The Diary of a CEOHuman Lie Detector: The #1 Sign They’re Lying To You, Catch Liars Instantly! | Dr Leanne Ten Brinke
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
100 min read · 20,254 words- 0:00 – 2:41
Intro
- SBSteven Bartlett
How long does it take someone to spot a psychopath?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
About five seconds. So most people think a psychopath looks dangerous. They picture the villain in a movie, but that's not how it works in real life. We've done some research in my lab, and we found there are certainly some things that you can look for.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Have they ever done that with lying to figure out if people can spot liars?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Thousands of times. [laughs] You ask people, "What's the number one cue that someone is lying to you?" They will say, "They can't look you in the eye," but there's no research to suggest that that is true. However, there's an essential tool for detecting lies, which is-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, fuck.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I know, and I study dark personality traits, and I found that there's four different elements, which are psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and sadism. And what we found is that people with higher levels of these traits engaged in Duchenne smiles, which is the activation around the eyes, and they also used a lot of hand gestures.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Where does this come from?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Well, research suggests that abuse, cold, uncaring parenting style, but also overvaluation of a child early in life may lead to more narcissistic views later.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there any other fascinating questions you've pursued in your lab?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yes. We studied the extent to which psychopathic personality traits could increase the amount of influence you have in government, and also there are three common mistakes people make when dealing with dark personalities. We'll get into this more later.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I'm wondering if you can spot any of these dark personality traits just by looking at dating profiles.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
All right. So this is Ryan. This feels like a red flag. [laughs] And then there's Hayley. That would be associated with psychopathy. Okay. David is a brain surgeon. Very impressive, but I'm seeing narcissism.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I guess this begs the question that if someone has those traits you've described, can they be cured?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So in my lab, what we found is that...
- SBSteven Bartlett
This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of a CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [upbeat music]
- 2:41 – 3:18
Why This Research Into Psychopathy Matters
- SBSteven Bartlett
Professor Leanne ten Brinke, at the very heart of your motivations, why is it you do what you do?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I want to make people less cynical about human nature, which I think might seem kind of paradoxical given what I study, 'cause I study deception and dominance and so-called dark personality traits. But I think when you understand those topics, and also that there's something you can do about it-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... to, like, make these interactions better, it's incredibly powerful and can give us a, a more accurate view of the world.
- 3:18 – 4:26
Why Psychopathy Is Getting More Attention
- SBSteven Bartlett
And why are the population at large so interested in this, these subjects? 'Cause they are. They're fascinated by it.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But what is underneath all of the sort of fascination and the curiosity? What is... What are they trying to figure out when people are interested in psychop- psychopathy?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm. You know, I think one of the reasons why we are so interested in psychopathy is because it's quite foreign to us. So most of us move through life caring about other people, having compassion for other people, telling a few lies here and there, but by and large being very truthful and honest and kind of playing by the rules, and that's, like, the opposite of psychopathy. And so I think when you are faced with this personality that is quite the opposite of your whole experience of being alive, you're like, "What's going on?" And I wanna understand that. I think there's also an element, uh, there actually is some research on, like, true crime specifically and why people are interested in true crime. Tends to be a largely, uh, female audience, and some of the motivations that people report is, like, wanting to understand and wanting to avoid, uh, you know, becoming a victim of these people.
- 4:26 – 5:50
Can You Spot a Psychopath in 5 Seconds?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is it possible to spot someone who is a psychopath?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How long, according to the research, does it take someone to spot a psychopath?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay, you can get a kernel of truth about someone's personality, the extent to which they're psychopathic, in about five seconds.
- SBSteven Bartlett
E- explain the research to me.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[laughs] Okay. So this is research by Scott Lilienfeld and his colleagues, and basically what they did is they showed people five-second, ten-second, and twenty-second clips of these interviews where criminal offenders were being interviewed by a psychologist and rated on their psychopathic personality traits. And then you had random psychology student volunteer for research watching five seconds of that interaction and making a rating of, like, you know, how callous do they seem? How manipulative do they seem? And they found that there's actually a pretty reasonable correlation between the ratings of these, like, you know, naive folks who watch five seconds and the trained clinical psychologists who did hours-long interviews and gathered collateral information. And so we partnered with Scott, and we, uh, got these videos, and we coded the, like, verbal and non-verbal behavior. Like, are these people behaving differently as th- and what are people paying attention
- 5:50 – 9:17
How Facial Expressions Reveal What People Really Feel
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
to? And what we found is that people with higher levels of these traits engaged in these, uh, what we call Duchenne smiles. They're, um, a genuine-looking smile- But they-- Yeah, that's the one. Okay, so what distinguishes these two kinds of smiles is the activation around the eyes, and it's the creation of, like, crow's feet. So you kind of get, you know, lines in the corner, at the corners of your eyes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So a genuine person will have crow's feet when they smile, theoretically.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Theoretically, yeah. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Again, there can be Botox and all kinds of things getting in the way of this, but-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Theoretically.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So it's, it's in the eyes is what we're saying.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yes, it's totally in the eyes. Whereas a, a non-Duchenne smile, you know, you, you have the same kind of upturned lips and maybe you're showing your teeth, you got a big grin, but no activation around the eyes, so you don't get those crow's feet. The people who are high in these psychopathic personality traits, they were showing these kinds of like, you know, very happy looking smiles as they were saying really hostile things. So they were using, like, happy expressions, hostile language at the same time. So you get this kind of like weird emotional presentation. Um, they also used a lot of hand gestures. We call them illustrators. Those seem to be things that just, you know, random observers paid attention to and used to help guide their judgments, which of course is, like, such little information to go on, but it does suggest that, you know, you can get a sense of someone relatively quickly. But again, personality is something that exists across time and context, so you're gonna get better data the more data that you have across those different times and places.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I've got two more facial expressions here.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm. So this is sadness. So some of the research that I've done has actually looked at people who've gone on TV and asked for help trying to find their missing loved one, and in some proportion of those cases, they were actually guilty of killing that person. So they are, like, falsely pleading for help for someone they know is never coming back. And-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wait, isn't this your, wasn't this your PhD?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
This was my PhD, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What, what was your PhD in?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
In psychology, uh, but I was in a more, like, forensic context at that time. So I was, uh, studying behavioral cues to emotional high-stakes deception.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I.e., trying to spot someone who was, say, in the media saying, "I can't find my wife. Please help me"
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
1,000%.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But they had killed their own wife.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yes. Yeah. So I was comparing a bunch of those cases to a bunch of cases where people genuinely had no idea where their missing loved one had gone, um, and they were, you know, desperately pleading to have them home. Um, and this is one of the differences that we saw in that set of videos where like... Maybe you can try to do this with me, Steven.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Are you up for it?
- SBSteven Bartlett
I am up for it.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm always up for everything. Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[laughs] Okay. So in the genuine sadness, you get the, like, downturned lip corners. Po- okay, so you did that pretty easily.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
What tends to be more difficult is this combination in the eyebrows. So your, just your inner eyebrows comes upward and together. Oh, you're pretty good. Nicely done. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
It was ha- hard though. [laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So what we saw in the people who were lying was more like surprise. So, like, they were able to kind of pull the lip corners down, but instead of, like, the inner eyebrows going upward and together, the whole inner and outer eyebrows would go up, but not together. So it's kinda like...
- 9:17 – 10:19
Can You Predict If Someone Is Guilty?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you could predictably tell from footage if someone had done it or not. Like, was there correlation?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah, so we were able to use four different cues, so two verbal and two non-verbal, to predict with about 90% accuracy who was lying and who was telling the truth. Caveat to that, we tried to replicate that more recently, and we found much more modest effects. But we did find, uh, consistencies, especially with the verbal stuff, and, and there it was the number of words that people used as well as tentative words. So liars would tend to say things like, "If you see this, come home or call or whatever." It was kind of like, ooh, [laughs] a little vague about what this person should do if they saw it. Saying things like, "It wasn't like an argument per se that we were having." So they kind of left a lot of, like, gray area in the things that they were saying, whereas the truthful people were like, "When you see this, call me."
