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Joe Rogan Experience #1545 - W. Keith Campbell

Social psychologist W. Keith Campbell is a recognized expert on narcissism and its influence on society at large. His latest book, The New Science of Narcissism, explores the origins of this character trait, why its presence has grown to almost epidemic proportions, and how all of us are at least a little narcissistic.

W. Keith CampbellguestJoe RoganhostGuestguest
Oct 6, 20202h 45mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 15:00

    (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. WC

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Hello, Keith.

    3. WC

      Hello, Joe.

    4. JR

      What's happening, man? Thanks for coming.

    5. WC

      Oh, thanks for having me. This is great. Great to be in the new studio.

    6. JR

      It's polarizing. Some like it, some do not. It, uh, it has a weird effect on people.

    7. WC

      When-

    8. JR

      I didn't th- I never thought it was gonna be a big deal. L- I just thought people would go, "Oh, this place looks weird," and that would be the end of it.

    9. WC

      Well, it's kind of a interdimensional hyper tube. What, do you... The Red Pill?

    10. JR

      (laughs)

    11. WC

      What's the name?

    12. JR

      Um, some people call it the Red Pill. I don't know. It's just the, the, the studio for now.

    13. WC

      It's cool.

    14. JR

      Thank you.

    15. WC

      It feels good to be here. Feels-

    16. JR

      Thanks, man.

    17. WC

      ... good. Nice studio.

    18. JR

      Feels good to have you here.

    19. WC

      Thank you.

    20. JR

      We tested you out.

    21. WC

      (laughs)

    22. JR

      What were you saying about testing? That it's not g-... Unless you- you're sick, it's not good to test often?

    23. WC

      Y- yeah. Well, and no. I mean, as a psychologist, you know, when you're doing psychological testing-

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. WC

      ... if I wanted to see if somebody has a mental disorder, I just don't go screen a bunch of people. I wait for somebody to show up in a hospital that's got troubles.

    26. JR

      Right.

    27. WC

      Because if I go gi- give the screen to a bunch of people, I'm gonna find a bunch of people who test as mentally ill but aren't. They're not doing anything wrong. Um, they just have some symptoms, but they might not have all the trouble that brings them to a hospital.

    28. JR

      Or maybe they do, but they just never m- make their way to a hospital?

    29. WC

      Well, or they're, it's, it's working out for them. So, p- part of the...

    30. JR

      (laughs)

  2. 15:00 – 30:00

    Hmm. Um, w- the,…

    1. WC

      take over this. My record's gonna be the best." And, um, and that mania can look like narcissism too, and those are probably more closely linked.

    2. JR

      Hmm. Um, w- the, the psychological disorders that we're aware of, the ones like narcissism, the ones like schizophrenia, like, do we know what's happening in the mind that causes a distortion of reality? Is it, is it, is it ego protecting you from the truth? Is it, uh, a chemical imbalance? Is it a series of things that all coincide? Like, when you, when you have someone who's both a narcissist and-

    3. WC

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      ... possibly schizophrenic.

    5. WC

      With narcissism, it's very hard to detect anything that's sort of clearly biological, like a, a... And, and this is true for all personality really. It's, we... People have been looking at this last five years pretty hard for sort of biomarkers or neural structures. Uh, you don't really see them very clearly. You do with schizophrenia. There's some. Um-

    6. JR

      What is it with schizophrenia?

    7. WC

      And I'm sayi- I was gonna say it's not my area and I don't want-

    8. JR

      Okay.

    9. WC

      I, it's... I say... Jamie, if I say anything wrong, just check me and call me out-

    10. JR

      All right.

    11. WC

      ... because I don't wanna screw up anything.

    12. JR

      He's the best one-handed Googler on earth.

    13. WC

      Yeah, please do that. (laughs)

    14. JR

      (laughs)

    15. WC

      You know, because there's that, you know, there's the old stuff about, you know, bl- um, kind of plaque in the brain and things-

    16. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    17. WC

      ... like with Alzheimer's you see some missing, uh, neural structure, but that's just out of my area.

    18. JR

      I understand.

    19. WC

      Um, but with personality, you generally don't see it in there. You just can't find it so far. Um, and when you look at genetics, you, you know what's in the genes, but there's no single genes. It's like a-

    20. JR

      Hmm.

    21. WC

      ... swarms of genes that we don't really understand.

    22. JR

      So it isn't that... So if your father is a narcissist, are you more or less likely to be a narcissist?

    23. WC

      More.

    24. JR

      More. But what have you learned from your father? You're like, "My God, my father's ruined his life." Like, many alcoholics-

    25. WC

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      ... have children that won't touch liquor, and I've, I've known quite a few of them.

    27. WC

      Yeah. Yeah. So in the, in the, in the clinical literature, they talk about that as, as sort of that identify- you, you sort of identify with them or you do the opposite of the father.

    28. JR

      Right.

    29. WC

      So if you have the alcoholic father, like you said, and you, you become a teetotaler, or your father's a narcissist and you become really nice.

    30. JR

      You know-

  3. 30:00 – 45:00

    I- exactly. The challenge…

    1. JR

    2. WC

      I- exactly. The challenge with ego is the message that makes us feel good is often the message that, that doesn't give us the information we need.

    3. JR

      Yeah.

    4. WC

      (laughs) And the message, you know, it's like that Mike Tyson. You know, everyone's got a plan till they get punched in the face.

    5. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    6. WC

      That pa- that face punch is where, that's the information you need.

