How to resist poisonous people, with Leanne ten Brinke

Welcome to Gulf Coast life. I'm your host, Cary Barber. Today on the show, we are talking with Leanne, ten Brinke, author of The New book, Poisonous People How to Resist Them and Improve Your Life. She's a Canadian PhD in psychology, and she specializes in what she calls dark personality types. She's going to tell us more about that, today. Leanne ten Brinke. Welcome to Gulf Coast life. Thanks so much for having me, Cary. Part of the subtitle of your book is psychopathy, narcissism, manipulation, sadism, which is quite a quite a laundry list. Let's do one. How did you become interested in in working in this field and in writing about this field? Yeah. I mean, I think it goes back to, you know, high school, I think maybe some other folks to recognize that they've had some high school teachers who are really influential in their lives. And that was the case for me. So I had a grade 11 sociology teacher who, like, rolled the TV, VCR combo into class one day. Maybe that dates me, but other people might appreciate it too. That was always a very exciting time. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be a great day, right? And she played a documentary, about psychopathy. And it's something I had never heard of before. And I also didn't realize that, like, you could make a living out of researching people, and that seemed absolutely fascinating to me. And for the topic in particular, you know, like, I remember this man on the documentary was talking about, you know, how he didn't feel remorse, he didn't feel, fear, really. You know, he didn't really care about the feelings of other people. And that just seemed so, like, different than my experience of the world. And I was fascinated to try to understand, you know, that personality type and how someone, you know, who has that experience moved through the world and how that would be different, and then kind of your average population. And so that's that was the, the trigger, that sent me to, Dalhousie University, where I did my undergrad, and started studying these, personality traits with originally within, like, a forensic population. So within incarcerated men, usually, and from then from there, I kind of branched out and started studying these personality traits and kind of the average population and business and politics. Because it turns out you take your personality with you wherever you go. Yes. And they these people tend to congregate in certain areas which which I want to get to a little bit later. But, you write in the book that most people with these qualities are not serial killers or rapists, like we sort of imagine they are. Can you say more about that? Yeah. So I think when people, you know, hear the word psychopathy or a psychopath, you know, their brain kind of immediately goes to this like Hannibal Lecter type individual, right? But these are actually personality traits that exist, along a continuum. And so everyone lands somewhere from like very low to very high on these traits. And certainly, you know, serial killing is not a criteria for this, type of personality. And so, you know, you might get some very extreme cases like that, but the kind of callous and manipulative ness is at the core of all of these so-called dark traits and those are things that we see, you know, across different contexts. You know, you're kind of the horrible boss or the manipulative mother in law or, you know, even the the child on the playground who seems to have no concern about other kids and doesn't really care about getting into trouble. And so callousness and manipulative ness are things that we see, you know, in a much broader array of people than just those, you know, very extreme cases. That's so interesting. I found this this statistic fascinating in your book. You said, one study found that there are about three times as many people with psychopathy per capita in senior management positions than the general public. So it seems like a lot of us maybe come across this kind of person at work. Do you? Is that is that right? And can you just say more about that? Yeah. So, certainly, you know, when I'm talking to people, this is a situation that comes to mind often the kind of the bad boss, the domineering boss, the like narcissistic boss that takes credit for everyone else's ideas, and puts in very little work of their own. That statistic that you talk about that actually is researched by, Paul Babcock and, Bob Hare, and basically they went into organizations and measured the psychopathy level of a bunch of senior managers there. And what they found was that when it comes to like clinical levels of psychopathy, so very high scores on that trait, the average, the population in general has, about 1% of people would meet that kind of criteria. Whereas in this, sample they had about 3 to 4%. So it's like, yes, it is. It is more it is considerably more. But it's not like every single person, however, you could still have quite a few bosses who are like, you know, not clinical level, but still scoring higher on those traits than other folks. And I think there's a few different reasons. You know, while you might find those people in those settings, I mean, the dark tetrad of traits, those individuals who score highly on those traits are very interested in power and status. And so it's probably not surprising that, like, if a promotion comes up at work, they're going to be the ones who are like putting their resume, you know, at the top of the pile, right, because they're very interested in that kind of power and status. Move. So and in addition to that, they tend to come across very powerful. They tend to come across very confident, particularly when it comes to narcissism. You know, they are they express themselves in a very kind of self-assured way. And that seems really attractive at first because we confuse confidence with competence or your actual ability to do the things that you say that you can do. And so, you know, these people might be more likely to get promoted, but then when they're actually in that position, they seem very like strategic and tactical communicators. So they're good at like, you know, talking the talk. But if you actually ask people around them, how good are they at their job or at managing people or some sort of like objective metric of success, they actually tend to perform more poorly. That is fascinating. Yeah, because I think I mean, it seems to me like we kind of give people the benefit of the doubt. Like if somebody says they can do something, we believe them, which is perhaps unwise. But, yeah, that that's really interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's what psychologists would call the, the truth bias. We, we tend to accept information as true, you know, without really considering the veracity of that information. And this works most of the time because people are tend to be honest. But people with high levels of dark traits tell a lot more lies on average, than kind of people with fewer such traits. So they tend to get away with it more. Well, if you if one does end up with a boss like that, what do you have any advice for? How to kind of I mean, aside from just getting a new job and getting away from them, are there any like, tips that you have to kind of deal with a person like that? Absolutely. So I think this is one of the kind of misconceptions I think that people have is like, you know, it's their world and you're just living in it. And there's nothing that you can do. And I think it's true that like trying to change their personality, if they're not motivated to change, that's not going to be a very fruitful avenue for you. But you can do little things to try to make your kind of daily interactions with them a little less stressful, a little less, you know, something that weighs on you. So there's things that you can do, things like, establishing tiny common ground at the start of a conversation. So we know that people who are really high in narcissism, for example, tend to respond very poorly to negative feedback like that they did something wrong or that you're suggesting they could do something better. And so what researchers have found is that if you start a conversation with someone with those traits, by establishing that, like you're part of the same team, maybe you're just talking, you start talking about like, oh, you both root for the same baseball team, or you went to the same college like start your conversation with that. So you're both part of the same team, and then they tend to be a little more willing to hear that feedback, that negative feedback that you get from them. You can also frame that feedback in the form of a question as opposed to a statement. So it could be something like instead of saying, you know, the the organization of this report is all wrong, we totally need to change it. You could say, what do you think about changing the organization of this report? And you're still getting your your, your feedback across, but you're doing it in a way that's a little less likely to trigger. They're like very kind of angry, defensive response. Another approach is to negotiate in writing. So if you say you've got, you know, you know, a boss that you're trying to negotiate a raise with or even an ex that you're trying to negotiate, like where the kids will go for an upcoming holiday, right? And you know that they have some of these traits. Research finds that they tend to come out on top in negotiations whenever they happen face to face, because they tend to be, pretty charming in person. So they may be able to kind of use their charms against you. They may be able to push on your boundaries, and you're your little less able to kind of hold hold true to them in person. And they can be quite domineering. So they may just kind of like, push you into submission. In this negotiation. Whereas if you have that negotiation in writing, so have it over text message over email. There's a ton of benefits and you tend to, come out with a better outcome for yourself in that negotiation. It also gives you a little bit of time to like, think about your responses, and it gives you a record of what was said so that they can't, like, change history later on. Wow, those are great. Those are great tips. Like writing them down. Seems okay. Okay. For my next, psycho boss, are people who are like this aware that, like, earlier, you said, you know, maybe a kid on the playground lacks empathy or, or or an adult, too. I mean, do they know that they lack empathy? Do they know that they're manipulative or not? Like, what is their self awareness level? Yeah. They tend to be quite self-aware. I mean, one of the ways in which we measure these personality traits is just through self-report questionnaires. So we will literally give people a set of statements and we will say, you know, to what extent is this characteristic of you? And it might say something like, you know, I am special. I am a born leader. I am entitled to things that other people are not. So these are like narcissistic traits. There might also be things like I tend not to, you know, cry at sad movies. You know, this would be looking at things like, empathy and they report you know, like, yeah, that sounds like me. I agree with that statement. And so it's not that they don't recognize their personality traits. It's more like it's not a problem for them. It's a problem for the people that they interact with. So they consider they don't necessarily consider their personality traits to be a problem. This is so fascinating. I'm so you picked such an interesting field I love it. I wanted to get into you right into the book about four, kind of buckets of traits that can help other people recognize troubling behavior. Do you mind if we if we kind of tick through that list? Of. Course. So. Yeah, I was just going to say I was just going to fire them off here. One of the first one is how they relate to others. Yeah. So this is, these are the kind of subcomponents of psychopathy in particular. And how they relate to others is tends to be in a pretty manipulative kind of way. So we see things like, telling a lot of lies, being superficially charming, you know, trying to get you on side, and grandiosity and that all kind of goes into that, how they relate to others bucket, if you will. And then next is how they experience emotions. Yeah I think sometimes people tend to think that they experience no emotions whatsoever. And that's not entirely true. They do tend to have kind of shallow emotions and they tend to have diminished experience of things like empathy for other people, remorse and guilt. But they can experience emotions, things like exhilaration or excitement. They tend to be pretty sensation seeking and they can have, especially experiences of anger, but they tend to be very like short lived. And so like, quick bursts of anger. So their emotional experience is just different than the average person. Do you, this is a sidetrack, but do they ever sort of act as if they're having an emotional reaction to kind of fool people, or they don't really go to that much trouble to try and fool people? That's a very I. Think it depends. I can't yeah, yeah, yeah. Generalize I'm sure. But yeah. No, I think it depends on like what what you