- SBSteven Bartlett
They were more sort of high conviction and precise.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- 10:19 – 14:06
Three Signs Someone Might Be Lying
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I think down there we have some cards that say, uh, three signs someone is lying.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So one cue to deception is sparser, ambiguous information. So the most consistent effect we have that differentiates people who are telling the truth from people who are lying is the amount of detail that they give. So people who are lying tend to give fewer details.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting. I thought it was the opposite.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah, I hear this a lot [laughs] where people are like, "No, but liars will like, you know, natter on and on and on." That's not what we find in the research whatsoever, es- especially, especially when people don't have time to prepare. So whenever people have time prep, to prepare, they can start to look pretty much like a truth teller on the amount of information they have. But if you get someone on the spot, the truth teller just has to like, say, remember what happened and, like, spit it out and tell you, right? And you can even ask for more information, like, "Tell me more about that," and they can come up with more information about that because they were there, right? The person who is lying has a much harder task. We call this they have increased cognitive load, which means that, like, they need to come up with details on the spot. They need to not contradict themselves. They need to make sure they remember it for the next time they [laughs] need to tell this lie. They also need to try to imagine like, "What do you know already?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ah.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
"And how do I not contradict or, or essentially step in it, right, whenever I'm trying to explain what actually didn't happen?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
They must have higher, like, blood pressure anyway just from knowing that they're not telling the truth, and that must make y- your cortisol spike to know that you're like-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah, we actually, we've done some research in my lab, uh, to show that people who are lying tend to have an increased cortisol reactivity relative to people who are telling the truth. Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know, on this one-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Oh, yeah. Sure
- SBSteven Bartlett
... the reason why, the reason why I was surprised to hear it is 'cause when I, I wa- I'm a big true crime fan, like obsessed
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, uh, I often watch the interrogation videos
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I, I think, I thought I heard before that when they're interviewing someone who is guilty, they will give lots of like irrelevant detail-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... on other parts of it. I was watching the Jussie Sm- Sm- Smollett-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... interview he did on TV.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
Again, he had time to prepare-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yes
- SBSteven Bartlett
... so maybe that's the caveat. And he really described a bunch of p- pointless stuff.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh
- SBSteven Bartlett
He like desc- he was like talking to the journalist, and he was like, "Uh, you know, and then I landed, and I called my manager, who was in Australia, because my manager is on tour with someone else, and I da, da, da, da."
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then even when he talked about going to Subway and getting the Subway wrap-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... he, he mentioned that it was like a tuna wrap
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- 14:06 – 20:49
Can Anyone Learn to Spot a Liar?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
bit further
- SBSteven Bartlett
You know, in the same way they did the research to figure out if members of the public could just on the surface tell if someone was a psychopath in five, 10 or 20 seconds-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... have they ever done that with lying to figure out if people can spot lies?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Literally thousands of times. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Really?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah. So in my lab we've actually had them steal a $100 bill from a room, and then we had someone come in and essentially interrogate them, and everyone had to deny it, right? So the people who took it were lying, and the people who did not take it were telling the truth. And we put 100 bucks on the line, right? So like if you're able to convince this person that you didn't take it when you actually did, you can keep that Benjamin. And then we showed these videos to other people, right? People are not very good [laughs] at detecting these, these lies or really any kind of lies. On average, people perform at about 54% accuracy. Like if I gave you 12 videos, six are liars, six are truth tellers, you'll get like six or seven right
- SBSteven Bartlett
What if someone is trained? Do the, do the stats increase?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
M- So they can increase a little bit, yes. What is better actually is learning how to ask better questions
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, really?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah. So instead of just being like, "Here's a video of someone lying or telling the truth," like that's all you get, and just like look at that and tell me if they're lying or telling the truth, good lie detectors ask for more information, or they ask unanticipated questions, uh, where people haven't prepared for them, and then those cues of deception, that like sparse information, that like sense that they're thinking really hard, is really going to kind of go off the charts. And so learning how to ask good questions is actually a really kind of essential tool for detecting lies
- SBSteven Bartlett
I mean, we're gonna have to go into that rabbit hole
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, again, I gotta be careful here because people are gonna take this out of context. Say that I suspect my, my p- partner is cheating on me
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I sit them down, and I go, "Babe, listen, are you cheating on me?" And they go, "No, absolutely not" What would be a good question to ask to ascertain if they are actually cheating on me?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So I think where, where you first made a mistake is you asked a closed-ended question.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
You were like, "Are you cheating on me?" "No." You didn't even give them an opportunity to like have to come up with something more difficult, right? If you were like, "Okay, well, I think last Friday night you said y- you had to work late, but I don't really believe that. I think you were out with someone else," you would say, "Tell me about, you know, work on Friday night." [laughs] And so then you're, you're asking an open-ended question. It's something-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay, let's, let's role play
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. You're the one that suspects I'm cheating
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay
- SBSteven Bartlett
And last Friday night I was up to something, so-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
... l- that's the context. Let's, let's do this
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay. I know you had to work late on Friday night. Uh, what were you working on?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, it was a big, big investment deal that we're working on with a couple of, uh, the c- the colleagues. We had to get a deck together, so I was... You know, I stayed till, what, 3:00 AM in the morning or something crazy like that, and I ended up falling asleep on my desk. And yeah, it was a long one. Anyway, what's for... What are we doing today? What's for dinner? [laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[laughs] Okay. Red flags flying up. So I would ask more questions. I would be like, "Oh, like what, what client were you working on this for? What's the, what's the deck about?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, uh, yeah, it's, uh, uh, we're doing an investment deal with, um, with Google, so it's Go- Google's... Yeah, it's Google. Yeah
- 20:49 – 22:13
Why the Eye Contact Myth Gets Body Language Wrong
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
deception.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about body language? People always talk about body language.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm. People put a lot of stock into body language, particularly into like gaze aversion. So if you go around the world and you ask people, "What's the number one cue that someone is lying to you?" They will say sketchy eye contact, and there's no research to suggest that that is true. And if you think about it for like a hot second, [laughs] it makes so much sense, right? Because I sometimes tell a lie. You sometimes tell a lie. We all know the stereotype that liars can't look you in the eye. So if I want you to believe me, I'm gonna make sure I control my eye contact, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Um, and that's something that's, that's well under our control.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And there's neurodivergence and things like that, whi- which means that some people who are, who have sort of certain neurodiversities-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... struggle with eye contact, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're lying.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Exactly. There, so there's some emerging research to suggest that people who are on the autism spectrum are perceived as lying more, uh, when they're actually telling the truth, and that's because of this eye contact thing, which people are using as a cue to deception, but in fact is unrelated to deception. I mean, there's also like cultural differences, right? In some cultures, um, it's more respectful like not to look at you in the eye, and so that can also lead to kind of errors in our judgment.
- 22:13 – 35:10
Psychopathy, Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Sadism Explained
- SBSteven Bartlett
And there's this sort of dark personality trait, um, hear, thing I hear a lot is, I guess it, it's a triad?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
It-
- SBSteven Bartlett
They refer to the t-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... was a triad.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Now we got a tetrad.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay. So is that what this is?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So if you wanna reveal what each of those is one at a time.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Psychopathy, for example-
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is psychopathy?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Psychopathy is a constellation that is a, a set of personality traits. So it's not just one thing. Having kind of a superficial charm. They're quite manipulative, and they tend to be pretty grandiose, so they've got a pretty inflated view of themselves. There's also emotional components, so they tend to have pretty shallow emotional experiences, a lack of remorse, uh, and guilt for harming other people, and they tend not to take responsibility for their own actions. In addition, they tend to be, uh, pretty impulsive, so they are kinda living life by the seat of their pants, and they're not really, you know, planning far out into the future. And so they might, you know, kind of mooch off of a family members or a romantic partner. And then lastly, they tend to break a lot of rules. So this might be just like workplace rules or social norms, but psychopathy has largely been studied in, uh, criminal populations, so this could also be laws. The, the other three of the so-called dark tetrad share some elements but also have some like unique flavors. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Um, so the next one we've got here is Machiavellianism, and that is, you know, named after Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote, um, The Prince, which is a kind of how-to manual [laughs] to like gain and wield power-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... effectively. So as a personality trait, well, they tend to be pretty cynical about other people. They tell a lot of lies, and they try to like manipulate people, but it's more like three-dimensional chess. You know? Like they might learn a little tidbit about you, Steven. They'll be like, "You know what? I could use that against him later. I'm just gonna like put that in my back pocket." And you know, when I need to manipulate or, like, blackmail you in the future, right, they'll have that available to them. So this is... They're very interested in power, which of course is where the name comes from. Next one is narcissism. You know, that's one that people know pretty well, right? So these are people who tend to be very entitled, and they're very willing to exploit other people in order to get what they think they deserve, right? So it's, like, very relentless kind of self-focus.
- SBSteven Bartlett
This word has been used quite a lot in culture.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh.
