should be a leader or have this great relationship.
Speaker 1: So they fantasize about that, and so maybe some of
Speaker 1: those more mindfulness based or dialectic based therapies could help
Speaker 1: them deal with those two sides of their mind kind
Speaker 1: of become comfort, you know, with those two sides, you know,
Speaker 1: hold that grandios to being attached. I don't do you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a therapist. They don't do this work. But
Speaker 1: when I've worked with people who do dialectic behavioral therapy,
Speaker 1: I find it very very effective for my own anxiety
Speaker 1: and my own neuroticism. I've had it helped me, you know.
Speaker 1: So I like those I like those ideas, and I
Speaker 1: think anything that comes out of working with borderline personality
Speaker 1: is probably going to be useful for vulnerable narcissism, and
Speaker 1: it may be just with some modifications for grandiosity and
Speaker 1: meeting some of those needs. We should talk about pathological narcissism.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about that NPD. That's a real Is
Speaker 1: that a real thing? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We kind
Speaker 1: of just skimmed around it. So when we when you
Speaker 1: look at NPD, you're talking about a narcissistic personality disorder
Speaker 1: in the description in the Diagnostics Statistics Manual, the DSM
Speaker 1: four and five, and go into that rabbit hole if
Speaker 1: you want, but I might skip it because it probably
Speaker 1: will change again. Narcissism is described as a combination of
Speaker 1: grandiosity and vulnerability, with the preference for grandiosity. So I
Speaker 1: kind of said, it's like two thirds grandiose, but it
Speaker 1: depends how you you know, it's it's really crazy. You
Speaker 1: read the description of narcissism in the hand in the
Speaker 1: in the DSM, and you're like, oh, that sounds a
Speaker 1: little vulnerable, and then you read the traits and you're like,
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty grandiose. And there's a reason for that.
Speaker 1: It's because the writing was more psychodynamic and the description
Speaker 1: and the traits were more behavioral, and so the traits
Speaker 1: captured the grandiosity and then in the new version they
Speaker 1: kind of flip that around. So anyhow, so that's how
Speaker 1: the NPD works. The key to have a diagnosis of
Speaker 1: it personality disorders, you have to have impairment. It has
Speaker 1: to be a personality, but it has to have clinically
Speaker 1: significant impairment has to mess your life up. And so
Speaker 1: that's really the clinical uh decision point is this not
Speaker 1: if you mess other people's lives that can be count
Speaker 1: that can be because that would be a relational impairment.
Speaker 1: In fact, that I think is the number one impairment
Speaker 1: of narcissism. It's going to be interfering with interpersonal relationships.
Speaker 1: But it could be cognitive distortions. It could be emotional dysregulation.
Speaker 1: You know, it could be you get angry when people
Speaker 1: threaten you and you always have anger issues. It could
Speaker 1: be it's typically though you're screwing up your your relationships. Good,
Speaker 1: I'm glad, I'm glad. We I felt remiss if we
Speaker 1: didn't cover the fact there is there's actually uh, it
Speaker 1: can reach the pathological you know, Eric from called it
Speaker 1: malignant narcissism. Yeah, And so what people are talking about
Speaker 1: now is coming up with specifiers for narcissism, which are
Speaker 1: kind of diagnostic labels or specifications that you could do. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this person has NPD with a vulnerable specifier. So that's
Speaker 1: something scha Miller and I have sort of argued for,
Speaker 1: but people have also said we should have a malignant specifier,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of people in the more psychoanalytic
Speaker 1: community that are really interested in this more psychopathic, dark, toxic,
Speaker 1: narcissistic characters. So they want that specifier. And there could
Speaker 1: be another specifier for sort of expressive, expressive, grandiose, you know,
Speaker 1: for all the actors that kind of the Iron Man
Speaker 1: figures out there, you know, the Tony Stark kind of
Speaker 1: narcissisticistic figures that seem like the bullets that they just
Speaker 1: destroy people around them. Well, Elon Musk must have some
Speaker 1: characteristics of grandee of I don't know. You have to
Speaker 1: if you want to change the entire world, you have
Speaker 1: to be gyos and and I think you have to.
