Making the Connection: Strategies to Build Effective Personal Relationships (Collection) (57 page)

Not all schizotypals are as blatantly odd as Bobby Fischer. Some are content to live in an unconventional way without antagonizing others. But their eccentric behavior is usually obvious enough to distinguish them from schizoid loners such as Noitrix who simply want to keep to themselves.

Very High E: The Disquietude of Histrionics

The potentially troublesome part of the Extraversion scale is not restricted to the low end. There’s also a high E pattern called histrionic. Unlike the schizoids, who may stay under your radar screen, histrionics tend to capture your attention because they are so eager to engage you.

Histrionics don’t just get top scores on gregariousness, activity, excitement-seeking, and positive emotionality. There’s also a prominent sexual quality to their Extraversion. Just as schizoids express their low E by a lack of interest in sex, histrionics express their high E through flamboyant sexual expression. In the DSM-IV, two outstanding characteristics of this pattern are: “interaction with others is often characterized by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior” and “consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to self.”

But unlike the schizoid pattern, which is largely limited to E, the histrionic pattern also includes notable rankings on the rest of the Big Five. Histrionics tend to be naively high on trust, a facet of A; high on impulsivity, a facet of N; high on romantic fantasy and feelings, facets of O; and low on self-discipline and deliberation, facets of C. In addition to their
seductiveness, DSM emphasizes their theatricality, suggestibility, and non-analytical way of thinking.

It’s not hard to find public figures who fit this picture, and show business is a good place to start. Marilyn Monroe is a fascinating example because her strong desire to call attention to her body was already apparent when she was a little girl. Gloria Steinem’s biography describes Marilyn’s report of a recurrent childhood impulse to take her clothes off in church: “I wanted desperately to stand up naked for God and everyone else to see. I had to clench my teeth and sit on my hands to keep myself from undressing.”
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Marilyn’s subsequent promotion of herself as a sex symbol, the ease with which she moved in and out of sexual relationships, and her exaggerated emotions off-stage all fit the histrionic pattern.

This pattern is also easy to spot in Hollywood men such as Marlon Brando, with whom Marilyn had an affair. He, too, projected sexuality, but of a masculine type. While Marilyn was titillating the guys in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,
Brando was turning on the ladies in
A Streetcar Named Desire
with the pouting and emotional swings of a bad boy who could easily get out of control. As with Marilyn, this was not just acting. Brando, too, displayed this pattern off-camera, and his difficulties with studio bosses and directors were as recurrent and authentic as hers.

Of course, you don’t have to be a movie star to be histrionic. Dramatic and physically demonstrative people are hardly rare. They are often irresponsible, irrational, and shockingly outgoing. But many attract a personal audience that finds them exciting and a great deal of fun.

Low A Patterns: Paranoids, Narcissists, and Antisocials

Three patterns of unusual A are in the Top Ten—paranoid, narcissistic, and antisocial—and all are at the low end. This doesn’t mean that low rankings on A are necessarily troublesome. In fact, many people who rise to the top of their fields have prominent versions of one or more of these three patterns. Nevertheless, clinicians have focused their attention on them because extreme versions may be self-defeating, frequently invite retaliation, and bring grief to others.

Thinking of these patterns together is useful because all of them include low rankings on three of the facets of A. People with each of these patterns tend to be selfish rather than generous, combative rather than cooperative, and heartless rather than compassionate. What distinguishes the three patterns is a particularly low ranking on at least one other facet of A. Paranoids are suspicious rather that trusting, narcissists are arrogant rather than modest, and antisocials are deceptive rather than straightforward.

Of these patterns, the paranoid one is the easiest to spot because those who express it are often outspoken about their distrust and dislike of others. Being so convinced of other people’s malevolence, they justify their contempt, combativeness, resistance to criticism, and tendency to bear grudges as legitimate defenses. They also tend to be cold and detached, signs of low E; dogmatic and insistent on their strongly held opinions, signs of low O; and easily angered, a sign of high N.

Although this pattern is not a prescription for popularity, it can be skillfully employed in vocations that require litigiousness and skepticism about human motives. Ralph Nader, for example, put it to good use in his brilliant career as a public advocate. Starting with a relentless campaign to uncover chicanery in the automobile industry, which forced the production of safer cars, he later turned his attention to other areas of corporate and government incompetence and corruption. For many years, he and his Nader’s Raiders spearheaded important reforms.

But Nader’s success as a crusader was not just fueled by paranoia. His ability to attract support for his populist movement was energized in part by the confidence and need for admiration that come with the narcissistic pattern.
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Moderate versions of this pattern are common among inspiring leaders. But some go too far. The pattern becomes particularly troublesome if it expands into arrogant grandiosity that impairs judgment.

In Nader’s case, the grandiosity was hard to miss in his 2000 campaign for president and its aftermath. Arguing that the two other candidates, Al Gore and George W. Bush, were as indistinguishable as “Tweedledee and Tweedledum ... so it doesn’t matter which you get,” Nader claimed that he was the only worthy candidate. When many of his early supporters urged him to drop out because he had no chance of winning and was pulling too many votes away from Gore, whom they preferred, Nader refused to get out of the limelight. And when Gore lost Florida by a few hundred votes—and, with it, the election—Nader wouldn’t even consider the possibility
that he had made a mistake. Instead, he was so pleased with himself that he wrote a book,
Crashing the Party
,
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in which he exulted in his mischief and continued to insist that only he should have been elected.