- SBSteven Bartlett
It's thrown around, uh, all the time.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Constantly, yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's your view of that?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I mean, narcissism, like all of these traits, exist on a continuum.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay. So you or anyone else, myself, could take a measure, a self-report measure of the extent to which I have these traits, right? And you can land anywhere from very low to very high. Now, some of these traits, narcissism being one of them, actually has a, a... There's a personality disorder diagnosis at the incredibly high end, right? So this appears in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is basically, like, a list of different mental disorders. You could go to a, a psychologist or psychiatrist, they could assess you and diagnose you if you have, like, extreme levels of narcissism. But, like, people land everywhere. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Right? So I think part of the problem is that people say, "Oh, she's a narcissist," right? "He's a narcissist. Are they a narcissist or a psychopath?" And they make this kind of very binary distinction there, right? I guess I have qualms with those words for a couple of different reasons. You know, these exist on a continuum. There's no clear, like-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Moment where it becomes-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... moment where it becomes you are a narcissist versus not a narcissist. And so as with all of these other traits, it's a bit of a mouthful, but I think it's more accurate to say they, they have relatively high levels of narcissism or psychopathy or, or whatever the case is.
- 35:10 – 36:48
The Biggest Myths About Psychopaths Debunked
- SBSteven Bartlett
what is the inverse of all this stuff? Because we've pointed at the traits, and a lot of those are things people understand.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But there's also some misconceptions.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
There's also the opposite, which is, like, people think n- narcissists or psychopaths can't hold eye contact, is one of the ones you hear all the time. What are some of these ones that through your research you've been able to debunk as not being true?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So I think one of the biggest ones is that all people with high levels of psychopathy are violent, and that's absolutely not the case. So-
- SBSteven Bartlett
It kind of links to your, your tweet here.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah. So most people think a psychopath looks dangerous. They picture the villain in a movie, but that's not how it works in real life. So you probably notice that, like, in that description that I gave you, kind of a long-winded description of psychopathy with all those four different elements, I did say that there was rule-breaking, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh-huh.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
And sometimes that's criminal rule-breaking, so that could be violent behavior, but it's not necessarily so. So psychopathy is, like, a risk factor for violent behavior, but there's plenty of people who would score relatively highly and, and never engage in violent behavior. They might break rules in other ways, right? So I think whenever we hear the word psychopathy, what comes to mind is, like, a Ted Bundy, right? Ted Bundy-type character. He reportedly scored I think it's 39 out of 40 or something on the psychopathy checklist revised, which is a, a measure that, uh, psychologists will use to assess how, uh, psychopathic someone is. So yeah, he's a, a bit of a poster boy, uh, for, for those traits, but, um, certainly people can score highly without being, you know, a serial
- 36:48 – 38:25
How Common Are Dark Personality Traits?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
murderer
- SBSteven Bartlett
In terms of the, the, the amount of the population-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that have one of these dark personality traits-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... what are, what are the numbers? How common is it?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So this is a complicated question because as I told you, you know, all these traits exist on a continuum. So the proportion of people that we say are high on these traits depends on where you put that cut point, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
If we're talking about psychopathy and clinical levels, that means, um, a score of 30 out of 40 on the psychopathy checklist revised or higher, that's about 1%-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... of the population. Narcissistic personality disorder, so again, very extreme levels of those traits, enough to warrant a diagnosis, that would be 2 to 5%.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
We don't have clinical cutoffs for sadism and Machiavellianism. What we do have is a ton of data of people who have completed self-report questionnaires. So, like, one way that you can kind of, uh, get a sense of how many people are high on these traits is by looking at the proportion of people who on average agree with the items. Like, if I say, "I am a born leader"-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... to what extent do you agree with that? That's a narcissism item. If you say, "Yeah, I agree with that." To what extent do you say you like to see other people get hurt? Sadism trait. "Yeah, I agree with that." Right? So if you just look at the people who on average agree with the items that we use to self-report assess, uh, these traits, it's about 10% of the population.
- 38:25 – 41:33
Are Dark Traits Caused by Genetics or Childhood?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And where, where does this come from? Is this, um, is this, does this come from childhood trauma? When you think about some of these, you know, these individuals you have-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... on these photos in front of you here, where do you think their antisocial or dark triad or dark personality behavior stems from?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is it something happened in their childhood? Is it genetics? Is it something else?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
The answer is both. So the research suggests that, uh, with respect to psychopathy, narcissism, quite similar, the variation in someone's score, um, on that personality trait is about 50% genetic and about 50% environmental experiences. And so, you know, it can in some ways make us realize that these people didn't ask to be this way because, I mean, you don't get to choose your parents, so you're n- you don't get to choose your genetics. And then when it comes to those environmental experiences, often they're, like, early life experiences and not good ones. So research suggests that, you know, abuse, uh, really kind of cold, uncaring parenting style early in life can increase the likelihood that someone will have higher levels of these traits later in life. For narcissism, um, another variable is, like, overvaluation of, um, a child early in life may lead to more narcissistic views later.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What does that mean, overvaluation?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So there's one study, it was a longitudinal study, and they asked parents, like, the extent to which they, you know, told their kids, like, "You're special. You're, like, better than other kids." And the more the kids got that kind of feedback, the more likely they were to be more narcissistic later down the road. Like, they thought they were exceptional. They thought they were entitled to things that other people were not entitled to, and that's different than self-esteem. We want our kids to have high self-esteem. [laughs] We want them to know that they are, you know, cared for and worthy. That comes from something different. That comes from, like, a warm, responsive parenting styles.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In that study I was, I was thinking about causation-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and I was wondering if, if the parents themselves had a genetic disposition to be narcissistic, is it conceivable that they then spoke s- highly to their children-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and actually maybe it wasn't the, the, the nurturing part-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... it was their nature, i.e., that child also shared the genetics as the parent who had the proclivity to tell them that they were the most amazing thing ever?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Does that make sense?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Totally. I mean, I mostly, I, I think about this in the context of psychopathy where you, like, sometimes you've got, like, a perfect storm, right? So, like, you might have a parent who has really high levels of these traits, so they're passing on that potential genetic risk factor. But if you've got someone, you know, a parent in your household who is callous, manipulative, impulsive, it's gonna be very difficult to maintain, like, a pretty stable home life-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... for that child. And so they might end up experiencing, you know, some of those, like, abuse and, and cold kind of parenting styles that are also environmental risk factors for developing psychopathy later in life. So they kinda get, like, a, a double whammy.
- 41:33 – 44:44
How to Increase Your Chances of Becoming a Good Parent
- SBSteven Bartlett
From all the research you've done and all the studying of these dark personality traits you've done and self-esteem and everything in between, is there any way to increase one's probability of being a good parent? Like, what, like, from everything you've seen, what is the, like, right approach? I know that's a, the, it's a difficult thing to say 'cause-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... kids are all different, but...
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I mean, warm and responsive parenting. Is it, like, when you look at treatment-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... for kids who are showing early warning signs of these callous and unemotional traits, that's the treatment that seems to work. Uh, and actually that's kind of like the, the silver lining in this whole, you know, kind of dark research area, is that early intervention with kids really can help reduce the likelihood of them developing high levels of psychopathic traits as they grow older. Um, and usually it's like, it's training parents. Uh, you know, it's not like a kid comes in and talks to a therapist, like, once a week, and then we're good, right? It's, it's more training parents about how to respond in ways that don't, like, escalate, k- create these kind of, like, dominance contests when the kid acts out, but also to reinforce and kind of model this warm and responsiveness. But What's fascinating about, uh, psychopathy and, and callous and unemotional traits, uh, in kids is that they tend to be not very responsive to punishment. They're very responsive to rewards. [laughs] So if you see kids doing something kind or helpful, the, like, parent-child interaction training teaches parents to repeat what they said. Say, "That was a very kind thing to say." Just like repeating, showing, responding to them, paying attention to their behavior when they do something good or kind, reinforcing it, and giving that attention, um, to increase the likelihood that you see it in the future.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so the inverse of that in terms of a bad way to respond to a child that might lead to some of these dark personality traits in the future would be...
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
A cold and unresponsive parenting, getting angry, getting frustrated with them. I mean, physically harming them, that would be... That's child abuse is associated with increased likelihood of developing these traits over time.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You mentioned dominating in terms of dominating-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... conversation, trying to outdo them.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah. So, um, I mean, and this is something that I think is not exclusive to, uh, parenting kids with CU traits, but sometimes, you know, if a kid is having a tantrum, you'll, like, you'll see a parent saying like, "No, you can't have that." And then they'll like, you know, increase the, the tantrum level and like, "No, you can't have that." And, but then once it gets to a certain point, you, like, give in, right? What that teaches is that you just need to escalate your behavior. You need to continue to, like, dominate your parent, like kick it up a notch, kick it up a notch, and then at some point you're gonna win-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... as a kid. So that kind of parenting is, is not, um, going to extinguish the negative behavior very effectively.
- 44:44 – 46:26
What Happens Inside a Psychopath's Brain?
