Kakistocracy: You Asked for It

FCC Chair Ajit Pai Unmasked Psychopath?

Many have accused FCC Chairman Ajit Pai of being a telecom shill between his background as a former Verizon lawyer and his determination to ignore all public input (not to mention complaints about comment bots) as he kills net neutrality. And apparently, his attempts at joking about it are only reinforcing those views. Gizmodo has obtained video of Pai trying to roast himself at the Federal Communications Bar Association’s annual event, including a pre-recorded skit where an actual Verizon executive (senior VP Kathy Grillo) talks about wanting to “brainwash and groom a Verizon puppet” to become the FCC chairman, with Pai responding that it sounds like an “awesome” idea.

Aside from the jokes falling flat, there are all kinds of problems with the routine. To start, FCC officials shouldn’t be joking about being shills. Whether or not they have industry backgrounds (like former Chairman Tom Wheeler), they’re supposed to take corruption allegations seriously instead of turning them into comedy sketches. The humor fails in part because there’s a painful degree of truth to it — it wouldn’t have come up if Pai weren’t pursuing the exact deregulation policies that major telecoms want. And crucially, telecom executives shouldn’t ever be involved. If anything, Grillo’s inclusion in the skit supports accusations that Pai is on the take, since he’s clearly cozy enough with Verizon to recruit one of its VPs for a gag.

For that matter, why would a Verizon executive agree to appear in a skit that makes light of corruption, especially knowing that the video might become public and damage the company’s reputation?

Excerpt from “FCC Chairman Ajit Pai ‘jokes’ about being a Verizon shill” by Joe Fingas, December 9, 2017

 

Psychopath TEST Politicians
DomesticEnemies.Org

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Slaughterbots

Some exciting tech news!

Pretty wonderful, eh? Never mind all the exterminated terrorists, just think of all the defectives we could get rid of with a team of beautiful drones, using facial recognition software and a smart analysis of the data trails everyone leaves behind.

Self-confessed psychopaths for instance; all those pricks with blogs and quora accounts and Facebook groups who have outed themselves online. Find their IP address, discover their real social media account, learn their name, what they look like and where they live, then send out the drones. Boom! If they have any children, chances are they also carry the evil gene, so it would be prudent to kill them too. Callous unemotional? Oppositional defiant? Conduct disorder? Boom! Now they’re all dead.

Why stop there? Send the tracking bots onto websites where paedophiles share kid porn, or where racists swap jokes about Jews, then repeat the same process. IP, geolocate, face recon, boom! There really is no end to the problems we could solve with the help of our flying executioners.

You could send them after real estate agents, for example. Nobody really likes them, do they? The drones would be fulfilling a public service. “An exciting opportunity has arisen in an up-and-coming neighbourho-” Boom! Those nasty beggars on the street who pester you for a handout? Drone ’em. “Excuse me sir, could you spare a-” Boom! Urgh, the Kardashians, yuck. Boom!

While we’re at it, let’s take care of bankers, lawyers and politicians. Well, only some politicians. Naturally, the drones will be in the hands of the politicians that matter, the good kind of politician in our sweet and benevolent governments. No, the politicians we can make the chopper-bombs destroy will be those with dangerous ideas about equality and wealth redistribution. Now we can finally put an end to these monsters once and for all. Democratic accountability? Boom! Anti-government protests? Boom! Online petitions? Boom!

Fuck it, I hate lazy scroungers, disabled wasters and trade unionists. Boom, boom, boom! Gays, trans people and other sexual degenerates? Thanks to wide societal acceptance, we know who you all are! Boom! Find all self-confessed Muslims, Jews and other deviant devil-worshippers on the census, and fucking boom them in the head! In fact, forego that. Just send the drones into mosques, synagogues, temples, monasteries and religious schools. Boom! Black people will be piss easy to locate with omnipresent facial recognition software. Racial purity, here we come, not with a bang but with a boom! Statistics say that one in four adults suffer from mental illness. They also say that one in four adults has just had their head exploded!

Boom! Fucking BOOM!