could offer them. So they do tend to be because they're quite manipulative. Right. We do see like say in romantic relationships, you know, kind of love bombing early in that relationship, maybe because they're trying to gain some sort of commitment from you. Maybe they're just trying to, you know, have sex with you or whatever the case may be. And so there, certainly there can be a lot of dissin and kind of faking these emotional experiences if they're especially if there's something to be gained from that. Next, how they weigh risks. Yeah. So they tend to be, you know, relatively fearless. So they can be quite impulsive. They take a lot of risks, and they live kind of like a fast life. So they're not exactly, you know, like, carefully plotting out their future. They're kind of jumping from one thing to the next. Like, what's interesting about Shinee today? And then do they are they also the ones like jumping out of airplanes and stuff like that kind of risk? So they tend to be engaged in more sensation seeking kind of behavior. I think the, the jumping out of airplanes is quite an interesting question, right? Because you can imagine jumping out of an airplane like being courageous, right? Like you feel the fear and you're like, okay, I'm going to do this anyway. I'm going to overcome by here. Or you could be like, oh, like, I don't care what happens. I'm just going to jump. I don't feel the fear at all. So I think you, you need to like, you know, when you're looking at someone's behavior, it's it's important to try to consider the source of that behavior as opposed to just, like, you know, what it might look like on the face of it. Yes. Yeah. Human beings are so interesting, aren't they? So complicated. And then the last one on the list is how they handle social rules and conventions. Yeah. They don't care so much about social rules and conventions. So, you know, rule breaking is kind of part of their M.O.. And, you know, I spoke to one person who had very high levels of psychopathy, and she described kind of only following rules that were written down because those are the only ones that could be proved against her. And like, why bother with any of those other, like, social norms of kindness or fairness or just waiting your turn? You know, all of the social norms that that govern our life that are not written down. But of course, they do tend to be more likely to, to violate the, the rules that are written to. And so there's, that is, you know, perhaps part of the reason why there's, overrepresentation of people with high levels of psychopathy in the prison system. Right. And those are they're literally violating laws, right, that are written down. Oh, wow. So interesting. You mentioned before that it's a pretty small percentage of people who are, like, clinically have clinical psychopathy or. I'm not sure exactly how you said it, but. Yeah. I know you said in your book, too, that despite that small percentage, they tend to have an outsized influence in, in culture, in politics, I don't know what can can you say more about that? Absolutely. So I think this is one of the the things that, is so interesting about this small number of people. So again, if we're talking about clinical levels of psychopathy, you know, if we if we use that as kind of our cut point on the spectrum, it's about 1% of the general population. But, we know that people with clinical levels of psychopathy tend to, or they're responsible for about 50% of all serious crime. And so it's like repeat offenders essentially, tend to have high levels of of psychopathic personality traits. And, and we can feel this in our own lives. Right? So like, even at that kind of, maybe even subclinical levels or people who don't engage in criminal behavior with these traits, you know, there's there's often just like one person in our lives that cause so much stress and turmoil and conflicts. And so I think, you know, if we really want to, you know, reduce the amount of kind of pain and suffering in our lives, often figuring out how to manage better, manage our interactions with, like, just one person or just two people can, like, dramatically shift the whole kind of emotional tone of our experience. Oh, interesting. And also, as you said before, they tend to be attracted to power. So they might run for president, let's say, or, you know, be the head of a corporation or something that would have kind of just would tend to have more of an influence over, over a wide swath of people. Absolutely. So, you know, even you think about, like in a workplace, if they're, you know, in charge of even a small team of like five people, like they are directly usually causing a lot of stress for those five people, whereas if they, you know, we're not in charge of anyone, they wouldn't have that same kind of, of direct influence on folks. So absolutely, having people in positions of power with these traits tends to cause a lot of, stress and division, and it enshrines the kind of competitive mindset in everyone else. And so the there, their impact on others can be quite like insidious. Both as a function of their personality, but also if they end up in one of those kind of powerful positions where they have outsized influence on others. Yes. We are unfortunately running out of time. But is there anything that you would like to add about your work or about the book that that we haven't talked about yet? I think one of the things that I hope people take away from this work is not only that there's like a small number of people who cause outsize harm, but that because they are the small number of people, that means that most people in the world do not meet clinical criteria for psychopathy. Right? Most people do not score highly in these traits, meaning they are, on average, pretty honest and kind and helpful. And so I hope that, you know, by recognizing the impact of a relatively malevolent few, we can also keep in mind that, like benevolent majority and, the importance of having, you know, trusting and honest relationships with, with people in our lives. That's nice. That's a good that's a good note to end on. It's a little palate cleanser. There. So interesting. But they're not that common, so that's good. We have been speaking with Leanne. Ten Brinke, author of Poisonous People How to Resist Them and Improve Your Life. Thank you so much for being here, doctor. Ten Brinke. You're so welcome. Thanks, Cary. This is Gulf Coast life, and I'm your host, Cary Barber. Thank you for listening. We had production help today from Emma Rodriguez and Mike Kiniry This is WGCU FM Fort Myers, 90.1 WMKO, Marco Island 91.7 FM, NPR for Southwest Florida.