- SBSteven Bartlett
And there's a brain scan there in front of you.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is that brain scan?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
This is a scan of functional MRI. So what they're pointing out there is the prefrontal cortex. So research suggests that people who have high levels of psychopathy tend to have less active and less connected, uh, prefrontal cortex that's associated with impulse control. It's also associated with kind of moral reasoning, moral thinking. If their, you know, brains are less active during the same moral or impulse control task in those regions, this might help us to explain why they're more likely to behave impulsively to, you know, not be empathetic to other people. There's also, um, the amygdala, which I don't think you can see on here, but, and it's on the inside.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You can open it up.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[laughs] Okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Let's see. So other research on, um, psychopathy suggests that the amygdala, which is deep within our brain, is also associated with, um, emotional responding, particularly fear. And so we know that people with high levels of psychopathy tend to have, they experience pretty low fear, and they're not very good at, like, aversive conditioning, right? So, like, if we get punished for something-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... we learn that whenever we ex- we, you know, come up against that stimuli again in the future, we're like, "Oh, that turned out really badly [laughs] last time. I'm gonna avoid that." So amygdalas in people with high levels of psychopathy tend to be both smaller and less active. So there, uh, there is like, you know, brain differences, neurological differences between people with high levels and low levels of psychopathy.
- 46:26 – 49:50
Can Dark Personality Traits Be Cured?
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I guess this begs the question that if someone has those traits you've described, or if they're any one of these four things in this dark triad, these dark personality traits, can they be cured?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So some change is possible, but I mean [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Some. [laughs] Some being an operative word there. So most of the research we have on, on psychopathy in particular comes from criminal offenders, so individuals who are incarcerated have to take part in some treatment, uh, while they're inside, and the research finds that they're not particularly motivated to change. So that's a big problem with, like, all of these things [laughs] because they don't particularly care about other people, and it tends to be other people that they are hurting with their behavior. And so it's like, "Why would I change? This is, like, a you problem, not a me problem," right? So motivation, uh, can be difficult to come by with this population, but if they do consistently engage in cognitive behavioral therapies, you can reduce the likelihood of, uh, recidivism, so the likelihood that they will re-offend upon release. Again, we're talking about incarcerated individuals. When it comes to lower levels of these traits, it's really interesting research by Nathan Hudson had people do these agreeableness challenges, and agreeableness is kind of like the opposite [laughs] of these traits. So he would just, like, ping them on their smartphone every day and would say, like, "Oh, you should give a compliment to a friend. You should reach out to a friend and just offer them some encouragement. You should, you know, buy coffee for the person behind you in line at the cafe today." These little things where people were encouraged to be kind, be helpful to other people, to see other people's perspectives, and people who actually followed through on those did report having lower levels of these traits after four months than at the start.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And in your book, under the section that says Hard Truths: Dark Personalities Persist, you write, "Poisonous people aren't likely to change very much. Personality traits are by definition enduring."
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"Although some evolution of our character happens naturally, it takes decade. Data suggests that people become a bit more agreeable over time, and research with incarcerated men finds that even those with clinical levels of psychopathy are less likely to re-offend as they get older. Even so..." Waiting it out is likely to be a painful strategy. One study asked more than 1,000 people who knew individual who were psychopathic for a long time whether their behavior had improved past the age of 50. Almost all respondents, 93%, said that as researchers put it, quote, "The behavior was just a, as bad or worse after age 50 than it had been previously." Just as bad or worse.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm. I mean, this is their personality, right? So it's kind of like asking a tiger to change their stripes. So if you're not motivated to do it, as we know, people with these traits tend not to be very motivated, that's where that, you know, 90-some percent of folks come in. It's like they're not, they're not dramatically changing unless they find some reason to do
- 49:50 – 51:52
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- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
so.
- SBSteven Bartlett
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- 51:52 – 57:34
Why Being Lied to Makes You Feel Distant
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is there anything else in this bucket that you find interesting? 'Cause I know you, um, you may or may not be working on a book that really focuses on deception, but is there anything else that we haven't covered here that you think is pertinent or any research that you uncovered that was fascinating?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So in my lab right now, I've become increasingly fascinated with how we respond to people who are lying to us when we're not suspicious at all. 'Cause most of the research is like, I give you a bunch of videos and I tell you some of these people are lying, some are telling the truth, and you make judgments about them. But that's not how real life [laughs] works like at all, right? So usually we're having some sort of interaction with people. No one comes in and says, "You need to judge the veracity of this person." We're just having a conversation, and so I've been really interested in how, um, conversations unfold, how interactions unfold when one person is lying and the other person is just like none the wiser. And so we keep finding these pretty small but consistent effects that people feel less close to their interaction partner when someone is lying to them.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Close.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah. It's like, so we actually had this study where, um, we got people to just converse, right? Talk to a stranger. One person was told to lie in response to everything. The other person had no idea that was going on. And at the end of that study, the dyads that had a liar in them said like, "I feel, you know, less connected to this other person," than dyads where both people were telling the truth. And so we also found that the more lies that people tell, they just, you know, self-report on how much they lie in their everyday life, the more lonely they feel. And so we're finding this kind of bidirectional effect and, and I think often people lie to like spare the feelings of others. That's for the average person, not necessarily these traits here, but for the average person, most of the lies that we tell are pro-social in nature. Like I tell you a lie because I don't wanna hurt your feelings. But we are finding that that actually creates this like social distance between us as opposed to bringing us closer together. And so I've been really interested in just kinda like the negative impacts of telling lies even when we do it for quote unquote good reasons.
- SBSteven Bartlett
In that you t- talked about how when, if we were both sat down and you were asked to lie to me-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... I would walk away feeling like I was less close-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... i.e. slash connected to you.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is it in your, in your behavior or in my perception that you think is causing this feeling of disconnection?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm. So we are finding that people who are lying are perceived as less warm, they're perceived as less competent, [laughs] they're perceived as less moral. Also, if we think about like some of the cues to deception that we talked about earlier, when people give relatively few details about themselves, conversations are based on this reciprocal exchange, right? Like I tell you something about myself, you tell me something about yourself, and like we start to know each other, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
And so if you've got someone who's lying to you, they're giving you less information about themselves, for example, and so I don't feel like I know you at the end of our conversation even though I'm not like Actively suspicious that you're lying to me about your likes and your interests and what you did on Friday afternoon, it comes across because you gave me less information, and that maybe I think he didn't really wanna talk to me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I, I mean, I'm so fascinated by this, the fact that you have a lab that tests this stuff.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What are some of the fascinating questions you've gone in search of answers for in your lab?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
One that I love is, um, how much sympathy people feel for individuals who are lying or telling the truth about how sad they are. So, like, think back to the pleaders, right, that we talked about. If you look at this face, right, versus this face, like, how much empathy do you have for that person? How sad do you feel? How willing are you to donate money to whatever cause they're looking for? So, like, we studied this with the pleaders that we talked about, so people who went on TV and asked for help trying to find their missing loved one, half of whom were actually responsible for killing that person they pleaded to find. And we showed people, again, they weren't aware that some of these folks were lying and some were telling the truth, but we showed them these videos and we said, "How much sympathy do you feel for this person who's asking for help trying to find the missing individual, and how much money would you donate to a theoretical GoFundMe that would, like, help support the search for this missing person?" And we find really consistently that people are more willing to donate money to the genuine pleaders relative to the deceptive ones, and they feel more kind of sympathy and compassion for them, even though they're not, you know, they don't know that some of these folks are actually, like, deceptive murderers. And the effects are, like, you know, not gigantic, but it does suggest that, like, we're not completely cl- [chuckles] clueless moving through the world. But when we reduce it to a simple binary, is this person lying or telling the truth-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... we lose a lot of kinda like the nuance of how we move through our relationships and like, oh, I'm feeling kinda close to this person, closer to that person. I'm willing to help this person more than that person. Yeah, so those are the kinds of things I've been interested
- 57:34 – 1:00:17
Can You Be Warm and Competent at the Same Time?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
in.
- SBSteven Bartlett
One of the thing... I spoke to Vanessa Van Edwards on this podcast a few times, and she, she does a lot of stuff around, like, body language-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and how you show up, and she talks about warmth and competence-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and how some people can over-index on warmth, and maybe that brings them down on competence, or they can over in-index on competence but be less warm. Wanted to know if you had a perspective on this. Like, how, like, through your research and through all the studies you've done, can you be warm and competent at the same time, or is, is there a bit of a trade-off? And, like, what-- e-even you used the word warmth a second ago. What is it to be a warm person? Is it to be like, "Hello?"
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
[chuckles]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or is it like, you know, like...