Speaker 1: I mean, but you can be grandiose and ambitious without
Speaker 1: being a narcissist. But I'm pretty ambitious. If I took
Speaker 1: an well, my MPI scores are pretty low. But it's
Speaker 1: hard because I've taken it so many times. It's hard,
Speaker 1: you know, I probably score myself. But you can be
Speaker 1: ambitious and not be mean. No, you can be ambitious
Speaker 1: and and be and not be scared and not be mean,
Speaker 1: and that makes you sort of fearless and so that's
Speaker 1: gonna You're gonna have some aspects of narcissism, and you
Speaker 1: could get in trouble because of it because you're fearless.
Speaker 1: You end up cheating on your relationship or taking too
Speaker 1: big a risks or whatever. But you're not gonna have
Speaker 1: those socially toxic effects that you will with the antagonism. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So there, what are sort of final frontiers of new
Speaker 1: treatments A couple you mentioned I thought were fascinating, or
Speaker 1: brain stimulation techniques, psychedelics, virtual reality. Are these things on
Speaker 1: the horizon to treatment. Yes, so, so the psychedelics are fascinating.
Speaker 1: And my student student and I with Josh Miller, Brandon
Speaker 1: Weiss studied you know, did his dissertation in ayahuasca ceremonies
Speaker 1: and studied people going down in Peru and Costa Rica
Speaker 1: going through the ceremonies. We've got personality data over time.
Speaker 1: So just recently we really focused on the Big five
Speaker 1: because that's you know, that's really what you want for
Speaker 1: a first stab at something. But we had some narcissism
Speaker 1: data in there, and we don't really find much. It
Speaker 1: seems like that ayahuasca ceremonies maybe help with that more
Speaker 1: vulnerable form of narcissism a little bit. But the effects
Speaker 1: weren't huge. But the challenge was it seemed to this
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about. It seemed to make the
Speaker 1: vulnerability a little less, but it made the grandiosity at
Speaker 1: least the extra version a little more, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And so it's really like when I looked
Speaker 1: at I'm like, you know, this isn't really this isn't
Speaker 1: in ournarcissism treatment. I think it's I think it can
Speaker 1: be super helpful for neuroticism, for especially trauma and depression anxiety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: depression was a big thing. And again this was in
Speaker 1: a clinical study. This was a looking at the personality traits.
Speaker 1: But you know when we saw the change in traite
Speaker 1: neuroticism that Brandon found was a d of about point eight.
Speaker 1: Would you know, pre post treatment with pure reports, this
Speaker 1: is pretty big effects, but again this is this one sample. Now,
Speaker 1: could you use those same psychedelics though in a in
Speaker 1: a directed therapeutic context and work with narcissism, or could
Speaker 1: you work with something like MDMA, which is really an
Speaker 1: empathogen in a sense, it's a psychedelic But people often
Speaker 1: refer to it as an empathogen. Would an empathogen work
Speaker 1: with something like narcissism? And that that's super interesting to
Speaker 1: me because that seems really possible if the problem is
Speaker 1: you have a lack of empathy and empathy, you know,
Speaker 1: and an empathogen might might work in a very you know,
Speaker 1: guided set and setting. You know, I would not like
Speaker 1: Roll and Mollie. I don't know what the kids do.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they know. What they call those drugs, man,
Speaker 1: it's so old over the hill, but they must demonstrate name.
Speaker 1: But using these things in a really in a controlled
Speaker 1: set and setting, I think might be beneficial. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. You know, the brain stuff is fascinating. But
Speaker 1: the more I talked about it, the more it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we nailed it with the brain. Oh wait, we were
Speaker 1: totally wrong with the brain we got you know, it's underpowered.
Speaker 1: We need to redo all these studies. And I've talked
Speaker 1: to a few people, as you probably have, who do
Speaker 1: this work seriously, and I don't get a lot of
Speaker 1: clear answers about neuralstructure, circuitry and trade level personality. I mean,
Speaker 1: there might be something with some some neuroticism. Maybe people
Speaker 1: have told me. But otherwise I'm just not getting the
Speaker 1: sense that there's stable signal in our research. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know too much about that. Yeah. My depth of
Speaker 1: knowledge that I just find really smart people and talk
Speaker 1: to them and see what they say. Well, there's just
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be stabilized. And there's some super
Speaker 1: cool work like a review to paper where they're looking
Speaker 1: at grandiose narcissism and then using machine learning to kind
Speaker 1: of predict narcissism from neurosurgatry. And you can see, you know,
Speaker 1: you can see this stuff how it could work. I
Speaker 1: just don't think we're there yet, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be cool. If we forget there, it would be very cool.