Even before the 2000 campaign, the paranoid and narcissistic patterns that fueled many of Nader’s successes had already gotten out of hand. We now know that the suspiciousness that helped him defeat outsiders also turned him against his colleagues at the first hint of disloyalty. And we know that the narcissistic traits that attracted dedicated crusaders to his early causes became justifications for exploitation and mean retaliation if they didn’t follow him blindly. Lisa Chamberlain summed this up in
The Dark Side of Ralph Nader
:

Dozens of people who have worked with or for Nader over the decades have had bitter ruptures with the man they once respected and admired. The level of acrimony is so widespread and acute that it’s impossible to dismiss those involved as disgruntled former employees...his own record, according to many of those who have worked closely with him, is characterized by arrogance, underhanded attacks on friends and associates, secrecy, paranoia and mean-spiritedness—even at the expense of his own causes.
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The narcissistic pattern has other dark sides. Taking unnecessary risks because of a sense of invulnerability is one of the most common, and many narcissists self-destruct
because of such errors of judgment. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia is an example.

But not all narcissists feel invulnerable. Many who lack the talent to be truly successful devote their energies to maintaining the illusion of superiority. To puff themselves up, they fantasize about a brilliant future, brag about their smallest achievements, and try to increase their status by putting others down. Nevertheless, such vulnerable narcissists
¹²
are easily crushed by even the smallest hints of criticism.

The great need of narcissists to feel high on the pecking order distinguishes them from people with a related low A pattern that the DSM calls antisocial and that other experts call psychopathic or sociopathic.
¹³
Like narcissists, antisocials are deceptive exploiters who lack empathy. But unlike narcissists, who are eager for admiration, most antisocials are not particularly interested in praise from others. Their cool indifference shows up in very low rankings on self-consciousness, vulnerability, and anxiousness, facets of N. In fact, their ability to experience negative emotions may be so low that they are incapable of feeling guilt or remorse and show no signs of conscience. Many of them also rank low on dutifulness and deliberation, facets of C, and are high on assertiveness and excitement-seeking, facets of E.

Considering how much damage antisocials can do, you might think that we would constantly be on the lookout for them. Yet they are remarkably easy to miss. One reason we may be so blind to them is that most of us find it hard to believe that such people really exist. Furthermore, they tend to be such glib deceivers that we may keep dismissing
the evidence that they’re conning us even if we keep catching them in the act. Robert Hare, an expert on the psychopathic pattern, remembers how he, too, used to be fooled by them. When he talks about such people at a party, he often gets responses like, “You know, I never realized it before, but the person you’re describing is my brother-in-law.”
¹⁴

Bernard Madoff,
¹⁵
who operated a massive Ponzi scheme for 20 years, is a good example. When the scheme was finally exposed, many of those he had been swindling for two decades just couldn’t believe it. “How could such a nice man do such a terrible thing?” “How could he keep screwing his closest friends, the people who kept trusting him?” Yet here he was, a seeming pillar of the community who had gone on lying and stealing for years in the face of repeated investigations—shameless, remorseless, unconstrained by conscience.

Madoff didn’t fool only gullible clients. He also fearlessly faced down officials of regulatory agencies who were trained to detect fraud. Even when an economic meltdown led to massive withdrawals that finally exposed his scheme, Madoff remained confident that he could cut a deal—so confident that he didn’t bother to consult his lawyer before he confessed.

O.J. Simpson, another famous antisocial, shared Madoff’s belief that he could get away with anything. After he was accused of murdering his wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman, and with a trail of damaging evidence against him, Simpson stayed cool. His brazen demeanor during his criminal trial, and the ease with which he played with the murder glove, helped persuade the jury that he wasn’t guilty.

Even Simpson’s subsequent conviction in the civil trial didn’t faze him. And instead of putting the whole thing behind him after that verdict was announced, Simpson decided to write a book, called
If I Did It
, an in-your-face virtual confession that further illustrates the callousness of antisocials. By describing the details of the way he
might
have committed the murders, Simpson could take pleasure in taunting the families of his victims while still claiming innocence.
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Such sadistic pleasure is illustrated even more vividly in Javier Bardem’s Academy Award–winning portrayal of a psychopathic killer in
No Country for Old Men.
In a particularly chilling scene early in the film, we see him toying with the hapless attendant at a gas station, who is quickly transformed from friendly to terrified. The man becomes increasingly bewildered by Bardem’s subtle threats and his unwillingness to back off in the face of signs of conciliation. Only because of the luck of a coin flip does the attendant escape with his life.

Bardem’s fictional character is, of course, an extreme version of this pattern, a killing machine who loves his work. Simpson’s version is more moderate, and many components of the pattern served him well in his outstanding football career. Were it not for the close scrutiny that followed Nicole’s murder, his great athletic achievements might have allowed him to continue to get away with a lot of antisocial behavior. From Robert Hare’s perspective, Bardem’s character is a good example of a full-blown psychopath, whereas Simpson might have been considered a “subcriminal psychopath.”
¹⁷

Many other antisocials who reach high positions are even more skillful at covering their tracks. And such people are not rare. Surveys show that about 4% of Americans, mostly male,
¹⁸
fit the antisocial picture described in DSM. So if someone you know shows signs of it, don’t dismiss it out of hand. It’s worth staying on the lookout for additional evidence.

Very High C: Compulsives

Although the antisocial pattern is fairly common, it is not the most widespread of the Top Ten. The compulsive pattern holds that record. A recent survey found troublesome forms of this pattern in about 8% of American adults,
¹⁹
both women and men.

A major distinguishing feature of the compulsive pattern is high scores on all facets of Conscientiousness. But what’s wrong with that? Aren’t competence, orderliness, dutifulness, self-discipline, deliberation, and achievement-striving exactly what our parents kept encouraging? Aren’t they crucial ingredients of success? So what’s the difference between the adaptive pattern of high C that is associated with healthy achievement and the potentially troublesome pattern of high C called compulsive?