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
No, it's like it is the sense that someone is kind and honest and trustworthy. It is your benevolent intentions toward another person, right? So we trust people to the extent that they are both warm and competent [chuckles]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... in the s- in the sense that, like, I'm gonna trust you if I think you have benevolent intentions toward me, that I think you, you, like, want to be kind to me. Um, but also if I think you can actually execute on that thing. Like, do you have the competence, the ability to actually, you know, do that thing, make that connection for me at work, right? It's like if you are just warm but, like, you've got no e-- you don't have, like, the, the ability to, to back it up, then we tend to trust those individuals less. So this warmth, high warmth, high competence tends to be associated with high trustworthiness.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And does high warmth come with certain behaviors?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah. I mean, one is just smiling. [chuckles]
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Smiling.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Eye contact. You know, it, it reminds me of the research by Alison Wood Brooks, who I know has been here before as well, and, you know, being engaged and interested in your conversation partner, right? Being-- these, like, immediacy cues. Like, you're leaning in, you're paying attention, you are smiling, you're making eye contact. These things are associated with warmth.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about resting bitch face? [both laughing]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh, I am occasionally guilty of this thing when I concentrate.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[chuckles]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So when we have very little information about a person, we're just tr-trying to pick up on anything, right, in their, in their body language, their non-verbal behavior to try to make an assessment of them. If we've just got, like, a quick look at your face and there's a bit of a scowl on it-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... that signals to us anger, and anger is not a very trust-- [chuckles] that's not a warm-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... thing, right? And so that tends to decrease our perceived
- 1:00:17 – 1:05:03
Why Dark Personality Traits Don't Get You Ahead
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
trustworthiness of people.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Any other fascinating questions you've pursued in your lab?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So I've been really interested in psychopathy as it relates to, like, leadership outcomes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So whenever I finished my Ph.D., I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do next, and I was kinda bummed out thinking about murder all the time.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
And I was like, "I really love these topics, but I gotta, I gotta go somewhere else and, like, think about this in a different context." It was shortly after, like, the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme kinda fell apart, and I was like, "Oh, maybe, like, business school." [chuckles] Like, I could go to a different context and study these same, like, personality traits just in a different area. And I was also interested in, like, this notion of, uh, successful psychopathy 'cause, like, since really early descriptions of psychopathy, there's been this suggestion that these traits can actually help you to succeed, right? And I often hear that from people where they're like- Yeah, like that's terrible behavior, but like, you know, sometimes that helps, right? And I'm like, does it? [laughs] Like what, what does the data say on that? And so I work with, um, Dacher Keltner and-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, Dacher's been here as well.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Has he?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I love him so much.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Love that guy. Yeah. [laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
He's so wonderful. I love him. And so we studied, you know, the extent to which psychopathic personality traits could increase the amount of influence you have in government, and also the amount of money that you make as a hedge fund manager. Those are kind of the two con- 'cause I was like, these hyper-competitive contexts, right, where maybe in government you can kind of like backstab and backroom deals and whatever, they might be able, you might be able to get lots of co-sponsors on your bills if you're using kind of these backroom tactics. Um, and then I thought with respect to money, maybe you're willing to take more risks, right? You're willing to cut people or companies down in public. You're not so worried about hurting other people. So I, of course, was like, these are situations where people with high levels of psychopathy can shine. Dacher was like, "No, [laughs] it won't be." So we were kind of pitting these like good versus evil [laughs] concepts against each other, and consistently we found that high levels of psychopathy was associated with less influence in government. It was also associated with making less money as a hedge fund manager, whereas it's very like counterintuitive, [laughs] I think, to people.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about some of these other ones like narcissism and Machiavell- what about those ones?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Hmm. So it really depends on like how you define success. So there is some research to suggest that narcissism, Machiavellianism can be associated with kind of rising up in ranks, maybe having a higher salary level, but they're not associated with like teams doing great, [laughs] right? And honestly, most of the research is, is on, um, psychopathy. The, the work that I'm interested in is that people with high levels of psychopathy, they talk a really good game, and they make people think that they're a great like tactical communicator. They're very strategic thinkers. But if you actually ask them like how good are they at their job, they say they're, they're a terrible manager. They tend to bully their subordinates. They create a huge amount of stress for other people on their team, um, and their teams have worse outcomes because of it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So when you're talking about team performance-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... you're saying narcissists typically aren't good at leading teams over the long term?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
They tend to come across as like leadership material early on, and there's this one study by, um, Del Paulhaus, which shows this quite nicely is like they had these student groups, and they would work together throughout the term. After the first meeting, they all made judgments about each other, how likable they were, et cetera, et cetera, whether they seemed, you know, confident and smart and, you know, agreeable. The people who were high in narcissism came across really well in that first interaction. Like they said they, they knew what they were doing. They came across very confident. They seemed like they could lead. They wanted to lead. But then as the course of the, [laughs] the term went by, people were like, "This person is actually really hostile and like doesn't do their work, and they're a pain in the butt." So certainly the, you know, the thing that can make narcissism look good at the outset is our confusion of confidence and competence. So when someone says they can do something and they say it very confidently, we're like, "Oh, they got this," right? But that's not the same thing as actually being able to do it.
- 1:05:03 – 1:09:26
What a Real Job Applicant's Voice Note Revealed
- SBSteven Bartlett
So I wanted to play you something. This is a team member of ours that's, um, so it's just, again, we're gonna, we're gonna change the voice and everything.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I wanna know in this voice note, which is a person opposing, supposedly applying for a job-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... if you spot anything that might be linked to some of these traits we're talking about.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that okay?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
I love being around people, working with people. I'm an extrovert. I trained as an actor from a, from when I was a child, I was making plays, writing, connecting with people in that way. So being with around people is my number one thing, people connected with one mission. Um, you know, used to be a play, and now it could hopefully be the mission of, of building this platform. A story is a story, and I know what makes a story tick from my actor training and writing comedy, writing plays, writing films, um, and just, you know, writing. Um, and now in my role, what I've learned is I can do process. I never thought, I thought, "Oh, I'm just a creative. I can't do data. I can't do process," and I really can. I absolutely love telling a story with data because y- when you tell a story, you can use data just like you can use words, and that's something I, I get lost in. Um, I use AI to do, uh, analytics. I'm, I'm also, you know, a p- I have been a performer. I create. So I think in the future I see melding those two worlds together, building my own thing. I want to be public facing, be a public speaker. I wanna speak on world stages. I'd love to speak at Cannes Lions. Um, I'd love to win awards for... You know, I still wanna keep being a creator, a creative and an artist.
- SBSteven Bartlett
So that was a script we sent her to read.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Was there anything in there at all that was, was flagged with any of these personality traits?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I think one would be, you know, just kind of talking about other creatives not nailing it, like putting other people down.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So that would be, that would be one thing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I mean, she also does talk about herself a lot and being able to do all of, literally all of the things.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I think those are like the biggest things that I noticed. You know, she comes across very con- like she just sound, she does not sound timid, I would say. But again, I think we, we need to recognize like if this is a job interview, that's kind of-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... you're supposed to be talking about yourself, right? So you've got some like situational effects, so you wouldn't wanna be like too quick to run to a kind of narcissism assessment there. Um, but those are just little things. I think whenever You know, I interact with someone or I see some of these little red flags coming up, just like talking about yourself a lot, putting other people down. They're like little red flags and just like, I'm just gonna-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Um, amber flags. [laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah, exactly. I'm just gonna like store that back there and, you know, look for, look for that pattern in the future. Like if there's a second interview, talk about teamwork, tell me a time you worked on a team and, and they're constantly like putting the other team members down or taking credit for everything that that team did. Like you can start to ask kind of more pointed questions that might help you get at the extent to which their ego is quite inflated or whether they're just trying to like make a, you know, a positive first impression and share their skills with you in a short amount of time in an interview.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Do you find in that, um, message the person said that they went to theater school. Uh, there's often like an assumption that people that are actors or have certain roles where they're on stage performing-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... have high levels of some of these things. Is that, is there any truth to that at all?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Not to my knowledge. Although, so I think where it would mostly intersect is like if you have any training in like the Stanislavski technique, which is like trying to experience an emotion. Like if I need to portray an emotion to you, I wanna come across as genuinely sad in this scene or whatever. I might recall a time in which I genuinely felt sad to try to like bring that emotion up as opposed to like trying to fake it. I try to actually feel it. So that kind of training might help you to like, you know, mimic some emotions, but to... I don't know of any research that would suggest that actors would be higher in these traits or not.