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. WC

      (laughs) My, my plan sucked. I just got-

    9. JR

      (laughs)

    10. WC

      ... punched in the face, but, but if you, but what's weird about life is you can build a life where you get a lot of positive feedback and you're not getting the negative feedback. You can build that life for yourself. It's just a very small life.

    11. JR

      Hmm.

    12. WC

      Because you have to put these walls around you so no one can get in there and say-

    13. JR

      Yeah.

    14. WC

      ... "You're an idiot." And you, you s-

    15. JR

      It's the promise that, like, m- hard moments are the ones you grow from. Like, uh, difficult moments to accept, like losses.

    16. WC

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      Like big losses.

    18. WC

      Oh, yeah.

    19. JR

      Those are where you grow the most because when, when you do fail or you do make mistakes, it forces you to really take an accurate account of w- who you are and what happened and why you had this colossal failure, and that's how you grow.

    20. WC

      Yes.But it's hard for people to... I mean, you know, lots of people fail and don't make the connection with themselves.

    21. JR

      Right.

    22. WC

      They- (laughs) They make-

    23. JR

      They blame other people.

    24. WC

      They blame everyone else.

    25. JR

      Yeah. Very dangerous.

    26. WC

      So it's, it's sometimes is harder to do that than it sounds. And the other thing is, we don't set up the world where people fail all the time.

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. WC

      Like, you go to school, you just don't fail all the time anymore.

    29. JR

      Well, that's the danger in not failing, right?

    30. WC

      I, I think so.

  4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

    So, does Michael Jordan…

    1. JR

      okay, okay. Thank you." Like, you need someone who sees your failures and your mistakes and, and checks you on them, and you need to respect that person.

    2. WC

      So, does Michael Jordan have that person? Who will-

    3. JR

      I think Michael Jordan was so hard on himself and so, like, so obsessed with winning. I mean, I think... This is why I wanted to bring him up because I think-

    4. WC

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      ... there's psychological issues that these extreme winners have that you don't get to where they are without them. It's like the, where the illness becomes beneficial, right?

    6. WC

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      If you're not sadistic, you don't make a good serial killer.

    8. WC

      Right. Or a good internet troll.

    9. JR

      (laughs)

    10. WC

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      But if you're not-

    12. WC

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      ... if you're not narcissistic or ego-

    14. WC

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... you're an egomaniac, I wonder if you ever become a guy like Michael Jordan who's just so dominant.

    16. WC

      Well, he's an example of somebody who's very egotistical. I mean, that's the... I don't know him, I don't... But that's the, what people say.

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. WC

      He's very competitive, you know.

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. WC

      And it's obviously worked for him. Um, and you see it with all... Uh, so the other option might be that, well, if you're kind of a dick and you're really, really good, people will let you get away with it.

    21. JR

      Hmm. What are you gonna say?

    22. GU

      Uh, that, for Kobe Bryant, they call it the ma, Mamba Mentality.

    23. WC

      Hmm.

    24. GU

      Like, he's known for having this mentality where winning at all costs. If you're not with me-

    25. WC

      Yeah.

    26. GU

      ... fuck you.

    27. JR

      Right.

    28. GU

      We're go-, I'm gonna win.

    29. JR

      Yeah. And also-

    30. GU

      See you there, yeah.

  5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:23

    Right. …

    1. WC

      (laughs)

    2. JR

      Right.

    3. WC

      "Be authentic."

    4. JR

      Then it wouldn't be authentic.

    5. WC

      He's like, "It's not hard to do."

    6. JR

      That's one of the brilliant things about social media is that there's no other people involved, so you get to chan- you get a chance to see these moments. Like, I was trying to explain this to a friend of mine who is a producer. He produces television shows and a bunch of different things and he was, we were talking about doing... He's, he's getting into the podcast world, but he's talked about doing podcasts and he's talked about why is it that podcasts, they, they have this resonance. There's something, they resonate with people in a way that, like, a talk show on television doesn't. And one of the things I was saying is, like, because there's too many people on these television shows.

    7. WC

      Mm-hmm.

    8. JR

      There's too many people staring. There's too many unnatural aspects of it. Like, this is really natural, right?

    9. WC

      Yeah.

    10. JR

      You and me are just sitting at a desk. There's a lot of people watching and listening, but it just happens to be that way.

    11. WC

      Yeah, I'm not thinking about that.

    12. JR

      There's no, right, there's no one here.

    13. WC

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      Here, it's just you and me sitting at a desk. If there was no one else paying any attention, there's no cameras, the only thing weird is the headphones.

    15. WC

      Right.

    16. JR

      But, and honestly, this is the best way to have a conversation because y- I hear you the same level that I hear me, so it keeps me from talking over you and we're locked into each other, so we don't hear any extraneous noise. Obviously, this is a soundproof room.

    17. WC

      Right.

    18. JR

      So we don't hear anything outside anyway, but th- that's why it works. The, the reason why it works is because it's just happening, right? There's no, "Cut. Uh-"

    19. WC

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      "Keith, I liked what you said there."

    21. WC

      "Yeah, can we try that again?"

    22. JR

      "But do you think, do you think you maybe are too happy that Donald Trump's doing well? I mean, in this day and age, I just, I'm a little uncomfortable." So let's try it again.

    23. WC

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      But this time what I want you to do is just say, you know, just like a little disdain.

    25. WC

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      We have a little disdain, right? We have a little... We're, we're, we're being good people here.

    27. WC

      Yeah, we can do that. Just a little sneer.

    28. JR

      And then, okay, try it again.

    29. WC

      Yeah. (laughs)

    30. JR

      And so just, that's how-

Episode duration: 2:45:55

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