What to read this week: Toxic People by Leanne ten Brinke

Toxic people
Leanne ten Brinke
Simon and Schuster

It seems only fitting that a book about dark personalities opens with the case study of a psychopath. But the author’s choice is not who you might have expected. Instead of a criminal whose misdeeds stand trial, it turns out to be the highly regarded judge hearing his case.

William O. Douglas, a US Supreme Court justice, is remembered as a towering figure of liberal theory in the mid-20th century, but psychologist Leanne ten Brinke says in her new book Toxic people that he would likely meet “modern definitions of psychopathy”. While his misconduct never rose to the level of a criminal offence, he left a trail of personal and professional wreckage that darkened every life he touched, writes ten Brinke.

The formal diagnosis of psychopathy was discontinued in 1952, largely due to perceived stigma, replaced by more nuanced diagnoses such as antisocial personality disorder. But in the 1980s the term was reintroduced in a criminal context, with criteria called the Psychopathy Checklist Revised used to evaluate the most dangerous criminals, whose brutal crimes and lack of empathy or sense necessitated a way of telling how likely they were to offend or be rehabilitated. People whose scores on this test identify them as psychopaths make up around 1 percent of the population, but according to some estimates they are responsible for half of all serious crime, writes ten Brinke.

But ten Brinke, who directs the Truth and Trust Lab at the University of British Columbia in Canada, argues that just because you don’t kill someone doesn’t mean you don’t have elevated levels of the same dark personality traits. “When we broaden our view of psychopathy to include the larger portion of the population—perhaps 10 to 20 percent—who would score high on some traits associated with psychopathy but who do not score enough to be considered a ‘psychopath’ by clinical standards, we find these people everywhere“, she writes.

IN Toxic peopleshe lists the costs these “aggressive, predatory animals” impose on society and puts together a playbook on how to minimize their impact on your life. But there is a catch.

Over the past two decades, personality researchers have developed a framework known as the dark tetrad. This describes the intersection of four personality traits: psychopathy (total imperviousness to the feelings of others), Machiavellianism (ice-cold strategizing and manipulation), narcissism and sadism.

While pop culture nurtures the idea that psychopathy is a binary diagnosis in that you either have it or you don’t, ten Brinke explains that it’s more of a sliding scale. We all fall somewhere on the spectrum, and our score on a single trait is independent of the others. The 10 to 20 percent of us who score high on the traits associated with psychopathy have a unique affinity for “eroding ethical standards and sow fear and distrust,” she writes.

That’s the bad news, but the good news is that 80 percent of us don’t score high. Right? Again, not so fast, says ten Brinke. In addition to being on a spectrum, the traits are malleable. That is, they can easily be dialed up and down by our environment.

In thorough case studies, she illustrates how “rotten cultures” can turn the 80 percent into what she calls “situational psychopaths”. “Kind and empathetic people are susceptible to infection by dark personalities,” she writes. Everything from excessive fatigue and extreme heat to the group dynamics fueled by sports fandom can cause people to view verbal and physical abuse of other people as a pleasant pastime.

The book offers a lot of useful advice on how to protect ourselves from the “toxic people” in our midst, such as establishing clear rules (because they love to identify and then take advantage of unwritten rules). But more of the book is devoted to a stern call for self-reflection. How can we resist losing our own moral bearings? And how can we stop enabling malicious people? After all, we are the ones who elevate them to positions where they can create such above-average chaos, as ten Brinke shows. Why do we vote for people with these qualities? Why do we hire them to run businesses?

You may respond that dark traits make effective leaders, but ten Brinke explodes this myth in an enlightening part of the book. She describes how her research into dark traits in investment bankers revealed an unexpected link between psychopathy and financial outcomes.

It turns out that “the most malicious and cunning managers generated returns 30 percent lower than the average manager over a ten-year period.” And cooperative leaders beat them all. “If you want to make less money as an investor,” she concludes, “you’d be wise to find the meanest, most ferocious predator to manage your wealth.”

So where do we get our pop-sci fantasy about the ultra-competent psychopath? A lot of it comes from them. Dark-tetrad types tell far more lies, she writes, especially of the big self-aggrandizing variety. Not only do they get a reward from it, called “duping pleasure,” but it furthers specific goals. As ten Brinke writes: “In the workplace, your co-worker may claim to be a highly effective leader, a clear communicator or the team’s strongest performer. This may be true – or it may be narcissistic delusions and outright lies.”

The problem is that we are all too happy to believe them, she writes, and in that way become complicit in their harm. We can at least make it a little harder for them, she argues, by calling upon a tiny fraction of our own dark qualities—specifically, a Machiavellian ability to engage in critical thinking. This will help us detect when we are being lied to.

Ten Brinke does not promise low-effort approaches to weeding out liars. “If lying was so easy and straightforward to detect, there would be little point in lying,” she reminds us.

But it can be done if you pay attention. If a minority of “bad apples,” as she calls them, spoil the barrel, the rest of us have a choice whether to let the rot set in or not. Ten Brinke actually suggests that there may be some personality types within the 80 percent who can not only stop the rot, but reverse it. These people combine dark traits with traits we don’t normally associate with them, such as empathy and conscientiousness.

Their mere existence explodes another uncritically accepted axiom among the 80 percent, that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. This actually only applies to the worst among us, says ten Brinke. Taking charge of the barrel of apples may require being more disciplined and honest about your own character. But there are rewards. Power is actually value neutral. It only makes us more of what we already are.

So we just need to figure out as a society how to cultivate what I will call the “moral Machiavellis” among us. It would be a great improvement to a world that currently seems to be an assembly line for psychopaths.

Three other good books on bad behavior

Born Liars: Why We Can’t Live Without Deception
Ian Leslie
Psychopaths may be inveterate liars, but the rest of us don’t come off so clean either. This book examines what makes lying so irresistible to so many of us. Remember that it is also one of the developmental milestones in childhood.

Snakes in Suits: Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office
Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare
This follows Robert Hare’s highly influential book Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. This time written with fellow psychologist Paul Babiak, Snakes in suits concentrates far more on non-criminal psychopaths, who probably work in an office.

The prince
Niccolò Machiavelli (translated by NH Thompson)

The original treatise on unscrupulous politics was written by Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian diplomat and scholar, in 1513. For many centuries it was interpreted as an endorsement of manipulation and became synonymous with trickery. In recent years, however, it has been rehabilitated as a self-defense manual against these dark arts.

Sally Adee is a science writer based in London