- 1:09:26 – 1:17:29
How to Spot Red Flags in Dating Profiles and Relationships
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, equally we have some cards here-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... which are people's dating profiles.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And I'm wondering if you can spot any of these dark personality traits just by looking at dating profiles or any clues-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that might be associated with it.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
All right. So this is Ryan. He's a chief of staff in Washington DC, professionally trained to argue my point, so yes, I'm probably going to win the debate about what to have for dinner. Okay, this feels like a red flag. [laughs]
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Um, savvy, strategic and persuasive by trade. I mean this feels very much like Machiavellianism, right? Kind of like controlling the situation, being kind of a smooth talker. Savvy meaning like they're con- they're controlling you. They're kind- maybe using information to get you to do what they want. Strategic, right? We talked about that very kind of strategic social style where like they're not kind of impulsively behaving like someone with psychopathy. They're more like three d- playing three-dimensional chess, right-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sure
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... to get what they want. So that's quite a strategic behavior. Off the clock you'll find me exploring the city, enjoying great food, traveling and keeping life interesting, looking for someone who makes me laugh. So I think the words to me that are like, uh, might be used as like euphemisms essentially for some of the Machiavellian traits would be savvy, strategic, persuasive, like I can get anybody to do anything 'cause I'm just gonna manipulate them into doing it. Now these, [laughs] these could be red flags. He could be a perfectly nice guy, but these are things that I would like go into that conversation thinking like, "Okay, does he seem very cynical of people? Is he quite power hungry?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
"Is he willing to manipulate other people to his own ends and kind of step over other people for what he wants?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about that last line about makes me laugh? I f- I found that to be quite-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in, self-serving in a way 'cause, don't know, it's, it's, it's, you're looking for something yourself there.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And well y- that's obviously can be true. We're all looking for someone-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that can make us laugh, but whether you'd write that is, I don't know.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Just interesting.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Potentially. All right, so this is Hailey, who is a lawyer. Uh, my friends call me Hurricane, but you can call me Hailey. Equal parts chaos and good company. Chaos is immediately bringing up, uh, potential psychopathy because that's like that impulsivity, like you kinda don't really know where she's at. In women in particular, psychopathy can be associated with like pretty volatile emotions and like connecting with, like we seem really close one day and then I'm really angry at you the next day. I'll happily spend the weekend trying to, trying a new workout class or plotting a harmless prank on my friends. That's a sadism [laughs] red flag, so someone who is, you know, maybe delighting in someone else getting hurt, that could be concerning. Outspoken, tough enough to handle myself. Toughness is associated with psychopathy. Do you think you can handle me?
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
That's up to you.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay. David is a brain surgeon. Very impressive. So he's a surgeon by day, theater enthusiast and cocktail appreciator by night. I'm confident enough to pick the restaurant, self-assured to admit when I'm wrong occasionally, and my friends would describe me as the life of the party. So this is giving like potential narcissism cues, right? So loves a lot of attention, life of the party, confident enough to pick... like he, he won't be wrong about picking the restaurant. Self-assured enough to admit when I'm wrong occasionally, he put in brackets. So you might not see a ton of that behavior. Don't worry, I'm sure I can find the time for you somewhere.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Winky face. [laughs] He kids. So you might not be a priority. [laughs]
- 1:17:29 – 1:18:55
Ads
- SBSteven Bartlett
[page flips] This is something that I've made for you. I've realized that The Diary of a CEO audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health. We all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learnt is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps, and we call this in our team the 1%. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries, and we released these last year, and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at thediary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. [page flips] There should be a button just down below here, and if it says Subscribed, you're already subscribed. If it says Subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know, and according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. [page flips]
- 1:18:55 – 1:20:13
Why Setting Boundaries Matters More Than You Think
- SBSteven Bartlett
With two things in mind.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The first thing is that these dark personality traits are very common relative to the impact that they can have on lives. I think they're extremely common. Uh, and the second thing is that according to your book and some of the research, people don't tend to change. So this leads me to the conclusion that we might have to figure out how to deal with these people because if we work in a company or a team-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... or even if we work in a family, if I look at some of those stats around antisocial personality d- behaviors-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... it would suggest roughly one in five people are gonna be antisocial in some way. So we can't just hope to avoid them in our lives.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
No. [laughs] You're... I mean, everyone's got a story I think, and I think people feel relatively powerless, like, because the approaches that we tend to take with other people when they hurt us don't work very well for these individuals. Like when someone hurts us, we might be like, we show them, we tell them, "That really hurt me," and then they feel guilt and they might apologize, right? Or we might punish them in some way, and then that leads them to avoid that behavior in the future. These are precisely things that people with psychopathy, for example, d- Like, doesn't really work, right? And so we're left being like, "How do I deal with this? Like, my tools are not working." But I think what's really kind of powerful to know is that there are things
- 1:20:13 – 1:24:10
7 Rules for Dealing With Dark Personalities
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
that you can do. So we've got seven rules for dealing with people with dark personalities. So the first one is to establish clear boun- boundaries. And I wanna kind of preface this by saying, like, setting out the rules is not, like, a guarantee that they won't be broken, right? We've talked about with respect to psychopathy that they tend to break the rules [laughs] as, like, a defining feature of that personality. But research suggests that establishing clear rules, making them explicit, decreases the likelihood of kind of selfish behavior, for example, compared to if there's no rules whatsoever, [laughs] right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So sometimes, like, you know, in my workplace, we have a respectful workplace policy, which when I read it was like, why do people need a respectful... [laughs] Like, why do people need to be reminded of this? This seems so obvious, right? But there's really good reasons to have a respectful workplace policy. One is that it makes very explicit how we expect people to be treated here. That is going to decrease the likelihood of people, even with h- with, you know, kind of moderate levels of these traits, let's say, will violate those rules. And more than that, if they do violate the rules, you've got, [laughs] you've got something written down that's like, "You're not supposed to do this." Otherwise, it's very hard to kind of do anything about it, right? In a relationship, you can make this really clear, like what's okay, what's not okay in this relationship, and you gotta tell the other person that. It can't just be in your head, right? So you gotta make these rules, um, explicit, and it can also help to, like, read in a buddy. Like, if you've got a friend and you're like, "Okay, these are the things that I want out of a relationship partner. These are, like, no-gos. These are behaviors that cross the red line," having, you know, a friend that knows what those are [laughs] that can tell you when your boundaries are slipping can be really useful.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking of one particular context that I know, and I'll keep it anonymous as well, where there's five people that I know. It is a family that I know of-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and they have five, five kids.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And one of the family members was telling me that they are the only one that has maintained a barri- a boundary-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh
- SBSteven Bartlett
... against one of the, um, older parents-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh-huh
- SBSteven Bartlett
... who's got a track record of, like, some of these dark personality traits.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And she was telling me that because she has always maintained a boundary against the father, who is the person that has dark personality traits, the father has almost left her alone and has gone for the other four siblings, may I say.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And that the other four siblings are suffering because they don't have an established boundary. Whereas what I'm saying here is it's interesting that someone who has a boundary seems to be preyed on less-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... by the narcissist or ma- person with Machiavellian personality than those that haven't established one.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And, and if that is true, then what is it about the, the, the psychopathic or narcissistic person that is choosing easier targets or boundaryless targets?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that, does that hold as truth or, or is that just anecdotal?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So we do know from research that this is mostly in workplaces, that workplaces that have kind of codes of fairness, people with high levels of these traits are less likely to, you know, keep a bunch of the bonus money for themselves instead of share it among their team fairly. So there's evidence of, like, having rules in place increases the likelihood that they will follow those rules relative to, like, a no holds bar kinda situation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
There's also research on, uh, you know, how people with s- high levels of psychopathic traits kind of choose who to-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Target
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... who to prey upon essentially, and individuals who are not very assertive, um, tend to be more likely to, you know, kind of... It's almost like they're, like, picking, you know, the weakest of the herd or something like that. So having, asserting, asserting some boundaries can help to, you know, not have that target on your back.
- 1:24:10 – 1:28:32
How to Spot Gaslighting and Coercive Control
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking about a guest that I interviewed on this podcast that was telling me she had gone through domestic violence-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and she, um, was telling me about, like, the love bombing process-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... a- as to how this individual had, like, broken down her boundaries and her confidence over time-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and then had isolated her from her friends and family, wouldn't allow her to call her mum.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Would give her a script when her mum called, and those kinds of things. And one of the, the remarkable things I observed is how over time they'd sort of broken down their confidence-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... in order to be able to seemingly control them.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is this a, is this common practice-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh, yeah, in a, in a-
- SBSteven Bartlett
... with narcissists?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... domestic-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Y- yeah
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... um, violence situation. You know, it kind of reminds me of the, the kind of emerging research on gaslighting where someone would, you know, make, make their partner kind of doubt their sense of reality.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh-huh.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Uh, kind of, you know, correcting them all the time, like, "You're being too sensitive. You don't see the truth around you." And I think what's kind of so, um, insidious about that is that it makes you dependent on that other person, and then the isolation can really decrease the, your ability to kind of, like, get out of it because you don't have someone else who can, you know, check your sense of reality that you really are seeing and feeling and remembering things that really did happen even though they're telling you that it didn't.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is gaslighting? 'Cause we u- we throw around the term all the time.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The minute someone lies we say, "You're gaslighting me."