If like me, you can’t wait for the day when all of society’s enemies can be destroyed mercilessly, leave a like and a comment, and don’t forget to share the good news with all of your friends 🙂

A Narcissist, a Psychopath, and a Machiavellian Walk into a Bar…

The bartender asks, ‘who has the darkest personality out of you three?’ The Narcissist says ‘me’, the Psychopath says, ‘I don’t care’ and the Mach says ‘it’s whoever I want it to be’.

All embarrassing jokes aside, the Dark Triad of Personality rather ominously named, is an area of Psychological research which is attracting significant attention. It is however only a young field, in fact, it was just over a decade ago that Paulhus and Williams (2002) coined the term ‘Dark Triad’. It’s an area of research that seems to intrigue Organisational, Clinical and Forensic Psychologists alike and of course, has important implications for society as a whole. However, is there any real merit, use and/or empirical rigour in the study of these traits? I was inspired to delve a little deeper into the Dark Triad after last month’s blog on office politics, which touched on certain characteristics which fall within the remit of these traits i.e. manipulating others for self gain.

So what does the Dark Triad consist of?

Narcissism: characterised by grandiosity, entitlement, dominance, and superiority (Corry, Merritt, Mrug, & Pamp, 2008). The scale largely used to measure this trait is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1979).

Psychopathy: characterised by high levels of impulsivity and thrill-seeking along with low levels of empathy (Hare, 1985). It has been described as the most ‘malevolent’ of the Dark Triad (Rauthmann, 2012). The scale which is largely used in the literature to measure Psychopathy is the Self-Report Psychopathy (SRP) scale, version III forthcoming (Paulhus, Neumann, & Hare). It was modelled on the Psychopathy Check List (Hare, 1991), which is largely seen as the ‘‘gold standard’’ for the measurement of forensic Psychopathy.

Machiavellianism: characterised as being cynical, unprincipled and using manipulation of others for self-gain and life success (Jones & Palhaus, 2009). The scale which is most used to measure this construct is the Mach IV (Christie & Geis, 1970).

Global measures of the triad have recently been created such as the Dirty Dozen, a 12 item scale (Jonason & Webster, 2010) and the Short Dark Triad, a 27 item scale (SD3; Jones & Paulhus, forthcoming).

Both Narcissism and Psychopathy have migrated from the clinical literature as personality disorders found in DSM-IV, whilst Machiavellianism has been distilled from the philosophy and tactics of Nicolo Machiavelli. In this instance, they have been applied to the sub-clinical population in much the same way as the Big Five personality factors. It is suggested that there are extreme personalities in our communities, which cross the boundary over into subclinical Dark Triad territory. In fact, a recent TED talk* highlighted the fact that as many as 1% of ‘normal people’ could be classed as a Psychopath, rising to 4% in CEO’s and business leaders.

Much of my research into the Dark Triad was precipitated by an excellent new review of the literature by Furnham, Richards & Paulhus (2013). Hence please refer to this for a more detailed account of this area. They do a particularly good job at highlighting the major outcomes which the Dark Triad predict, across the workplace, educational and evolutionary literature.

Focussing on workplace behaviours, they cite research which shows that while leaders who are high in such traits can be successful in navigating their way to the top (when coupled with high IQ and attractiveness, apparently), most eventually fall or derail in the end (Furnham, 2010). They are described by Hogan (2007) as being able to ‘get ahead’ but not ‘get along’ – which eventually comes back to haunt them. Specific behaviours include Narcissists’ softer methods of manipulation, while Psychopaths use harder, more direct methods and Machs are able to be flexible and switch between both methods (Jonason, Slomski, & Partyka, 2012). With extremely successful publications such as Snakes in Suits raising awareness of Dark Triad traits and behaviours, leadership derailment and management style are more relevant and important than ever.