Speaker 1: And you seem pretty optimistic, you know, you end your
Speaker 1: book with the future of Hope, and you say, I'm
Speaker 1: a big believer in natural consequences, in the reality principle
Speaker 1: where narcissm thrives in the short term but fails in
Speaker 1: the long term. You're an optimist. It seems like in
Speaker 1: a certain extent you see a new world someday, less
Speaker 1: focused on status and more focused on creativity. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: makes you hopeful about that? I have to be because
Speaker 1: if I'm not helpful, I'm just going to drive my
Speaker 1: minivan into a lake. But other than the pure pragmatics
Speaker 1: of being optimistic, is I think that that this this
Speaker 1: sort of narcissism is exciting and fun, but it's not
Speaker 1: really satisfying. And my hope is that it kind of
Speaker 1: burns through our society and people going, you know, I
Speaker 1: had that narcissism. It was like I had the student
Speaker 1: ones who who wrote a paper that you know, it's
Speaker 1: actually a narcissism Facebook. This is about twelve thirteen years
Speaker 1: ago when it just came out and it took It
Speaker 1: was the biggest story in the world, and she got
Speaker 1: to be famous, and I said, how's your fame and
Speaker 1: she goes says, fame is awesome, and then like a
Speaker 1: day later she's like, fame is horrible. Fame's the worst.
Speaker 1: I get these horrible emails. I hate fame. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: fame sucks. You know, it's cool, but it kind of sucks,
Speaker 1: like you don't really want it dark. There's a dark
Speaker 1: side to it. And I think maybe when we go
Speaker 1: through this process of ego that we start to see
Speaker 1: the it's dark side and people are like, you know,
Speaker 1: I had enough. It was cool. But you know, maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get in touch, and I wonder if that's going
Speaker 1: to happen. I also wonder, since we're reliving nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: maybe the psychedelic revolution will do something. Maybe that when
Speaker 1: that kicks in in a couple of years, that'll get
Speaker 1: people to sort of reframe their ego when they start
Speaker 1: thinking about consciousness. When consciousness revolution and thinking that people
Speaker 1: are thinking about consciousness much more broadly, your little ego,
Speaker 1: your narcissism, in the face of sort of massive levels
Speaker 1: of consciousness is nothing. It's trivial. And so you know, people,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of people in those sort of in
Speaker 1: spiritual communities that are incredibly narcissistic. It's not that spirituality
Speaker 1: gets rid of ego by any means. It can be
Speaker 1: a great vehicle to expand it. Yeah, but my hope
Speaker 1: is with some people that will help with the suffering peace,
Speaker 1: that will help with the sense of disconnection and maybe
Speaker 1: give people some peace. And when people at peace, they
Speaker 1: have love, and when they have love, that's pretty good,
Speaker 1: and status and fame aren't as satisfying as love ultimately,
Speaker 1: and that people won't that's very Eric from it was
Speaker 1: just true. If it were true, I'd be you know,
Speaker 1: I'd be shooting up fame right now. It's just not
Speaker 1: for you. Man. Well, I agree very much. I very
Speaker 1: much agree with that. And you know, I think me
Speaker 1: and you have we've gone on separate trajectories in our
Speaker 1: research programs, but I feel like we've converged on our
Speaker 1: love for humanistic psychology and UH and self transcendence. It's
Speaker 1: funny how we ended up here. I think so too.
Speaker 1: When I teach that in class, I just start laughing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I love this humanism. I love thinking about
Speaker 1: the self not being a statue you put up on
Speaker 1: a hill and praise, but becoming a process that you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're a river, not a not a glacier
Speaker 1: and uh. And so I like that, And I think
Speaker 1: there must be something about transcending ego that makes you
Speaker 1: a little less narcissistic, much more effective, and much more
Speaker 1: engaged in the world. Because your ego isn't restricting you.
Speaker 1: You can be anything you want want to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, Carl Rogers talked about that in the
Speaker 1: Fully Functioning Human has that flexibility. Yes, I like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're open to all of their experience. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being such a great friend and colleague
Speaker 1: and for really being a legend in this field. You
Speaker 1: are you know the science of narcissism. It's almost synonymous
Speaker 1: with W. Keith Campbell. So thank you so much for
Speaker 1: that chat today. Oh thanks Scott, this is great. I
Speaker 1: always love talking. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some
Speaker 1: way to something you heard, I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's
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