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah. It's a, a pattern of denying someone's version of reality. So you might tell people that, you know, they shouldn't be feeling the way that they're feeling, things didn't happen like they are remembering they happened, that they can't trust their own, you know, sense of, you know, perception of reality. And so it can be incredibly Kind of destabilizing and isolating. And what is worrisome about that is that we really need other people [laughs] to help us see reality. And so if we- we're only seeing it through, like, their lens of we can't be trusted, our own eyes, our own memory can't be trusted, we start to depend on their perception, which is essentially a, a control tactic. And research does suggest that people with high levels of these traits endorse [laughs] these tac- they, like, they don't see anything wrong with doing that to-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... a romantic partner, which would probably follow, um, that they would be more likely to engage in it.
- SBSteven Bartlett
A lot of romantic arguments would sound like gaslighting, I think, uh, within that definition of, like, you know... Let's go back to the cheating example we said. Last Friday, I was doing something dodgy.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
You suspect I'm lying.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- 1:28:32 – 1:35:40
7 Rules for Dealing With Dark Personalities Continued
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yep. So the next one is don't give them power over others. We've talked about kind of all of these different traits in that they, you know, Machiavellianism is actually kind of named [laughs] after the pursuit of power. Psychopathy is associated with domineering people. Narcissism, I'm better than you, I'm a born leader. All of these are kind of related to power. People with these traits tend to be very interested in having power over other people. But we know from research that this does not tend to go well for those individuals who are working underneath them. So at work, for example, we know that people who are working under a boss with more psychopathic traits report being more stressed out. They also tend to be more likely to bring that stress home, and that creates more family conflict, so it kind of spreads. It doesn't stay where it is. They tend to create, uh, division within teams. They also tend to increase the likelihood of turnover intentions. So, you know, if you're working for a boss with these traits, you're like, "I gotta get the hell out of here." So you're, you're churning through staff, right? So giving them power over others is not a great way [laughs] to, to kind of-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Deal with
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... yeah, to-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Manage
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... deal with them. So you don't wanna give them power over others even when they want it, but there's other things that you can give them that they do want. And this is essentially, like, Negotiating 101, right? So, like, you can look for win-wins when you're negotiating with them, recognizing that what they consider motivation [laughs] to get to this win-win might not be what you consider to be motivation to get to this win-win. So imagine that, like, you've got this, um, this employee who is bullying his subordinates, and you're like, "You really need to treat your team better because they are so stressed out, and they, uh, you know, are going home from work, and they're crying to their spouses, and, you know, they're bringing it home, and they're, they're getting sick because of this." You're trying to make them feel compassion for other people to get them to behave better-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... toward their team. That's not motivating to them, right? It might be motivating to other people, but people who with high levels of these traits, right, we're callous, not concerned about other people. However, that doesn't mean that they can't do something kind or helpful, right? They might just do it for a different reason. So if you know that the team is suffering under this person's current, like, bullying management style, you could say, "You know, you've got this, you know, sales bonus that's coming up, but your team is so stressed out that you're not gonna meet that target, and you're not gonna get your, your bonus," right? "You need to treat your, your team differently." Money, they like money. [laughs] They like power. They like status. And so it's not that they can't behave better, it's that they might do it for a different reason.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So trying to understand what motivates them-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... and trying to figure out how you can use that. The next one is use the carrot, not the stick. So we've talked about this a little bit where people, particularly with high levels of psychopathy, very reward sensitive but not very punishment sensitive. So you can try to punish them, but literally their brains don't process punishment in the same way. They don't develop that kind of link between, "If I do this behavior, then fear of punishment again." [laughs] So, like, they're more likely to repeat it than people with low levels of these traits. So punishment, you know, there, there's a place for it, I suppose, but it's like it's not gonna be as effective with these personalities in particular. And I think what's terrible, what we are losing a huge opportunity on, is that we don't use the carrot instead when the carrot is so powerful. So sometimes people are like They're a bad person, I'm not gonna reward anything that they do. Like, I'm not gonna give them any kind of positive feedback because I think they're terrible, right? But if they do something kind or honest or helpful, oh my God, reward them. [laughs] Reward them not with power over others, but maybe with like a bonus at work, with like a job title, because they really care about status. That's a, um, a reward that they will really like, and you are going to increase the likelihood that you get more of that behavior in the future.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I think there'll be some people listening right now that are thinking, "Shouldn't you just fire these people?"
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
"Shouldn't you get all of these people out of your life if they've got sadism, narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy?"
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Psychopathy, yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Psychopathy. Um, shouldn't you just throw them out your life?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah, I think given that there are, you know, a reasonable, [laughs] reasonably sized minority of the population has some elevated level of these traits, you're gonna be chucking a l- you're gonna be chucking a lot of people, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
And they also might genuinely have some, like, really useful skills that just, you know, you want in your company. You just need to learn how to manage these, this personality trait. And so I think even if, you know, you have kind of a low tolerance for these personality traits, you're not gonna be able to completely avoid them at all times. It might not be your decision to chuck them out of the company.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, like a sibling or something.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah, exactly. It might be a person that you like, you wanna have a relationship with them, even if that relationship is not perfect. You know, it, maybe it's a brother-in-law, right? And you're like, "He's such a pain in the ass, but I see him like twice a year and I don't wanna cut him out 'cause that means I don't get to see my sister anymore."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh-huh.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
"And I love my sister and I wanna support my sister." And so I think there's just like the i- the, you know, stay or go question is just so complicated and there's so many reasons why you might not be able to do that. And so we need to learn the skills to manage interactions with these people as well. Next one is emphasize your common identity. People with high levels of narcissism are not particularly interested in, like, of being fair to you [laughs] or like, you know, being kind to you, but they are interested in loyalty. There's these studies that are really fascinating where they just tell people, like, "Oh, you guys have the same birthday," or, "You have the same fingerprint type," which I don't even think is a thing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
[laughs]
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Is that a thing? Anyway, but people think we have some sort of commonality. Then people are, people with high levels of narcissism get less angry when you give them negative feedback if they think you've got something in common with them. So if you start your conversation with, you know, maybe that, that uncle at Thanksgiving who's like always combative and talks about himself all the time and you're like, "Oh, you know, we went to the same university. We root for the same football team," whatever it is. You start with what you have in common. You're like, "Okay, we are one," [laughs] right? And then if you need to say, "You know what? You really need to pick up your game and help him with the care of Grandma."
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Then he might be more willing to listen to that as opposed to just like getting negative feedback. You know, people with high levels of narcissism don't like that. Um, so emphasizing your common identity can help to tamp that
- 1:35:40 – 1:38:31
How to Communicate With Dark Personalities
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
down.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'd sat here with Tali Sharot, who's this neuroscientist.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And she'd looked at the subject of disagreement quite extensively, and she'd put people in these brain scanners and basically got them to disagree with each other at some point-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and looked at what happened in their brain. And what she told me she observed is essentially, and I'm, you know, I'm generalizing wildly here, so please do fact check me on the screen. She basically observed that the brain changed when someone disagreed with you. And I was on a, um, phone call the other day with about 10 different people from a company we're doing a deal with, and I just observed that one person would often open up their rebuttal when they felt, had a difference of opinion with the phrase, "I completely disagree."
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And then they would make their point. And so funnily enough, I got straight off the call, even though I'd written about this previously, I got straight off the call and like did, did a bit, bit of research as to whether I, I just find that to be quite ineffective behavior-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... or if there's research around it. And what I found is it says, yes, there is exce- extensive research across social psychology and behavioral economics and linguistics showing that opening a counterargument or a rebuttal with explicit adversarial phrasing like, "I disagree," actively will hinder your ability to persuade somebody. When you start a rebuttal with, "I disagree," several psychological mechanisms trigger in the other person's brain, and that goes into the detail about what goes on in their brain. I just, uh, it seems so somewhat linked to what you're saying there about like how you keep the other person receptive.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm. Totally. Okay, so this reminds me of another study on, I think it's like really domineering bosses. If you need to give them negative feedback, like, so I don't know, say you, you hate the way that we're running this particular process. You're like, "These three forms should be one form." Like [laughs] why are we spending so much... This is like, you know, the bane of office existence. If you say, "This is so stupid. You need to change the way that we're doing," you know, like kinda coming in hot, particularly people with high levels of narcissistic traits are like, "We don't like this kind of, you know, ego threat. You're threat- you're criticizing me. You're giving me negative feedback. I'm just like shutting it down," right? "I'm not e- I don't even hear what you're saying." Whereas if you phrase it as a question like, "What do you think if we turn these three forms into one form?"