In terms of specifics, research indicates that Psychopaths tend to make negative impressions in short meetings (Rauthman, 2012), while Machs have the most questionable morals and are most cynical towards others (Rauthman, 2012). Lastly, Narcissists believe themselves to be good leaders, with high emotional intelligence even though they are perceived negatively by those around them (Petrides et al, 2011). Globally, however, all three Dark Triad traits exhibit a drive for ruthless self-advancement (Zuroff, Fournier, Patall, & Leybman, 2010).

A word of warning; whereas Psychopaths react aggressively to physical threat, Narcissists do so to ego-threat (Jones & Palhaus, 2010). However, Machs are more deliberate and cautious as to how they react and respond as they don’t give into temptation as easily as the other two typically do (Williams, Nathanson & Paulhus, 2010). Therefore, when thinking about corporate crime, Jones et al (2012) suggest that it is the Mach who is unhindered by the impulsivity of the Psychopath, and displays of hedonism of the Narcissist to be the most successful perpetrator of white-collar crimes.

All jokes aside, the next time you face an aggressive bully, you could be dealing with a Psychopath. The next time you face an overtly arrogant manager, you could be dealing with a Narcissist. And finally, the next time you find yourself manoeuvred out of an opportunity, you may have just been made a victim of a Mach’s manipulation. The Dark Triad does exist, perhaps in all of us. However, in the vast majority of us, they do so to a much lesser extent than that 1% of the population that they truly manifest themselves in.

Written by Raj Chopra, TPF committee member.

Follow me on Twitter: @Raj_Chopra24, follow TPF on Twitter: @TPF_UK.

• TED Talk on Psychopaths by Jon Ronson: http://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_strange_answers_to_the_psychopath_test.html

References

Christie, R. C., & Geis, F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic press.

Corry, N., Merritt, R. D., Mrug, S., & Pamp, B. (2008). The factor structure of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 90, 593–600.

Furnham, A. (2010). The Elephant in the Boardroom: The Causes of Leadership Derailment. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Furnham, A., Richards, S.C. & Paulhus, D.L. (2013) The Dark Triad of Personality: A 10 Year Review. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7/3, 199–216,

Hare, R. D. (1985). Comparison of procedures for the assessment of psychopathy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53, 7–16.

Hare, R. D. (1991). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.

Hogan, R. (2007). Personality and the Fate of Organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Jonason, P. K., Slomski, S., & Partyka, J. (2012). The Dark Triad at work: How toxic employees get their way. Personality and Individual Differences, 52, 449–453.

Jonason, P. K., & Webster, G. D. (2010). The Dirty Dozen: A concise measure of the Dark Triad. Psychological Assessment, 22, 420–432.

Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2009). Machiavellianism. In M. R. Leary & R. H. Hoyle (Eds.), Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior (pp. 93–108). New York: Guilford.

Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2010). Different provocations trigger aggression in narcissists and psychopaths. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1, 12–18.

Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. forthcoming. Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A brief measure of dark personalities. Manuscript under review.

Paulhus, D. L., Neumann, C. S., & Hare, R. D. forthcoming. Manual for the Self-Report Psychopathy (SRP) Scale. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.

Paulhus, D. L, & Williams, K. M. (2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36, 556–563.

Petrides, K. V., Vernon, P. A., Schermer, J. A., & Veselka, L. (2011). Trait emotional intelligence and the Dark Triad of personality. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 14, 35–41.

Raskin, R. N., & Hall, C. S. (1979). Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Psychological Reports, 45, 590.

Rauthmann, J. F. (2012). The Dark Triad and interpersonal perception: Similarities and differences in the social consequences of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3, 487–496.

Williams, K. M., Nathanson, C., & Paulhus, D. L. (2010). Identifying and profiling scholastic cheaters: Their personality, cognitive ability, and motivation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 16, 293–307.

Zuroff, D. C., Fournier, M. A., Patall, E. A., & Leybman, M. J. (2010). Steps toward an evolutionary personality psychology: Individual differences in the social rank domain. Canadian Psychology, 51, 58–66.

Reblogged from: A Narcissist, a Psychopath and a Machiavellian Walk into a Bar…  by Raj Chopra, June 23, 2013

 

Psychopath TEST Politicians

 

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