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Phrasing it as a question just kind of like makes it softer and makes them more willing to just hear it. Like maybe you, [laughs] you ultimately won't get to that one form, but you'll at least get a little bit further in that conversation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
And I think that's true for, you know, it's true for everybody.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Everybody, yeah.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
But especially when it comes to people, um, who are really domineering, which these personalities tend to be.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm. Okay. So like you kind of co-create- The solution
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
Or at least, you know, okay, interesting.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- 1:38:31 – 1:39:03
How to Become a Better Detective of People's Cues
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Become a detective and notice their cues. So we know that they tend to lie-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... a lot, being manipulative, telling lies. That's kind of part of their MO. That's what all of these traits share. And so being able to identify, know what those cues to deception are, know that we're not looking for gaze aversion, we're not looking for fidgeting. We're looking for those lack of verifiable details, we're looking for relatively few details, we're looking for signs of cognitive strain, and maybe like following up, right, if we start to see some of those red
- 1:39:03 – 1:42:56
Why You Should Avoid Face to Face Negotiations
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
flags. And finally, avoid face-to-face negotiations. So this is like a really simple move that can be really helpful. So some research out of same university as me, University of British Columbia, um, had people with various levels of these dark traits engage in a negotiation. It was just over like the price of concert tickets.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
But what they found is that whenever those negotiations occurred face to face, the person with the high level of psychopathic traits or, or any of these dark traits, they got a really good deal. Like they were able to command a whole bunch of money for these concert tickets. Whereas if they engage in this negotiation over text, that wasn't the case. So if you need to negotiate with someone, these dark traits can be like really domineering, really kind of, you know, superficially charming sometimes in person, and then you can kind of like let your guard down, and they're gonna take advantage of you. If you reduce them to words on the page, they lose some of that like charisma, right? But there's also other like practical reasons like, you know, you've got a written version of what was agreed upon. Like you can't gaslight me and tell me, you know, I'm misremembering what we agreed upon later. I've got a written version here. I've got some time-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Time
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... to think about how I want to respond.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking time is a big one.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah, exactly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
And you know, if, if violence is a concern, say you're talking about this is a, a domestic violence situation, you've got to get out of the house. You've got to-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
... maybe negotiate, you know, some sort of settlement, um, in a divorce or something. Like being face to face can be dangerous, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
It literally puts some physical distance between yourself and that other person if violence is a concern. So there's all kinds of potential upsides to like if you got to negotiate, like pop it into text, put it into the chat as opposed to sitting down face to face.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I was thinking about all the things that are linked to just having a bit more time-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
... but also like the medium of text.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And one of the things that came to mind is if someone does have those dark personality traits, they are probably more cautious about what they say if it's permanent and it's written. So like if I was sending you an e-mail, I might say something to you in person, but if I-- would I write that same thing on an email?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Uh, and the other one is i- in written form, you, you as the person that's receiving the, uh, being on the receiving end, you have time to show other people-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... and get another perspective.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Even if it's like putting it into AI or asking Google or-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... checking if the facts are right or asking your like husband or partner-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
... if this is appropriate behavior.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Totally. And like involving other people can be so helpful. So research suggests that whenever we discuss with other people before making a, a truth-lie judgment about someone else's statements, we tend to be more accurate.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Hmm.
- 1:42:56 – 1:44:39
Three Mistakes People Make With Dark Personalities
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you've got three final cards down there, which I think are-
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm. These are three common mistakes people make when dealing with dark personalities. So the first one is, is just believing there's nothing you can do. So, you know, we've talked about how some of our, our go-to responses when people hurt us, like trying to make them feel badly, trying to make them apologize to us, like trying to punish them don't work so well. But we've also talked about all of the things you can do, right?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
So we don't need to feel completely helpless. Another is assuming they have the same inner experience as you. You know, when we're trying to figure out what motivates people, again, we talked about this with respect to negotiation, right? Like what motivates you to do a thing might not be the same thing that motivates me to do a thing. I need to try to get into their head, figure out what their goals are, what would be motivating to change their behavior in this situation, and try to, you know, frame our interaction in that way, try to convince them to change their behavior for that reason, not because I think they should or not because I would feel guilty if I did what they did.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Right? But lastly, you know, is thinking you can change them. So if your ultimate goal is like, "I'm gonna stick around, and they're going to be kind and honest, and they're gonna be super conscientious and helpful all the time. They're never gonna break any rules," like I think we also need to be kind of clear-eyed about the likelihood of that happening.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Um, and so instead we need to kind of deploy some of these strategies for making our day-to-day interactions a little more positive as opposed to just hoping pe- That someday they're gonna wake up, you know, with a different personality
- 1:44:39 – 1:46:13
How the 10% Do the Damage and the Biggest Lie About Success
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is the, the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to your work? And again, zooming in on the people that are listening, that might benefit them in their lives
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I think it's like a matter of numbers. [laughs] So, you know, we've talked about the, you know, 10% of people would generally agree with items that we use to measure these traits. That means that 90% of people would generally not agree, right? So I want people to keep into perspective that like 90% of people, right, are good and kind and honest and not breaking the rules. We've got this 10%, right? That's not to say that 10% is causing little harm. In fact, they're causing hugely outsized harm, right? So like with respect to psychopathy, that's about 1% of the population have clinical levels of it. Offenders with clinical levels of psychopathy account for about 50% of all serious crime. So these people are [laughs] like doing incredibly outsized harm, and we also feel that in our lives too.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Right? Not necessarily in criminal rap sheets maybe, but we've got like one person who's like constantly making things hard because of these traits. They're, they're causing strife at work. They're, um, abusing people at home. And so if we can learn to mitigate the damage from just this small, relatively small group of people, then we can dramatically improve our lives, um, our workplaces, our interactions day to day
- 1:46:13 – 1:49:18
What Is the Greatest Lie We've All Been Told?
- SBSteven Bartlett
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Okay
- SBSteven Bartlett
And the question that's been left for you is somewhat relevant. I like, I like that you got this one, is, um, what is one great lie we've all been told?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
I think one great lie we've all been told is that to be successful you have to be in it for number one, and you need to, you know, exemplify some of these traits in order to get that promotion, to get that raise, to run that company that's worth millions of dollars. And y- you know, even I went searching for evidence for that to show that people with high levels of psychopathy could use their kind of callous, cunning, you know, fearlessness in order to make more money as hedge fund managers, and I found the opposite. And so I think even in those areas where we think these traits lead to success, they fall short. And really taking other people with us and thinking about success as, you know, prestige and like respect from other people, care and concern about us from other people, is a much truer version of success
- SBSteven Bartlett
Leanne, thank you so much. Thank you for writing a book that is incredibly illuminating in, in a way that is, um, research-based whilst also being just unbelievably engaging. And I think these subjects are so pertinent to everybody listening, and I, I know that they're gonna love this conversation because much like you were when you started your career, we're all tr- just trying to figure out the ultimate barrier and opportunity that all sits in front of us, and that's just other people
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
And again, as you said on one of the cards, but you, you articulated really nicely earlier on, we kind of go through the world thinking that everyone else's internal experience is a mirror of ours
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Yeah
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it's very easy to get frustrated or to feel, um, like you're the problem or you're inadequate if that's the lens that you take to life. And I think through your research, you do exactly what you said, which is in a weird way you do make us more empathetic and maybe more optimistic and less cynical about the nature of human experience
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Mm-hmm
- SBSteven Bartlett
And so this is a wonderful, wonderful book for anyone that wants more information. I'm gonna link it below. Poisonous People: How to Resist Them and Improve Your Life, but also it might be a good opportunity to buy this book for someone else who you know is dealing with a slightly poisonous person. Where do people go to, to support your work and to find more from you?
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Um, they can find that book w- you know, wherever books are sold. They can also find me on Instagram, @leannetenbrinke, uh, on all the socials, TikTok, on YouTube, and, uh, I post little things about studies and findings that I think are interesting, and hopefully they'll find it interesting too
- SBSteven Bartlett
Thank you so much
- LBDr. Leanne ten Brinke
Thank you, Steven. This has been so wonderful
- SBSteven Bartlett
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Episode duration: 1:49:19
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